I do assure you that your kind letter has afforded me very
great pleasure; for although our correspondence has been suspended by my own
indolence, and no other cause, yet my regard for you has never diminished, and
I should much rejoice in any occasion of doing you a service. I shall have
great pleasure in taking a share in your new work, and in being its publisher
in London. With regard to the projected quarto edition of ‘The Queen’s Wake,’ I
am not sorry that it is at an end; for you will gain more, I think, by one in
royal octavo. But I really think that you ought to print a thousand in demy
octavo to sell for 9s., and throw off no more in the
larger size than you are confident of obtaining subscribers for—otherwise
you will absolutely stop the sale of your book by printing it in a form that is
neither customary nor useful, and retard at the same time the advancement of
your own fame. If Blackwood likes, I
will join in giving you at once half the profit of the edition of 1000 copies
to sell at 9s., and let you throw off copies for your
subscribers in royal octavo, paying only for the paper and working. If you will
draw out a neat advertisement of the royal octavo, and give me all the names of
subscribers, I will print the whole for you, and insert it in the next number
of the Quarterly
Review—of which, by the way, the number printed is
now equal to that of the Edinburgh Review, 12,000, and which I expect
to make 14,000 after two numbers. I beg you, at any rate, to put my name down
upon your list for twenty-five copies, at £1 1s.
each, and I will try to get you other subscribers. This is the very best time,
if you will send me your advertisement and list of subscribers. I am happy to
say that I have your portrait in my room—the one done by a painter
| SCOTT’S REVIEW OF HOGG. | 5 |
