Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

PROFESSOR LESLIE. 369
who appreciate your talents, and will be proud to welcome you
to Auld Eeekie.
I was much amused to-day on meeting my old friend Leslie
for the first time since your attack on him appeared. He tried
to look smiling, but it was evidently a strong effort, and he
asked me if we were to have another attack on him next
month. I told him I rather thought not at present, but he
would see the number on Saturday. I am sure he expects
something, and I hope you will send us the article on the
Professor's mathematical attainments.
I received the Cork paper, and saw at once to whom we
were indebted for the very elegant and favourable notice of
the Magazine. It has been copied into most of our Edinburgh
and several of the London papers. As a small return to the
Printer of the paper, I would be obliged to you to desire him to
insert the enclosed advertisement twice ; but not to do it until
he finds that copies of this number have arrived for sale in Cork.
Before the end of the year 1820, however, the
criticism, so lightly thought of, by which the
Magazine had harked back, though by a new hand,
to the old reckless polemics of her youth, had become
a serious matter, and all the machinery of the
law was set to work by the victim, with the effect,
half alarming, half exciting, to which Princes Street
was not altogether unaccustomed. Mr Blackwood
informs his contributor of the fact in the following
letter. We must remember that the man who had
thus led the Magazine and its stout-hearted Pub-
lisher into renewed trouble was still, whatever guess
might have been formed of his personality, no more
to them than B. T. S. at the Minerva Booms :
W. Blackwood to R T. S.
—
Edinburgh, 6 Z>ec. 1820.
You will not be a little surprised when you open this letter
to find a summons (as it is called here) which was served upon
VOL. I. 2 A