Peter Murray, son of the clever Lord Elibank, called and sat half-an-hour-an old friend, and who, from the peculiarity and originality of his genius, is one of the most entertaining companions I have ever known.1 But I must finish Malachi.

February 27.-Malachi is getting on; I must finish him to-night. I dare say some of my London friends will be displeased-Canning perhaps, for he is engoué of Huskisson. Can't help it.

The place I looked at won't do; but I really must get some lodging, for, reason or none, Dalgleish 2 will not leave me, and cries and makes a scene. Now if I stayed alone in a little set of chambers, he would serve greatly for my accommodation. There are some nice places of the kind in the New Buildings, but they are distant from the Court, and I cannot walk well on the pavement. It is odd enough that just when I had made a resolution to use my coach frequently I ceased to keep one-in town at least.

February 28.-Completed Malachi to-day. It is more serious than the first, and in some places perhaps too peppery. Never mind, if you would have a horse kick, make a crupper out of a whin-cow, and I trust to see Scotland kick and fling to some purpose. Woodstock lies back for this. But quid non pro patria?

MARCH.

March 1.-Malachi is in the Edinburgh Journal to-day, and reads like the work of an uncompromising right-forward Scot of the old school. Some of the cautious and pluckless instigators will be afraid of their confederate; for if a man of some energy and openness of character happens to be on the same side with these truckling jobbers, they stand as much in awe of his vehemence as doth the inexperienced conjurer who invokes a fiend whom he cannot manage. Came home in a heavy shower with the Solicitor. I tried him on the question, but found him reserved and cautious. The future Lord Advocate must be cautious; but I can tell my good friend John Hope that, if he acts the part of a firm. and resolute Scottish patriot, both his own country and England will respect him the more. Ah! Hal Dundas, there was no such truckling in thy day!

Looked out a quantity of things to go to Abbotsford; for we are flitting, if you please.1 It is with a sense of pain that I leave behind a parcel of trumpery prints and little ornaments, once the pride of Lady S's heart, but which she sees consigned with indifference to the chance of an auction. Things that have had their day of importance with me I cannot forget, though the merest trifles. But I am glad that she, with bad health and enough to vex her, has not the same useless mode of associating recollections with this unpleasant business. The best part of it is the necessity of leaving behind, viz., getting rid of, a set of most wretched

1 The full-length picture of Sir Walter (with the two dogs, Camp and the deerhound) by Raeburn, painted in 1809, was at this time given to Mr. Skene, and remained

in his possession till 1831, when it was sent to Abbotsford, where it now hangs.-See Letter, Scott to Skene, under January 16th, 1831.

daubs of landscapes, in great gilded frames, of which I have often been heartily ashamed. The history of them was curious. An amateur artist (a lady) happened to fall into misfortunes, upon which her landscapes, the character of which had been buoyed up far beyond their proper level, sank even beneath it, and it was low enough. One most amiable and accomplished old lady continued to encourage her pencil, and to order picture after picture, which she sent in presents to her friends. I suppose I have eight or ten of them, which I could not avoid accepting. There will be plenty of laughing when they come to be sold. It would be a good joke enough to cause it to be circulated that they were performances of my own in early youth, and they would be looked on and bought up as curiosities. True it is that I took lessons of oil-painting in youth from a little Jew animalcule, a smouch called Burrell, a clever sensible creature though; but I could make no progress either in painting or drawing. Nature denied me correctness of eye and neatness of hand, yet I was very desirous to be a draughtsman at least, and laboured harder to attain that point than at any other in my recollection, to which I did not make some approaches. My oil-paintings were to Miss above commemorated what hers are to Claude Lorraine. Yet Burrell was not useless to me altogether neither; he was a Prussian, and I got from him many a long story of the battles of Frederic, in whose armies his father had been a commissary, or perhaps a spy. I remember his picturesque account of seeing a party of the Black Hussars bringing in some forage carts which they had taken from a body of the Cossacks, whom he described as lying on the top of the carts of hay, mortally wounded, and, like the Dying Gladiator, eyeing their own blood as it ran down through the straw. I afterwards took lessons from Walker, whom we used to call Blue-beard. He was one of the most conceited persons in the world, but a good teacher-one of the ugliest

countenances he had too-enough, as we say, to spean weans.1 The man was always extremely precise in the quality of everything about him, his dress, accommodations, and everything else. He became insolvent, poor man, and for some reason or other I attended the meeting of those concerned in his affairs. Instead of ordinary accommodations for writing, each of the persons present was equipped with a large sheet of drawing paper and a swan's quill. It was mournfully ridiculous enough. Skirving made an admirable likeness of Walker, not a single scar or mark of the smallpox which seamed his countenance, but the too accurate brother of the brush had faithfully laid it down in longitude and latitude. Poor Walker destroyed it (being in crayons) rather than let the caricature of his ugliness appear at the sale of his effects. I did learn myself to take some vile views from Nature. When Will Clerk and I lived very much together, I used sometimes to make them under his instruction. He to whom, as to all his family, art is a familiar attribute, wondered at me as a Newfoundland dog would at a greyhound which showed fear of the water.

Going down to Liddesdale once, I drew the castle of Hermitage in my fashion, and sketched it so accurately that with a few verbal instructions Clerk put it into regular form, Williams 3 (the Grecian) copied over Clerk's, and his drawing was engraved as the frontispiece of the first volume of the Kelso edition, Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. Do you know why you have written all this down, Sir W.? Because it pleases me to record that this thrice-transmitted drawing, though taken originally from a sketch of mine, was extremely

like Hermitage, which neither of my colleagues in the task had ever seen? No, that's not the reason. You want to put off writing Woodstock, just as easily done as these memoranda, but which it happens your duty and your prudence recommend, and therefore you are loath to begin. "Heigho,

I can't say no;

But this piece of task-work off I can stave, O,
For Malachi's posting into an octavo ;

To correct the proof-sheets only this night I have, O,

So, Madame Conscience, you've gotten as good as you gave, O
But to-morrow's a new day and we'll better behave, O,

So I lay down the pen, and your pardon I crave, O."

In the evening Mr. Gibson called and transacted business. March 2.-I have a letter from Colin Mackenzie, approving Malachi,-" Cold men may say it is too strong; but from the true men of Scotland you are sure of the warmest gratitude." I never have yet found, nor do I expect it on this occasion, that ill-will dies in debt, or what is called gratitude distresses herself by frequent payments. The one is like a ward-holding and pays its reddendo in hard blows. The other a blanch-tenure, and is discharged for payment of a red rose or a peppercorn. He that takes the forlorn hope in an attack, is often deserted by those that should support him, and who generally throw the blame of their own cowardice upon his rashness. We shall see this will end in the same way. But I foresaw it from the beginning. The bankers will be persuaded that it is a squib which may burn their own fingers, and will curse the poor pyrotechnist that compounded it; if they do, they be d-d. Slept indifferently, and dreamed of Napoleon's last moments, of which I was reading a medical account last night, by Dr. Arnott. Horrible death-a cancer on the pylorus. I would have given something to have lain still this morning and made up for lost time. But desidiae valedixi. If you once turn on your side after the hour at which you ought to rise,