Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/238

202 202 WILLIAM BLA CKWO OD. Dwarf" was offered when Scott considered it desir- able to bring it out in other hands, and with a title- page apparently by another author. Blackwood wrote to say that, in his opinion, the unravelling of the end of the story might be improved, and offered to pay for cancelling the proofs. Gifford, too, to whom Murray had shown it, was of a like opinion. Scott differed most essentially ; witness his letter to Ballan- tyne : " DEAR JAMES, " I have received Blackwood's impudent letter. G d his soul, tell him and his coadjutor that I belong to the Black Hussars of Literature, who neither give nor receive criticism. I'll be cursed but this is the most impudent proposal that ever was made." This, of course, brought the proposal to a close for the time, though, as Lockhart says, " Scott did both know and appreciate Blackwood better in after times." Blackwood was now, from the profits of the old- book trade and the success of his own publishing ventures, in a fair way to success, and in 1816 he took the bold step of selling off all his old stock and migrating to Prince's Street. " He took possession," says Lockhart, in " Peter's Letters," " of a large and airy suite of rooms in Prince's Street, which had formerly been occupied by a notable confectioner, and whose threshold was, therefore, familiar enough to all the frequenters of this superb promenade Stimulated, I suppose, by the example and success of John Murray, whose agent he is, he determined to make, if possible, Prince's Street to the High Street, what the other had made Albemarle Street to the