INTRODUCTION xxix 



writer from two aspects of the correspondence — the way in 

 which he keeps Bell and his servants up to the mark and his 

 severe handling of the unprogressive, prejudiced, and limited 

 attitude of the people for whose benefit he was giving his 

 right hand. Beautiful too is his self-criticism — his ironical 

 deference to the judgment of others along with confidence 

 in his own, his consciousness of elaborating his instructions to 

 weariness, and the self-restraint in the confession, ' I dare say 

 no more for fear of getting into a passion ' (p. 95) ; or 

 this bit of homely frankness : ' I hate wrangling, and when 

 I cant make a shoe do I choose in the easiest way to let it go 

 down in the heel ' — a surprising confession from a Lord of the 

 Admiralty in the days of Pope and Addison. True ' gentility ' 

 breathes in this to Wight, 'My wife returns thanks to 

 yours for the receipt for making starch ; and, as we are 

 farmers here, she says there is no receipt which she, as a sister 

 farmer''s wife, can return but she shall be glad to send." But 

 the most abiding feature of the picture is the strenuous con- 

 centration of the man. These letters are a revelation of, in 

 its own way, as interesting a personality as that more famous 

 official of the Navy Office, Samuel Pepys. Bell is to give 

 him a journal of what he does every day. He irks to know 

 what his neighbour laird, Hepburn, thinks of his improve- 

 ments. Every five minutes he has to spare he gives to Ormis- 

 toun. Almost pathetic is this: 'Last evening we had the 

 finest soft shower could be and this a fine sunshine morning. 

 It actually has made a great change upon the colours of the 

 fields already, and it now gives me great pain only to be able 

 to see the fields and the changes every day will make from 

 my windows ' (p. 52). Concentration could hardly go further 

 than this bit of unconscious humour: 'Arch. Pringle, who 

 has lost his wife, talks much of his Onion Seed, so I send 

 you a little of it, to give it a fair trial' (p. 50). Archie 

 was another 'brither Scot' doing well on gardening in the 

 south. Delicious, too, is the dry remark : ' This has been 



