struggle in vain against the obstinate, or, as Homer calls it, the "impudent" stone's alacrity in sinking.

Αντις έπειτα πεδονδε κυλινδετο λαας αναίδης.

P. M.

156

LETTER XLII.

TO THE SAME.

DEAR WILLIAMS,

I TRUST, that among the many literateurs of Edinburgh, there will ere long be found some person to compose a full and detailed history of this city, considered as a great mart of literature. I do not know of any other instance, in the whole history of the world, of such a mart existing and flourishing in a place not the seat of a government, or residence of a court, or centre of any very great political interest. The only place which at all approaches to Edinburgh in this view is Weimar; for the residence of so small a prince as the Grand Duke can scarcely be considered as conferring anything like what we would understand by the character of a capital. But even there it can scarcely be said that any

great mart of literature exists, or indeed existed even at the time when Wieland, Schiller, and Goëthe lived together under the wing of the palace. Books were written there in abundance, and many books were nominally published there; but the true centre from which they were diffused over Germany was always Leipsick.

Till within these twenty years, I suppose there was no such thing in Edinburgh as the great trade of Publishing. Now and then some volume of sermons or so issued from the press of some Edinburgh typographer, and after lying for a year or two upon the counter of some of their booksellers, was dismissed into total oblivion, as it probably deserved to be. But of all the great literary men of the last age, who lived in Edinburgh, there was no one who ever thought of publishing his books in Edinburgh. The trade here never aspired to anything beyond forming a very humble appendage of understrappers to the trade of the Row. Even if the name of an Edinburgh bookseller did appear upon a titlepage, that was only a compliment allowed him by the courtesy of the great London dealer, whose instrument and agent he was. Every thing was conducted by the Northern Bibliopoles in the same timid spirit of which this af

fords a specimen. The dulness of their atmosphere was never enlivened by one breath of daring. They were all petty retailers, inhabiting snug shops, and making a little money in the most tedious and uniform way imaginable. As for risking the little money they did make upon any bold adventure, which might have tripled the sum, or swept it entirely away, this was a thing of which they had not the most remote conception. In short, in spite of Hume and Robertson, and the whole generation of lesser stars, who clustered around those great luminaries, the spirit of literary adventure had never approached the bibliopoles of Edinburgh. They never dreamed of making fortunes for themselves, far less of being the means of bestowing fortunes upon others, by carrying on operations in the large and splendid style of mercantile enterprize.

The only thing that could be looked upon as any invasion of this quiescent state of matters, was the appearance of the Mirrors, and some other works in the same style, or by the same hands, which were published in the shop of Mr Creech, then the Prince of the Edinburgh Trade-and which, of course, must have attracted no inconsiderable share of attention to him and his shop.

But this bibliopole was a very indifferent master of his trade, and wanted entirely the wit to take due advantage of "the goods the gods provided." He was himself a literary character, and he was always a great man in the magistracy of the city; and perhaps he would have thought it beneath his dignity to be a mere ordinary money-making bookseller. Not that he had any aversion to money-making; on the contrary, he was prodigiously fond of money, and indeed carried his love of it in many things to a ridiculous extent. But he had been trained in all the timid prejudices of the old Edinburgh school of booksellers, and not daring to make money in a bold and magnificent way, neither did he dare to run the risk of losing any part of what he had made. Had he possessed either the shrewdness or the spirit of some of his successors, there is no question he might have set on foot a fine race of rivalry among the literary men about him-a race, of which the ultimate gains would undoubtedly have been greatest to himself. But he was not aware of the powers of that great momentum, of which I have spoken on a former occasion. He never had the sense to perceive, that his true game lay in making high sweep