it is clear I should stand by it.  Each novel of three volumes brings L4000, and I remain proprietor of the mine when the first ore is cropped out.  This promises a good harvest, from what we have experienced.  Now, to become a stipendiary editor of a New-Year’s Gift-Book is not to be thought of, nor could I agree to work for any quantity of supply to such a publication.  Even the pecuniary view is not flattering, though these gentlemen meant it should be so.  But one hundred of their close-printed pages, for which they offer L400, is not nearly equal to one volume of a novel, for which I get L1300, and have the reversion of the copyright.  No, I may give them a trifle for nothing, or sell them an article for a round price, but no permanent engagement will I make.  Being the Martyrdom, there was no Court.  I wrought away with what appetite I could.

January 31.—­I received the young gentlemen to breakfast and expressed my resolution, which seemed to disappoint them, as perhaps they expected I should have been glad of such an offer.  However, I have since thought there are these rejected parts of the Chronicles, which Cadell and Ballantyne criticised so severely, which might well enough make up a trifle of this kind, and settle the few accounts which, will I nill I, have crept in this New Year.  So I have kept the treaty open.  If I give them 100 pages I should expect L500.

I was late at the Court and had little time to write any till after dinner, and then was not in the vein; so commentated.

FOOTNOTES: 

[109] To whom Scott addressed the fifth canto of Marmion.

[110] See letter to R. Cadell, Life, vol. ix. p. 209.

[111] “The first Tales of a Grandfather [as has already been said] appeared early in December, and their reception was more rapturous than that of any one of his works since Ivanhoe.  He had solved for the first time the problem of narrating history, so as at once to excite and gratify the curiosity of youth, and please and instruct the wisest of mature minds.  The popularity of the book has grown with every year that has since elapsed; it is equally prized in the library, the boudoir, the schoolroom, and the nursery; it is adopted as the happiest of manuals, not only in Scotland, but wherever the English tongue is spoken; nay, it is to be seen in the hands of old and young all over the civilised world, and has, I have little doubt, extended the knowledge of Scottish history in quarters where little or no interest had ever before been awakened as to any other parts of that subject except those immediately connected with Mary Stuart and the Chevalier.”—­Life, vol. ix. pp. 186-7.

[112] It may be remarked at this point how the value of these works has been sustained by the public demand during the term of legal copyright and since that date.  That of Waverley expired in 1856, and the others at forty-two years from the date of publication.