30 THE EOT. 



tion of the cave. We need not retain the childish mis- 

 spelling : 



1 There stands a cavern on the sea-beat shore, 

 Which stood for ages since the days of yore, 

 "Whose open mouth stands forth awfully wide, ' 

 And oft takes in the roaring, swelling tide. 

 Out through the cavern water oozes fast, 

 Which ends in nothing but white stones at last. 

 Two boys, the author one, away did stray, 

 Being on a beauteous and a sunshine day.' 



The contemptuous ' nothing but white stones ' hardly 

 betrays the future geologist, and the naivete of ' the 

 author one ' is charming. The three last stanzas relate, 

 in very flat prose fitted with rhyme, that the boys went 

 to the cavern 'for some stones/ found that the water 

 had filled in round them, tried to get out but could not, 

 were doubly pained when 'the night came on, down 

 poured the heavy rain/ and c ran so very fast' to the 

 boats when they came to rescue them. Nothing here 

 but the sternest historical realism. Fancy has not 

 gilded the clouds, nor enthusiasm softened the colours ; 

 the fact stands simply out as an experience of un- 

 romantic misery. 



For several years this version seems to have con- 

 tented Hugh, the revision it underwent extending only 

 to verbal alterations. The lad of nineteen, however, 

 discards the whole, and produces a more polished and 

 melodious ditty. The friend who shared the ad- 

 venture is dismissed, and the interest centres in the 

 ' author/ or, as he is now more poetically styled, ' the 

 Muses' youngest child/ or, with a touch of remorseful 

 pathos, 'the Muses' rude, untoward child.' He has 

 learned to sketch in Scott's lighter manner, and there is 

 something of gracefulness and vivacity in his handling : 



