Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

448 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD.
inspiration was over that the too clear-sighted pub-
lisher had very soon weighed and found them want-
ing. I do not think that after the first step of the
' Annals of a Parish ' this flattering idea continued
to exist in respect to Gait ; and the correspondence
between him and Mr Blackwood was not of the exciting
character of the others we have quoted. Here
one sober man of business on the one side is balanced
by an almost more sober man of business on the other,
a man who makes no flights and is carried away by no
enthusiasms, as Mr Blackwood frequently was, but dis-
cusses his business calmly without any dangerous
amour propre, declaring with every appearance of
sincerity that he was not himself able to discriminate
between his writings as to which was bad or good, or
which was better or best : and accepting the judgment
of his friend with a magnanimity not always to be
found among literary men. Mr Blackwood himself
describes the mutual position of the two friends in
a letter to Mr Croker, in sending him copies of the
' Annals ' and the ' :
Legatees '
W. Blackwood to J. Wilson Croker.
I feel more than merely a publisher's interest in these books
for the revisal and correction of them my friend the author has
left entirely to myself. The ' Legatees ' he corrected from the
Magazine sheets ; but the MS. of the ' Annals ' I went entirely
over, and I think that by omissions and a good many little
alterations it is now a much more perfect and simply natural
work than when it was first put into my hands.
Croker, by no means a genial critic, replied graciously
to this recommendation. He had been most uncom-
promising in his contempt, whether of this or a similar
publication does not appear, tartly assuring the pub-
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