“I have been very impatient to hear from you. There is a certain affair of which you and I talked a little in private, and which must now be concluded, that naturally increaseth this.
“I am afraid that I was at least half-seas over the
night I was with you, for I cannot, for my life, recollect what passed when it
was late; and, there being certainly a small vacuum in my brain, which, when
empty, is quite empty, but is sometimes supplied with a small distillation of
intellectual matter—this must have been empty that night, or it never could
have been taken possession of by the fumes of the liquor so easily. If I was in
the state in which I suspect that I was, I must have spoke a very great deal of
nonsense, for which I beg ten thousand pardons. I have the consolation,
however, of remembering that Mrs Scott kept
in company all or most of the time, which she certainly could not have done,
had I been very rude. I remember, too, of the filial
| 410 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
“You once promised me your best advice in the first
lawsuit in which I had the particular happiness of being engaged. I am now
going to ask it seriously in an affair, in which, I am sure, we will both take
as much pleasure. It is this: I have as many songs beside me, which are
certainly the worst of my productions, as will make
about one hundred pages close printed, and about two hundred, printed as the
Minstrelsy is. Now,
although I will not proceed without your consent and advice, yet I would have
you to understand that I expect it, and have the scheme much at heart at
present. The first thing that suggested it, was their extraordinary repute in
Ettrick and its neighbourhood, and being everlastingly plagued with writing
copies, and promising scores which I never meant to perform. As my last
pamphlet was never known, save to a few friends, I wish your advice what pieces
of it are worth preserving. The ‘Pastoral’ I am resolved to insert, as
I am ‘Sandy
Tod.’ As to my manuscripts, they are endless; and as I doubt you
will disapprove of publishing them wholesale, and letting the good help off the
bad, I think you must trust to my discretion in the selection of a few. I wish
likewise to know if you think a graven image on the first leaf is any
recommendation; and if we might front the songs with a letter to you, giving an
impartial account of my manner of life and education, and, which if you pleased
to transcribe, putting He for I. Again, there is no publishing a book without a
patron, and I have one or two in my eye, and of which I will,
| THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD—1803. | 411 |
