LITERARY AND DOMESTIC LIFE. 319 



tion of this beautiful poem, the tender domestic allusions in which 

 would alone make it of peculiar interest and value in the eyes 

 of the present writer,* down to 1837, when he composed his last 

 poem, " Unimore," he did not again exercise his poetic faculty in 

 the form of verse. Late in life, he thought much of a subject which 

 he wished to shape into verse, " The Covenanters," but he said that 

 he found in it insuperable difficulties. f " The Manse" was another 

 subject he used to speak of, adding jocularly, " he was obliged to 

 leave that, owing to the Disruption"^ 



How far we have got beyond the days when criticism of the 

 Ettrick Shepherd required remonstrance to subdue it, may be gath- 

 ered from the next letter, received during this holiday time at 

 Elleray : — 



"Mouxt Benger, August 11, 1829. 



" My dear and honored John : — I never thought you had been 

 so unconscionable as to desire a sportsman on the llth or even the 

 13th of August to leave Ettrick Forest for the bare scraggy hills of 

 Westmoreland ! — Ettrick Forest, where the black cocks and white 

 cocks, brown cocks and gray cocks, ducks, plovers, and peaseweeps 

 and whilly-whaups are as thick as the flocks that cover her moun- 

 tains, and come to the hills of Westmoreland that can nourish nothing 

 better than a castril or stonechat ! To leave the great yellow-fin of 

 Yarrow, or the still larger gray-locher for the degenerate fry of 

 Troutbeck, Esthwaite, or even Wastwater ! No, no, the request will 

 not do ; it is an unreasonable one, and therefore not unlike your- 

 self; for besidps, what would become of Old North and Blackwood, 

 and all our friends for game, were I to come to Elleray just now? 

 I know of no home of man where I could be so happy within doors, 

 with so many lovely and joyous faces around me ; but this is not 

 the season for in-door enjoyments; they must be reaped on the 



* Contrasting his present experience with his early poetic dreams, he says : 



" Those days are gone, 

 And it has pleased high Heaven to crown my life 

 With such a load of happiness, that at times 



My very soul is faint with bearing up the blessed burden. 11 . . . 

 t He corresponded with Mr. Aird a good deal on this subject. His letters are too lengthy for 

 insertion, but it is refreshing to find in them an occasional hearty outburst of indisnation at the 

 persecuting government of Charles and James. "Ought there not to be some savage splendid 

 Covenanters introduced somewhere or other? Pray, consider with yourself how far they ever 

 carried retaliation or retribution. I believe not far. Besides, under such accursed tyranny, bold 

 risinsrs up of men's fiercest and fellest passions were not wrong." 

 J The split in the Church of Scotland in 1S43. 



