Indeed, Sir, I do not.
‘How then, Sir, am I to understand so unaccountable a diversity of opinion from the most approved writers on the philosophy of the human mind, such as Mr. Dugald Stewart and the Editors of the Edinburgh Encyclopædia?’
May I ask, my dear Sir, did you ever read Mr. Wordsworth’s poem of Michael?
‘I cannot charge my memory with the fact; or I paid no particular attention to it at the time, as I have always agreed with the Edinburgh Review in considering Mr. Wordsworth’s poetry as remarkably silly and puerile.’
But still true to Nature in a humble way.
‘Why, I think, Sir, something of that kind is admitted (either by way of ridicule or praise) in the article in the Review.’
Well, Sir, this Michael is an old shepherd, who has a son who goes to sea, and who turns out a great reprobate by all the accounts received of him. Before he went, however, the father took the boy with him into a mountain-glen, and made him lay the first stone of a sheep-fold, which was to be a covenant and a remembrance between them if anything ill happened. For years after, the old man used to go to work at this sheep-fold—
‘Among the rocks
He went, and still look’d up upon the sun,
And listen’d to the wind’—