"the isle of palms." 115 



taking care not to write till you have time to send me a full and 

 long letter."* 



In the next number of the Edinburgh Review appeared a criti- 

 cism of the Isle of Palms, what publishers would call a " favorable 

 notice," but, it would appear, not quite to the taste of the author. 

 He would probably have preferred a good "cutting up" to the 

 measured and somewhat patronizing approval of the reviewer. On 

 the 3d of May, he writes to Mr. Smith : — 



" I write this in great haste, it being near two o'clock on Sunday 

 morning, and at eight I leave Edinburgh on a fishing excursion to 

 Kelso for a week. 



" Jeffrey's review is beggarly. I don't much like the extract ; it 

 is too much of an excerpt, too quackish ; but please yourself. The 

 other review is a masterpiece of nonsense and folly." 



Soon after he writes again from Elleray : — 



" I am meditating many other poems, and probably shall begin to 

 write soon. I know that I can in a year write another volume that 

 will make the Isle hide its head. But unless the Isle travels the 

 Continent a little more before that time, I shall not throw pearls 

 before swine in a hurry." 



" Elleray, Monday morning, 

 "Mv. 23, 1812. 

 " My dear Smith : — The day after I received your last, I left 

 Elleray for Ireland, on a visit to my sister, who lives near Killarney. 

 I stayed there a month, and on my return have received the melan- 

 choly intelligence of my dear brother's death. f Since then I have 

 not had the power of thinking of my literary concerns. We often 

 know not how dearly we love our near relations, till called on to 



* The anxiety and disappointment of the anthor as to the early sale of the volume does not 

 seem altogether unreasonable, when we find that in Edinburgh, where the chief demand was to 

 be looked for, '■ the trade" received the work so cautiously, as the following " subscription list" 

 indicates : — " The Isle of Palms, and other Poems. By John Wilson. Demy Svo, retail at 12s. ; 

 under 10, 8s. 6d. ; above, 8s. A few copies Royal Svo at sub. John Ballantyne & Co., two hundred 

 copies, demy ; Manners «fc Miller, twenty-five ; .Archd. Constable &, Co., twenty -five copies ; Jno. 

 Anderson, twenty -five copies; Win. Blackwood, six copies." 



The last item in the list looks specially curious now ; but at that time Mr. Blackwood's busi- 

 ness was in its infancy, and the future Christopher North was unknown to him. 



About the same time Longman & Co. wrote to Mr. Smith, to report the London "subscrip- 

 tion :" — " We received a copy of Wilson's Poems from Ballantynes, and our clerk, who subscribes 

 our books, took it round the trade yesterday and this morning ; but as the author is not known 

 amongst the London booksellers, we are sorry to say we have been enabled to subscribe only be- 

 tween forty-five and fifty, though, from what you say of the merit of the work, and what we 

 hear of it from other quarters, we have no doubt of its selling very well here when it is known." 



t His brother Andrew. 



