Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

THE LAST NUMBER. 107
number. It occurs to me that it would save all unpleasant
discussion if you were inclined to send the different articles
to Mr John Wilson, who has all along taken so deep an in-
terest in the Magazine. I do not wish to offer my opinion
with regard to the fitness or unfitness of any article, but I
should expect that you would be inclined to listen to anything
which Mr Wilson rtiight suggest. He had promised me
the following articles: "Account of Marlowe's Edward II.,"
" Argument in the Case of the Dumb Woman lately before the
Court," " Vindication of Wordsworth," " Eeviews of Lament of
Tasso," " Poetical Epistles, and Spencer's Tour." His furnish-
ing these or even other articles will, however, depend upon the
articles you have got and intend to insert.
I beg to assure you that it is my most anxious wish to
have the whole business settled speedily and as amicably as
possible.
The last number thus referred to had evidently-
been delayed beyond the proper time of publication,
which was a way they had in those days. No ex-
ertions on Murray's part, for instance, could secure
the appearance of the ' Quarterly ' at its correct, or
indeed at any regular time, and to postpone the
publication of a Magazine from day to day, or even
from week to week, seems to have been a pleasant
vagary of an age In which literary persons, or, to
use the more flattering conventional term, persons of
genius, were still considered quite above the laws of
punctuality and regularity. Messrs Cleghorn and
Pringie kept the threat of an indefinite delay in re-
spect to this last number over the publisher's head to
force him into compliance with their demands ;
but in
this particular they reckoned without their Blackwood
—also, it must be added, without the sensible and
candid arbitrator who finally arranged the matter.
I may quote here a portion of the long letter recapitu-