_October_ 14.--Strolled about in the morning with Morritt, and saw his new walk up the Tees, which he is just concocting. Got a pamphlet he has written on the Catholic Question. In 1806 he had other views on that subject, but "live and learn" as they say. One of his squibs against Fox and Grenville's Administration concludes--
"Though they sleep with the devil, yet theirs is the hope, On the scum of old England, to rise with the Pope."
Set off at two, and reached Wetherby to supper and bed.
It was the Corporation of Leeds that by a subscription of £80,000 brought in the anti-Catholic candidate. I remember their subscribing a similar sum to bring in Morritt, if he would have stood.
Saw in Morritt's possession an original miniature of Milton by Cooper--a valuable thing indeed. The pedigree seemed authentic. It was painted for his favourite daughter--had come into possession of some of the Davenants--was then in the Devonshire collection from which it was stolen. Afterwards purchased by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and at his sale by Morritt or his father.[358] The countenance handsome and dignified, with a strong expression of genius, probably the only portrait of Milton taken from the life excepting the drawing from which Faithorne's head is done.
[_Grantham_,] _October_ 15.--Old England is no changeling. It is long since I travelled this road, having come up to town chiefly by sea of late years, but things seem much the same. One race of red-nosed innkeepers are gone, and their widows, eldest sons, or head-waiters exercise hospitality in their room with the same bustle and importance. Other things seem, externally at least, much the same. The land, however, is much better ploughed; straight ridges everywhere adopted in place of the old circumflex of twenty years ago. Three horses, however, or even four, are often seen in a plough yoked one before the other. Ill habits do not go out at once. We slept at Grantham, where we met with Captain William Lockhart and his lady, bound for London like ourselves.
[_Biggleswade_,] _October_ 16.--Visited Burleigh this morning; the first time I ever saw that grand place, where there are so many objects of interest and curiosity. The house is magnificent, in the style of James I.'s reign, and consequently in mixed Gothic. Of paintings I know nothing; so shall attempt to say nothing. But whether to connoisseurs, or to an ignorant admirer like myself, the Salvator Mundi, by Carlo Dolci, must seem worth a King's ransom. Lady Exeter, who was at home, had the goodness or curiosity to wish to see us. She is a beauty after my own heart; a great deal of liveliness in the face; an absence alike of form and of affected ease, and really courteous after a genuine and ladylike fashion.
We reached Biggleswade to-night at six, and paused here to wait for the Lockharts. Spent the evening together.
[_Pall Mall_,] _October_ 17.--Here am I in this capital once more, after an April-weather meeting with my daughter and Lockhart. Too much grief in our first meeting to be joyful; too much pleasure to be distressing--a giddy sensation between the painful and the pleasurable. I will call another subject.
Read over _Sir John Chiverton_[359] and _Brambletye House_[360]--novels in what I may surely claim as the style
"Which I was born to introduce-- Refined it first, and show'd its use."
They are both clever books; one in imitation of the days of chivalry; the other (by Horace Smith, one of the authors of the _Rejected Addresses_) dated in the time of the Civil Wars, and introducing historical characters. I read both with great interest during the journey.
I am something like Captain Bobadil[361] who trained up a hundred gentlemen to fight very nearly, if not altogether, as well as myself. And so far I am convinced of this, that I believe were I to publish the _Canongate Chronicles_ without my name (_nom de guerre_, I mean) the event would be a corollary to the fable of the peasant who made the real pig squeak against the imitator, while the sapient audience hissed the poor grunter as if inferior to the biped in his own language. The peasant could, indeed, confute the long-eared multitude by showing piggy; but were I to fail as a knight with a white and maiden shield, and then vindicate my claim to attention by putting "By the Author of _Waverley_" in the title, my good friend _Publicum_ would defend itself by stating I had tilted so ill, that my course had not the least resemblance to my former doings, when indisputably I bore away the garland. Therefore I am as firmly and resolutely determined that I will tilt under my own cognisance. The hazard, indeed, remains of being beaten. But there is a prejudice (not an undue one neither) in favour of the original patentee; and Joe Manton's name has borne out many a sorry gun-barrel. More of this to-morrow.
Expense of journey, £4100 Anne, pocket-money, 500 Servants on journey, 200 Cash in purse (silver not reckoned), 200 ____ £5000 ____
This is like to be an expensive journey; but if I can sell an early copy of the work to a French translator, it should bring me home.
Thank God, little Johnnie Hoo, as he calls himself, is looking well, though the poor dear child is kept always in a prostrate posture.
_October_ 18.--I take up again my remarks on imitators. I am sure I mean the gentlemen no wrong by calling them so, and heartily wish they had followed a better model; but it serves to show me _veluti in speculo_ my own errors, or, if you will, those of the _style_. One advantage, I think, I still have over all of them. They may do their fooling with better grace; but I, like Sir Andrew Aguecheek, do it more natural.[362] They have to read old books and consult antiquarian collections to get their knowledge; I write because I have long since read such works, and possess, thanks to a strong memory, the information which they have to seek for. This leads to a dragging-in historical details by head and shoulders, so that the interest of the main piece is lost in minute descriptions of events which do not affect its progress. Perhaps I have sinned in this way myself; indeed, I am but too conscious of having considered the plot only as what Bayes[363] calls the means of bringing in fine things; so that in respect to the descriptions, it resembled the string of the showman's box, which he pulls to show in succession Kings, Queens, the Battle of Waterloo, Bonaparte at Saint Helena, Newmarket Races, and White-headed Bob floored by Jemmy from town. All this I may have done, but I have repented of it; and in my better efforts, while I conducted my story through the agency of historical personages, and by connecting it with historical incidents, I have endeavoured to weave them pretty closely together, and in future I will study this more. Must not let the background eclipse the principal figures--the frame overpower the picture.
Another thing in my favour is, that my contemporaries steal too openly. Mr. Smith has inserted in _Brambletye House_ whole pages from Defoe's _Fire and Plague of London_.
"Steal! foh! a fico for the phrase-- Convey, the wise it call!"[364]
When I _convey_ an incident or so, I am at as much pains to avoid detection as if the offence could be indicted in literal fact at the Old Bailey.
But leaving this, hard pressed as I am by these imitators, who must put the thing out of fashion at last, I consider, like a fox at his last shifts, whether there be a way to dodge them, some new device to throw them off, and have a mile or two of free ground, while I have legs and wind left to use it. There is one way to give novelty: to depend for success on the interest of a well-contrived story. But woe's me! that requires thought, consideration--the writing out a regular plan or plot--above all the adhering to one--which I never can do, for the ideas rise as I write, and bear such a disproportioned extent to that which each occupied at the first concoction, that (cocksnowns!) I shall never be able to take the trouble; and yet to make the world stare, and gain a new march ahead of them all!!! Well, something we still will do.
"Liberty's in every blow; Let us do or die!"
Poor Rob Burns! to tack thy fine strains of sublime patriotism! Better take Tristram Shandy's vein. Hand me my cap and bells there. So now, I am equipped. I open my raree-show with
Ma'am, will you walk in, and fal de ral diddle? And, sir, will you stalk in, and fal de ral diddle? And, miss, will you pop in, and fal de ral diddle? And, master, pray hop in, and fal de ral diddle?
Query--How long is it since I heard that strain of dulcet mood, and where or how came I to pick it up? It is not mine, "though by your smiling you seem to say so."[365] Here is a proper morning's work! But I am childish with seeing them all well and happy here; and as I can neither whistle nor sing, I must let the giddy humour run to waste on paper.