LETTER TO ALLAN CUNNINGHAM. 41 



Our northern districts seem to have produced many 

 that could invent, but none that could give their inven- 

 tions much publicity ; many that could think and feel 

 poetry, but none that could write it : their literature is 

 consequently an oral literature their very history is tra- 

 ditional ; they may be thought of as fields unreaped, as 

 mines unopened : and must not some little interest 

 attach to a work, however deficient as a piece of com- 

 position, that may properly be regarded as a sample 

 of the grain a specimen of the ore ? I trust, however, 

 that my mode of telling my stories will not be deemed 

 very repulsive. I have had a hard and long-protracted 

 struggle with the disadvantages attendant on an imperfect 

 education. To you, at least, I need not say how hard 

 and how protracted such a struggle must always prove ; 

 but I have at length, I trust, got on the upper side of 

 them ; and, if I eventually fail, it will be rather from a 

 defect of innate vigour than from any combination of 

 untoward circumstances pressing upon me from with- 

 out. 



' I publish by subscription from the nature of the 

 work and the obscurity of the writer, the only way open 

 to me. But, trust me, I have no eye to pecuniary ad- 

 vantage ; I would not give a very little literary celebrity 

 for all the money I ever saw ; besides, bad as the times 

 are, I am master enough of the mallet to live by it. I 

 could ill afford, however, the expense of an unlucky spe- 

 culation ; and as literature is not so much thought of in 

 Cromarty as the curing of herrings, I find that, without 

 extending my field, I cannot securely calculate on cover- 

 ing the expense of publication. Forgive me that I 

 apply to you. I am a pilgrim, passing slowly and 

 heavily along the path which leads right through the 

 wicket now floundering through the mud of the slough, 



