Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

68 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD.
finest of the whole, I am averse to your not getting them.
Don't worry ! for you shall have them at tea-time.
One can imagine the excitement, the eager anxiety,
the watch kept at the door for the messenger from
the printing-office—no printer's devil in this case, but
a messenger of the gods. Alas ! at this point there is
a gap in the correspondence. The excited publisher
was too warmly inspired to write any scroll of his
reply. We find another version of it, however, in the
correspondence of Mr Murray, dashed off on the same
eventful evening, without stopping to take breath :
W. Blackwood to John Murray.
August 23, 1816
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—
Midnight.
My dear Murray,—I have this moment finished the reading
of 192 pages of our book—for ours it must be—and I cannot
go to bed without telling you what is the strong and most
favourable impression it has made upon me. If the remainder
be at all equal, which it cannot fail to be from the genius dis-
played in what is now before me, we have been most fortunate
indeed. The title is ' The Tales of my Landlord ; collected and
reported by Jedediah Cleishbotham, Parish Clerk and School-
master of Gandercleugh.' There cannot be a doubt as to the
splendid merit of the work. It would never have done to have
higgled and protested about seeing more volumes. I have now
neither doubts nor fears, and I anxiously hope you will have as
little. I am so happy at the fortunate termination of all my
pains and anxieties, that I cannot be in bad humour with you
for not writing me two lines in answer to my two last letters.
It is clear that the reply to Ballantyne was not less
enthusiastic than this, for the next letter, we find, is
from that able negotiant, and is full of the triumphant
composure of a victor, one who has been conscious
from the beginning of inevitable glory :
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