Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

154 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD.
might find him " a dead-weight, only made endurable
by the assistance of Mr Scott's powerful pen," which
was a true suggestion enough. " I learnt," Laidlaw
says, "in course of our conversation that the high
literary tone and character your Magazine had acquired,
and which it was necessary to keep up, had
got rather above agricultural subjects, and this ap-
peared to me with greater force from knowing that
Hogg's spirited paper on a very interesting process in
the management of sheep had been found inconsistent
with it." A further conversation with Wilson, who
said " he took no hand in editing the work," showed
Laidlaw that the register of public events both foreign
and abroad, which had been put into his charge, was
considered unnecessary by that very influential person.
What was the good man to do ?—to be a dead-weight
was terrible to his pride : but it would be a slight to
Mr Scott to throw up an engagement which he had
formed. He could only appeal to the publisher to
tell him frankly what was the true state of affairs.
We do not find any conclusion to this little episode.
The Chronicle or Register, however, which at first
even went so far as to contain births, marriages, and
deaths, was continued for a considerable time. And
Scott not only judiciously advised Laidlaw not to
throw away his bread and butter, but went on helping
him without intermission.
I enclose [he writes to Blackwood] the Chronicle and an
article which we must see in proof, as clubbing our information
we had but just time to have it copied over. I am sorry I
have no loose poetry, but I never keep copies of anything not
written for the Press ; so all my trifles are either selected and
printed or lost. I never write poetry nowadays. If I find I