May 3.—­Sophia arrives—­with all the children looking well and beautiful, except poor Johnnie, who looks very pale.  But it is no wonder, poor thing!

May 4.—­I have a letter from Lockhart, promising to be down by next Wednesday, that is, to-day.  I will consult him about Byron’s Exec., and as to these poems said to be his Lordship’s.  They are very probably first copies thrown aside, or may not be genuine at all.  I will be glad to see Lockhart.  My pronunciation is a good deal improved.  My time glides away ill employed, but I am afraid of the palsy.  I should not like to be pinned to my chair.  But I believe even that kind of life is more endurable than we could suppose.  Your wishes are limited to your little circle—­yet the idea is terrible to a man who has been active.  My own circle in bodily matters is daily narrowing; not so in intellectual matters, but I am perhaps a bad judge.  The plough is coming to the end of the furrow, so it is likely I shall not reach the common goal of mortal life by a few years.  I am now in my sixtieth year only, and

    “Three score and ten years do sum up."[457]

May 5.—­A fleece of letters, which must be answered, I suppose—­all from persons, my zealous admirers, of course, and expecting a degree of generosity, which will put to rights all their maladies, physical and mental; and expecting that I can put to rights whatever losses have been their lot, raise them to a desirable rank, and [stand] their protector and patron.  I must, they take it for granted, be astonished at having an address from a stranger; on the contrary, I would be astonished if any of these extravagant epistles were from any one who had the least title to enter into correspondence with me.  I have all the plague of answering these teasing people.

Mr. Burn, the architect, came in, struck by the appearance of my house from the road.  He approved my architecture greatly.  He tells me the edifice for Jeanie Deans—­that is, her prototype—­is nigh finished, so I must get the inscription ready.[458] Mr. Burn came to meet with Pringle of Haining; but, alas! it is two nights since this poor young man, driving in from his own lake, where he had been fishing, an ill-broken horse ran away with him, and, at his own stable-door, overturned the vehicle and fractured poor Pringle’s skull; he died yesterday morning.  A sad business; so young a man, the proprietor of a good estate, and a well-disposed youth.  His politics were, I think, mistaken, being the reverse of his father’s; but that is nothing at such a time.  Burn went on to Richardson’s place of Kirklands, where he is to meet the proprietor, whom I too would wish to see, but I can hardly make it out.  Here is a world of arrangements.  I think we will soon hit upon something.  My son Walter takes leave of me to-day to return to Sheffield.  At his entreaty I have agreed to put in a seton, which they seem all to recommend.  My own opinion is, this addition to my tortures will do me no good; but I cannot hold out against my son.  So, when the present blister is well over, let them try their seton as they call it.