Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

TOM CRINGLE MAKES HIS BOW. 443
had crept into 3^ sheets, has occupied me so much with cancelling
and rewriting—and the verification of many points which
are differently stated by different authors has so much added
to my labour, that although working early and late I have not
yet brought my paper into a complete state, and I fear that
it will not be before Friday (day after to-morrow) that I shall
be able to call upon yoU with the paper in a state of absolute
completion. This I write to-day for fear that you might sup-
pose that I had laid aside my intention or postponed it indefinitely.
ISText week I propose, Te annuente, to complete my
Paper on Ancient Oratory, upon which I have been so long at
work—that is, I shall recommence next week : but as the specimens
require unusual polish, coming from one expressly condemning
the style of all previous translators, I fear that I shall
not have finished to my own mind before the end of the month.
We were all much obliged to you for the present of the late
numbers of ' Maga.' I and every member of the family read
with concern that Tom Cringle has made his bow to the public.
I have no guess who he is : this much only I think I have per-
ceived—viz., that he is a Scotsman : but be he who or what he
may, I admire him greatly. In some of his sketches he has
the mingled powers of Salvator Eosa and of Hogarth: so at
least it strikes me.
Last night I returned to you about 10 o'clock the manuscript
of the Gordon article, upon which I wish to make a short explanation.
The first thing I did after receiving back the MS.
was carefully to read over the whole, pen in hand. My pur-
pose was to have struck out everything which seemed not in-
dispensable to the narrative. But I assure you that having
totally forgotten the article, and reading it therefore as an en-
tirely new and unknown tale, I was more deeply interested in
the whole succession of events than ever I was in any war
whatsoever : a fact which I am far from ascribing to any merit
on my part, but simply to the exceedingly romantic and scenical
character of the leading incidents, which could not have been
narrated by anybody in so condensed a form without offering
the interest of a novel. Under these circumstances I could
not devise any material suppressions which would not have