I know the “pip,” the “black pigs” too, know them well; but they are quite beneath contempt; and nothing on earth would induce me to cross the bright blue of my serenity.  I have a great notion of being the master of my own happiness, and not suffering it to be contingent on the manners and conduct of other people.

If a man slights me, he does me no harm; but if his conduct is detrimental to the general good, if he is unjust, a villain in high place, a seducer, a poison, a snare to the innocent, then have at him! though, constitutionally I had rather leave him alone.

The sum of happiness in the world is not too large.  I would like, if possible, to increase it by the modest contribution of my own store.  If so, I must guard it from all disturbance; and poetry enables me to do this, gives me a thousand springs of joy, in none of which there is one drop of bitterness—­and thank God for that!

We are here in the I. of Wight, busy comparing it with the I. of Man, of course.  It is really a beautiful island, not merely as regards richness of vegetation, an ornament that just now is not available, but also for its configuration.  The “lay of the land,” the attitude, and gesture of the lines are admirable.  The coast is dismally inferior to ours; glens are not to be seen, and streams are puny, but very clean.  On the whole we give the preference to Mona, and that upon purely aesthetic, not patriotic, grounds.

I hope you are all well and thriving.  Accept my best wishes for the New Year.  Your satire discloses perhaps a slight biliary secretion—­all satire, I fear, is bile.  I hope I may impute it to Christmas festivities rather than to any permanent disorder!

P.S.—­I return the verses, as I think you would like to keep them....

* * * * *

I did very well in the Isle of Man; had two good solitary walks, drank deep draughts of—­don’t know how to describe it—­that social brewage which I get nowhere else.  Very likely other people get it in their own habitats.  But it really does seem to me as if the whole island was quivering and trembling all over with stories—­they are like leaves on a tree.  The people are always telling them to one another, and any morning or evening you hear, whether you like it or not, innumerable anecdotes, sayings, tragedies, comedies—­I wonder whether they lie fearfully.  They are a marvellously narrational community.  And you’ve not been there a day before all this closes round you with a quiet familiarity of “use and custom” which is most fascinating.  Nothing else in the universe seems of any consequence.

  And warly cares, and warly men,
    May a’ gae tapsalteerie, O!

A week more and I should have become reabsorbed into this medium past recovery and past recognition....

I have been musing a good deal over my “Dooiney-molla"[1]:  he is now taking shape, and looms rather large.  I believe you will like him, and his fiery little groom.  These good souls do well to visit my dreams:  they are such a comfort; and, do you know, they positively do “go on” in my dreams.  Here are two lines which came tripping at the window of my slumbers last night: