By a letter from Blackwood to-day, I have the disagreeable intelligence that circumstances have occurred which I fear will deprive me of you as a publisher—I hope never as a friend; for I here attest, though I have heard some bitter things against you, that I never met with any man whatever who, on so slight an acquaintance, has behaved to me so much like a gentleman. Blackwood asks to transfer your shares of my trifling works to his new agents. I answered, “Never! without your permission.” As the ‘Jacobite Relics’ are not yet published, and as they would only involve you further with one with whom you are going to close accounts, I gave him liberty to transfer the shares you were to have in them to Messrs. Cadell and Davies. But when I consider your handsome subscription for ‘The Queen’s Wake,’ if you have the slightest inclination to retain your shares of that work and ‘The Brownie,’ as your name is on them, along with Blackwood, I would much rather, not only from affection, but interest, that you should continue to dispose of them.
I know these books are of no avail to you; and that if you retain them, it will be on the same principle that you published them, namely, one of friendship for your humble poetical countryman. I’ll never forget your kindness; for I cannot think that I am tainted with the general vice of authors’ ingratitude; and the first house that I call at in London will be the one in Albemarle Street.
