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Many years ago, when as yet Blackwood's Magazine was not, and when Blackwood himself kept a sale-room for second-hand books, one of his nightly lots was knocked down cheap to a working man. The day's labours over, the man had come in his working-dress, and was the highest bidder for the lot aforesaid. Three and elevenpence he paid down, and with four volumes under his arm turned his springy step homewards. A gentleman present in the sale-room, but too late for this particular lot, stopped the happy purchaser in his retreat, and offered him an advance on the purchase-money, to an amount sufficiently tempting to working men in general, would he resign the bargain. But no; politely, but firmly the original purchaser declined negotiating; and all that was left for the foiled book-buyer was to stare at a rough workman's insusceptibility to a good offer, and perhaps wonder with a foolish face of praise at his uncompromising preference of literature to lucre. The workman went on his way rejoicing, and the gentleman saw him no more.
Now to that purchase, value (by sale-room scale) three shillings and elevenpence, we indirectly owe two notable contributions to our modern literature; to wit, the Lives of the British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, in Murray's Family Library, by Cunningham père, and the edition now before us, fully and carefully annotated and corrected, of Johnson's Lives of the Poets, in Murray's British Classics, by Cunningham, fils
For the book purchased in the gloaming, auld lang syne, at the Auld Reekie roup, Auld Ebony in the chair, was Johnson's Lives of the Poets; and the purchaser was Allan Cunningham. "Honest Allan," as he was familiarly called—to distinguish him, perhaps, so Thomas Hood suggested, from one Allan-a-Dale, who was apt to mistake his neighbours' goods for his own—was indeed what Sir Walter Scott declared him, "a credit to Caledonia;" "a long credit," Sir Walter might have said, quoth the same kindly humourist, who loved to play on Allan's towering stature.[2] At present he was working as a mason in Edinburgh, not unmindful, amid the daily din and oust of labour, of early joys and hopes in bonny Blackwood and Dalswinton, nor of cherishing the gift of poetry that was in him, and the love of romance that refined him, and which ere lone should find expression in such sweet lyrics as "My Nanie O," such true ballads as "The young Maxwell," such tender
- ↑ Lives of the most eminent English Poets, with critical Observations on their Works. By Samuel Johnson. With Notes corrective and explanatory, by Peter Cunningham, F.S.A. In Three Vols. Murray. 1854.
- ↑ "The grenadier of our corps," he styles him, when reviewing the forces of the London Magazine;—"a physical Colossus of Literature." And again: "Thou was formed to a poet, Allan, by nature, and by stature too, according to Pope—
'To snatch a grace beyond the reach of Art.'"
