Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

106 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD.
of that wonderful flow and eloquence which personal
controversy gives. The editors could have nothing to
say against Mr Blackwood's resolution, for it had been
fully provided for in the original agreement ;
but they
kept up a lengthened wrangle over the edition to be
published of the last remaining numbers, arguing that
there should be only a sufficient number printed to
supply the subscribers, and suggesting that the pub-
lisher might, if left unfettered, print 20,000 as easily
as 2000, and so swamp their possible profits alto-
gether. Of these profits, as is unfortunately so often
the case with writers, they had apparently formed
a quite unfounded idea. The Magazine had never
reached the paying point. But this was a thought
which did not easily penetrate the intelligence of a
time in which the one periodical of which everybody
thought as a model paid largely, and the profits of
literature were supposed by the ignorant— demoral-
ised by the reports of fabulous sums paid to Scott
and Byron, and even Moore—to be immense. John
Murray's pocket-book with the thousand-pound note
in it cast a glamour over the productions of the
humblest author, and why Messrs Cleghorn and
Pringle should not be as worthy of recompense as
Francis Jeffrey and Henry Brougham was a fact hid
from these gentlemen's eyes. I quote the following
letter chiefly as showing the first visible introduction
into Mr Blackwood's arrangements of a figure destined
hereafter to take so much place in them :
W. Blackwood to Messrs Pringle and Cleghorn.
As you have now an interest directly opposite to mine, I
hope you will not think it unreasonable that I should be made
acquainted with the materials which you intend for this
—