Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

"a work of tremendous splendour." 69
J. Ballantyne to W. Blackwood.
2Zrd August.
I need not say that your letter has given me great pleasure.
I never in my life had anything more at heart than to show
you by substantial proof that I felt as I ought to do towards
you : and my vexation was proportioned to the disappointment
which at one period had 'overset all my hopes. Nothing kept
me up but the consciousness .
that I had done my possible.
Your approbation is just as it ought to be. Had it been calm,
it would have been unworthy both the work and yourself.
Yes; it is a work of tremendous splendour, and may it turn
out—it must turn out—as we both expect. Your letter to
Murray, which I enclose, is a most excellent 'precis. Keep the
sheets as long as you like, but I beg you to return them. I
have most especial reasons for this.
We might novsr suppose that everybody was as
much satisfied and wholly triumphant as it was pos-
sible to be ; but there were still further troubles in
the way of the Work of Fiction, as it had been hitherto
comically and formally entitled between these corre-
spondents. The story was told by Lockhart in the
' Life of Sir Walter Scott ' in a way which— probably
without intention, yet perhaps, who can tell? in the
character of the Scorpion who delighteth to sting the
faces of men—left a disagreeable impression as to the
part taken by Mr Blackwood, and seemed to account
for the fact that the ' Black Dwarf ' was the only one
of Scott's works published by him. I will quote this
from Lockhart's narrative, premising that, by his own
account, before it was written, both Blackwood and
Ballantyne were dead. Mr Murray, not caring, I
presume, to open up the records of a story which
came to an inglorious end, furnished little informa-
tion ;
and, except the sons of the Edinburgh publisher,
there was nobody to be wounded by the story :
—