DINES WITH BAIRD. 35 



die station between works of amusement and abstract 

 thinking, runs no small risk, I am afraid, of being neg- 

 lected by the readers of both. Was it not strange that 

 I should not have discovered this when the work was in 

 manuscript ? But it is, I believe, of almost general 

 experience among writers, that their productions must 

 appear in print before they can form an estimate regard- 

 ing them at all approaching to correct. Lavater used 

 to remark that his works, when in MS., appeared to 

 him almost faultless, though no sooner had they passed 

 through the press than he became frightened to 'look at 

 them. Pope has expressed himself to nearly the same 

 purpose. Well, the past can't be recalled, but I may 

 trust that my fate is not staked on one throw, and that 

 the next may be a better game. 



' On Wednesday last I dined with the Principal 

 (Baird), and have seldom spent an evening more 

 pleasantly. He was in one of his happiest moods, and 

 full of anecdote and remark. He seems to form a kind 

 of connecting link between the literature of the past and 

 of the present age ; in his youth he was the friend and 

 companion of men whose names leap to our tongues 

 when we sum up the glories of our country, of Burns 

 and Robertson and Blair. Nearly fifty years ago he 

 edited the poems of Michael Bruce, in behalf of the 

 mother of the poet, who was then very poor and very 

 old, childless, and a widow. Twenty years after he 

 was the warm friend and patron of the linguist Murray. 

 He was the first who introduced Pringle, the poet, to 

 the notice of the public. He lived on terms of the 

 closest intimacy with Sir Walter Scott, and is thoroughly 

 acquainted with Wilson. What a stride from the times 

 of the historian of Charles V. to those of the editor of 

 Blaclcwood's Magazine ! does it not sound somewhat 



