Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

AN AUTHOR AT BAY. 221
self; but I tell you honestly you have utterly sickened me
with your eternal expostulations. Change, but don't speak to
me again. If any other person mentioned had been allowed
only one 50th of your remarks, the book would have been at
the 2nd volume at Doomsday
!
After this "Peter" begins to be a familiar figure,
entering into the midst of the continual talk about
the Magazine and the manner of its concoction :
—
I enclose the rest of the ' Noctes.' The Professor may add
what he likes. We have of late had so much of Hogg's talk
that I have made him say little this time; but if Wilson
pleases he can stuff out the porker with some of his own puddings.
You must take Cay into your counsels (or somebody)
anent the musical concerns. The airs I have given to Peter
are what I heard to be popular at the time, and if you choose to
give the music, with some of his Italian rhapsodies, you can
find it in any shop. And if you have any thorough Italian
scholar to go over the proofs of Peter's lingo and improve it, so
much the better.
I find that the fool who abuses us in the 'Athenaeum' is
Charles Knight alias " Crito." The attack was begun, tho', by
one Forbes, whom you wot of. I leave these folk scatheless
for the present.
It need not be added after these curious statistics
that ' Peter ' was a very successful publication, though
its revelations of Edinburgh are not vv^ithout traces of
the mischievous inclination by v^^hich Lockhart v^^as
distinguished. Murray for one found offence in it, and
made its indiscretion recoil on the Magazine, vs^hich
was scarcely just ; but in the meantime Blackwood and
his band had become names to conjure by withal, as
will be seen from the following letter of Lockhart's :
I am, of course, highly gratified with all your accounts both
of ' Peter ' and of ' Maga.' As for the poor Tories here, their
views are of course entirely selfish. Sym had a visit from