Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

270 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD.
sheets of ' Maga '
with the greatest pleasure," and
that the number will be " most lively and amusing."
John Wilson to W. Blackwood.
I consider old M. to be the greatest nuisance that ever in-
fested any Magazine. His review of Gait's ' Annals ' was poor
and worthless : that of ' Adam Blair ' still worse : and this of
'Lights and Shadows' the most despicable and foolish of all.
His remarks on ' Adam Blair ' did the book no good, but much
harm with dull stupid people, and this wretched article cannot
fail to do the same to a greater degree, I cannot express my
disgust with it. He damns the book at once by comparing it
with Gessner : for he draws a most degrading character (falsely,
I presume) of that writer, and then says that my book is "a
close imitation of it." Gessner's ' Idylls ' are syrupy, it seems,
and only fit for young sentimentalists who have never looked
into the mirror of nature ; and of him I am said to be a close
imitator. The Colonel himself could not have told a baser lie,
although from baser motives—those of the old dotard being
simply self-conceit and sheer incapacity. Whatever he may
bring himself to say afterwards, this is his idea of the book
published to the world, that it is on the whole a syrupy dish for
young sentimentalists,—the very thing which might be said by
some malignant Idiot. Of Gessner I never read one syllable
nor indeed ever saw a volume of his even lying on the table.
But from what I have heard of him I believe, first, that he has
great merit ; secondly, that he is unlike in all points to me, J. W.
What he says about 'Idylls' shows ignorance; and his non-
acquaintance with the origin of the term blue-stocking is al-
together incomprehensible. In short, all this is a dull, vile
falsehood, and one that cannot fail of being got by heart by
thousands, and of injuring the book. The next paragraph is on
the whole worse. "Kural images are always pleasing" is a
clever way of talking of the scenery in the volume—shepherds
are "Arcadian," the Lights and Shadows are not Scottish, it
seems. And then his own attempts at description in this para-
In the third paragraph it is
graph, what miserable drivelling !
said that the morality is pure, it seems, but still something
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