196 MEMOIR OF JOHN WILSON. 



nn insult. Assure Mr. Napier of this, and that I am sorry he should 

 have been put under the necessity by disagreeable and stupid 

 rumor of disowning that of which I know his nature to be inca- 

 pable. Had I suspected Mr. Napier, and yet "alluded" to him as 

 the object of my suspicion, I should have acted like an idiot and a 

 coward. In a case like this, suspicion is not to be so intimated. 

 Should I ever suspect any man, I will send with privacy a friend to 

 him ; he may be a man of some nerve, and if ever he avow r s himself 

 he will require them all. My affection and friendship for you never 

 can suffer any abatement. But may I gently say to you, this villa- 

 nous and lying pamphlet has been read by you with feelings, and 

 has left on your mind an impression, which I did not imagine such 

 a publication could have created in you towards your very attached 

 friend, 



"J. Wilson." 



Not the least of the ill results of that unhappy letter of the 

 Baron Lauerwinkel w r as the interruption of the friendly relation 

 between my father and Jeffrey. The latter conveyed his sentiments 

 on the subject in these manly and honorable terms : — 



"Craigcuook House, 13th October, 1818. 



" My dear Sir : — I take the liberty of enclosing a draft for a 

 very inconsiderable sum, which is the remuneration our publisher 

 enables me to make for your valuable contribution to the last num- 

 ber of the Edinburgh Review; and though nobody can know better 

 than I do, that nothing was less in your contemplation in writing 

 that article, it is a consequence to wdiich you must resign yourself, 

 as all our other regular contributors have done before you. 



" And now, having acquitted myself of the awkward part of my 

 office with my usual awkwardness, I should proceed to talk to you 

 of further contributions, and ... to save editorial disquisition on 

 the best style of composition for such a journal, if I had not a still 

 more awkward and far more painful subject to discuss in the first 

 place. 



" You are said to be a principal writer hi, and a great director 

 aud active supporter of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. In the 

 last number of that work there is an attack upon my excellent 

 friend Mr. Playfair, in my judgment so unhandsome and uucandid, 



