tales and legends, and in garnishing them with the flowers of poesy,
whereof he was a vain and frivolous professor. For he followed not the
example of those strong poets whom I proposed to him as a pattern, but
formed versification of a flimsy and modern texture, to the compounding
whereof was necessary small pains and less thought. And hence I have chid
him as being one of those who bring forward the fatal revolution
prophesied by Mr. Robert Carey, in his Vaticination on the Death of the
celebrated Dr. John Donne:

Now thou art gone, and thy strict laws will be
Too hard for libertines in poetry;
Till verse (by thee refined) in this last age
Turn ballad rhyme.

I had also disputations with him touching his indulging rather a flowing
and redundant than a concise and stately diction in his prose
exercitations. But notwithstanding these symptoms of inferior taste, and
a humour of contradicting his betters upon passages of dubious
construction in Latin authors, I did grievously lament when Peter
Pattieson was removed from me by death, even as if he had been the
offspring of my own loins. And in respect his papers had been left in my
care, (to answer funeral and death-bed expenses,) I conceived myself
entitled to dispose of one parcel thereof, entitled, "Tales of my
Landlord," to one cunning in the trade (as it is called) of book
selling. He was a mirthful man, of small stature, cunning in
counterfeiting of voices, and in making facetious tales and responses,
and whom I have to laud for the truth of his dealings towards me.
Now, therefore, the world may see the injustice that charges me with
incapacity to write these narratives, seeing, that though I have proved
that I could have written them if I would, yet, not having done so, the