Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

290 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD.
I have read over the article twice with great attention. I
hope you will leave out everything I have scored. Two or
three things not unobjectionable I have allowed to remain, for
they cannot be struck out without hurting something that re-
mains. The article will read well as it now stands. But I
would on no account call it No. V., for that looks like poverty.
The Doctor ought to follow ; he is a better writer than Croly.
We are thus brought once again to the machinery
of the Magazine after Wilson had become the chief
adviser, and the first excitement of the beginning was
over : though, indeed, as the reader has seen, there
was no one so good as he in keeping that excitement
alive. The scraps of criticism are few, for these were
no doubt sent flying from one to another round the
table in the saloon, where all the brotherhood, soon
thinned by removal and change, still met continually,
and were thus exhausted and never got into print
but here and there comes a word of interest mingled
with all the discussions of articles done, or doing, or,
alas ! at the last moment found not capable of being
done.
Here, for example, is a curious scrap. Gait's books,
' The Provost ' and ' Sir Andrew Wylie,' were, as will
be seen hereafter, specially revised and superintended
by Mr Blackwood himself, and therefore extremely
interesting to him :
—
I hear ' The Provost ' is doing excellently. ' Nigel ' has amused
me much. It is beyond all his works, lively, spirited, dramatic,
new—and after all not a Work. ' Sir Andrew Wylie,' I have
heard, assisted the author in the character of King James.
This will probably cause the reader to look with
more respect on the history of ' Sir Andrew Wylie,'
: