From my Scotch historical reading, I am gradually compiling a skeleton chronology of the History of Scotland, with references to every fact: it is intended to stretch from the fall of Macbeth to that of Mary--_i.e._ the national, Catholic, and feudal period. And--pleasure after business--I have in hand a translation of the Targum (Paraphrastic Commentary by the Jewish Fathers) upon the Song of Solomon, from the Latin version published at Antwerp in 1570. This has just been rejected by the Jesuits for one of their publications as "dull." As I did not compose it, I feel free to differ from their verdict. I think now of offering it to _Good Words_. It is mystic (not fleshly) and very wild, picturesque, and diffuse--indeed, in my opinion, touching not infrequently on the sublime. So you see I have lots of work in hand. Bute took an infinity of pains over his English Breviary, polishing and repolishing his version of the mediæval Latin text over and over again, and correcting and revising the proofs with such meticulous care as greatly to add to the expense of the production (which was defrayed by himself, not by the publishers) and also to the delay in bringing out the work. Probably few books of the size and character of these two portly volumes were ever printed with a smaller proportion of typographical errors; but Bute professed himself far from satisfied with the work on its appearance. Sending a copy to a friend, he wrote: There are a good many things in it--blunders and {128} oversights (mostly mine, not the printers', who have done their work extraordinarily well)--which make me anything but contented with it. I am on the whole, seeing the book in print, least dissatisfied with the rendering of the _prayers_, in which I venture to think I have not quite failed to reproduce to some extent the measured and sonorous dignity of the original Latin. Reviewers, as a rule, received the Breviary with respectful admiration, their tributes being, however, paid in many cases less to the work itself than to the astonishing industry of the translator. Bute himself was disappointed at the slowness of the sale. "I hope," he wrote to a friend at Oxford, "you will speak of it if occasion offers, as the circulation is not large." And some months later he wrote again, "I am very glad that you find the Breviary of use, and that there are others who do the same. It is not, however, a feeling as yet very widely disseminated among the public, seeing that I am still £300 out of pocket by having published it."