222 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. IX. 



waltz and quadrille. Part-singing is equally a closed region 

 to me, for I never could keep time. 



" Understand, then, that I do my best, not wilfully fol- 

 lowing divisive courses, but using the eccentric gift that is 

 in me as well as I can. Do not say this hymn will not scan ; 

 but this hopelessly unscannable hymn will, or will not do. 

 I am not an engine running on hexameter, pentameter, long 

 metre, short metre, * old ' or ' new hundred ' rails. I am an 

 unlicensed privateer, now sailing discreetly before the wind, 

 and then tacking at a sharp angle ; now covered with 

 canvas, and then with the sweeps out, oaring off the lee 

 shore. The end of the manoeuvring, however, is not the 

 manoeuvring, but only like the steadiest lugger or straightest 

 sailing steamship, to reach my port; and I need lots of 

 steerage way. Now, the application of all this tirade is, that 

 I have several hymns on hand, which I think will soon get 

 finished. Also, since out here [a country residence] I have 

 made large additions, spite of rheumatics and the east wind, 

 to a long poem, treating, with shocking irregularity of metre, 

 of this life, and of the life to come, on which, when com- 

 pleted, and that soon too, I trust you shall sit in judgment." 



This reference, in 1848, is to "The Sleep of the Hya- 

 cinth," which never was finished, and which has been given 

 to the public in its fragmentary state. 1 The hymn enclosed 

 in this letter was probably the following, which appeared in 

 ' Blackwood's Magazine" soon after. During the previous 

 winter he had only been once at church owing to the state 

 of his health. " On one of the stay-at-home Sabbaths I 

 wrote the enclosed hymn, which is at least not the expres- 

 sion of a sham feeling, but an honest and earnest utterance 

 of what I daresay many an invalid has felt ; only don't 

 suppose from the second line that I am a weeping phi- 

 1 See ' ' Macmillan's Magazine" for April and June, 1860. 



