-morrow. I wish I knew how it would run
out. Dr. Lardner's measure is a large one, but so much the better. I
like to have ample verge and space enough, and a mere abridgment would
be discreditable. Well, nobody can say I eat the bread of idleness. Why
should I? Those who do not work from necessity take violent labour from
choice, and were necessity out of the question I would take the same
sort of literary labour from choice--something more leisurely though.

FOOTNOTES:

[286] Son of Lord Medwyn. Mr. Forbes had lately returned from Italy,
where he had had as travelling companion Mr. Cleasby, and it was owing
to Mr. Forbes's recommendation that Mr. Cleasby came to Edinburgh to
pursue his studies. Mr. Forbes possessed a fine tenor voice, and his
favourite songs at that time were the Neapolitan and Calabrian
canzonetti, to which Sir Walter alludes under April 4.

[287] Mr. Lockhart's own account of the overture is sufficiently amusing
and characteristic of the men and the times:--

"I had not time to write more than a line the other day under Croker's
cover, having received it just at post time. He sent for me; I found him
in his nightcap at the Admiralty, colded badly, but in audacious
spirits. His business was this. The Duke of W[ellingto]n finds himself
without one newspaper _he_ can depend on. He wishes to buy up some
evening print, such as the _dull Star_; and could I do anything for it?
I said I was as well inclined to serve the Duke as he could be, but it
must be in other fashion. He then said _he agreed_ with me--but there
was a second question: Could I find them an editor, and undertake to
communicate between them and him--in short, save the Treasury the
inconvenience of maintaining an avowed intercourse with the Newspaper
press? He said he himself had for some years done this--then others. I
said I would endeavour to think of a man for their turn and would call
on him soon again.

"I have considered the matter at leisure, and resolve to have nothing to
do with it. They CAN only want me as a _writer_. Any understrapper M.P.
would do well enough for carrying hints to a newspaper office, and I
will not, even to secure the Duke, mix myself up with the newspapers.
That work it is which has damned Croker, and I can't afford to sacrifice
the advantage which I feel I have gained in these later years by
abstaining altogether from partisan scribbling, or to subject the
_Quarterly_ to risk of damage. The truth is, I do