nd would linger still, look wistful, and marvel why if at
any time I passed on without making my wonted delay. I did not follow
these practices only 'when summer days were fine.' The lines of an
epistle written subsequently will convey some idea of my habits:--

"'My early years were pass'd far on
The hills of Ettrick wild and lone;
Through summer sheen and winter shade
Tending the flocks that o'er them stray'd.
In bold enthusiastic glee
I sung rude strains of minstrelsy,
Which mingling with died o'er the dale,
Unheeded as the plover's wail.
Oft where the waving rushes shed
A shelter frail around my head,
Weening, though not through hopes of fame,
To fix on these more lasting claim,
I'd there secure in rustic scroll
The wayward fancies of the soul.
Even where yon lofty rocks arise,
Hoar as the clouds on wintry skies,
Wrapp'd in the plaid, and dern'd beneath
The colder cone of drifted wreath,
I noted them afar from ken,
Till ink would freeze within the pen;
So deep the spell which bound the heart
Unto the bard's undying art--
So rapt the charm that still beguiled
The minstrel of the mountains wild.'

"The ancients had a maxim--'Revenge is sweet.' In rural, as well as in
other life, there are things said and done which are more or less
ungenerous. These, if at any time they came my way, I repelled as best I
might. But I did not stop here; whether such matters, when occurring,
might concern myself as an individual or not, I took it upon me, as if I
had been a 'learned judge,' to write satires upon such persons as I knew
or conceived to have spoken or acted in aught contrary to good manners.
These squibs were written through the impulse of offended feeling, or
the stirrings of that injudicious spirit which sometimes prompts a man
to exercise a power merely because he possesses it. They were still,
after all, only as things of private experiment, and not intended ever
to go forth to the world--though it happened otherwise. I usually
carried a lot of these writings in my hat, and by and by, unlike most
other young authors, I got a publisher unsought for. This was the wind,
which, on a wild day, swept my hat from my head, and tattering its
contents asunder from their fold, sent them away over hill and dale like
a flock of wild fowl. I recovered some where they had halted in bieldy
places; others of them went further, and f