. And so pleased was my Landlord of the Wallace in his
replies during such colloquies, that there was no district in Scotland, yea, and
no peculiar, and, as it were, distinctive custom therein practised, but was
discussed betwixt us; insomuch, that those who stood by were wont to say, it was
worth a bottle of ale to hear us communicate with each other. And not a few
travellers, from distant parts, as well as from the remote districts of our
kingdom, were wont to mingle in the conversation, and to tell news that had been
gathered in foreign lands, or preserved from oblivion in this our own.
    Now, I chanced to have contracted for teaching the lower classes with a
young person called Peter, or Patrick, Pattieson, who had been educated for our
Holy Kirk, - yea, had, by the license of Presbytery, his voice opened therein as
a preacher, - who delighted in the collection of olden tales and legends, and in
garnishing them with the flowers of poesy, whereof he was a vain and frivolous
professor; for he followed not the example of those strong poets whom I proposed
to him as a pattern, but formed versification of a flimsy and modern texture, to
the compounding whereof was necessary small pains and less thought. And hence I
have chid him as being one of those who bring forward the fatal revolution
prophesied by Mr. Thomas Carey, in his Vaticination on the Death of the
celebrated Dr. John Donne:
 
Now thou art gone, and thy strict laws will be
Too hard for libertines in poetry;
Till verse (by thee refined) in this last age
Turn ballad rhyme.
 
I had also disputations with him touching his indulging rather a flowing and
redundant than a concise and stately diction in his prose exercitations. But
notwithstanding these symptoms of inferior taste, and a humour of contradicting
his betters upon passages of dubious construction in Latin authors, I did
grievously lament when Peter Pattieson was removed from me by death, even as if
he had been the offspring of my own loins. And in respect his papers had been
left in my care (to answer funeral and deathbed expenses), I conceived myself
entitled to dispose of one parcel thereof, entitled, »Tales of my Landlord,« to
one cunning in the trade (as it is called) of bookselling. He was a mirthful
man, of small stature, cunning in counterfeiting of voices, and in making
facetious tales and responses, and whom I have to laud for the truth of his
dealings towards me.
    Now, therefore, the world may see the injustice
