“Mr Lockhart has this moment communicated your letter respecting my fourth share of the copyright of Marmion. I have already been applied to by Messrs Constable, and by Messrs Longman, to know what sum I would sell this share for—but so highly do I estimate the honour of being even in so small a degree the publisher of the author of the poem—that no pecuniary consideration whatever can induce me to part with it.
“But there is a consideration of another kind, which until now I was not aware of, which would make it painful to me if I were to retain it a moment longer. I mean the knowledge of its being required by the author, into whose hands it was spontaneously resigned in the same instant that I read his request.
“This share has been profitable to me fifty-fold
beyond what either publisher or author could have anticipated, and, therefore,
my returning it on such an occa-
196 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |