Excerpt from Description of a Jaunt to Auld Reekie, and Other Scotch Poems In this loose-jointed age of sham and shoddy, When folks neglect the soul to mind the body, Even priests themselves to Scripture maxims doubtish By gourmandizing grow a kennan stoutish; Besides the stuffing of the carnal wame, A scratchy itching by the yeuk o'fame. An age of oddities and bedlam whims, - A Tanner fasts, a Webb the channel swims. But truce with instances. A nameless wight Endow'd, at least he thinks so, with poetic light, Smit by th' infection of the shifty times And ungagg'd freedom of the first of climes, Without no patronage or critic herald, To sound my entrance to the reading world, And golden prospects of a single bodle, To pay the labour of my thinking noddle. Although to be, it is but honour sma, Your ain praise-sounding trumpeter to blaw, Fame whispers that my rustic rhymes hae merit, If unpoetic, least a sturdy spirit To scold abuses with ironic jibing, Besides a ready knack at scene-describing. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This is a guide to the main developments in the history of British and Irish literature, charting some of the main features of literary language development and highlighting key language topics.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1882.