_Skerryvore_, _Dec._ 14, 1886.
MY DEAR COLVIN,—This is first-rate of you, the Lord love you for it! I
am truly much obliged. He—my father—is very changeable; at times, he
seems only a slow quiet edition of himself; again, he will be very heavy
and blank; but never so violent as last spring; and therefore, to my
mind, better on the whole.
Fanny is pretty peepy; I am splendid. I have been writing much
verse—quite the bard, in fact; and also a dam tale to order, which will
be what it will be: I don’t love it, but some of it is passable in its
mouldy way, _The Misadventures of John Nicholson_. All my bardly
exercises are in Scotch; I have struck my somewhat ponderous guitar in
that tongue to no small extent: with what success, I know not, but I
think it’s better than my English verse; more marrow and fatness, and
more ruggedness.
How goes _Keats_? Pray remark, if he (Keats) hung back from Shelley, it
was not to be wondered at, _when so many of his friends were Shelley’s
pensioners_. I forget if you have made this point; it has been borne in
upon me reading Dowden and the _Shelley Papers_; and it will do no harm
if you have made it. I finished a poem to-day, and writ 3000 words of a
story, _tant bien que mal_; and have a right to be sleepy, and (what is
far nobler and rarer) am so.—My dear Colvin, ever yours,