a year of divisible profit.  This leads to a further speculation, as I said, of great importance.  Longman & Co. have agreed to sell their stock on hand of the Poetry, in which they have certain shares, their shares included, for L8000.  Cadell thinks he could, by selling off at cheap rates, sorting, making waste, etc., get rid of the stock for about L5000, leaving L3000 for the purchase of the copyrights, and proposes to close the bargain as much cheaper as he can, but at all events to close it.  Whatever shall fall short of the price returned by the stock, the sale of which shall be entirely at his risk, shall be reckoned as the price of the copyright, and we shall pay half of that balance.  I had no hesitation in authorising him to proceed in his bargain with Owen Rees of Longman’s house upon that principle.  For supposing, according to Cadell’s present idea, the loss on the stock shall amount to L2000 or L3000, the possession of the entire copyright undivided would enable us, calculating upon similar success to that of the Novels, to make at least L500 per cent.  Longman & Co. have indeed an excellent bargain, but then so will we.  We pay dear indeed for what the ostensible subject of sale is, but if it sets free almost the whole of our copyrights, and places them in our own hands, we get a most valuable quid pro quo.  There is only one-fourth, I think, of Marmion in Mr. Murray’s hands, and it must be the deuce if that cannot be [secured].[331] Mr. Cadell proposed that, as he took the whole books on his risk, he ought to have compensation, and that it should consist in the sum to be given to me for arranging and making additions to the volumes of Poetry thus to be republished.  I objected to this, for in the first place he may suffer no loss, for the books may go off more rapidly than he thinks or expects.  In the second place, I do not know what my labours in the Poetry may be.  In either case it is a blind bargain; but if he should be a sufferer beyond the clear half of the loss, which we agree to share with him, I agreed to make him some compensation, and he is willing to take what I shall think just; so stands our bargain.  Remained at home and wrote about four pages of Tales.  I should have done more, but my head, as Squire Sullen says, “aiked consumedly."[332] Rees has given Cadell a written offer to be binding till the twelfth; meantime I have written to Lockhart to ask John Murray if he will treat for the fourth share of Marmion, which he possesses.  It can be worth but little to him, and gives us all the copyrights.  I have a letter from Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, touching a manuscript of Messrs. Hay Allan called the Vestiarium Scotiae by a Sir Richard Forrester.  If it is an imposition it is cleverly done, but I doubt the quarter it comes from.  These Hay Allans are men of warm imaginations.  It makes the strange averment that all the Low-Country gentlemen and border clans wore tartan, and gives sets of them all.  I must see the manuscript before I believe in it.  The Allans are singular men, of much accomplishment but little probity—­that is, in antiquarian matters.  Cadell lent me L10,—­funny enough, after all our grand expectations, for Croesus to want such a gratility!