Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

256 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD.
marked examples of that beginning -of- the -century-
method. Everybody saw him at play. He was the
most vigorous athlete, the most reckless wanderer,
ever ready for frolic or fight—and rarely or never was
he seen at work : nevertheless he was publicly complimented
when he left Oxford, and perhaps during the
course of his literary life there was no one more
brilliant or more appreciated or more productive,
though those who knew him best were continually
provoked by what appeared his carelessness and in-
dolence, and were convinced, even at the height of
labours which were never believed in, because it was
his whim to undervalue them, that any excuse was
sufficient to induce him to shirk work and cast duty
aside. In everything he had to do, he did more than
other men. When his companions took a decorous
ramble by coach or carriage, he tramped with his
knapsack, burying himself in Border valleys or among
the Highland glens. He sought adventure everywhere
by flood or field. He idled, talked, jested, wasted his
time, did everything but work ;
yet somehow seldom,
in his early life at least, failed in the great demands
made upon him, and produced a whole literature of
that criticism of life which we have remarked as the
grand characteristic of his compositions and those of
his friend—not a literature, perhaps, which has lasted,
or is likely to last except in brilliant fragments, but
one which inspired and delighted his age, and made
his generation acquainted with a larger view and
widened conception of things intellectual and moral,
a scorn of the poor and paltry, a generous appreciation
of the neglected. The ' Noctes ' of Blackwood, which
finally fell into his hands after the joint manipulation