rm is properly _Lochbreist_; but in
the neighborhood he was generally known as _Laird
Lauchie_--or _Lauchie Langlegs_. Washington Irving
describes him in his _Abbotsford_, with high gusto. He
was a most absurd original.]

I saw Blackwood yesterday, and Hogg the day before, and I
understand from them you think of resigning the Chronicle
department of the Magazine. Blackwood told me that if you
did not like that part of the duty, he would consider
himself accountable for the same sum he had specified to you
for any other articles you might communicate from time to
time. He proposes that Hogg should do the Chronicle: He will
not do it so well as you, for he wants judgment and caution,
and likes to have the appearance of eccentricity where
eccentricity is least graceful; that, however, is
Blackwood's affair. If you really do not like the Chronicle,
there can be no harm in your giving it up. What strikes me
is, that there is a something certain in having such a
department to conduct, whereas you may sometimes find
yourself at a loss when you have to cast about for a subject
every month. Blackwood _is_ rather in a bad pickle just
now--sent to Coventry by the trade, as the booksellers call
themselves, and all about the parody of the two beasts.[92]
{p.221} Surely these gentlemen think themselves rather
formed of porcelain clay than of common potter's ware.
Dealing in satire against all others, their own dignity
suffers so cruelly from an ill-imagined joke! If B. had good
books to sell, he might set them all at defiance. His
Magazine does well, and beats Constable's: but we will talk
of this when we meet.[93]

[Footnote 92: An article in one of the early numbers of
_Blackwood's Magazine_, entitled _The Chaldee MS._, in
which the literati and booksellers of Edinburgh were
quizzed _en masse_--Scott himself among the rest. It was
in this lampoon that Constable first saw himself
designated in print by the _sobriquet_ of "The Crafty,"
long before bestowed on him by one of his own most
eminent Whig supporters; but nothing nettled him so much
as the passages in which he and Blackwood are
represented entreating the s