Archibald Constable and His Literary Correspondents: A Memorial by His Son (1873)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. Alexander Gibson Hunter, Forfarshire Laird and Edinburgh Bookseller. Mr. Hunter, with whom my father was associated during seven of his most prosperous and happiest years, was the eldest son of a proprietor of good fortune and good family in the county of Forfar. He was a man of great ability and very active mind, and would probably have become a distinguished lawyer had the legal profession proved attractive; but his energetic nature demanded strong excitement, and the commerce of books offered him a field at once for the gratification of a spirit of enterprise and the satisfaction of literary taste. His leisure, which had been more extensive than was either useful or agreeable, had been chiefly spent in Forfarshire, the county at that time, par excellence, of high living and hard drinking, where his wit and good-fellowship made him at all times a welcome guest at the tables of the neighbouring lairds; but in spite of his love of sport and conviviality he longed for escape from the temptations to excess that daily beset him; and in a letter to my father, written some years before he became his partner, he says, " I verily believe my senses will leave me if I stay long in this country." Whether the proposal of association came from Mr. Hunter or my father I do not know, but they both entered on it with the most cordial feelings, which at its close had suffered no abatement . The earliest notice of the partnership occurs in the following letter from my father to Mr. Hunter, and in one addressed a few days later to Mr. Wallace, at that time Professor in the Military College at Great Marlowe:? "edinburgh, 18A December 1803. " Dear Sir,? . . . Your letter was to me a most welcome one, for although I considered matters in a great measure agreed on between ou...