410 MEMOIR OF JOHN WILSON. 



There are one or two allusions in this letter which may require 

 a word of explanation. 



The first paragraph refers to a proposition made by some parties 

 in Edinburgh, that the remains of Mr. Kemp, the architect of the 

 Scott monument, should have interment beneath it, he having come 

 to an untimely end not long after the completion of his design. 

 Professor Wilson had some trouble in preventing this absurd pro- 

 ject being carried out. In the second, there are some playful re- 

 marks about a novel ; d propos of which I may say, that novel- 

 reading was a mental dissipation my father seldom indulged in, re- 

 garding that sort of literature, in general, as enervating to the mind 

 and destructive to the formation of good taste. Now and then he 

 was prevailed on to open one, when recommended as very good. 

 WMtefriars had just been published ; he was delighted with it, 

 and sat down, on the impulse of the moment, to congratulate the 

 author (who could be no other than John G. Lockhart) on his suc- 

 cess ; and in this belief he addresses him by the title of his hero.* 



This letter is almost immediately followed by another : — 



"March 28, 1844. 

 "My deab Wilson: — It is not easy to judge of the merit of 

 an architectural design until one (I mean an ignoramus) has seen it 

 in actual stone. I thought the drawing of Scott's monument very 

 good, and I suppose, from what is now executed, you can form a 

 fair opiuion. All my remaining anxiety is that the statue should be 

 in bronze. Marble will last very few years before you see the work 

 of decay on the surface. Is it too late to make a vigorous effort for 

 this, in my mind, primary object? I have no fear about money. I 

 met . . . yesterday at dinner at ... , and gave her your love. She 

 is a fine creature. I see nothing like her, and were I either young 

 or rich, I should be in danger. She told me Brewster, Chalmers, 

 and all the Frow Kirk are going to start a new Review. How 

 many Reviews are we to have ? Is not it odd that the old ones keep 

 afloat at all ? but I doubt if they have lost almost any thing as yet. 

 The Q. M. prints nearly 10,000, I know, if not quite. Nor have I 



years ago so remarkably popular, and which, while exhibiting with abundant keenness the prom, 

 inent features and peculiarities of the persons caricatured, were always gentlemanly in feeling, 

 and free from any appearance of malice." — Knight's English Cyclopced/ia. 

 * WMtefriars has been ascribed to Miss E. Eobinson. 



