The interview which you allude to took place in the
course of last winter, and is so deeply imprinted on my recollection,
that it requires no effort to collect all its most minute details.
You are aware that the share which I had in introducing the Romance,
called THE MONASTERY, to public notice, has given me a sort of
character in the literature of our Scottish metropolis. I no longer
stand in the outer shop of our bibliopolists, bargaining for the
objects of my curiosity with an unrespective shop-lad, hustled among
boys who come to buy Corderies and copy-books, and servant girls
cheapening a pennyworth of paper, but am cordially welcomed by the
bibliopolist himself, with, "Pray, walk into the back-shop, Captain.
Boy, get a chair for Captain Clutterbuck. There is the newspaper,
Captain--to-day's paper;" or, "Here is the last new work--there is a
folder, make free with the leaves;" or, "Put it in your pocket and
carry it home;" or, "We will make a bookseller of you, sir, and you
shall have it at trade price." Or, perhaps if it is the worthy
trader's own publication, his liberality may even extend itself to--
"Never mind booking such a trifle to _you_, sir--it is an over-copy.
Pray, mention the work to your reading friends." I say nothing of the
snug well-selected literary party arranged round a turbot, leg of
five-year-old mutton, or some such gear, or of the circulation of a
quiet bottle of Robert Cockburn's choicest black--nay, perhaps, of his
new ones.
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