AN OFFER OF HELP. 291 



riodicals, and had the shrewdness to be aware that, nei- 

 ther by his poems nor by his letters on the herring fishery, 

 had he attained celebrity enough to command for his pro- 

 ductions a ready sale and a high price in the market of cur- 

 rent literature. His disposition was at all times the reverse 

 of sanguine, and the largest and most radiant possibility 

 had a less attraction for him than a very small certainty. 

 Tor the present, therefore, he determined to watch 

 and wait, concentrating his efforts on the improvement 

 of his prose style, and preparing a prose work which 

 might conclusively scale for him the heights of literary 

 distinction. Soon after the appearance of his poems, 

 we find him at work on a traditional history of his native 

 parish, and, at the time when his engagement with Miss 

 Fraser commenced, he had composed enough to fill a 

 goodly volume. To remove its blemishes, heighten its 

 beauties, and procure its publication, were for several 

 years his chief endeavours. Against publishing by sub- 

 scription he had objections which were, for a long time, 

 invincible. The stubborn independence of his nature, 

 the profound contempt with which he looked upon 

 those mendicant friars of literature who, incompetent to 

 succeed as mechanics and failing to sell their manuscripts 

 to booksellers, hawk subscription-lists about country 

 districts, and make beggary more hideous by conceit and 

 affectation, and the dainty exclusiveness of his appetite 

 for fame, loathing the very idea of a reputation he did 

 not owe to his unaided efforts, all combined to dissuade 

 him from this mode of publication. 



Ultimately he gave way on the point, influenced by 

 satisfactory reasons of which we shall hear ; but the 

 difficulty was evidently unresolved at the time when 

 Miss Fraser addressed to him the following note. Its 

 precise date has not been preserved, but I take it to 



