friendly feeling for the tongue of Fergusson and of Sir
Walter, both Edinburgh men; and I confess that Burns has
always sounded in my ear like something partly foreign. And
indeed I am from the Lothians myself; it is there I heard the
language spoken about my childhood; and it is in the drawling
Lothian voice that I repeat it to myself. Let the precisians
call my speech that of the Lothians. And if it be not pure,
alas! what matters it? The day draws near when this
illustrious and malleable tongue shall be quite forgotten; and
Burn's Ayrshire, and Dr. Macdonald's Aberdeen-awa', and
Scott's brave, metropolitan utterance will be all equally the
ghosts of speech. Till then I would love to have my hour as a
native Maker, and be read by my own countryfolk in our own
dying language: an ambition surely rather of the heart than of
the head, so restricted as it is in prospect of endurance, so
parochial in bounds of space.


BOOK I. In English


I - ENVOY


Go, little book, and wish to all
Flowers in the garden, meat in the hall,
A bin of wine, a spice of wit,
A house with lawns enclosing it,
A living river by the door,
A nightingale in the sycamore!