and plans—­first for charity to herself or some protege.  I gave my guinea.  Then she wanted to have half the profit of a novel which I was to publish under my name and auspices.  She sent me the manuscript, and a moving tale it was, for some of the scenes lay in the cabinet a l’eau. I declined the partnership.  Lastly, my fair correspondent insisted I was a lover of speculation, and would be much profited by going shares in a patent medicine which she had invented for the benefit of little babies, I believe.  I dreaded to have anything to do with such a Herod-like affair, and begged to decline the honour of her correspondence in future.  I should have thought the thing a quiz, but that the novel was real and substantial.  Anne goes to Ravelston to-day to remain to-morrow.  Sir Alexander Don called, and we had a good laugh together.

February 12.—­Having ended the second volume of Woodstock last night, I have to begin the third this morning.  Now I have not the slightest idea how the story is to be wound up to a catastrophe.  I am just in the same case as I used to be when I lost myself in former days in some country to which I was a stranger.  I always pushed for the pleasantest road, and either found or made it the nearest.  It is the same in writing, I never could lay down a plan—­or, having laid it down, I never could adhere to it; the action of composition always diluted some passages, and abridged or omitted others; and personages were rendered important or insignificant, not according to their agency in the original conception of the plan, but according to the success, or otherwise, with which I was able to bring them out.  I only tried to make that which I was actually writing diverting and interesting, leaving the rest to fate.  I have been often amused with the critics distinguishing some passages as particularly laboured, when the pen passed over the whole as fast as it could move, and the eye never again saw them, except in proof.  Verse I write twice, and sometimes three times over.  This may be called in Spanish the Dar donde diere mode of composition, in English hab nab at a venture; it is a perilous style, I grant, but I cannot help it.  When I chain my mind to ideas which are purely imaginative—­for argument is a different thing—­it seems to me that the sun leaves the landscape, that I think away the whole vivacity and spirit of my original conception, and that the results are cold, tame, and spiritless.  It is the difference between a written oration and one bursting from the unpremeditated exertions of the speaker, which have always something the air of enthusiasm and inspiration.  I would not have young authors imitate my carelessness, however; consilium non currum eape.

Read a few pages of Will D’Avenant, who was fond of having it supposed that Shakespeare intrigued with his mother.  I think the pretension can only be treated as Phaeton’s was, according to Fielding’s farce—­