They cannot say but what I had the crown.  It is unhappily inconvenient for my affairs to lay by my [work] just now, and that is the only reason why I do not give up literary labour; but, at least, I will not push the losing game of novel-writing.  I will take back the sheets now objected to, but it cannot be expected that I am to write upon return.  I cannot but think that a little thought will open some plan of composition which may promise novelty at the least.  I suppose I shall hear from or see these gentlemen to-day; if not, I must send for them to-morrow.  How will this affect the plan of going shares with Cadell in the novels of earlier and happier date?  Very-much, I doubt, seeing I cannot lay down the cash.  But surely the trustees may find some mode of providing this, or else with cash to secure these copyrights.  At any rate, I will gain a little time for thought and discussion.

Went to Court.  At returning settled with Chief-Commissioner that I should receive him on 26th December at Abbotsford.

After all, may there not be, in this failure to please, some reliques of the very unfavourable matters in which I have been engaged of late,—­the threat of imprisonment, the resolution to become insolvent?  I cannot feel that there is.  What I suffer by is the difficulty of not setting my foot upon such ground as I have trod before, and thus instead of attaining novelty I lose spirit and nature.  On the other hand, who would ’thank me for “repented sheets”?  Here is a good joke enough, lost to all who have not known the Clerk’s table before the Jurisdiction Act.

My two learned Thebans are arrived, and departed after a long consultation.  They deprecated a fallow-break as ruin.  I set before them my own sense of the difficulties and risks in which I must be involved by perseverance, and showed them I could occupy my own time as well for six months or a twelvemonth, and let the public gather an appetite.  They replied (and therein was some risk) that the expectation would in that case be so much augmented that it would be impossible for any mortal to gratify it.  To this is to be added what they did not touch upon—­the risk of being thrust aside altogether, which is the case with the horses that neglect keeping the lead when once they have got it.  Finally, we resolved the present work should go on, leaving out some parts of the Introduction which they object to.  They are good specimens of the public taste in general; and it is far best to indulge and yield to them, unless I was very, very certain that I was right and they wrong.  Besides, I am not afraid of their being hypercritical in the circumstances, being both sensible men, and not inclined to sacrifice chance of solid profit to the vagaries of critical taste.  So the word is “as you were.”