Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

90 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD.
placed in your circumstances, I should have felt myself bound
in honour to have addressed this information in the first place
to my partner in the Book, who had obtained for me a share
in it, and who I knew would instantly communicate every
syllable to the persons interested in it. Men differ, however,,
in their views of these matters. I hope we will be able to
get up an article for the Eeview which will redeem the former
ones. Mr Scott also told me about the very satisfactory letters
he had from you.
I need not tell you how cordially I agree with you in think-
ing that this work is one of the most extraordinary that has
appeared in our times. I reckon it one of the proudest things
in my life to have attained it. I laboured for many years
through many difficulties and many discouragements to ac-
complish something of this kind. I had always your interest
in it as much at heart as my own, though I never received
assistance from you of any kind to forward my views, only
that my connection with you may be considered to have been
of general use to me. At last I did obtain the prize I had
been so long striving for ; and now when it has turned out so
much greater than my most sanguine expectations, and when I
might have flattered myself with having some credit as well as
favour with you for what I had done, and I may add suflered
in the cause, I have short querulous letters. But this is a
most unpleasing as well as ungrateful subject. I hope in God
we shall be done with it either in one way or another. I have
not time for long letters, and I cannot afford the time and
thought that these disagreeable dissensions cause. If I
answered your letter at all, I felt I could not do justice to
myself or you without entering into this long detail. I have
kept a straightforward course, and can lay my hand on my
heart and say that to the best of my judgment I have always
made your concerns my own, and have thought no work too
much, or any exertion too great, that could be of the smallest
use to them. It is no small satisfaction to my own mind that
whatever disagreeable things have occurred in the course of
our connection I have never at any time slackened my exertions
as your agent, whatever credit I may have had from
them.