416 THE JOURNEYMAN. 



well as Scott and Byron and Wordsworth had no chance 

 of becoming popular, and so had better not write at all. 

 " Ah, craving your pardon," said the poet, " one may be 

 very eminent without being quite at the top. You must 

 surely allow that there is nature and originality in my 

 pieces, possessed of nature and originality, it is impos- 

 sible for me to fail. I will print 4000 copies of my 

 work, and shall sell every one of them." We have an- 

 other poet in this part of the country, who has issued 

 proposals for printing a metrical history of Joseph, con- 

 sisting of 20,000 lines/ 



TO THE SAME. 



' School House of Nigg, Sept. 5, 1833. 



' I send you, according to promise, a copy of 

 my young friend's verses. They are, as I have already 

 stated to you, quite her first attempt in metrical com- 

 position, with the exception, perhaps, of half-a-dozen 

 stanzas, and, regarded as such, indicate, or I am some- 

 what mistaken, considerable powers of thought and ex- 

 pression, a delicate sense of the beautiful, and much of 

 what metaphysicians term the conceptive faculty. It is 

 wonderful with what facility some happily-constituted 

 minds acquire an ability of wielding all their powers, 

 contrasted with the much labour it costs others, though 

 of no inferior order, to attain a very limited command of 

 these. There are winged spirits which can reach at a 

 single flight the higher pinnacles of art. I have read of 

 a common mechanic, who, after watching for a few hours 

 a copper-plate engraver when at work, bought a plate of 

 copper from him, and, going home, produced a master- 

 piece. There is a similar story told of West, the 

 painter. How different the progress of other minds ! 



