Gave a poor poetess £1. Gibson writes me that £2300 is offered for the poor house; it is worth £300 more, but I will not oppose my own opinion, or convenience to good and well-meant counsel: so farewell, poor No. 39. What a portion of my life has been spent there! It has sheltered me from the prime of life to its decline; and now I must bid good-bye to it. I have bid good-bye to my poor wife, so long its courteous and kind mistress,--and I need not care about the empty rooms; yet it gives me a turn. I have been so long a citizen of Edinburgh, now an indweller only. Never mind; all in the day's work. J. Ballantyne and B. Cadell dined with me, and, as Pepys would say, all was very handsome. Drank amongst us one bottle of champagne, one of claret, a glass or two of port, and each a tumbler of whisky toddy. J.B. had courage to drink his with _hot_ water; mine was iced. _June_ 30.--Here is another dreadful warm day, fit for nobody but the flies. And then one is confined to town. Yesterday I agreed to let Cadell have the new work,[291] edition 1500, he paying all charges, and paying also £500--two hundred and fifty at Lammas, to pay J. Gibson money advanced on the passage of young Walter, my nephew, to India. It is like a thorn in one's eye this sort of debt, and Gibson is young in business, and somewhat involved in my affairs besides. Our plan is, that this same _Miscellany_ or _Chronicle_ shall be committed quietly to the public, and we hope it will attract attention. If it does not, we must turn public attention to it ourselves. About one half of vol. i. is written, and there is worse abomination, or I mistake the matter. I was detained in Court till four; dreadfully close, and obliged to drink water for refreshment, which formerly I used to scorn, even on the moors, with a burning August sun, the heat of exercise, and a hundred springs gushing around me. Corrected proofs, etc., on my return. I think I have conquered the trustees' objections to carry on the small edition of novels. Got Cadell's letter about the _Chronicle_. FOOTNOTES: [278] Sheridan's _Critic_, Act IV. Sc. 2. [279] Buckingham's _Rehearsal_.--The expression "To Feague" does not occur in the first edition, where the passage stands thus:-- "_Phys._--When a knotty point comes, I lay my head close to it, with a pipe of tobacco in my mouth and then _whew_ it away. I' faith. "_Bayes_.--I do just so, i' gad, always." Act II. Sc. 4. In some subsequent editions the words are:--"I lay my head close to it with a _snuff-box in my hand_, and I _feague_ it away. I' faith." I am indebted to Dr. Murray for this reference, which he kindly furnished me with from the materials collected for his great English Dictionary.