[403] School for Scandal.

SEPTEMBER

September 5.—­In spite of resolution I have left my Diary for some weeks, I cannot tell why.  We have had the usual number of travelling Counts and Countesses, Yankees male and female, and a Yankee-Doodle-Dandy into the bargain, a smart young Virginia man.  We have had friends of our own also, the Miss Ardens, young Mrs. Morritt and Anne Morritt, most agreeable visitors.[404] Cadell came out here yesterday with his horn filled with good news.  This will in effect put an end to the trust; only the sales and produce must be pledged to insure the last L15,000 and the annuity interest of L600.  In this way Mr. Cadell will become half-partner in the remaining volumes of the books following St. Ronan’s; with all my heart, but he must pay well for it, for it is good property.  Neither is any value stated for literary profits; yet, four years should have four novels betwixt 1830-4.  This at L2500 per volume might be L8000, which would diminish Mr. Cadell’s advance considerably.  All this seems feasible enough, so my fits of sullen alarm are ill placed.  It makes me care less about the terms I retire upon.  The efforts by which we have advanced thus far are new in literature, and what is gained is secure.

     [No entry between September 5 and December 20.]

FOOTNOTES: 

[404] Sir Walter had written to Morritt on his retirement from the Court of Session, and his old friend responded in the following cordial letter:—­

“November, 1830.

“MY DEAR SCOTT,—...  I am sorry to read what you tell me of your lameness, but legs are not so obedient to many of us at our age as they were twenty years ago, non immunes ab illis malis sumus, as the learned Partridge and Lilly’s Grammar tells us.  I find mine swell, and am forced to bandage, and should not exert them with impunity in walking as I used to do, either in long walks or in rough ground.  I am glad, however, you have escaped from the Court of Session, even at the risk of sometimes feeling the want you allude to of winter society.  You think you shall tire of solitude in these months:  and in spite of books and the love of them, I have discovered by experience the possibility of such a feeling; but can we not in some degree remedy this?  Why should we both be within two days’ march of each other and not sometimes together, as of old?  How I have enjoyed in your house the summum bonum of Sir Wm. Temple’s philosophy, ’something which is not Home and yet with the liberty of Home, which is not Solitude, and yet hath the ease of Solitude, and which is only found in the house of an old friend.’  Our summer months are well provided with summer friends.  You have plenty and to spare of sightseers, Lions, and their hunters, and I have travellers, moor-shooters, etc., in equal abundance, but now when the country