Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

206 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD.
The Professor can patch this concern as he likes. No traces
of the lost packet yet ? and I have had sad bother by the
accident, for the same parcel contained a lot of Burns's life
which, by the bye, the Professor can puff in a page of dialogue
anywhere, if he does not think it worth more. I have made
a tailpiece for Cay's article which I now enclose. I have also
corrected the slips of the review of Irving. I partly agree
with you as to most of your suggestions, but I think there will
be a better opportunity of introducing them in the 'Noctes.'
As for the Laureate, I am inexorable at present.
You may depend on having Timothy on the ' Edinburgh Review
' and ' Liberal ' soon : therefore if Maginn or Wilson send
anything on that subject let me have it. You should get Gait
to write a few paragraphs about Gill's ' Green.' ... I suppose
you will now begin to print your No. Let me know what you
have and what you want. I shall certainly do the Cobbett and
Faux on America.
We do not know in what Lockhart had been severe
to Southey ; but it is well to see that his inexorable
attitude did not last. Another letter tells the excel-
lent effect of the publisher's opinion on this subject.
" Since you take it so much to heart," he says, " pray
draw your pen through all the concluding part of the
article about Southey : end it with the serious bit."
The temper of the Magazine got generally smoother
as time went on, and other writers came in and the
brotherhood became larger. But the ' Noctes ' always
remained (sometimes disastrously) a safety-valve for
the heat of jest or satire or almost irrestrainable im-
pulse of slaughter (not altogether, as witness the
regretful giving up of Dr Poole : at the first outset
Dr Poole would have been slain and laid out upon the
table for demonstration without consideration of his
insignificance) ; and in this lucky medium they had
always each other to spend a stray jibe upon, all in
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