WILL WHITE IN PROSE. 415 



to attain a considerable command of the pen in this de- 

 partment of composition. If ever I gain celebrity, it 

 will be as a writer of prose/ 



TO THE SAME. 



' My page of history, since I parted from you at 

 Rosemarkie, occupies little space, and is by no means 

 very brilliant. I have hewn tombstones, and sold such 

 fame as the chisel affords. and warranted to last a 

 whole century, at so much per letter. I have built 

 houses during the day, and castles during the night. I 

 have written pages, and have promised to write books, 

 and I now find myself on the verge of my twenty-eighth 

 year nearly as foolish, and quite as much without a 

 rational aim in life, as when entering on my fourteenth. 

 * # * * # 



' I have not yet written a single line in verse since 

 the publication of my book, and I now flatter myself 

 that my cure is radically complete. But, alas ! there 

 will be writers of bad verse in abundance, though I 

 should never write any. In June last I was visited by 

 a Highland versifier, who, after having blotted much 

 good paper with miserable rhyme, determined on pub- 

 lication about two years ago, and he has been wandering 

 over the country ever since in quest of subscribers and 

 a patron. The terms are that half the money be paid 

 him in advance, but as what he receives barely affords 

 him sustenance, his day of publication is as far away as 

 at the beginning. He is so far honest, however, as to 

 prefer the fame of a poet to all the money in the world ; 

 and, from a conviction of this, I strive to do him a 

 service, not by telling him that his verses were bad, for 

 that would have been taking a wolf by the ears, but by 

 assuring him that the person who could not write as 



