Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

242 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD.
sacredly keep what I have said to yourself in the meantime. I
do not even except the Professor for this once.
We have been, as you guess, in a horrible hubbub. Sir Walter
will be in Edinburgh in about ten days. We dined at Croker's
yesterday — party to meet the Unknown, the Speaker and
Theodore Hook. These three sweet lads are always together.
The Doctor, poor fellow, has of late done one very good
paper for me, but what he spends his time in God only knows.
I never saw a man grow more inferior to himself in a short
time than he has to the O'Doherty of former days. Newspaper
scribbling has totally destroyed a style that was always too light
and hasty. There is now little whalebone indeed remaining.
J. G. Lockhart to W. Blackwood.
Sept. 4, '28.
The Professor on Sir Humphry was capitally good, but I
think (I am no angler) unjustifiably severe, particularly con-
sidering the circumstances of the book being written by a great
man after two strokes of palsy, in miserable dejection of spirits
and in health hopelessly shattered ; but all this Wilson knew
not, and I take it he hates Sir H. Davy for some private reason
or no reason, as I daresay I should have done, had I not happened
to see a good deal of him. . . . However, Sir Walter is
to review Sir H. in the ' Quarterly,' so the Baronet will have it
with the hair as well as against it.
'Tis now said the Speaker goes to the Admiralty with a peer-
age; but no one is in town, and indeed I seldom go on the
Stones, even when I am here. Next week I am going to
Chelsea to see Gleig for two or three days. He has some
sermons, some novels, and some histories all at press in London
at this moment, how much more in Edinburgh you can tell.
Colburn has given £750 for his novel, 3 vols., 'Chelsea Pen-
sioners,' at least the Sub says so.
I beg my love to Wilson, Cay, &c., &c., if any such people be
now about the old haunts. I fear I shall not even get down
this autumn; but as Johnny has rallied, we are really and
seriously planning to be at Chiefswood all next summer, which
I think must stop my hair getting grey so fast as it at present
seems to be doing."