Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson Vol 1

, a precious and most acceptable donation, for which I tender my most ebullient thanksgivings. I almost forgot to drink my tea and eat mine egg.

It contains more detailed accounts than anything I ever saw, except Wodrow, without being so portentously tiresome and so desperately overborne with footnotes, proclamations, acts of Parliament, and citations as that last history.

I have been reading a good deal of Herbert. He's a clever and a devout cove; but in places awfully twaddley (if I may use the word). Oughtn't this to rejoice Papa's heart -

'Carve or discourse; do not a famine fear. Who carves is kind to two, who talks to all.'

You understand? The 'fearing a famine' is applied to people gulping down solid vivers without a word, as if the ten lean kine began to-morrow.

Do you remember condemning something of mine for being too obtrusively didactic. Listen to Herbert -

'Is it not verse except enchanted groves And sudden arbours shadow coarse-spun lines? Must purling s