e the bard, in fact; and also a dam tale to order, which will
be what it will be: I don't love it, but some of it is passable in its
mouldy way, _The Misadventures of John Nicholson_. All my bardly
exercises are in Scotch; I have struck my somewhat ponderous guitar in
that tongue to no small extent: with what success, I know not, but I
think it's better than my English verse; more marrow and fatness, and
more ruggedness.

How goes _Keats_? Pray remark, if he (Keats) hung back from Shelley, it
was not to be wondered at, _when so many of his friends were Shelley's
pensioners_. I forget if you have made this point; it has been borne in
upon me reading Dowden and the _Shelley Papers_; and it will do no harm
if you have made it. I finished a poem to-day, and writ 3000 words of a
story, _tant bien que mal_; and have a right to be sleepy, and (what is
far nobler and rarer) am so.--My dear Colvin, ever yours,

THE REAL MACKAY.

TO LADY TAYLOR

Stevenson's volume of tales _The Merry Men_, so called from the story
which heads the collection, was about to appear with a dedication to
Lady Taylor. Professor Dowden's _Shelley_ had lately come out, and
had naturally been read with eager interest in a circle where Sir
Percy (the poet's son) and Lady Shelley were intimate friends and
neighbours.

_Skerryvore, Bournemouth_ [_New Year, 1887_].

MY DEAR LADY TAYLOR,--This is to wish you all the salutations of the
year, with some regret that I cannot offer them in person; yet less than
I had supposed. For hitherto your flight to London seems to have worked
well; and time flies and will soon bring you back again. Though time is
ironical, too; and it would be like his irony if the same tide that
brought you back carried me away. That would not be, at least, without
some meeting.

I feel very sorry to think the book to which I have put your name will
be no better, and I can make it no better. The tales are of all dates
and places; they are like the box, the goose, and the cottage of the
ferryman; and must go floating down time together as best they can. But
I am after all a (superior) penny-a-liner; I must do, in the Scotch
phrase, as it will do with me; and I cannot always choose what my books
are to be, only seize the chance they offer to link my name to a
friend's. I hope the lot of them (the tales) will look fairly
disciplined when they are clapped in binding; but I fear they will be
but an awkw