I don’t like to bore you about the Scotch novels, (as they call them, though two of them are wholly English, and the rest half so,) but nothing can or could ever persuade me, since I was the first ten minutes in your company, that you are not the man.  To me those novels have so much of ‘Auld lang syne’ (I was bred a canny Scot till ten years old) that I never move without them; and when I removed from Ravenna to Pisa the other day, and sent on my library before, they were the only books that I kept by me, although I already have them by heart.

     “January 27. 1822.

“I delayed till now concluding, in the hope that I should have got ‘The Pirate,’ who is under way for me, but has not yet hove in sight.  I hear that your daughter is married, and I suppose by this time you are half a grandfather—­a young one, by the way.  I have heard great things of Mrs. Lockhart’s personal and mental charms, and much good of her lord:  that you may live to see as many novel Scotts as there are Scots’ novels, is the very bad pun, but sincere wish of

     “Yours ever most affectionately, &c.

“P.S.  Why don’t you take a turn in Italy?  You would find yourself as well known and as welcome as in the Highlands among the natives.  As for the English, you would be with them as in London; and I need not add, that I should be delighted to see you again, which is far more than I shall ever feel or say for England, or (with a few exceptions ‘of kith, kin, and allies’) any thing that it contains.  But my ‘heart warms to the tartan,’ or to any thing of Scotland, which reminds me of Aberdeen and other parts, not so far from the Highlands as that town, about Invercauld and Braemar, where I was sent to drink goat’s fey in 1795-6, in consequence of a threatened decline after the scarlet fever.  But I am gossiping, so, good night—­and the gods be with your dreams!

     “Pray, present my respects to Lady Scott, who may, perhaps,
     recollect having seen me in town in 1815.

“I see that one of your supporters (for like Sir Hildebrand, I am fond of Guillin) is a mermaid; it is my crest too, and with precisely the same curl of tail.  There’s concatenation for you:—­I am building a little cutter at Genoa, to go a cruising in the summer.  I know you like the sea too.”

* * * * *

LETTER 476.  TO ——.[73]

     “Pisa, February 6. 1822.

“‘Try back the deep lane,’ till we find a publisher for the ‘Vision;’ and if none such is to be found, print fifty copies at my expense, distribute them amongst my acquaintance, and you will soon see that the booksellers will publish them, even if we opposed them.  That they are now afraid is natural, but I do not see that I ought to give way on that account.  I know nothing of Rivington’s ‘Remonstrance’