in my favour. In tossing the bar or
throwing the stone, the competitor who begins with a rather indifferent
cast is never very unfavourably judged if he immediately mend it by
giving a better; and I resolved on mending my cast, if I could, by
writing for the _Inverness Courier_--which was now open to me, through
the kindness of the editor--a series of carefully prepared letters on
some popular subject. In the days of Goldsmith, the herring-fishing
employed, as he tells us in one of his essays, "all Grub Street." In the
north of Scotland this fishery was a popular theme little more than
twenty years ago. The welfare of whole communities depended in no slight
degree on its success: it formed the basis of many a calculation, and
the subject of many an investment; and it was all the more suitable for
my purpose from the circumstance that there was no Grub Street in that
part of the world to employ itself about it. It was, in at least all
its better aspects, a fresh subject; and I deemed myself more thoroughly
acquainted with it than at least most of the men who were skilful
enough, as _litterateurs_, to communicate their knowledge in writing. I
knew the peculiarities of fishermen as a class, and the effects of this
special branch of their profession on their character: I had seen them
pursuing their employments amid the sublime of nature, and had
occasionally taken a share in their work; and, further, I was acquainted
with not a few antique traditions of the fishermen of other ages, in
which, as in the narratives of most seafaring men, there mingled with a
certain amount of real incident, curious snatches of the supernatural.
In short, the subject was one on which, as I knew a good deal regarding
it that was not generally known, I was in some degree qualified to
write; and so I occupied my leisure in casting my facts respecting it
into a series of letters, of which the first appeared in the _Courier_ a
fortnight after my volume of verse was laid on the tables of the north
country booksellers.

I had first gone out to sea to assist in catching herrings about ten
years before; and I now described, in one of my letters, as truthfully
as I could, those features of the scene to which I had been introduced
on that occasion, which had struck me as novel and peculiar. And what
had been strange to me proved equally so, I found, to the readers of the
_Courier_. My letters attracted attention, and were republished in my
behalf by the