[179] This was a club-house on the London plan, in Princes Street [No. 54], a little eastward from the Mound. On its dissolution soon afterwards, Sir W. was elected by acclamation into the elder Society, called the _New Club_, who had then their house in St. Andrew Square [No. 3], and since 1837 in Princes Street [No. 85]. [180] Mr. Skene's house was No. 126 Princes Street. Scott's written answer has been preserved:-- "MY DEAR SKENE,--A thousand thanks for your kind proposal. But I am a solitary monster by temper, and must necessarily couch in a den of my own. I should not, I assure you, have made any ceremony in accepting your offer had it at all been like to suit me. "But I must make an arrangement which is to last for years, and perhaps for my lifetime; therefore the sooner I place myself on my footing it will be so much the better.--Always, dear Skene, your obliged and faithful, W. SCOTT." [181] Pope's _Imitation of Horace_, Bk. ii Sat. 6.--J.G.L. [182] These Letters appeared in the _Edinburgh Weekly Journal_ in February and March 1826. "They were then collected into a pamphlet, and ran through numerous editions; in the subsequent discussions in Parliament, they were frequently referred to; and although an elaborate answer by the then Secretary of the Admiralty, Mr. Croker, attracted much notice, and was, by the Government of the time, expected to neutralise the effect of the northern lucubrations--the proposed measure, as regarded Scotland, was ultimately abandoned, and that result was universally ascribed to Malachi Malagrowther."--Scott's _Misc. Works_, vol. xxi. [183] _Winter's Tale_, Act iv. Sc. 2, slightly altered. [184] The late Mr. Williamson of Cardrona in Peeblesshire, was a strange humorist, of whom Sir Walter told many stories. The allusion here is to the anecdote of the _Leetle Anderson_ in the first of _Malachi_'s Epistles.:--See Scott's _Prose Miscellanies_, vol. xxi. p. 289.--_J.G.L._ [185] _The Omen_, by Galt, had just been published.--See Sir Walter's review of this novel in the _Miscellaneous Prose Works_, vol. xviii. p. 333. John Gait died at Greenock in April 1839.--J.G.L. [186] "A Letter from Malachi Malagrowther, Esq., to the Editor of the _Edinburgh Weekly Journal_, on the proposed Change of Currency, and other late alterations as they affect, or are intended to affect, the Kingdom of Scotland. 8 vo, Edin. 1826." The motto to the epistle was:-- "When the pipes begin to play _Tutti taittie_ to the drum, Out claymore and down wi' gun, And to the rogues again." In the next edition it was suppressed, as some friends thought it might be misunderstood. Mr. Croker in his reply had urged that if the author appealed to the edge of the claymore at Prestonpans, he might refer him to the point of the bayonet at Culloden.--See Croker's _Correspondence_, vol. i. pp. 317-320, and Scott's _Life_, vol. viii. pp. 301-5.