The day was so tempting that I went out with Tom Purdie to cut some trees, the rather that my task was very well advanced. He led me into the wood, as the blind King of Bohemia was led by his four knights into the thick of the battle at Agincourt or Crecy,[252] and then, like the old King, "I struck good strokes more than one," which is manly exercise. _April_ 21.--This day I entertained more flattering hopes of Lady Scott's health than late events permitted. I went down to Mertoun with Colonel Ferguson, who returned to dine here, which consumed time so much that I made a short day's work. Had the grief to find Lady Scott had insisted on coming downstairs and was the worse of it. Also a letter from Lockhart, giving a poor account of the infant. God help us! earth cannot. _April_ 22.--Lady Scott continues very poorly. Better news of the child. Wrought a good deal to-day, rather correcting sheets and acquiring information than actually composing, which is the least toilsome of the three. J.G.L. kindly points out some solecisms in my style, as "amid" for "amidst," "scarce" for "scarcely." "Whose," he says, is the proper genitive of "which" only at such times as "which" retains its quality of impersonification. Well! I will try to remember all this, but after all I write grammar as I speak, to make my meaning known, and a solecism in point of composition, like a Scotch word in speaking, is indifferent to me. I never learned grammar; and not only Sir Hugh Evans but even Mrs. Quickly might puzzle me about Giney's case and horum harum horum.[253] I believe the Bailiff in _The Good-natured Man_ is not far wrong when he says, "One man has one way of expressing himself, and another another, and that is all the difference between them."[254] Went to Huntly Burn to-day and looked at the Colonel's projected approach. I am sure if the kind heart can please himself he will please me. _April_ 23.--A glorious day, bright and brilliant, and, I fancy, mild. Lady Scott is certainly better, and has promised not to attempt quitting her room. Henry Scott has been here, and his canvass comes on like a moor burning. _April_ 24.--Good news from Brighton. Sophia is confined; both she and her baby are doing well, and the child's name is announced to be Walter--a favourite name in our family, and I trust of no bad omen. Yet it is no charm for life. Of my father's family I was the second Walter, if not the third. I am glad the name came my way, for it was borne by my father, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather; also by the grandsire of that last-named venerable person who was the first laird of Raeburn. Hurst and Robinson, the Yorkshire tykes, have failed after all their swaggering, and Longman and Co. take _Woodstock_. But if _Woodstock_ and _Napoleon_ take with the public I shall care little about their insolvency, and if they do not, I don't think their solvency would have lasted long. Constable is sorely broken down.