you
might tell me, you who know Bach, where the easiest is to be found. I
write all morning, come down, and never leave the piano till about five;
write letters, dine, get down again about eight, and never leave the
piano till I go to bed. This is a fine life.--Yours most sincerely,

R. L. S.

If you get the musette (Lully's), please tell me if I am right, and it
was probably written for strings. Anyway, it is as neat as--as neat as
Bach--on the piano; or seems so to my ignorance.

I play much of the Rigadoon; but it's strange, it don't come off _quite_
so well with me!

[Illustration]

There is the first part of the musette copied (from memory, so I hope
there's nothing wrong). Is it not angelic? But it ought, of course, to
have the gavotte before. The gavotte is in G, and ends on the keynote
thus (if I remember):--

[Illustration]

staccato, I think. Then you sail into the musette.

_N.B._--Where I have put an "A" is that a dominant eleventh, or what? or
just a seventh on the D? and if the latter, is that allowed? It sounds
very funny. Never mind all my questions; if I begin about music (which
is my leading ignorance and curiosity), I have always to babble
questions: all my friends know me now, and take no notice whatever. The
whole piece is marked allegro; but surely could easily be played too
fast? The dignity must not be lost; the periwig feeling.

TO SIDNEY COLVIN

Written after his return from an excursion to Matlock with his
father, following on their visit to London. "The verses" means
_Underwoods_. The suppressed poem is that headed "To ----,"
afterwards printed in _Songs of Travel_.

[_Skerryvore, Bournemouth, April 1886._]

MY DEAR COLVIN,--This is to announce to you, what I believe should have
been done sooner, that we are at Skerryvore. We were both tired, and I
was fighting my second cold, so we came straight through by the west.

We have a butler! He doesn't buttle, but the point of the thing is the
style. When Fanny gardens, he stands over her and looks genteel. He
opens the door, and I am told waits at table. Well, what's the odds; I
shall have it on my tomb--"He ran a butler."

He may have been this and that,
A drunkard or a guttler;
He may have been bald and fat--
At least he kept a butler.

He may have sprung from ill or well,
From Emperor or sutler;
He may be burning now in Hell--
On earth he kept a butler.

I want t