3. The History of the Reformation in Scotland; and, 4. The History of Scotland, from the Reformation to the Death of Queen MARY.

No. LXXXIV.

Dr GILBERT STUART to Mr WILLIAM
Smellie.

DEAR BILL,

IF you will send me the 2d volume of Lord KAMESES Sketches, in which there are some good remarks on the management of boroughs, I will fit out CAYS paper for this number *.

In a work by JONATHAN EDWARDS, called The History of the Work of Redemption, there is a most curious fanatical page on the peopling of America, which will afford a column of excellent food for the Magazine department. The book you will easily get, as DICKSON will give it to you for half a day.

* Alluding to an intended article for the Edinburgh Magazine and Review.

I could wish you to give it a whipping; see p. 295; or rather send the book out to me, and I will adorn the passage by a note or two*. It will attract the General Assembly.

LEST there be a defalcation of review, send me HARRY HUNTERS Sermon; or, if you chuse it better, draw up a short account of it yourself; but not too flattering. I hope you have reviewed CRAIG.

I AM angry, and sorry at the same time, for the West Kirk. But I cannot possibly allow myself to think that the Solicitor will begin his political career with trifling like a boy.

GIVE the inclosed to CAY as soon as you see him. The inclosed review by our friend is truly good criticism and good sense; let it be the first article. I am, &c.

GILBERT STuart.

८

Dr STUART accordingly did adorn the passage' with a few precious notes; but these Mr SMELLIE very prudently left out, from the account of this publication in the Edinburgh Magazine and Review.

The inclos

may return

ed is to Dr BLACKLOCK. You an answer to Philo-Bib. that his paper will appear; and that the Editors have no more respect for the papers he opposes than for his own: And that he alludes to a bias, as the source of its not being inserted, which is certainly inexcusable in a periodical work, and which will not apply to the Edinburgh Magazine and Review,

CULLENS letter requests the return of MADOXES Firma Burgi, a thin folio, which I thought you had given him. I beg and intreat that you will look it out: Mrs DUNCAN will give you both the keys.

LET CREECH and you consult fully, and then write me. If there is any news more

about Dance and the Magistrates, let us hear by the coach. I do not wish that CREECH and you should lose money; and I think neither you nor he should wish that I should lose time. CULLEN also writes that he had sent a review of CRAIG, which please send. Yours, &c.

I BEG that CREECH and you may have some communing about the fate of the Magazine, as I am no longer to have any concern with it. I do not mean to write any thing for it, after the present volume is finished ; and I fancy the next is the last number of the third volume, I have another view of disposing of my time, and I fancy it will almost wholly be taken up; the sooner, therefore, that I am informed of your resolutions the better.

* * *

Yours, &c.

G. STUART,

THERE is no date to this letter, but it must have been in or about June 1775, from the circumstance respecting the last number of the 3d volume of the Magazine, mentioned in the letter, as the last number of volume III. was for June of that year. Yet, notwithstanding this declaration, that he was to write no more for the Edinburgh Magazine and Review after the close of the third volume in June 1775, he assuredly continued to write for the fourth and fifth volumes; and the last portion of his review of the Origin and Progress of Language, which gave so much offence, appeared so late as that number of the fifth volume which was published in June 1776.

No. LXXXVII.

From Dr GILBERT STUART to Mr WILLIAM

SMELLIE.

DEAR BILL,

No date.

I DID not get your letter till late yesterday, though it is dated on Monday. The preface will do very well, and appears to me