This description, which C. K. S. must have himself read on its first appearance in _Lockhart_,[47] had to serve as a sufficient account of him for the general public so long as he lived, except in so far as it might be filled up by impressions from his own writings. After his death there were obituary sketches of him, of course, in the Edinburgh newspapers; and he figured posthumously, under the thin disguise of “Fitzpatrick Smart, Esq.,” as one of the typical Edinburgh bibliomaniacs so cleverly described by Hill Burton in his _Book-Hunter_, published in 1862. Not till 1869, however, was there any adequate commemoration of him. In that year there was published by Messrs. Blackwood a sumptuous large quarto entitled _Etchings by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, with Photographs from Original Drawings, Poetical and Prose Fragments, and a Prefatory Memoir_. The volume sufficed in every respect for those who still felt an interest in Kirkpatrick Sharpe and his memory, save that it contained hardly any representation of his extensive epistolary correspondence. The defect has been amply supplied in the two large new volumes now before us. The _Memoir_ which they contain is substantially a reproduction of that in the now scarce volume of 1869; but they consist chiefly of a selection of Kirkpatrick Sharpe’s preserved letters, and of letters to him, through the long period of fifty-two years extending from 1798 to 1850. The careful editor, Mr. Allardyce, has erred rather by excess than by defect in his selection. A good many of the letters of Sharpe’s correspondents which he has thought worth giving might well have been spared. With that exception, however, the editing is admirable; and in the main, the collection is as variously amusing, and here and there as startlingly and laughably odd, as anything of the kind that has been published in Great Britain for many a day. By far the largest proportion of the letters belong to what has been hitherto the least known period of Kirkpatrick Sharpe’s life: to wit, the period preceding his definite settlement of himself in Edinburgh in 1813. From these, together with Mr. Bedford’s prefixed _Memoir_, we obtain the following facts:—