RHYME AND REASON. 421 



of his temper was shaken by reiterated and agonizing 

 attacks of inflammation of the lungs, did he display the 

 least severity to any of his children. One or two speci- 

 mens may be given of the letters which, when absent 

 on his geological tours, he used to address to them. 



TO HIS DAUGHTER HARRIET. 



' Cromarty, 20th September, 1850. 



4 You tell me you were " considering whether I 

 wrote anything in the Album at the John o' Groats' 

 Inn, and, if I did, what I wrote." Well, I did write in 

 it ; without adding my name, however ; and what I did 

 write was, though not poetry, a kind of verse. In one 

 respect, papa resembles a great many other grown-up 

 people ; he occasionally writes bad verses ; but then, un- 

 like many of the others, he knows the verses to be bad, 

 and does not make roundabout speeches in order to 

 create an opportunity of repeating them in company. 

 In all verse-writing a sort of marriage should take 

 place, a marriage between the lady Rhyme and the 

 gentleman Reason ; but in many verses the parties do 

 not come together at all, and in many more the union is 

 far from being a happy one. It is only those Heaven- 

 made marriages that are happy, in which Genius enacts 

 the part of the priest. That in which I took a part in 

 the Inn at Huna was at best only a kind of humdrum 

 fisher-wedding ; the bridegroom, though not quite a 

 fool, was decidedly commonplace, and the bride, if not 

 a fright, was at least plain. 



" John o' Groats is a shapeless mound, 



John o' Groat is dust ; 

 To shapeless mound and wormy ground, 



Man, and man's dwelling, must ; 

 Rottenness waits on the pomp of kings, 



On the sword of the warrior canker and rust. 



