|Mr. J.W.:  | Mr. Charles Lamb:  | |’Everybody seems delighted.’ | ’You seem to presume your readers | | | are stupid:  the instructions too | | | direct.’ | | | | | ‘Idiot Boy.’ | ‘Idiot Boy.’ | |Mr. J.W.:  | Mr. S.:  | |’A lady, a friend of mine, could | ’Almost thrown by it into a fit | |talk of nothing else:  this, of all the | with disgust; cannot read it!’ | |poems, her delight.’ | | | | | |But here comes the waggon | | | | W.W.[48] | |---------------------------------------|-------------------
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26. On his Scottish Tour.

TO SCOTT.

Grasmere, Oct. 16. 1803.

’We had a delightful journey home, delightful weather, and a sweet country to travel through.  We reached our little cottage in high spirits, and thankful to God for all His bounties.  My wife and child were both well, and, as I need not say, we had all of us a happy meeting....  We passed Branxholme (your Branxholme, we supposed) about four miles on this side of Hawick.  It looks better in your poem than in its present realities.  The situation, however, is delightful, and makes amends for an ordinary mansion.  The whole of the Teviot, and the pastoral steeps about Mosspaul, pleased us exceedingly.  The Esk, below Langholm, is a delicious river, and we saw it to great advantage.  We did not omit noticing Johnnie Armstrong’s Keep; but his hanging-place, to our great regret, we missed.  We were, indeed, most truly sorry that we could not have you along with us into Westmoreland.  The country was in its full glory; the verdure of the valleys, in which we are so much superior to you in Scotland, but little tarnished by the weather; and the trees putting on their most beautiful looks.  My sister was quite enchanted; and we often said to each other, “What a pity Mr. Scott is not with us!...”  I had the pleasure of seeing Coleridge and Southey at Keswick last Sunday.  Southey, whom I never saw much of before, I liked much:  he is very pleasant in his manner, and a man of great reading in old books, poetry, chronicles, memoirs, &c., particularly Spanish and Portuguese....  My sister and I often talk of the happy days that we spent in your company.  Such things do not occur often in life.  If we live, we shall meet again; that is my consolation when I think of these things.  Scotland and England sound like division, do what we can; but we really are but neighbours, and if you were no further off, and in Yorkshire, we should think so.  Farewell!  God prosper you, and all that belongs to you!  Your sincere friend, for such I will call myself, though slow to use a word of such solemn meaning to any one,