November 30.—­Another idle morning, with letters, however.  Had the great pleasure of a letter from Lord Dudley[83] acquainting me that he had received his Majesty’s commands to put down the name of my son Charles for the first vacancy that should occur in the Foreign Office, and at the same time to acquaint me with his gracious intentions, which were signified in language the most gratifying to me.  This makes me really feel light and happy, and most grateful to the kind and gracious sovereign who has always shown, I may say, so much friendship towards me.  Would to God the King’s errand might lie in the cadger’s gait, that I might have some better way of showing my gratitude than merely by a letter of thanks or this private memorandum of my gratitude.  The lad is a good boy and clever, somewhat indolent I fear, yet with the capacity of exertion.  Presuming his head is full enough of Greek and Latin, he has now living languages to study; so I will set him to work on French, Italian, and German, that, like the classic Cerberus, he may speak a leash of languages at once.  Dined with Gillies, very pleasant; Lord Chief-Commissioner, Will Clerk, Cranstoun, and other old friends.  I saw in the evening the celebrated Miss Grahame Stirling, so remarkable for her power of personifying a Scottish old lady.  Unluckily she came late, and I left early in the evening, so I could not find out wherein her craft lay.  She looked like a sensible woman.  I had a conference with my trustees about the purchase (in company with Cadell) of the copyrights of the novels to be exposed to sale on the 19th December, and had the good luck to persuade them fully of the propriety of the project.  I alone can, by notes and the like, give these works a new value, and in fact make a new edition.  The price is to be made good from the Second Series Chronicles of Canongate, sold to Cadell for L4000; and it may very well happen that we shall have little to pay, as part of the copyrights will probably be declared mine by the arbiter, and these I shall have without money and without price.  Cadell is most anxious on the subject.  He thinks that two years hence L10,000 may be made of a new edition.

FOOTNOTES: 

[65] Holyrood remained an asylum for civil debtors until 1880, when by the Act 43 & 44 Victoria, cap. 34 imprisonment for debt was abolished.  For description of bounds see Chronicles of the Canongate, p. 7. (vol. xli.).

[66] The book was published during November, under the following title, Chronicles of the Canongate (First Series).  By the author of Waverley, etc.—­SIC ITUR AD ASTRA, motto of Canongate arms.  In two vols. The Two Drovers, The Highland Widow, The Surgeon’s Daughter.  Edinburgh, printed for Cadell and Co., and Simpkin Marshall.  London 1827.

The introduction to this work contains sketches of Scott’s own life, with portraits of his friends, unsurpassed in any of his earlier writings; for example, what could be better than the description of his ancestors the Scotts of Raeburn, vol. xli. p. 61:—­