[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, L4100
Anne, pocket-money, 500
Servants on journey, 200
Cash in purse (silver not reckoned), 200
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                                       L5000
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