“My dear Laidlaw,—We have letters last night from Naples. Sir Walter writes this time a much better hand than the last, but I grieve to say he seldom writes about anything but new books he is or is to be about! I fear he will find Cadell little disposed for new undertakings at this time.
| HOGG IN TOWN | 111 |
“The Hogg is the Lion of the season, and is playing his part with great good sense to all appearance. I hope and trust we shall be able to do something for his real good in the way of a subscription edition of the ‘Queen’s Wake,’ which Murray is starting, and which the Highland Society are, it is believed, likely to patronise. As for his plan of twelve volumes of novels and tales, of that I never could have had any favourable opinion; and, between ourselves, I believe it is in the hands of a publisher not likely to be solvent, even if there were anything to pay.1 At all events, the Shepherd, if he retires soon, will have left a good impression of himself here—and laid in a stock of new observation to boot, and thus, if in no other way, I trust he will have benefited by his trip. I keep my budget of his sayings and doings, which is a rich one, till I can communicate it over a tumbler.
“Whether I may be able to get away from town this year long enough to admit of my making a run to see the laird” (Scott, in Italy), “wherever he may chance to be, I can’t yet say. If I cannot, we shall go down for a few weeks to Abbotsford, and place ourselves at the tender mercies of Mrs. Mackay.
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1 Mrs. Garden, in her Memorials of her father, thinks that Lockhart believed in the solvency of Cochrane, the publisher. There must have been a misconception on one side or the other. The publisher failed: Hogg was often unlucky. A letter of Mrs. Lockhart’s, to Will Laidlaw, suggests that Lockhart may have changed his mind about Cochrane, as no better publisher was ready to take Hogg’s work. |
| 112 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
“Love to the ladies, and, when you see him, to Colonel Ferguson.—Ever yours truly,
