Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

A MODEL OF PUNCTUALITY. 431
1. In spite of my disappointment, here explained, in respect
to the number immediately forthcoming, I have been writing
keenly ; and I hope to send you something in the course of the
day, but at latest (and here I am promising) by to-morrow fore-
noon.
2. I have lost a good deal of labour by having begun upon an
article from Schiller, prefaced by a view of Schiller's character,
&c., which by mere accident Gillies informed me had been
already published in an early number of the Magazine. It was
the story of Christian Wolf,
3. You remember something about Saturday and Monday ?
So Gillies tells me. Now, my remembrance is this: De Q.
Pray, Mr Blackwood, am I in time if I send you some sheets
of letter-paper down to Saturday? Mr B. Oh, never mind
about the time. Send them then ; or if not then, on Monday
morning.
The most punctilious, the most regular, the most
formal of men, always ready to an hour, guilty of no
irregularity, only too rigid in his adherence to every
point of exactitude : this is the conclusion to be drawn
from these epistles. It need scarcely be said that in
every particular De Quincey was the reverse of all
these things.
The next letter we shall quote is of a date much
later than these, and is concerned with a volume of
tales which De Quincey had in preparation, and for
which again he anxiously inquires at what date it
must be put in the publisher's hands. Again he has
been detained, this time by " dreadful illness in my
family, Mrs De Quincey having been at the point of
death from Jaundice, and one of my children from Ery-
sipelas." He discusses with his usual elaborate detail
the question of date, the possibility of running to two
volumes instead of one, the expediency of printing his
book under his nom de guerre as the English Opium-