Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

294 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD.
Magazine :
the said Magazine being due in London by
the 1st of the next month. But these were still heroic
days. The correspondence of Wilson continues always
in the same tone, explaining with the plausible ampli-
tude of a habitual sinner the reason of his delays, or
with the simplicity of a defaulter at school forestalling
the expected reproof, or with almost a whimper, like a
woman wounded, in fond or indignant woe, declaring
that he cannot bear the changed look or disapproving
word. Our excellent founder had to support all these
varieties of treatment as he might, sometimes pacing
his office in the fret and fume of wrathful impatience,
almost au hout, fearing for a breakdown altogether of
the all-important Magazine ; sometimes meeting with
all his sober strength the petulant protest of the man
who would not endure reproach ; sometimes melting in
answer to an agonised complaint of changed looks or
tones which the tender culprit could not bear. It
was amusing to hear in the many descriptions and
anecdotes of that lifelong connection, which I have
heard from Miss Isabella Blackwood, the thrill still
existing of the tone of family wrath, resentment, af-
fection, and enthusiasm for that intolerable and beloved
Professor, who kept the father of the house in con-
tinual commotion, sometimes all delight and admiration,
sometimes half wild with indignation and
impatience. The publisher's daughter could not, to
her last days, laugh at the amusing, exasperating,
continued struggle, though her listeners did so at
the whimsical record. The reader will be able to
form an idea of it from the following letters. The
reference in the first is to an article which he had
been asked to revise and improve :
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