Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

Ambrose's a fiction. 261
the ease and simplicity of the admission to his wife
of " I fear I did not go to bed sober," with the facts
of a life of great domestic regularity and propriety
but it was not so difficult in those days, when men's
peccadilloes were regarded with an indulgent eye so
long as their principles were sound and their demeanour
what it ought to be. We remember that, among
the grave objections made to Wilson during the contest,
the singing of a certain song in the lingering and
diminished party which carried on its revels into the
small hours after some public dinner, from which the
sober seniors had gone home hours before, was dis-
cussed before the respectable bailies, making their hair
stand on end. It is needless to add that the immense
potations of Ambrose's were at all times fictitious : this
will be already apparent from the fact, which the
reader has seen, that the famous ' Noctes ' came from
the study at Chiefswood, in the supreme silence of
the country, as often, at least at first, as from any
jovial centre where they might have been otherwise
inspired.
We labour under the same difficulty in respect to
Wilson's correspondence with Mr Blackwood as we have
already experienced in that of Lockhart—a complete
absence of dates, reducing us in many cases to the
difficult process of putting together a number of scraps,
not so much for any Importance in themselves, as to
illustrate—which is our chief object—the nature of
the intercourse between him and Blackwood. There
are, however, at the beginning of the correspondence a
few letters which we can place in their proper position,
and which show how early the connection was formed,
with what enthusiasm on one side and eager response
;