EDINBURGH, [AUTUMN] 1875.

MY DEAR COLVIN, - Thanks for your letter and news. No - my BURNS
is not done yet, it has led me so far afield that I cannot finish
it; every time I think I see my way to an end, some new game (or
perhaps wild goose) starts up, and away I go. And then, again, to
be plain, I shirk the work of the critical part, shirk it as a man
shirks a long jump. It is awful to have to express and
differentiate BURNS in a column or two. O golly, I say, you know,
it CAN'T be done at the money. All the more as I'm going write a
book about it. RAMSAY, FERGUSSON, AND BURNS: AN ESSAY (or A
CRITICAL ESSAY? but then I'm going to give lives of the three
gentlemen, only the gist of the book is the criticism) BY ROBERT
LOUIS STEVENSON, ADVOCATE. How's that for cut and dry? And I
COULD write this book. Unless I deceive myself, I could even write
it pretty adequately. I feel as if I was really in it, and knew
the game thoroughly. You see what comes of trying to write an
essay on BURNS in ten columns.

Meantime, when I have done Burns, I shall finish Charles of Orleans
(who is in a good way, about the fifth month, I should think, and
promises to be a fine healthy child, better than any of his elder
brothers for a while); and then perhaps a Villon, for Villon is a
very essential part of my RAMSAY-FERGUSSON-BURNS; I mean, is a note
in it, and will recur again and again for comparison and
illustration; then, perhaps, I may try Fontainebleau, by the way.
But so soon as Charles of Orleans is polished off, and immortalised
for ever, he and his pipings, in a solid imperishable shrine of R.
L. S., my true aim and end will be this little book. Suppose I
could jerk you out 100 Cornhill pages; that would easy make 200