JAQUES. 217 



of the images which are preserved along with them, join- 

 ing or disjoining them at pleasure. Oh, how strange 

 and varied are the powers of that soul which is destined 

 to immortality ! It can be made of itself, just as we 

 deal with it, either a heaven or a hell. And now I have 

 done. No, not yet. I must, by quoting Shakespeare, 

 forestall some of your remarks. 



" When I did hear 



The motley fool thus moral on the time, 

 My lungs began to crow like chanticleer. 

 That fools should be so deep contemplative ; 

 And I did laugh sans intermission 

 An hour by his dial."' 



This remarkable letter was not sent away at once. 

 On the 10th of the month Hugh took it up, and 

 added a few words. The ' thoughts and modes of ex- 

 pression ' seem, he says, as new to him ' as if they had 

 been found by some other person.' Prom this he infers 

 that, if he and his two friends made copies of their letters, 

 the volume containing them, if of no great interest to 

 third parties, would be not only interesting but extremely 

 useful to the correspondents. ' You may see/ he pro- 

 ceeds, ' that I am bent on making this experiment/ 

 Miller carried out his intention to a very considerable 

 extent, and seems never, while he resided in Cromarty, 

 to have grudged the labour of copying for preservation 

 what he wrote. 



Reverting to his letter, he remarks justly that it is 

 ' too much in the style which a preceptor would assume/ 

 while some of the observations ' are commonplace and 

 ill connected, and others of them unpardonably quaint/ 

 He assures Ross that the preceptorial tone is ' only in 

 seeming, not in reality/ and that he does not suppose 

 his correspondent to be ignorant of anything he has 

 written. 'The blockhead who sets himself up as an 



