Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

THE shepherd's FAMILIARITY. 353
Shepherd) Hogg adds a note in respect to the recep-
tion of Mr Rees, one of the Longman firm
" Longman, Eees, & Co.,
Hurst, Orme, & Brown, our fathers in the Eow,"
who apparently was then visiting Edinburgh :
James Hogg to W. Blackwood.
—
Although in the throng of my harvests, as well as of the moor
sports, I will be in town again next week if possibly I can, or
the next again at all events. But should I miss Mr Eees [whom
he had previously desired to meet, "though merely to shake
hands with him, and bring him in for a bottle of whisky made
into toddy at Ambrose's "], tell him that I am going to publish
two small works about Martinmas, 7s. 6d. each, ' The Shepherd's
Calendar ' and ' Some Passages in the Lives of Eminent Men,'
and he must send the paper for both on the instant you and he
agree about what share you are to have. His house and I never
stand on any conditions, having an understood rule between us,
which we subsequently alter or not as occasion requires.
The reader will remember that a few pages back the
long-suffering Blackwood was employed, and goodhumouredly
consented to act, as intermediary between
the Shepherd and the house of Longman, so that this
free-and-easy reference to " his house and I " must
have been an exceedingly good joke to the always
kind and good-humoured man, open to a good joke in
all circumstances, to whom it was addressed. Another
very characteristic piece of reproach, not ill-natured,
but very Shepherdish, follows. We have got by this
time to the year 1826. The farm of Mount Benger,
which never succeeded, was hanging very heavily
upon Hogg, and his ventures in literature were uni-
formly unsuccessful :
VOL. I.
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