LETTER TO SIR GEORGE MACKENZIE. 43 



of the works. But take a brother-mason's as well as a 

 brother-writer's advice. Don't be too solicitous about 

 being noticed in reviews ; let the thing take its course : 

 a worthy work seldom fails.' 



One sample will suffice of the letters in which he 

 applied to gentlemen of influence landed proprietors, 

 clergymen, leading merchants in his district, to coun- 

 tenance his enterprise. 



TO SIR GEORGE MACKENZIE, OF COUL, BART. 



' Permit me to submit to your judgment the inclosed 

 prospectus. I am acquainted with only your writings, 

 and the high character which you bear as a gentleman 

 of taste and science ; but there is more implied in such 

 an acquaintance than in a much closer intimacy with a 

 common mind ; and it is the knowledge I have derived 

 from it which now emboldens me to address you. 



' I am one of the class almost peculiar to Scotland, 

 who became conversant in some little degree with books 

 and the pen amid the fatigues and privations of a life of 

 manual labour. For several years past I have amused 

 my leisure hours in striving to acquire the art of the 

 writer, and in collecting and arranging the once widely 

 spread, but now fast sinking, traditions of this part of 

 the country. I have written much, that I might learn 

 to write well, and have made choice, as the scene of my 

 exertions, of a field so solitary and little known that I 

 might not have to contend with labourers more prac- 

 tised than myself ; and I have found in this field much 

 that I have felt to be interesting, and much that I deem 

 original incidents of a structure wholly unborrowed, 

 striking illustrations of character and manners, inven- 

 tions not unworthy of poetry, and strongly-defined traces 



