to tell us a story of a pauper lunatic, who, fancying he was a rich man, and was entertaining all sorts of high persons to the most splendid banquets, communicated to his doctor in confidence that there was one thing that troubled him much, and which he could not account for, and that was that all these exquisite dishes seemed to him to taste of oatmeal porridge.  Sir Walter told this with much humour, and after a few minutes’ silence began again, and told the same story over a second time, and then again a third time.[E] His daughter, who was watching him with increasing anxiety, then motioned to us to rise from table, and persuaded her father to return to his bedroom.  Next day the doctor, who had been sent for, told us that he was seriously ill, and advised that his guests should leave at once, so that the house might be kept quiet and his daughter devote herself entirely to the care of her father.  We accordingly left at once, and I never saw Sir Walter again.  I still, however, retain a memorial of my visit.  I had fallen into indifferent health in the previous year, and been recommended Highland air.  By Sir Walter’s advice I was sent to live with a friend of his, the Reverend Doctor Macintosh Mackay, then minister of Laggan, in the Inverness-shire Highlands, and had passed my time learning from him the Gaelic language.  This excited in me a taste for Celtic Antiquities, and finding in Sir Walter’s Library a copy of O’Connor’s Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores veteres, I sat up one night transcribing from it the Annals of Tighernac.  This transcript is still in my library.—­WILLIAM F. SKENE.

“27 INVERLEITH ROW, Sept. 1890.”

[E] An echo of one of his own singular illustrations (see Letters on Demonology) of the occasional collision between a disturbed imagination and the organs of sense.

[455] AEneid II. 62.

MAY.

April 30 and May 1.—­To meet Sandy Pringle to settle the day of election on Monday.  Go on with Count Robert half-a-dozen leaves per day.  I am not much pleased with my handiwork.  The Chancery money seems like to be paid.  This will relieve me of poor Charles, who is at present my chief burthen.  The task of pumping my brains becomes inevitably harder when “both chain-pumps are choked below;"[456] and though this may not be the case literally, yet the apprehension is wellnigh as bad.

May 2.—­The day passed as usual in dictating (too little) and riding a good deal.  I must get finished with Count Robert, who is progressing, as the Transatlantics say, at a very slow pace indeed.  By the bye, I have a letter from Nathan T. Rossiter, Williamstown, New York City, offering me a collection of poems by Byron, which are said to have been found in Italy some years since by a friend of Mr. Rossiter.  I don’t see I can at all be entitled to these, so shall write to decline them.  If Mr. Rossiter chooses to publish them in Italy or America he may, but, published here, they must be the property of Lord Byron’s executors.