That Constable was correct in his estimate of the value of the literary property has been shown by the large sums realised from the sale of Scott’s works since 1829; and that his was the brain ("the pendulum of the clock” as Scott termed it) to plan is also shown by the fact that the so-called “favourite” edition, the magnum opus, appears to have been Constable’s idea (Memoirs, vol. iii. p. 255), although, according to the Annual Register of 1849, Mr. Cadell claimed the merit of a scheme which he had “quietly and privately matured.”

[15] Thomas Thomson, Depute-Clerk Register for Scotland under Lord Frederick Campbell.

[16] Johnson’s Epitaph on Claude Phillips.

AUGUST.

August 1.—­My guests left me and I thought of turning to work again seriously.  Finished five pages.  Dined alone, excepting Huntly Gordon, who is come on a visit, poor lad.  I hope he is well fixed under Mr. Planta’s[17] patronage.  Smoked a cigar after dinner.  Laughed with my daughters, and read them the review of Hoffmann’s production out of Gillies’s new Foreign Review.

The undertaking would do, I am convinced, in any other person’s hands than those of the improvident editor; but I hear he is living as thoughtlessly as ever in London, has hired a large house, and gives Burgundy to his guests.  This will hardly suit L500 a year.

August 2.—­Got off my proofs.  Went over to breakfast at Huntly Burn; the great object was to see my cascade in the Glen suitably repaired.  I have had it put to rights by puddling and damming.  What says the frog in the Fairy Tale?—­

    “Stuff with moss, and clog with clay,
    And that will weize the water away.”

Having seen the job pretty tightly done, walked deliciously home through the woods.  But no work all this while.  Then for up and at it.  But in spite of good resolutions I trifled with my children after dinner, and read to them in the evening, and did just nothing at all.

August 3.—­Wrote five pages and upwards—­scarce amends for past laziness.  Huntly Gordon lent me a volume of his father’s manuscript memoirs.[18] They are not without interest, for Pryse Gordon, though a bit of a roue, is a clever fellow in his way.  One thing struck me, being the story of an Irish swindler, who called himself Henry King Edgeworth, an impudent gawsey fellow, who deserted from Gordon’s recruiting party, enlisted again, and became so great a favourite with the Colonel of the regiment which he joined, that he was made pay-sergeant.  Here he deserted to purpose with L200 or L300, escaped to France, got a commission in the Corps sent to invade Ireland, was taken, recognised, and hanged.  What would Mr. Theobald Wolfe Tone have said to such an associate in his regenerating expedition?  These are thy gods, O Israel!  The other was the displeasure of the present Cameron of Lochiel, on finding that the forty Camerons, with whom he joined the Duke of Gordon’s Northern Fencible regiment, were to be dispersed.  He had wellnigh mutinied and marched back with them.  This would be a good anecdote for Garth.[19]