Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

A PUBLISHER ON HIS DIGNITY. 229
Since you desire it, I lose not a moment in returning your
MS. I do hope, however, it is only for the present. You know-
better than I can tell you that this article is of the highest im-
portance to me. Mortified as I certainly would be were it not
to appear in the Magazine, I do not wish to press upon you to
send me this article unless you yourself are perfectly satisfied
with regard to doing so. I have no wish to recur to anything
that has already passed ; but while I know you hate bargaining
about the price of this or anything else, I hope you know me
sufficiently to believe that it is not the consideration of any sum
whatever which would tempt me to act in the smallest way
differently from what you would expect from me. Saying this,
I leave the matter entirely to your own good feelings.
I am unable to say what was the precise occasion of
the letter which follows : probably it was after the unhappy
affair of the duel in which Mr John Scott, the
editor of the ' London Magazine,' met his death. The
great shock of this fatal event, and the depression into
which Lockhart fell, would seem to have given him the
greatest distaste for his previous work, and everything
connected with it : from whence no doubt arose the
report that he was about to withdraw from the
Magazine altogether.
W. Blackwood to J. G. Lockhart.
Setting my own wishes and interests entirely out of the
question, I regret, on your own account, that you should feel
such a disinclination to do anything for the Magazine. Either
by yourself or your friends it has been given out that you had
dropped all connection with it. These reports I never listened
to, and I could not bear to notice them to you ; for, if you did
not see the matter in the same point of view as I did, anything
I had to say would be apt to appear to you as merely proceeding
from selfish views of my own. My lips therefore have been
sealed, and whatever I have felt or suffered I have kept to
myself. Now, however, that you have introduced the subject
yourself, I cannot help saying a few words with regard to it.