Fergus stared. What did his father’s herd-boy mean by talking such English to the ladies, and such vulgar Scotch to him? Although now a magistrand—that is, one about to take his degree of Master of Arts—Donal was still to Fergus the cleaner-out of his father’s byres—an upstart, whose former position was his real one—towards him at least, who knew him. And did the fellow challenge him to a discussion? Or did he presume on the familiarity of their boyhood, and wish to sport his acquaintance with the popular preacher? On either supposition, he was impertinent.
“I spoke poetically,” he said, with cold dignity.
“Ye’ll excuse me, Fergus,” replied Donal, “—for the sake o’ auld langsyne, whan I was, as I ever will be, sair obligatit till ye—but i’ that ye say noo, ye’re sair wrang: ye wasna speykin’ poetically, though I ken weel ye think it, or ye wadna say ’t; an’ that’s what garred me tak ye up. For the verra essence o’ poetry is trowth, an’ as sune ’s a word’s no true, it’s no poetry, though it may hae on the cast claes o’ ’t. It’s nane but them ’at kens na what poetry is, ’at blethers aboot poetic license, an’ that kin’ o’ hen-scraich, as gien a poet was sic a gowk ’at naebody eedit hoo he lee’d, or whether he gaed wi’ ’s cwite (coat) hin’ side afore or no.”
“I am at a loss to understand you—Donal?—yes, Donal Grant. I remember you very well; and from the trouble I used to take with you to make you distinguish between the work of the poet and that of the rhymester, I should have thought by this time you would have known a little more about the nature of poetry. Personification is a figure of speech in constant use by all poets.”
“Ow aye! but there’s true and there’s fause personification; an’ it’s no ilka poet ’at kens the differ. Ow, I ken! ye’ll be doon upo’ me wi’ yer Byron,”—Fergus shook his head as at a false impeachment, but Donal went on—“but even a poet canna mak lees poetry. An’ a man ’at in ane o’ his gran’est verses cud haiver aboot the birth o’ a yoong airthquack!—losh! to think o’ ’t growin’ an auld airthquack!—haith, to me it’s no up till a deuk-quack!—sic a poet micht weel, I grant ye, be he ever sic a guid poet whan he tuik heed to what he said, he micht weel, I say, blether nonsense aboot the sea warrin’ again’ the rocks, an’ sic stuff.”
“But don’t you see them?” said Fergus, pointing to a great billow that fell back at the moment, and lay churning in the gulf beneath them. “Are they not in fact wasting the rocks away by slow degrees?”
“What comes o’ yer seemile than, anent the vainity o’ their endeevour? But that’s no what I’m carin’ aboot. What I mainteen is, ’at though they div weir awa the rocks, that’s nae mair their design nor it’s the design o’ a yeuky owse to kill the tree whan he rubs hit’s skin an’ his ain aff thegither.”
“Tut! nobody ever means, when he personifies the powers of nature, that they know what they are about.”
“The mair necessar’ till attreebute till them naething but their rale design.”
“If they don’t know what they are about, how can you be so foolish as talk of their design?”