December 13.—­A letter from Lockhart announcing that Murray of Albemarle Street would willingly give me my own terms for a volume on the subject of planting and landscape gardening.  This will amuse me very much indeed.  Another proposal invites me, on the part of Colburn, to take charge of the Garrick papers.  The papers are to be edited by Colman, and then it is proposed to me to write a life of Garrick in quarto.[92] Lockhart refused a thousand pounds which were offered, and carte blanche was then sent.  But I will not budge.  My book and Colman’s would run each other down.  It is an attempt to get more from the public out of the subject than they will endure.  Besides, my name would be only useful in the way of puff, for I really know nothing of the subject.  So I will refuse; that’s flat.

Having turned over my thoughts with some anxiety about the important subject of yesterday, I think we have done for the best.  If I can rally this time, as I did in the Crusaders, why, there is the old trade open yet.  If not, retirement will come gracefully after my failure.  I must get the return of the sales of the three or four last novels so as to judge what style of composition has best answered.  Add to this, giving up just now loses L4000 to the trustees, which they would not understand, whatever may be my nice authorial feelings.  And moreover, it ensures the purchase of the copyrights—­i.e. almost ensures them.

December 14.—­Summoned to pay arrears of our unhappy Oil Gas concern—­L140—­which I performed by draft on Mr. Cadell.  This will pinch a little close, but it is a debt of honour, and must be paid.  The public will never bear a public man who shuns either to draw his purse or his sword when there is an open and honest demand on him.

December 15.—­Worked in the morning on the sheets which are to be cancelled, and on the Tale of St. Valentine’s Eve—­a good title, by the way.  Had the usual quantum sufficit of the Court, which, if it did not dissipate one’s attention so much, is rather an amusement than otherwise.  But the plague is to fix one’s attention to the sticking point, after it has been squandered about for two or three hours in such a way.  It keeps one, however, in the course and stream of actual life, which is a great advantage to a literary man.

I missed an appointment, for which I am very sorry.  It was about our Advocates’ Library, which is to be rebuilt.  During all my life we have mismanaged the large funds expended on the rooms of our library, totally mistaking the objects for which a library is built; and instead of taking a general and steady view of the subject, patching up disconnected and ill-sized rooms, totally unequal to answer the accommodation demanded, and bestowing an absurd degree of ornament and finery upon the internal finishing.  All this should be reversed:  the new library should be calculated upon a plan which ought to suffice for all