I feel all the delicacy of the time and mode of your application, and you cannot doubt I would greatly prefer you personally to men of whom I know nothing.  But they are not of my choosing, nor are they in any way responsible to me.  I transact with the Edinburgh bookseller alone, and as I must neglect no becoming mode of securing myself, my terms are harder than I think you, in possession of so well established a trade, would like to enter upon, though they may suit one who gives up his time to them as almost his sole object of expense and attention.  I hope this necessary arrangement will make no difference betwixt us, being, with regard,

Your faithful, humble Servant,

Walter Scott.

On his return to London, Lockhart proceeded to take a house, No. 24, Sussex Place, Regent’s Park; for he had been heretofore living in the furnished apartments provided for him in Pall Mall.  Mr. Murray wrote to him on the subject: 

John Murray to Mr. Lockhart.

July 31, 1828.

As you are about taking or retaking a house, I think it right to inform you now that the editor’s dividend on the Quarterly Review will be in future L325 on the publication of each number; and I think it very hard if you do not get L200 or L300 more for your own contributions.

Most truly yours,

JOHN MURRAY.

At the beginning of the following year Lockhart went down to Abbotsford, where he found his father-in-law working as hard as ever.

Mr. Lockhart to John Murray.

January 4, 1820.

“I have found Sir Walter Scott in grand health and spirits, and have had much conversation with him on his hill-side about all our concerns.  I shall keep a world of his hints and suggestions till we meet; but meanwhile he has agreed to write almost immediately a one volume biography of the great Earl of Peterborough, and I think you will agree with me in considering the choice of this, perhaps the last of our romantic heroes, as in all respects happy. ...  He will also write now an article on some recent works of Scottish History (Tytler’s, etc.) giving, he promises, a complete and gay summary of all that controversy; and next Nov. a general review of the Scots ballads, whereof some twenty volumes have been published within these ten years, and many not published but only printed by the Bannatyne club of Edinburgh, and another club of the same order at Glasgow....  I am coaxing him to make a selection from Crabbe, with a preface, and think he will be persuaded.”

January 8, 1829.

“Sir Walter Scott suggests overhauling Caulfield’s portraits of remarkable characters (3 vols., 1816), and having roughish woodcuts taken from that book and from others, and the biographies newly done, whenever they are not in the words of the old original writers.  He says the march of intellect will never put women with beards and men with horns out of fashion—­Old Parr, Jenkins, Venner, Muggleton, and Mother Souse, are immortal, all in their several ways.”