Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

228 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD.
way deserving of your friendship, I should feel myself most
unworthy of it.
If we did not know to the contrary, we could
almost imagine there was a certain irony in the tone
of this extraordinarily liberal letter, and in the sudden
granting thus at a word of any or every claim the
startled author might bring forth. Perhaps it was
this sentiment which made Lockhart answer it in a
way more consistent with such a hypothesis than with
the real effusion with which it was written :
It is not necessary that you and I should at this time of day
write long letters on the subject of your Magazine. I perfectly
appreciate your warm feelings to me personally, and I am sure
you will never have any good reason to suspect me of not
desiring to see you and all your concerns prosper.
As to bargaining with you or with anybody about money in
this style, it is out of the question. I put a paper in your
hands, and asked what you would think it worth for your
Magazine. We, it appears, thought differently as to that matter.
I can see nothing here but what happens every day in the world.
You will return me the paper, and the whole affair is as if it
had never been. I told you plainly I was not thinking of the
thing as an ordinary contribution to the Magazine. It was a
solitary effort, and, as hinted, my original intention was some-
thing in the nature of a volume on Universities in general, an
intention to which, when leisure serves, I may recur.
I think the enclosed paper very admirable indeed, and that
it will have a powerful effect.
P.^S'.—Allow me to beg that this may be the last of a corre-
spondence which, knowing you as I do, I am sure must be
equally painful to us both. Think anything you please, except
that there is or has been the least touch of unkindness in my
feelings. Nothing is more remote from my thoughts. Indeed,
the tone of your letter is only a great deal too generous towards
me personally.
Blackwood answered on the 1 6th June as follows :
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