as well inclined to serve the Duke as he could be, but it must be in other fashion.  He then said he agreed with me—­but there was a second question:  Could I find them an editor, and undertake to communicate between them and him—­in short, save the Treasury the inconvenience of maintaining an avowed intercourse with the Newspaper press?  He said he himself had for some years done this—­then others.  I said I would endeavour to think of a man for their turn and would call on him soon again.

“I have considered the matter at leisure, and resolve to have nothing to do with it.  They CAN only want me as a writer.  Any understrapper M.P. would do well enough for carrying hints to a newspaper office, and I will not, even to secure the Duke, mix myself up with the newspapers.  That work it is which has damned Croker, and I can’t afford to sacrifice the advantage which I feel I have gained in these later years by abstaining altogether from partisan scribbling, or to subject the Quarterly to risk of damage.  The truth is, I don’t admire, after all that has come and gone, being applied to through the medium of friend Crokey.  I hope you will approve of my resolution.”

[288] Peel, in writing to Scott, says, “The mention of your name [in Parliament] as attached to the Edinburgh petition was received with loud cheers.”

[289] Richard Cleasby, afterwards the well-known scholar who spent many years in gathering materials for an Icelandic Dictionary.  Mr. Cleasby died in 1847, but the work he had planned was not published until 1874, when it appeared under the editorship of Mr. Vigfusson,[A] assisted by Sir George Dasent.

[290] Bickerstaff’s Padlock, Act I. Sc. 6.

[A] An Icelandic-English Dictionary based on the MS. collections of the late Richard Cleasby, enlarged and completed by G. Vigfusson. 4to, Oxford, 1874.

[291] Don Quixote, Pt.  I. Bk.  II.  Cap. 2.

[292] Friends of Joanna Baillie’s and John Richardson’s.

[293] This must have been an unusual experience for the head of a family that considered itself to be the oldest in Christendom.  Their chateau contained, it was said, two pictures:  one of the Deluge, in which Noah is represented going into the Ark, carrying under his arm a small trunk, on which was written “Papiers de la maison de Levis;” the other a portrait of the founder of the house bowing reverently to the Virgin, who is made to say, “Couvrez-vous, mon cousin.”—­See Walpole’s Letters.  The book referred to by Sir Walter is The Carbonaro:  a Piedmontese Tale, by the Duke de Levis. 2 vols.  London, 1829.

[294] No. 152—­May, 1829.

[295] Burns’s Lines to a Mouse:  “a daimen-icker in a thrave,” that is, an ear of corn out of two dozen sheaves.

[296] John, Duke of Argyll and Greenwich.

[297] These biographies, intended for The Family Library, were never written.