LETTER FROM CARRUTHERS. 47 



friend Allan Cunningham in this respect. Allan had 

 better opportunities than you in his early days. His 

 father had an excellent library, was an intelligent man, 

 and mixed with intelligent people. Nay, the poet him- 

 self was turned of thirty, had been a reporter for the 

 London press, and was almost necessarily well versed in 

 critical lore, before he tried his hand at prose. Yet 

 even his last work, his Life of Barns, is full of sins against 

 right taste and delicacy of feeling. But, after all, your 

 solitude and seclusion were your best teachers. We 

 may wonder how you got your style so pure and 

 vigorous, but it was your lonely communings with 

 nature that fixed the matter in your mind, and gave it 

 room to grow. You studied deeply and minutely all 

 you heard, read, and saw, and thus came to your task 

 fraught with thoughts, feeling, and knowledge, pondered 

 over daily for years, and moulded into perfect shapes. 

 Your imagination had merely to supply a coping for this 

 depository. But I am getting too dissertative myself. 

 If the Edinburgh Review is at your command, turn to 

 one of the early volumes for a review of " Cromek's Re- 

 liques," and you will find some excellent observations 

 of Jeffrey, on the peculiar position of Burns in his youth. 

 Situation is as necessary for the proper growth of genius 

 as of forest trees ; and I cannot help thinking, my dear 

 friend, that though your early lot has been hard, it has 

 been favourable for the development of your mental 

 power. 



' It will be your own fault if you do not sail with 

 full and prosperous gale. Your next appearance will be 

 looked forward to with interest, and will secure you 

 good terms with your bookseller. Publishers are a 

 fraternity wise in their generation, and I really think 

 they will be casting out nets for you hereafter. I hope 



