Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

'SALATHIEL.'
481
the history of the Wandering Jew, which he describes
at some length as follows :
Dr Croly to W. Blackwood.
—
Brompton, Nov. 3, 1827.
I have been offered five hundred pounds for the first edition
of any novel or romance that I write. If you think that you
can conveniently give this, I should be gratified by leaving the
present work in your hands, on whose honour and punctuality I
can so perfectly rely. But I by no means wish to urge you to
what may be inconsistent with your purposes.
The work is conceived on the idea of a man, undying : driven
in succession through all ages, all countries, pressed by violent
passions, and encumbered with bitter calamities of successive
kinds. Such a subject would give room for all that the human
pen is capable of. Of course no one should speak of his own
work. But I am satisfied that I have done as well as / could.
And what that measure may be, your experience of my scribbhng
can ascertain perhaps better than I can myself.
There would be an obvious inconvenience in sending the MSS.
—or indeed any part of it—to you, from the chance of loss, and
the still greater inconvenience of delay : but the proofs of course
of the first two or three sheets might be sent to acquaint you
with the style. It is to be much [feared] that you have no
London [correspondent] for publications of this kind, by which
Colburn has cleared £20,000 a-year for the last three years.
However, the question is merely this. Will you give five hundred
pounds for a romance by an untried novelist ?
The suggestion of sending a few sheets of proof to
show the style does not appear to have satisfied the
publisher, and the manuscript, notwithstanding all
dangers of the post, would seem to have been sent
to Edinburgh ; but it evidently did not please Mr
Blackwood, and was not published by him. Lessons
upon the extravagance of literary hopes are not
needed ; but it is always sad to see an effort with
which so many hopes were concerned fall so soon into
VOL. I. 2 H