Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

galt's want of any critical faculty. 455
John Gait to W. Blackwood.
18 Downing Street, Oct. 25, 1824.
If you like I will send you a review of Medwin's book re-
specting Lord Byron, in which I will introduce all I meant to
say in another form ; but you must promise to insert it, for I do
feel mortified at finding of latter days so many of my things
rejected. If this subject {I mean the proposed critique) should
be otherwise engaged, I will send the sketch to some other
journal. At a meeting to-day the period of my return will be
regulated. In the meantime, for a week or two I shall have
some leisure. Write in course.
Maginn, it would appear, had been already set
upon this piece of work, and he too by this time
had begun to complain of articles rejected or postponed
; so that there was a fine opportunity for
diplomacy and Mr Blackwood's best skill to explain
how in such a case it was indispensable that the
younger man should give way. It is seldom, how-
ever, that Gait grumbles over this sad subject of
articles rejected, though he had a great deal to bear
in that way. The native humbleness with which he
confesses the entire absence of any critical faculty in
himself, and accepts the criticism of his friends, is
pathetic :
—
John Gait to W. Blackwood.
Strange as it may seem, and I really wish you would under-
stand it, I have no knowledge whatever of any difference in the
merit of my productions, so that although I have struggled
against this conviction more than enough, I fairly give in. If
it was not asking you to take too much trouble, I wish you
would draw your pen with red ink through the strikingly
objectionable passages, and return it to me when you can. If
it shall then appear worthy of correction, I will do it ; if not, it
will be destroyed. When I say that I have no notion of one
piece being better than another, I mean to say that I have no