January 27.—­Wrought manfully at the Chronicles all this day and have nothing to jot down; only I forgot that I lost my lawsuit some day last week or the week before.  The fellow therefore gets his money, plack and bawbee, but it’s always a troublesome claim settled,[121] and there can be no other of the same kind, as every other creditor has accepted the composition of 7s. in the L, which my exertions have enabled me to pay them.  About L20,000 of the fund had been created by my own exertions since the bankruptcy took place, and I had a letter from Donald Horne, by commission of the creditors, to express their sense of my exertions in their behalf.  All this is consolatory.

January 28.—­I am in the scrape of sitting for my picture, and had to repair for two hours to-day to Mr. Colvin Smith—­Lord Gillies’s nephew.  The Chief Baron[122] had the kindness to sit with me great part of the time, as the Chief Commissioner had done on a late occasion.  The picture is for the Chief Commissioner, and the Chief Baron desires a copy.  I trust it will he a good one.  At home in the evening, and wrote.  I am well on before the press, notwithstanding late hours, lassitude, and laziness.  I have read Cooper’s Prairie—­better, I think, than his Red Rover, in which you never get foot on shore, and to understand entirely the incidents of the story it requires too much knowledge of nautical language.  It’s very clever, though.[123]

January 29.—­This day at the Court, and wrote letters at home, besides making a visit or two—­rare things with me.  I have an invitation from Messrs Saunders and Otley, booksellers, offering me from L1500 to L2000 annually to conduct a journal; but I am their humble servant.  I am too indolent to stand to that sort of work, and I must preserve the undisturbed use of my leisure, and possess my soul in quiet.  A large income is not my object; I must clear my debts; and that is to be done by writing things of which I can retain the property.  Made my excuses accordingly.

January 30.—­After Court hours I had a visit from Mr. Charles Heath, the engraver, accompanied by a son of Reynolds the dramatist.  His object was to engage me to take charge as editor of a yearly publication called The Keepsake, of which the plates are beyond comparison beautiful, but the letter-press indifferent enough.  He proposed L800 a year if I would become editor, and L400 if I would contribute from seventy to one hundred pages.  I declined both, but told him I might give him some trifling thing or other, and asked the young men to breakfast the next day.  Worked away in the evening and completed, “in a way and in a manner,” the notes on Guy Mannering.  The first volume of the Chronicles is now in Ballantyne’s hands, all but a leaf or two.  Am I satisfied with my exertions?  So so.  Will the public be pleased with them?  Umph!  I doubt the bubble will burst.  While it is current, however,