Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

502 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD.
as soon as I can manage to effect it, to get our London and
some of our best Provincial Editors (with many of whom I
am on tolerably good terms) into a regular train of quotation
from your Magazine at the beginning of each month. Some-
times when room could not be found for anything complete, a
smart syllabus of its contents would answer every purpose.
The advantages of having such a work of high talent quoted
from are obvious. Brilliant extracts speak to the intellect of
the newspaper reader if he happens to possess any ; and since
the accession of Colburn to the throne of imperial supremacy,
people have begun to decide for themselves, and will no longer
rely upon mere advertisements. Some of the London gentlemen
of the press are most willing to quote clever papers from
your work ; but then, they argue, the matter must either be tran-
scribed or their Magazines spoiled, and even this trifling circum-
stance acts as a preventive. A parcel of waste sheets forwarded
to me every month would obviate this weighty difficulty ; but
this aid, and the distribution of about a dozen Magazines as I
will suggest, would enable me to organise a plan by which you
can be, I doubt not, very extensively quoted. I will write more
particularly on this subject on the next opportunity.
Again, I propose, if you consider it will be of the slightest
service, to give you a private letter, consisting chiefly of loose
memoranda of whatever is passing in the principal literary
circles in London or even in the Trade, opinions of your work,
&c. Some of your finest strokes of satire have lost their
point with us, from being of too local a nature : it will be but
fair to give us a bit now and then which ive Londoners can fully
enter into the spirit of.
Lastly, though I place but slight value on my individual
assistance as a contributor, I have it often in my power to
secure articles from well-known men for your pages, so that I
may become the medium of clever communications when I am
unable to originate them. ... No ceremony need ever be used
in the rejection of any paper proceeding from me which does
not appear to suit your purposes.
This letter gives an amusing picture of the literary
handy -man, ready for every use, from furnishing