WILLIAM CREECH. The Lucknbooths.
remembered after he had passed away; but he
had acquired penurious habits, with a miserly
avidity for money, which not only precluded all
benevolence to the deserving, but actually marred
even the honest discharge of business transactions.
In 1771 he entered into partnership with Mr.
Kincaid, who left the business two years after, and
came from his establishment. He published the
works of Cullen, Gregory, Adam Smith, Burns,
Dugald Stewart, Henry Mackenzie, Blair, Beattie,
Campbell (the opponent of Hume), Lords Woodhouselee
and Kames, and by the last-named he
was particularly regarded with esteem and friendship
; and it was on the occasion of his having gone
WILLIAM CREECH. (From th Port~uit ay SW Henry Raebzmz.)
the whole devolving upon Mr. Creech, he conducted
it for forty-four years with singular enterprise
and success. For all that time his quaint shop
at the east-end of the Luckenbooths was the resort
of the clergy, the professors, and also all public
and eminent men in the Scottish metropolis ; and
his breakfast-room was a permanent literary lounge,
which was known by the name of " Creech's Levee."
During the whole of the period mentioned
nearly all the really valuable literature of the time
to London for some time in 1787 that Burns wrote
his well-known poem of " Willie 's Awa : "-
" Oh, Willie was a witty wight,
And had 0' things an' unco slight,
Auld Reekie aye he,keepit tight,
And trig and braw ;
But now they'll busk her like a fright-
Willie's awa ! "
.
We have already referred to the club in which
originated the Mirror and Lounger. These
The Lucke~rbooths.] WILLIAM CREECH. 157
periodicals were issued by Creech; and the first
number of the former, when it appeared on Saturday,
23rd of January, 1779, created quite a sensation
among the ?? blue-stocking ? coteries of the
city.
In ?Peter?s Letters to his Kinsfolk,? ?Mr. Creech,
then prince of the Edinburgh trade,? is rather
dubiously written of. ?This bibliopole was a
very indifferent master of his trade, and wanted
entirely the wit to take due advantage of the goods
the gods provided. He was himself a great literary
character, and he was always a great man in the
magistracy of the city ; and perhaps he would have
thought it beneath him to be a mere ordinary moneymaking
bookseller. Not that he had any aversion
to money-making; on the contrary, he was prodigiously
fond of money, and carried his love of it
in many things to a ridiculous extent. But he had
been trained in all the timid prejudices of the old
Edinburgh school of booksellers ; and not daring
to make money in a bold and magnificent way,
neither did he dare to run the risk of losing any
part of what he had made. Had he possessed
either the shrewdness or the spirit of some of his
successors, there is no question he might have set
on foot a fine race of rivalry among .the literary
men about him-a race of which the ultimate
gains would undoubtedly have been greatest to
himself. . . . , He never had the sense to
perceive that his true game lay in making high
sweepstakes, and the consequence was that nobody - would take the trouble either of training or running
for his courses.?
The successors referred to are evidently Constable
and the Blackwoods, as the writer continues
thus :-
*? it?hat a singular contrast does the present state
of Edinburgh in regard to these. matters afford
when compared to what I have been endeavouring
to describe as existing in the days of the Creeches !
Insteac! of Scottish authors sending their works to
be published by London booksellers, there is
nothing more common now-a-days than to hear of
English authors sending down their books to Edinburgh
to be published in a city than which Memphis
or Palmyra would scarcely have appeared a
more absurd place of publication to any English
author thirty years ago.?
Creech died unmarried on the 14th of January,
1815, in his seventieth year, only two years before
the interesting old Land which bore his name for
nearly half a century was demolished ; but a view
of it is attached to his ?Fugitive Pieces,? which
he published in 1791. These were essays and
sketches of character and manners in Edinburgh,
which he had occasionally contributed to the newspapers.
The Z?+shoj of Creech?s Land was last occupied
by the Messrs. Hutchison, extensive traders,
who, in the bad state of the copper coinage, when
the halfpennies of George 111. would not pass
current .in Scotland, produced a coinage of Edinburgh
halfpennies in .I 7 g I that were long universally
received. On one side were the city arms
and crest, boldly struck, surrounded by thistles.
with the legend, Edinburgh Halfpenny; on the
other, St. Andrew with his cross, and the national
motto, Nemo me imjune Zacessit, which is freely
and spiritedly rendered, ? Ye dzurna meddle wi?
me.? Since then they have gradually disappeared,
and now are only to ue found in numismatic collections.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE PARLIAMENT HOUSE.
Site of the Parliament House-The Parliament Hall-Its fine Roof-Proportions-Its External Aspct of Old-Pictures and Statues
-The Great South Window-The Side Windows-Scots Prisonen of War-Gcneral Monk Feasted-A Scene with Gen. Llalyell-
The Fire of IT-Riding of the Parliament-The Union-Its dire Erects and ultimate good RcsuIt+Tnal of Covenanters.
No building in Edinburgh possesses perhaps more
interest historically than the Parliament House,
and yet its antiquity is not great, as it was finished
only in 1639 fot the meetings of the Estates, and
was used for that purpose exclusively till the Union
in 1707.
Previous to its erection in St. Giles?s churchyard,
the national Parliaments, the Courts of Justice,
and the Town Council of Edinburgh, held?their
meetings in the old Tolbooth, and the circumstance
of such assemblies taking place constantly in its
vicinity must have led to the gradual abandonment
of the old churchyard of St. Giles?s as a place of
sepulture, for when the readiest access to the Tolbooth
was up the steep slope from the chapel of
the holy rood in the Cowgate, among the grassy
tumuli and old tombstones, and the burial-place
became the lounge of lackeys, grooms, and
armed servitors, waiting for their masters during
the sittings of the House, all the sacred and
