Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

' NERVOUSNESS. 299
easily if necessary cut down into two with some additions, and
the other likewise has some passages which, if too long, will
go into some other literary article. A good literary article shall
be in every number. For the love of God no chill slow ' Noctes '
for few, if anybody, liked them, and many hated them. That
was my fault, or rather my misfortune.
It would be vain to hope that such a beatific state
of affairs could last. Wilson, it is evident, retired to
the country, as many have done, with a certainty that
in the leisure and quiet he could do wonderful things ;
but the open air, and the summer, and the hundred
inducements to idle and to wander, were too many for
him, and winter and the long evenings seemed then the
only hope. But by times everything failed, and in-
dolence, or dilatoriness, or " nervousness," not then as
now so tremendous an agency in men's lives, got the
better of him once more. Things came now and then
to such a dreadful pitch that a Magazine appeared
without him — that is, without anything from his
hand. He writes in startled admiration and wonder
of this strange fact, not without a faint tone of injury,
though quite aware it is his own fault. " Let the
Doctor [Maginn] do all kinds of clever things for
' Maga' this time," he says ; " there should be a new,
striking, delightful, and conclusive preface, which M.
and L. can do very well without W."
Another cry of compunction follows :
John Wilson to W. Blackwood.
I have passed several very unhappy days in the thought of
acting badly towards you and the Magazine. I declare it to be
utterly impossible for me to write either on Dalton or a ' Noctes.'
Here have I sat for two hours in vain, unable to write a sylla-
ble. If it were otherwise, you know that I would strain every
nerve to do it. It seems silly and unaccountable, but it is
—
;