Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

468 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD.
went on steadily, sending by the very post which
conveys (written in another hand) this sad account
of his condition, an instahnent of another piece of
work. It is evident that Mr Blackwood had suggested
to the old friend, who in the meantime
had strayed far into realms unknown, that after
all there was nothing like ' Maga '
of the literary deserts :
John Gait to W. Blackwood.
—
amid the mirages
Freeman's Court, Cornhill, Z\st Jvly 1832.
I beg you to accept my best thanks for the number of the
Magazine. You conjecture truly when you suppose me to
have a warm side to it. I certainly do feel somehow at greater
ease with it than I have ever done since other engagements
drew me off; for what with these and with Canadian concerns
I have but little leisure, and infirm health makes me sparing
of myself.
Politics I doubt are now over for a time; but I have
often thought that a Deputation to London from a Borough,
treated somewhat like the 'Ayrshire Legatees/ offered a new
and excellent subject. If you think it will do to be carried
through two-three numbers, let me know at your leisure, and I
will send a portion for the next number. Much good satire,
I am persuaded, may be concealed under a very seemingly
sincere manner, and a story may be introduced which shall
embrace a case of private interest with public virtue. Besides,
one can give characters of public men that may be amusing
if people are not disgusted with the subject.
This idea would seem to have been carried out in
the ' Borough,' in which Gait returned with some suc-
cess to his original vein, the only one in which success
was possible to him. But many were the projects
less legitimate and reasonable which went through
the busy mind of the man thus toiling on with limbs
that could no longer obey his will, and labouring