The Surgeons Daughter | Page 6

have often observed, that an idea of declining such a
reference, on account of his own consciousness of incompetency, is, as
it perhaps ought to be, the last which occurs to the referee himself. He
that has a literary work subjected to his judgment by the author,
immediately throws his mind into a critical attitude, though the subject
be one which he never before thought of. No doubt the author is well
qualified to select his own judge, and why should the arbiter whom he
has chosen doubt his own talents for condemnation or acquittal, since
he has been doubtless picked out by his friend, from his indubitable
reliance on their competence? Surely, the man who wrote the
production is likely to know the person best qualified to judge of it.
Whilst these thoughts crossed my brain, I kept my eyes fixed on my
good friend, whose motions appeared unusually tardy to me, while he

ordered a bottle of particular claret, decanted it with scrupulous
accuracy with his own hand, caused his old domestic to bring a saucer
of olives, and chips of toasted bread, and thus, on hospitable thoughts
intent, seemed to me to adjourn the discussion which I longed to bring
on, yet feared to precipitate.
"He is dissatisfied," thought I, "and is ashamed to show it, afraid
doubtless of hurting my feelings. What had I to do to talk to him about
any thing save charters and sasines?--Stay, he is going to begin."
"We are old fellows now, Mr. Croftangry," said my landlord; "scarcely
so fit to take a poor quart of claret between us, as we would have been
in better days to take a pint, in the old Scottish liberal acceptation of the
phrase. Maybe you would have liked me to have kept James to help us.
But if it is not a holyday or so, I think it is best he should observe office
hours."
Here the discourse was about to fall. I relieved it by saying, Mr. James
was at the happy time of life, when he had better things to do than to sit
over the bottle. "I suppose," said I, "your son is a reader."
"Um--yes--James may be called a reader in a sense; but I doubt there is
little solid in his studies--poetry and plays, Mr. Croftangry, all
nonsense--they set his head a-gadding after the army, when he should
be minding his business."
"I suppose, then, that romances do not find much more grace in your
eyes than dramatic and poetical compositions?"
"Deil a bit, deil a bit, Mr. Croftangry, nor historical productions either.
There is too much fighting in history, as if men only were brought into
this world to send one another out of it. It nourishes false notions of our
being, and chief and proper end, Mr. Croftangry."
Still all this was general, and I became determined to bring our
discourse to a focus. "I am afraid, then, I have done very ill to trouble
you with my idle manuscripts, Mr. Fairscribe; but you must do me the
justice to remember, that I had nothing better to do than to amuse

myself by writing the sheets I put into your hands the other day. I may
truly plead--
'I left no calling for this idle trade.'"
"I cry your mercy, Mr. Croftangry," said my old friend, suddenly
recollecting--"yes, yes, I have been very rude; but I had forgotten
entirely that you had taken a spell yourself at that idle man's trade."
"I suppose," replied I, "you, on your side, have been too busy a man to
look at my poor Chronicles?"
"No, no," said my friend, "I am not so bad as that neither. I have read
them bit by bit, just as I could get a moment's time, and I believe, I
shall very soon get through them."
"Well, my good friend?" said I, interrogatively.
And "Well, Mr. Croftangry," cried he, "I really think you have got over
the ground very tolerably well. I have noted down here two or three bits
of things, which I presume to be errors of the press, otherwise it might
be alleged, perhaps, that you did not fully pay that attention to the
grammatical rules, which one would desire to see rigidly observed."
I looked at my friend's notes, which, in fact, showed, that in one or two
grossly obvious passages, I had left uncorrected such solecisms in
grammar.
"Well, well, I own my fault; but, setting apart these casual errors, how
do you like the matter and the manner of what I have been writing, Mr.
Fairscribe?"
"Why," said my friend, pausing, with more grave and important
hesitation than I thanked him for, "there is not much to be said against
the manner. The style is terse and intelligible, Mr. Croftangry,