It must be confessed that no justification can be offered for such treatment. Such was my own opinion, derived from this source, of Hogg, and from prints of him, with wide open mouth and huge straggling teeth, in full roars of drunken laughter, that, on meeting him in London, I was quite amazed to find him so smooth, well-looking, and gentlemanly a sort of person. There are many truths which James Hogg in his honest candor speaks out, that not one author in a thousand, stand as high and as strong as he may, dares speak out, for fear of the trade, as it is called. For instance, who will not set the seal of his authorly experience to this: "I would never object trusting a bookseller, were he a man of any taste; for, unless he wishes to reject an author altogether, he can have no interest in asserting what he does not think. But the plague is, they _never read works themselves_, but give them to their minions, with whom there never fails to lurk a literary jealousy; and whose suggestions may be uniformly regarded as any thing but truth. For my own part, I know that I have always been looked on by the learned part of the community as an intruder in the paths of literature, and every opprobrium has been thrown on me from that quarter. The truth is, that I am so. The walks of learning are occupied by a powerful aristocracy, who deem that province their own peculiar right; else, what would avail all their dear-bought collegiate honors and degrees?"[3] [3] Memoir, p. 81. So true is James, so far as regards the practice of publishers never reading the MSS. submitted to them, but consigning them to readers;--_i.e._, publishers being the only dealers who never pretend to judge of the article they deal in;--that since the publication of the Book of Seasons, which was declined by half-a-dozen of the principal publishing houses in London, I never suffered a MS. of mine to be inspected by any publisher. What is more, finding that publishers in bargaining for copyrights never offered more than half the profits of a single edition, I have always persisted in refusing to sell copyrights, and sold only editions. This is a point that all authors should attend to. An author is not justified in selling the copyrights of his works, which should become the property of his family, especially as he may rest assured that he will, in nine cases out of ten, never get more for the whole copyright than he ought to have for a single edition. The late Mr. Longman once spoke to me a great truth--a truth confirmed by all experiences of all authors, in all ages, the present forming no exception--that "Authorship is an agreeable addition to a tolerable fixed income, but as a total dependence is a wretched reed." Scott, the most successful author of any age, though possessed of a good income independent of literature, died a bankrupt. Maginn, Hood, Blanchard, and a host of others, have yet to swell the history of the calamities of authors.