Availing myself, then, of the privileges to which I have alluded, I
strolled onward in that labyrinth of small dark rooms, or _crypts_, to
speak our own antiquarian language, which form the extensive back-
settlements of that celebrated publishing-house. Yet, as I proceeded
from one obscure recess to another, filled, some of them with old
volumes, some with such as, from the equality of their rank on the
shelves, I suspected to be the less saleable modern books of the
concern, I could not help feeling a holy horror creep upon me, when I
thought of the risk of intruding on some ecstatic bard giving vent to
his poetical fury; or it might be, on the yet more formidable privacy
of a band of critics, in the act of worrying the game which they had
just run down. In such a supposed case, I felt by anticipation the
horrors of the Highland seers, whom their gift of deuteroscopy compels
to witness things unmeet for mortal eye; and who, to use the
expression of Collins,

----"heartless, oft, like moody madness, stare,
To see the phantom train their secret work prepare."

Still, however, the irresistible impulse of an undefined curiosity
drove me on through this succession of darksome chambers, till, like
the jeweller of Delhi in the house of the magician Bennaskar, I at
length reached a vaulted room, dedicated to secrecy and silence, and
beheld, seated by a lamp, and employed in reading a. blotted _revise_,
[Footnote: The uninitiated must be informed, that a second proof-sheet
is so called.] the person, or perhaps I should rather say the Eidolon,
or representative Vision of the AUTHOR OF WAVERLEY! You will not be
surprised at the filial instinct which enabled me at once to
acknowledge the features borne by this venerable apparition, and that
I at once bended the knee, with the classical salutation of, _Salve,