Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

A MANUSCRIPT RETURNED. 245
the thing in the same point of view as I did. The fools and
the malicious are so much more common in this world than
their opposites, that there appeared to me not a little risk of the
paper being either mistaken or misrepresented. It struck me
that the stupid would take some of the sketches literatim, and
consider it an unwarrantable liberty to represent Lord Melville
in a kilt ; but this mattered not much, as they would be soon
enlightened, and, as your friend the Secretary has it, stirred
up with a long pole. What weighed with me was the use a
certain gang might make of the article, and the annoyance it
might be to Sir Walter Scott. And if you will consider the
matter calmly, I think you will see I had some ground for my
fears on this head.
The object of your satire is clearly to ridicule the Cockney
jumble of Brambletye Hall, and in this you are most successful.
But when one reflects that this creature is a mere imitator of
Sir Walter, and that any travestie is so much more applicable
to an original than to a mere copy, for all readers are much
more familiar with the Waverley romances than with this
Brambletye trash, surely there is some reason to fear that
such satire would be applied and caught up with delight by the
whole press gang as appearing in my Magazine. Among other
delectable quizzes that might have been quoted and commented
on with this view, nothing could have been more apposite than
your most droll sketch of the Duke of Wellington's Address
to Napoleon's stucco figure as an inimitable counterpart to
Cromwell before the picture of Charles I. This and some other
things I am pretty sure Sir Walter would not have liked, and
as I never could have revealed to him or to any one who was
the quizzer, he would have thought it odd of me to allow such
a thing to appear in ' Maga.'
It was with a very heavy heart, therefore, that I at last re-
solved to give the MS. back to Mr Cay. In this I have acted
solely on my own judgment, for there is no one that I could
venture to consult on such a matter. You will probably think
I have decided wrong, and that it is from mere timorousness
that I have not ventured to insert the article. I can only say
that I have stated exactly what influenced me, and that the
loss of such an article I feel to be a very severe one.