Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

420 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD.
and on-carryingness of his Diction, appears never to have
aspired, rather than to have fallen short of. The ' Odd Book
I hope to commence to-morrow. I refer to it now chiefly as an
excuse for expressing the regrets I felt and feel that Mr K. left
London, and that I had no opportunity of shaking [his hand]
and giving him an old Poet's and Fellow- Christian's blessing.
But what shall I say of what I owe to you for the delight and
comfort and instruction of the Ed. Magazine, and especially for
the whole series of the two years, during which Sickness and
Sorrow have made such a visitor and Bedside Comforter a
Friend indeed, for it has been a Friend in Need. If I were to
express half of what I think and feel concerning the Magazine
I should give the heartless slanderers of the Catilinarian press
a tempting pretext for charging me with flattery. But, never-
theless, I should accuse myself of cowardice and ingratitude if
I hesitated to avow and assert my conviction that in the
long, never-flagging Height and Sustainedness of irony, in the
continuity, variety, and strength of wing, and in the value, the
worth, the deep importance of the moral and political truths
which it has streamed forth with eloquent wisdom, ' Blackwood's
Magazine' is an unprecedented Phenomenon in the world of
letters, and forms the golden—alas ! the only—remaining link
between the Periodical Press and the enduring literature of
Great Britain. If ever I was delighted with what, at the same
moment, I felt as a gross flattery, it was on the Belief enter-
tained by several of my friends that the 13 articles on Eeform,
the French Eevolution, &c., had been contributed by me ; and if
perfect identity of sentiment, principle, and faith and feeling
could excuse the mistake, it might stand within the conditions
of a Pardon. But at no period of my life could I have produced
such a union of the Popular and the Profound. Your
Magazine is everywhere, and therefore supersedes the necessity
of any further publication. Still I cannot but long to possess
these, and its congeners of the last three years, in a couple of
volumes printed like the ' Klosterheim.'
I had read only to page 230. I have since finished and carefully revised
the volume, and for all that follows from page 23 I have much to say
which De Quincey will suffer me to say to himself should I have strength
to put it down.
'