He took

An inkstand
In his hand
And a Pen
Big as ten
In the other,

And away

In a Pother

He ran

To the mountains

And fountains

And ghostes

And Postes

And witches

And ditches

And wrote

In his coat

When the weather

Was cool,

Fear of gout,

And without

When the weather

Was warm

Och the charm

When we choose

To follow one's nose

To the north,

To the north,

To follow one's nose

To the north!

(3) This is a genuine autobiographic reminiscence of the time when the young Keatses lived with their grandmother after the death of their parents.

Of his Granny-good-
He often would

Hurly burly

Get up early
And go

By hook or crook

To the brook
And bring home
Miller's thumb,
Tittlebat

Not over fat,
Minnows small

As the stall

Of a glove,
Not above

The size

Of a nice

Little Baby's
Little fingers-

O he made
'Twas his trade

Of Fish a pretty Kettle

(4) There is an under-current of dissatisfaction with things Caledonian in this fourth stanza; and indeed I do not think Keats ever got entirely rid of this during the whole of the tour, albeit he enjoyed many transient visitations of true enthusiasm inspired both by fine scenery and by associations.

That a cherry

Was as red-
That lead

Was as weighty,

That fourscore
Was as eighty,

That a door
Was as wooden

As in England

So he stood in his shoes
And he wonder'd,

He wonder'd,

He stood in his shoes

And he wonder'd.

SONNET.

TO AILSA ROCK.*

TEARKEN, thou craggy ocean pyramid!

H

Give answer from thy voice, the sea-fowls' screams!
When were thy shoulders mantled in huge streams?

When, from the sun, was thy broad forehead hid?

How long is't since the mighty power bid

Thee heave to airy sleep from fathom dreams?
Sleep in the lap of thunder or sunbeams,
Or when grey clouds are thy cold coverlid.
Thou answer'st not; for thou art dead asleep;

From Kirkcudbright the tourists went to Newton Stewart and thence through Wigtonshire to Port Patrick, visiting Glenluce and Stranraer on the way. From Port Patrick they crossed in the mail packet to Ireland, reaching Donaghadee on the 5th of July. They walked from Donaghadee to Belfast and back, having abandoned the idea of seeing the Giant's Causeway on account of the expense, crossed again so as to sleep at Port Patrick on the 8th, and then resumed their Scotch walk. Lord Houghton says

Returning from Ireland, the travellers proceeded northwards by the coast, Ailsa Rock constantly in their view. That fine object first appeared to them, in the full sunlight, like a transparent tortoise asleep upon the calm water, then, as they advanced, displaying its lofty shoulders, and, as they still went on, losing its distinctness in the mountains of Arran and the extent of Cantire that rose behind." His Lordship records that the sonnet to Ailsa Rock was written in the inn at Girvan; and, as Keats was at Maybole on the 11th, and Girvan is more than three quarters of the way from Port Patrick to Maybole, the sonnet should be dated the 1oth or 11th of July 1818. It appeared in Leigh Hunt's Literary Pocket-book for 1819, from which I give the text, and the title with the preposition to, not on as in other editions.

Thy life is but two dead eternities

The last in air, the former in the deep;

First with the whales, last with the eagle-skies -
Drown'd wast thou till an earthquake made thee steep,
Another cannot wake thy giant size.

SONNET.*

WRITTEN IN THE COTTAGE WHERE BURNS WAS BORN.

HIS mortal body of a thousand days

THIS

Now fills, O Burns, a space in thine own room,
Where thou didst dream alone on budded bays,
Happy and thoughtless of thy day of doom!
My pulse is warm with thine own Barley-bree,
My head is light with pledging a great soul,
My eyes are wandering, and I cannot see,
Fancy is dead and drunken at its goal;
Yet can I stamp my foot upon thy floor,
Yet can I ope thy window-sash to find
The meadow thou hast tramped o'er and o'er,
Yet can I think of thee till thought is blind,
Yet can I gulp a bumper to thy name,

O smile among the shades, for this is fame!

*In giving this sonnet in the Life, Letters &c. next to that on Visiting the Tomb of Burns, Lord Houghton recorded that it was written "in the whisky-shop into which the cottage where Burns was born was converted." The date however is not the same as that of the other, as the travellers made the détour to the coast and across to Ireland already described, before coming to Burns's birthplace. The following extract from a letter of Keats's accompanies the sonnet in the Life :-"The 'bonnie Doon' is the sweetest river I ever saw - overhung with fine trees as far as we could see. We stood some time on the 'brig' o'er which Tam o' Shanter fled - we took a pinch of snuff on the key stone- then we proceeded to the auld Kirk of Alloway. Then we went to the cottage in which Burns was born; there was a board to that effect by the door's side; it had the same effect as the same sort of memorial at Stratford-upon-Avon. We drank some toddy to Burns's memory with an old man who knew him. There was something good in his description of Burns's melancholy the last time he saw him. I was determined to write a sonnet in the cottage: I did, but it was so bad I cannot venture it here." Lord Houghton gave this as from a letter to Haydon : it is really an edited extract from a letter to Tom Keats which happens to have been pasted into Haydon's journal.

On the 11th of July, at Maybole, Keats began a letter to Reynolds, the whole of which is very interesting; but the following passage is, in this connexion, peculiarly so:

"I begin a letter to you because I am approaching Burns's cottage very fast. We have made continual enquiries from the time we left his tomb at Dumfries.

LINES

WRITTEN IN THE HIGHLANDS AFTER A VISIT TO BURNS'S COUNTRY.

HERE is a charm in footing slow across a silent plain,

THE

Where patriot battle has been fought, where glory had the gain;
There is a pleasure on the heath where Druids old have been,
Where mantles grey have rustled by and swept the nettles green;
There is a joy in every spot made known by times of old,
New to the feet, although each tale a hundred times be told;
There is a deeper joy than all, more solemn in the heart,
More parching to the tongue than all, of more divine a smart,
When weary steps forget themselves upon a pleasant turf,
Upon hot sand, or flinty road, or sea-shore iron scurf,
Toward the castle or the cot, where long ago was born

One who was great through mortal days, and died of fame unshorn.
Light heather-bells may tremble then, but they are far away;
Wood-lark may sing from sandy fern, - the Sun may hear his lay;

5

10

His name, of course, is known all about: his great reputation among the plodding people is, 'that he wrote a good mony sensible things." One of the pleasantest ways of annulling self is approaching such a shrine as the Cottage of Burns: we need not think of his misery- that is all gone, bad luck to it! I shall look upon it hereafter with unmixed pleasure, as I do on my Stratford-on-Avon day with Bailey. I shall fill this sheet for you in the Bardie's country, going no further than this, till get to the town of Ayr, which will be a nine miles walk to tea."

Probably the proceedings related to Tom Keats took place on the 12th the travellers must have passed no great way from Burns's cottage on the road to Ayr, seeing that the cottage is some two miles south of the town; but they may have wished to start with renewed vigour after a night's rest on this quasi-religious part of their pilgrimage. To Reynolds also Keats spoke disparagingly of the sonnet, as too bad for transcription; and to Bailey he wrote that it was "so wretched that he destroyed it. Nevertheless it fortunately survived; and I heartily concur in the opinion of the late Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who observes in a letter to me that this sonnet, "for all Keats says of it himself, is a fine thing." Lord Houghton comments thus"The 'local colour' is strong in it: it might have been written where' Willie brewed a peck o' maut,' and its geniality would have delighted the object of its admiration."

*After leaving Ayr Keats and Brown appear to have been detained by rain at some place twelve miles along the road, when Keats took the opportunity of going on with his letter to Reynolds begun at Maybole. They were en route for Glasgow (casually mentioned in a letter to Bailey begun at Inverary on the 18th of July), which they took on their way from Ayr to Loch Lomond and Inverary. The poem given above is mentioned to Bailey as having been written within a few days of the sonnet in Burns's cottage, so that, although it is headed as above in the manuscript written at the end of Sir Charles Dilke's copy of Endymion, it seems more probable that the term Highlands was used in a lax popular sense than that the poem was composed after the visit to Staffa. Indeed in the letter to Bailey he speaks of the whole tour as in the Highlands. Keats expected to be by Loch Lomond about the 15th of July, and may have written this poem on high ground anywhere about the Loch, with the scenery of which he was very much impressed. They did not