Where is the bravery of treading on a worm or crushing a poor fly?
Where the utility?
Where the honour ?" An edition of 4,000 copies had been printed; this was soon exhausted, and a second edition was called for.
Mr.Scott was ample in his encouragements.
"I think," he wrote to Murray, "a firm and stable sale will be settled here, to the extent of 1,000 or 1,500 even for the next number....

I am quite pleased with my ten guineas a sheet for my labour in writing, and for additional exertions.

I will consider them as overpaid by success in the cause, especially while that success is doubtful." Ballantyne wrote to Murray in March: "Constable, I am told, has consulted Sir Samuel Romilly, and means, after writing a book against me, to prosecute me for _stealing his plans!_ Somebody has certainly stolen his brains!" The confederates continued to encourage each other and to incite to greater effort the procrastinating Gifford.

The following rather mysterious paragraph occurs in a letter from Scott to Murray dated March 19, 1809.
"I have found means to get at Mr.G., and have procured a letter to be written to him, which may possibly produce one to you signed Rutherford or Richardson, or some such name, and dated from the North of England; or, if he does not write to you, enquiry is to be made whether he would choose you should address him.

The secrecy to be observed in this business must be most profound, even to Ballantyne and all the world.