R. B.
CCLVI.
TO ROBERT AINSLIE, ESQ.
[“Up tails a’, by the light o’ the moon,” was the name of a Scottish air, to which the devil danced with the witches of Fife, on Magus Moor, as reported by a warlock, in that credible work, “Satan’s Invisible World discovered.”]
April 26, 1793.
I am d—mnably out of humour, my dear Ainslie, and that is the reason, why I take up the pen to you: ’tis the nearest way (probatum est) to recover my spirits again.
I received your last, and was much entertained with it; but I will not at this time, nor at any other time, answer it.—Answer a letter? I never could answer a letter in my life!—I have written many a letter in return for letters I have received; but then—they were original matter—spurt-away! zig here, zag there; as if the devil that, my Grannie (an old woman indeed) often told me, rode on will-o’-wisp, or, in her more classic phrase, Spunkie, were looking over my elbow.—Happy thought that idea has engendered in my head! Spunkie—thou shalt henceforth be my symbol signature, and tutelary genius! Like thee, hap-step-and-lowp, here-awa-there-awa, higglety-pigglety, pell-mell, hither-and-yon, ram-stam, happy-go-lucky, up-tails-a’-by-the-light-o’-the-moon,—has been, is, and shall be, my progress through the mosses and moors of this vile, bleak, barren wilderness of a life of ours.
Come then, my guardian spirit, like thee may I skip away, amusing myself by and at my own light: and if any opaque-souled lubber of mankind complain that my elfine, lambent, glim merous wanderings have misled his stupid steps over precipices, or into bogs, let the thickheaded blunderbuss recollect, that he is not Spunkie:—that
“Spunkie’s wanderings could not copied be:
Amid these perils none durst walk but he.”—