well--"whereby men live, and in all which, is the life of the spirit." At
seventeen, indeed, I had devoured Shakspeare, though merely for the food to
my fancy which his plots and incidents supplied, for the gorgeous colouring
of his scenery: but at the period of which I am now writing, I had
exhausted that source of mere pleasure; I was craving for more explicit and
dogmatic teaching than any which he seemed to supply; and for three years,
strange as it may appear, I hardly ever looked into his pages. Under what
circumstances I afterwards recurred to his exhaustless treasures, my
readers shall in due time be told.

So I worked away manfully with such tools and stock as I possessed, and
of course produced, at first, like all young writers, some sufficiently
servile imitations of my favourite poets.

"Ugh!" said Sandy, "wha wants mongrels atween Burns and Tennyson? A gude
stock baith: but gin ye'd cross the breed ye maun unite the spirits, and
no the manners, o' the men. Why maun ilk a one the noo steal his neebor's
barnacles, before he glints out o' windows? Mak a style for yoursel,
laddie; ye're na mair Scots hind than ye are Lincolnshire laird: sae gang
yer ain gate and leave them to gang theirs; and just mak a gran', brode,
simple, Saxon style for yoursel."

"But how can I, till I know what sort of a style it ought to be?"

"Oh! but yon's amazing like Tom Sheridan's answer to his father. 'Tom,'
says the auld man, 'I'm thinking ye maun tak a wife.' 'Verra weel, father,'
says the puir skellum; 'and wha's wife shall I tak?' Wha's style shall I
tak? say all the callants the noo. Mak a style as ye would mak a wife, by
marrying her a' to yoursel; and ye'll nae mair ken what's your style till
it's made, than ye'll ken what your wife's like till she's been mony a year