ock. About nine leaves
will make the volume quite large enough.

By the way, the booksellers have taken courage to print up 2000 more of
the first edition [of Napoleon]; which, after the second volume, they
curtailed from 8000 to 6000. This will be L1000 more in my way, at
least, and that is a good help. We dine with the Skenes to-day, Lockhart
being with us.[534]

_June_ 22.--Wrought in the morning as usual. Received to breakfast Dr.
Bishop, a brother of Bishop the composer. He tells me his brother was
very ill when he wrote "The Chough and Crow," and other music for Guy
Mannering. Singular! but I do think illness, if not too painful, unseals
the mental eye, and renders the talents more acute, in the study of the
fine arts at least.[535]

I find the difference on 2000 additional copies will be L3000 instead of
L1000 in favour of the author. My good friend Publicum is impatient.
Heaven grant his expectations be not disappointed! _Coragio, andiamos_!
Such another year of labour and success would do much towards making me
a free man of the forest. But I must to work since we have to dine with
Lord and Lady Gray. By the way, I forgot an engagement to my old friend,
Lord Justice-Clerk. This is shockingly ill-bred. But the invitation was
a month old, and that is some defence.

_June_ 23.--I corrected proofs and played the grandfather in the
morning. After Court saw Lady Wedderburn, who asked my advice about
printing some verses of Mrs. Hemans in honour of the late Lord James
Murray, who died in Greece. Also Lord Gray, who wishes me to write some
preliminary matter to his ancestor, the Master of Gray's correspondence.
I promised. But ancestor was a great rogue, and if I am to write about
him at all, I must take my will of him. Anne and I dined at home. She
went to the play, and I had some mind to go too. But Miss Foote was the
sole attraction, and Miss Foote is only a very pretty woman, and if she
played Rosalind better than I think she can, it is a bore to see
Touchstone and Jacques murdered. I have a particular respect for _As You
Like It_. It was the first play I ever saw, and that was at Bath in 1776
or 1777. That is not yesterday, yet I remember the piece very well. So I
remained at home, smoked a cigar, and worked leisurely upon the review
of the Culloden Papers, which, by dint of vamping and turning, may make
up the lacking copy for the "Works" better, I think, than that lumbering
Essay on Border Antiquities.

_J