[298] Romeo and Juliet, Act v.  Sc. 1.

[299]

“When I think on the world’s pelf May the shame fa’ and the blethrie o ’t.”  Burden of old Scottish Song.

[300] That these afternoon rambles with the dogs were not always so tranquil may be gathered from an incident described by Mr. Adolphus, in which an unsuspecting cat at a cottage door was demolished by Nimrod in one of his gambols.—­Life, vol. ix. p. 362.  This deer-hound was an old offender.  Sir Walter tells his friend Richardson, a propos of a story he had just heard of Joanna Baillie’s cat having worried a dog:  “It is just like her mistress, who beats the male race of authors out of the pit in describing the higher passions that are more proper to their sex than hers.  Alack-a-day! my poor cat Hinse, my acquaintance, and in some sort my friend of fifteen years, was snapped at even by the paynim Nimrod.  What could I say to him but what Brantome said to some ferrailleur who had been too successful in a duel, ’Ah! mon grand ami, vous avez tue mon autre grand ami.’”

[301] Manager of the Foreign Review.

[302] Robert Pitcairn, author of Criminal Trials in Scotland, 3 vols. 4to.

[303] William Scott, Esq., afterwards Laird of Raeburn, was commonly thus designated from a minor possession, during his father’s lifetime.  Whatever, in things of this sort, used to be practised among the French noblesse, might be traced, till very lately, in the customs of the Scottish provincial gentry.—–­ J.G.L.

[304] Life, vol. vi. p. 90.

[305]

“They have ty’d me to a stake; I cannot fly, But bear-like I must fight the course.”—­Macbeth, Act v.  Sc. 7.

[306] The work was published in May30 under the following title:—­“Anne of Geierstein, or The Maiden of the Mist.  By the Author of Waverley, etc.

What! will the aspiring blood of Lancaster Sink in the ground?  SHAKESPEARE.

In three volumes.  Edinburgh:  Printed for Cadell & Co., Edinburgh; and Simpkin & Marshall, London, 1829. (At the end) Edinburgh:  Printed by Ballantyne & Company, Paul’s Work, Canongate.”

MAY.

May 1.—­Weather more tolerable.  I commenced my review on the Duke of Guise’s Expedition,[307] for my poor correspondent Gillies, with six leaves.  What a curious tale that is of Masaniello!  I went to Huntly Burn in the sociable, and returned on foot, to my great refreshment.  Evening as usual.  Ate, drank, smoked, and wrote.

May 2.—­A pitiful day of rain and wind.  Laboured the whole morning at Gillies’s review.  It is a fine subject—­the Duke of Guise at Naples—­and I think not very much known, though the story of Masaniello is.

I have a letter from Dr. Lardner proposing to me to publish the history in June.  But I dare not undertake it in so short a space, proof-sheets and all considered; it must be October—­no help for it.[308] Worked after dinner as usual.