Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

THE FIFTY POUNDS. 341
unattractive a subject. It adds, however, a fine
variety to the too common situation to see behind the
wild wits in the foreground and the clown of genius
red and resentful in his clumsy exasperation— the
plain man behind holding the reins, not without a
strain and effort, and rather glad upon occasion to let
loose his own provoked feelings upon any chance
objector who came in his way.
We have said there was always a £50 which on
some account or other Hogg was convinced that either
Mr Blackwood or Mr Murray owed him, and which he
was bent on extracting from the former, either directly
or by a letter to be written by him to Murray. The
transaction had been repeated so often, now on one
ground, now on another, that the reader by degrees
comes to think of it as a sort of floating property upon
which the Shepherd could always calculate, which he
called in from time to time, yet could always go back
upon, finding it perennially available. We have little
doubt that this had grown to be Hogg's own view.
And he was always in want of £50. He was so constantly
in want of it, and so many chances had
occurred, softenings on the part of Blackwood, im-
pulses of careless generosity on the part of Murray, to
procure it for him, that he went on asking for it with
a degree of innocency that obliterated the real facts of
the case altogether. But a publisher's temper and
nerves were not invulnerable any more than those of
other men ; and whether it was that the claim was
less warranted than usual, or that Blackwood was
completely tired out by its repetition, it is evident
that he was moved to make a stand against it from
time to time. Hogg's letters are the most curious