Chapter 36

"August 3. 1814.

"It is certainly a little extraordinary that you have not sent the Edinburgh Review, as I requested, and hoped it would not require a note a day to remind you. I see _advertisements_ of Lara and Jacqueline; pray, _why?_ when I requested you to postpone publication till my return to town.

"I have a most amusing epistle from the Ettrick bard--Hogg; in which, speaking of his bookseller, whom he denominates the 'shabbiest' of the _trade_ for not 'lifting his bills,' he adds, in so many words, 'G----d d----n him and them both.' This is a pretty prelude to asking you to adopt him (the said Hogg); but this he wishes; and if you please, you and I will talk it over. He has a poem ready for the press (and your _bills_ too, if '_lift_able'), and bestows some benedictions on Mr. Moore for his abduction of Lara from the forthcoming Miscellany.[44]

"P.S. Sincerely, I think Mr. Hogg would suit you very well; and surely he is a man of great powers, and deserving of encouragement. I must knock out a Tale for him, and you should at all events consider before you reject his suit. Scott is gone to the Orkneys in a gale of wind; and Hogg says that, during the said gale, 'he is sure that Scott is not quite at his ease, to say the best of it.' Ah! I wish these home-keeping bards could taste a Mediterranean white squall, or 'the Gut' in a gale of wind, or even the 'Bay of Biscay' with no wind at all."

[Footnote 44: Mr. Hogg had been led to hope that he should be permitted to insert this poem in a Miscellany which he had at this time some thoughts of publishing; and whatever advice I may have given against such a mode of disposing of the work arose certainly not from any ill will to this ingenious and remarkable man, but from a consideration of what I thought most advantageous to the fame of Lord Byron.]

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