Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

BEGINNING TO FEEL A COLD SIDE. 33Y
or word of mouth? There is surely no impropriety in my
making this inquiry.
Poor Hogg by this time, however, had grown into a
general sense of injury with all the world. The free
use made of his name in all the jests of the Magazine
was quite enough to inflame a man of his temper,
feeling himself at a disadvantage, even through the
tough armour of his self-conceit. He threw forth
freely complaints, criticisms, and threats. On one
occasion he desires that various articles he had sent
should be returned to him :
I have been quizzed too much by your chaps already ; I will
not so easily take again. I am writing for another Magazine,
with all my birr, and intend having most excellent sport with
it, as the editors will not understand what one sentence of my
•celebrated allegories mean till they bring the whole terror of
Edinburgh aristocracy upon them. For the soul that is in your
body mention this to no man living. You have quite forgot to
send me a newspaper. I care not though they lie two or three
days in the shop. A Saturday paper is soon enough to me by
Wednesday's post, or a Wednesday paper by the Saturday one.
There are some very able papers in the last Magazine, but I do
not think the selection likely to add much to its popularity.
On another occasion :
—
This last number is not near so interesting as the former
there is too much of pompous fine writing in it, at least at-
tempts at it. Such papers as that declamatory one on the
state of parties are not the kind of political papers that will
stand the test. But enough of that which is not agreeable : no
wonder that I begin to feel a cold side to a work which holds
such an avowed one to me.
An amusing little quarrel seems to have taken place
about Hogg in the summer of 1821, which, as it shows
something of the publisher's attitude, and is in itself
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