_April_ 28.--Beautiful morning, but ice as thick as pasteboard, too surely showing that the night has made good yesterday's threat. Dalgleish, with his most melancholy face, conveys the most doleful tidings from Bogie. But servants are fond of the woful, it gives such consequence to the person who communicates bad news.
Wrote two letters, and read till twelve, and then for a stout walk among the plantations till four. Found Lady Scott obviously better, I think, than I had left her in the morning. In walking I am like a spavined horse, and heat as I get on. The flourishing plantations around me are a great argument for me to labour hard. "_Barbarus has segetes?_" I will write my finger-ends off first.
_April_ 29.--I was always afraid, privately, that _Woodstock_ would not stand the test. In that case my fate would have been that of the unfortunate minstrel trumpeter Maclean at the battle of Sheriffmuir--
"By misfortune he happened to fa', man; By saving his neck His trumpet did break, And came off without music at a', man."[262]
J.B. corroborated my doubts by his raven-like croaking and criticising; but the good fellow writes me this morning that he is written down an ass, and that the approbation is unanimous. It is but Edinburgh, to be sure; but Edinburgh has always been a harder critic than London. It is a great mercy, and gives encouragement for future exertion. Having written two leaves this morning, I think I will turn out to my walk, though two hours earlier than usual. Egad, I could not persuade myself that it was such bad _Balaam_ after all.
_April_ 30.--I corrected this morning a quantity of proofs and copy, and dawdled about a little, the weather of late becoming rather milder, though not much of that. Methinks Duty looks as if she were but half-pleased with me; but would the Pagan bitch have me work on the Sunday?
FOOTNOTES:
[234] Ben Jonson's _Every Man in his Humour_, Act IV, Sc. 5.
[235] The reader will understand that the Novel was sold for behoof of James Ballantyne & Co.'s creditors, and that this sum includes the cost of printing the first edition as well as paper.--J.G.L.
[236] Eident, _i.e._ eagerly diligent.--J.G.L.
[237] These lines slightly altered from Logan.--J.G.L.
[238] Lippened, _i.e._ relied upon.--J.G.L.
[239] 2 _King Henry VI_., Act IV. Sc. 10, slightly varied.
[240] In a letter of the same day he says--"My interest, as you might have known, lies Windsor way."--J.G.L.
[241] William Coulter, Lord Provost of Edinburgh, died in office, April 1810, and was said to have been greatly consoled on his deathbed by the prospect of so grand a funeral as must needs occur in his case.--Scott _used to take him off_ as saying, at some public meeting, "Gentlemen, though doomed to the trade of a stocking-weaver, I was born with the soul of a _Sheepio_" (Scipio).
[242] _Quarterly Review_, No. 66: Lockhart's review of Sheridan's Life.
[243] It is interesting to read what James Ballantyne has recorded on this subject.--"Sir Walter at all times laboured under the strangest delusion, as to the merits of his own works. On this score he was not only inaccessible to compliments, but even insensible to the truth; in fact, at all times, he hated to talk of any of his productions; as, for instance, he greatly preferred Mrs. Shelley's _Frankenstein_ to any of his own romances. I remember one day, when Mr. Erskine and I were dining with him, either immediately before or immediately after the publication of one of the best of the latter, and were giving it the high praise we thought it deserved, he asked us abruptly whether we had read _Frankenstein_. We answered that we had not. 'Ah,' he said, 'have patience, read _Frankenstein_, and you will be better able to judge of----.' You will easily judge of the disappointment thus prepared for us. When I ventured, as I sometimes did, to press him on the score of the reputation he had gained, he merely asked, as if he determined to be done with the discussion, 'Why, what is the value of a reputation which probably will not last above one or two generations?' One morning, I recollect, I went into his library, shortly after the publication of the _Lady of the Lake_, and finding Miss Scott there, who was then a very young girl, I asked her, 'Well, Miss Sophia, how do you like the _Lady of the Lake_, with which everybody is so much enchanted?' Her answer was, with affecting simplicity, 'Oh, I have not read it. Papa says there's nothing so bad for young girls as reading bad poetry.' Yet he could not be said to be hostile to compliments in the abstract--nothing was so easy as to flatter him about a farm or a field, and his manner on such an occasion plainly showed that he was really open to such a compliment, and liked it. In fact, I can recall only one instance in which he was fairly cheated into pleasure by a tribute paid to his literary merit, and it was a striking one. Somewhere betwixt two and three years ago I was dining at the Rev. Dr. Brunton's, with a large and accomplished party, of whom Dr. Chalmers was one. The conversation turned upon Sir Walter Scott's romances generally, and the course of it led me very shortly afterwards to call on Sir Walter, and address him as follows--I knew the task was a bold one, but I thought I saw that I should get well through it--'Well, Sir Walter,' I said, 'I was dining yesterday, where your works became the subject of very copious conversation.' His countenance immediately became overcast--and his answer was, 'Well, I think, I must say your party might have been better employed.' 'I knew it would be your answer,'--the conversation continued,--'nor would I have mentioned it, but that Dr. Chalmers was present, and was by far the most decided in his expressions of pleasure and admiration of any of the party.' This instantly roused him to the most vivid animation. 'Dr. Chalmers?' he repeated; 'that throws new light on the subject--to have produced any effect upon the mind of such a man as Dr. Chalmers is indeed something to be proud of. Dr. Chalmers is a man of the truest genius. I will thank you to repeat all you can recollect that he said on the subject.' I did so accordingly, and I can recall no other similar instance."--_James Ballantyne's MS._
[244] For the life led by many of the _détenus_ in France before 1814, and for anecdotes regarding Sir Alexander Don, see Sir James Campbell of Ardkinglas' _Memoirs_, 2 vols. 8vo, London 1832, vol. ii. chaps. 7 and 8.
[245] Hugh Scott of Harden, afterwards (in 1835) Lord Polwarth--succeeded by his son Henry, in 1841.
[246] Henry Jas. Scott, who succeeded to the Barony of Montagu on the demise of his grandfather, the Duke of Montagu, was the son of Henry, 3d Duke of Buccleuch. At Lord M.'s death in 1845 the Barony of Montagu expired.
[247] Henry Scott, afterwards Lord Polwarth.
[248] Slightly altered from Pope's _Eloisa to Abelard_.
[249] The Catalogue of Criminals brought before the Circuit Courts at one time was termed in Scotland the Portuous Roll. The name appears to have been derived from the practice in early times of delivering to the judges lists of Criminals for Trials _in Portu_, or in the gateway as they entered the various towns on their circuit ayres.--Chambers's _Book of Scotland_, p. 310.
Jamieson suggests that the word may have come from "Porteous" as originally applied to a Breviary, or portable book of prayers, which might easily be transferred to a portable roll of indictments.
[250] _Quarterly Review_, No. 66, Pepys' _Diary_.
[251] _Twelfth Night_, Act II. Sc. 3.
[252] See Froissart's account of the Battle of Crecy, Bk. i. cap. 129.
[253] _Merry Wives of Windsor_, Act iv. Sc. 1.
[254] See Goldsmith's Comedy, Act III.
[255] _King Lear_, Act III. Sc. 2.
[256] James Pringle, Convener of Selkirkshire for more than half a century. For an account of the Pringles of Torwoodlee, see Mr. Craig Brown's _History of Selkirkshire_, vol. i. pp. 459-470.
[257] "_The Insurrection of the Papers--a Dream_." _The Twopenny Post-Bag_, 12mo, London, 1812.
[258] The well-known ballads on these two North-country legends were published by M.G. Lewis and Mr. Lambe, of Norham. "Sir Guy," in the _Tales of Wonder_, and "The Worm," in Ritson's _Northumberland Garland_.--See Child's _English and Scottish Ballads_, 8 vols. 12mo, Boston, 1857, vol. i. p. 386.
[259] _Fyn Segellak wel brand en vast houd_: old brand used by sealing-wax makers.
[260] _Balaam_ is the cant name in a Newspaper Office for asinine paragraphs, about monstrous productions of Nature and the like, kept standing in type to be used whenever the real news of the day leaves an awkward space that must be filled up somehow.--J.G.L.
[261] _Henry VIII._ Act III. Sc. 2.
[262] Ritson, _Scottish Songs_, xvi.
MAY.
_May_ 1.--I walked to-day to the western corner of the Chiefswood plantation, and marked out a large additional plantation to be drawn along the face of the hill. It cost me some trouble to carry the boundaries out of the eye, for nothing is so paltry as a plantation of almost any extent if its whole extent lies defined to the eye. By availing myself of the undulations of the ground I think I have avoided this for the present; only when seen from the Eildon Hills the cranks and turns of the enclosure will seem fantastic, at least until the trees get high.