Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

A publisher's secret hope. 447
portrait. It was not a refined portrait, nor did it
leave much room for those higher qualities which
the poet finds in every class and under whatsoever
mantle of commonplace his subjects may be disguised ;
but as to the outside veracity there could be no doubt
at all : the picture was the thing it represented.
To so enthusiastic a lover of literature as Mr
Blackwood, and one at the same time so patriotic
and full of that love of his native country in all her
manifestations which sometimes leads the Scot astray
and confuses his judgment, Gait was at his beginning
like the springing up of the most refreshing of foun-
tains. I am disposed to think that our excellent
Founder would at any time have given all his goods
and something to boot could he but have discovered
another Scott among the many literary aspirants that
crowded round him :
and
that he had all his life
through a secret hope of this, an expectation so eager
that it seemed almost impossible it should not be
gratified. From the bitter moment when he lost
Scott, after the brief enjoyment of that glory of being
the publisher of a Waverley Novel, which turned
every head in " the Trade,"—Murray in London,
though already triumphant in the splendour of Byron,
as well as Blackwood in Edinburgh,— I think I can
see through his welcome of every new writer this
glimmer of hope in his eyes. He was too able a
critic not to find out, after a very brief trial, that
his hope was not to be realised—a critic in spite of
himself and in spite of the many sadly disappointed
candidates for favour, who were sometimes elated to
the seventh heaven by his cordial applauses, only,
alas ! to find out when the first freshness of their