A RARE FISH. 8 1 



But her words such a pleasure convey, 



So much I her accents adore, 

 Let her speak, and whatever she say, 



Methinks I should love her the more." 



In the same poem — the Pastoral Ballad — occurs this exquisite 

 verse : — 



" When forced the fair nymph to forego. 



What anguish I felt at my heart ! 

 Yet I thought — but it might not be so — 



'Twas with pain she saw me depart. 

 She gazed as I slowly withdrew ; 



My path I could hardly discern : 

 So sweetly she bade me adieu, 



I thought that she bade me return." 



But alas, and woe the whUe ! "William Shenstone of the Leasowes, 

 with his many tuneful contemporaries, are forgotten, or at least 

 unread, by the present generation, and the poetasters of our day 

 claim Parnassus, its Castalian spring and Temple of Apollo, for their 

 own ! All we can is that in re poctiea the taste of an age tolerant 

 of such an usurpation is little to he commended. 



A gentleman in the opposite district of Appin sent us a message 

 a few days ago begging us to go and have a look at what he termed 

 a rarissimus piscis, a most rare fish that had been caught in a 

 scringe net along with a lot of sethe and mackerel. In complying 

 with such messages we can seldom be charged with dilatoriness, as 

 most of our friends will bear witness. Nor was it otherwise in 

 this case ; Cha ie'n ruith ach an leum, as the Highlanders say — 

 it was not a run but a rush, with a leap and a bound — when they 

 would emphatically characterise a person's conduct in going about 

 anything with extraordinary alacrity. The fish in question we 

 found to be an old acquaintance of ours, though so rare on the 

 west coast that we never saw or heard of it before during a twenty 

 years' residence in the country, and constantly, too, on the out-look 

 for everything in the shape and semblance of a rara avis, whether 



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