DEAR WILLIAMS,

I TRUST, that among the many literateurs of Edinburgh, there will ere long be found some person to compose a full and detailed history of this city, considered as a great mart of literature. I do not know of any other instance, in the whole history of the world, of such a mart existing and flourishing in a place not the seat of a government, or residence of a court, or centre of any very great political interest. The only place which at all approaches to Edinburgh in this view is Weimar; for the residence of so small a prince as the Grand Duke can scarcely be considered as conferring anything like what we would understand by the character of a capital. But even there it can scarcely be said that any great mart of literature exists, or indeed existed even at the time when Wieland, Schiller, and Goethe lived together under the wing of the palace. Books were written there in abundance, and many books were nominally published there; but the true centre from which they were diffused over Germany was always Leipsick.

Till within these twenty years, I suppose there was no such thing in Edinburgh as the great trade of Publishing. Now and then some volume of sermons or so issued from the press of some Edinburgh typographer, and after lying for a year or two upon the counter of some of their booksellers, was dismissed into total oblivion, as it probably deserved to be. But of all the great literary men of the last age, who lived in Edinburgh, there was no one who ever thought of publishing his books in Edinburgh. The trade here never aspired to anything beyond forming a very humble appendage of understrappers to the trade of the Row. Even if the name of an Edinburgh bookseller did appear upon a title-page, that was only a compliment allowed him by the courtesy of the great London dealer, whose instrument and agent he was. Every thing was conducted by the Northern Bibliopoles in the same timid spirit of which this affords a specimen. The dulness of their atmosphere was never enlivened by one breath of daring.