I the on to explain that I found myself peculiarly un?tted for the situation offered to me, not merely by my political opinions, but by the very stitution and habits of my mind. "My whole course of life," I observed, "has beeory, and I am un?tted for any periodically recurring task, or any stipulated labor of body or mind. I have no and of my talents, such as they are, and have to watch the varyings of my mind as I would those of a weathercock. Practid training may bring me more into rule; but at present I am as useless fular service as one of my own try Indians or a Don Cossack.
"I must, therefore, keep oy much as I have begun; writing when I , not when I would. I shall occasionally shift my residend write whatever is suggested by objects before me, or whatever rises in my imagination; and hope to write better and more copiously by and by.
I am playing the egotist, but I know er way of answering your proposal than by showing what a very good-for-nothing kind of being I am. Should Mr. stable feel ined to make a bargain for the wares I have on hand, he will ence me to further enterprise; and it will be something like trading with a gypsy for the fruits of his prowlings, who may at oime have nothing but a wooden bowl to offer, and at aime a silver tankard."
In reply, Scott expressed regret, but not surprise, at my deing what might have proved a troublesome duty. He then recurred to the inal subject of our correspondence; entered into a detail of the various terms upon which arras were made between authors and booksellers, that I might take my choice; expressing the most encing ?dence of the success of my work, and of previous works which I had produced in America. "I did no more," added he, "thahe trenches with stable; but I am sure if you will take the trouble to write to him, you will ?nd him disposed to treat your overtures with every degree of attention. Or, if you think it of sequen the ?rst place to see me, I shall be in London in the course of a month, and whatever my experience and is most heartily at your and. But I add little to what I have said above, except my ear reendation to stable to enter into the iation."*
* I ot avoid subjoining in a note a succeeding paragraph of Scotts letter, which, though it does not relate to the main subject of our correspondence, was too characteristic to be emitted. Some time previously I had sent Miss Sophia Scott small duodeeri editions of her fathers poems published in Edinburgh in quarto volumes; showing the "nigromancy" of the Ameri press, by which a quart of wine is jured into a pint bottle. Scott observes: "In my hurry, I have not thanked you in Sophias name for the kind attention which furnished her with the Ameri volumes. I am not quite sure I add my own, since you have made her acquainted with much more of papas folly than she would ever otherwise have learned; for I had taken special care they should never see any of those things during their earlier years. I think I have told you that Walter is sweeping the ?rmament with a feather like a maypole and iing the pavement with a sword like a scythe--in other words, he has bee a whiskered hussar ih Dragoons."
Before the receipt of this most obligier, however, I had determio look to no leading bookseller for a launch, but to throw my work before the public at my own risk, a sink or swim acc to its merits. I wrote to that effect to Scott, and soon received a reply:
"I observe with pleasure that