ABSTRACT
It is the month of December. I have been recumbent the whole afternoon in piles of cushions writing a set of Latin verses on a snowstorm in Caledonia stern and wild. 47 They are now complete and they are excellent. I shall write them in my large notebook to possess. I have absorbed Horace and Virgil till their cadences ring in my memory and are part of myself. 48 I have always written excellent compositions. Mine were the best at school, though Peter wrote good ones too, but mine were brilliant where his were merely pedantic and accurate. One day I will be a poet, but that will be incidental; in the first place I shall rule.
