[301] In 1827 Scott was one day heard saying, as he saw Peter guiding the plough on the haugh:--"Egad, auld Pepe's whistling at his darg: if things get round with me, easy will be his cushion!" Old Peter lived until he was eighty-four. He died at Abbotsford in 1854, where he had been well cared for, respected, and beloved by all the members of the family since Sir Walter's death. [302] Sheridan's _Rivals_, Act II. Sc. 1. [303] The murder of Weare by Thurtell and Co., at Gill's-Hill in Hertfordshire (1824). Sir Walter collected printed trials with great assiduity, and took care always to have the contemporary ballads and prints bound up with them. He admired particularly this verse of Mr. Hook's broadside-- "They cut his throat from ear to ear, His brains they battered in; His name was Mr. William Weare, He dwelt in Lyon's Inn." --J.G.L. [304] Dr. John Jamieson, formerly minister to a Secession congregation in Forfar, removed to a like charge in Edinburgh in 1795, where he officiated for forty-three years; he died in his house in 4 George Square in 1838, aged seventy-nine. [305] This novel was passing through the press in 8vo, 12mo, and 18mo, to complete collective editions in these sizes.--J.G.I. [306] Afterwards Sir David Brewster. He died at Allerley House on the Tweed, aged eighty-seven, on February 10, 1868. AUGUST. _August_ 1.--Yesterday evening did nothing for the _idlesse_ of the morning. I was hungry; eat and drank and became drowsy; then I took to arranging the old plays, of which Terry had brought me about a dozen, and dipping into them scrambled through two. One, called _Michaelmas Term_,[307] full of traits of manners; and another a sort of bouncing tragedy, called the _Hector of Germany, or the Palsgrave_.[308] The last, worthless in the extreme, is, like many of the plays in the beginning of the seventeenth century, written to a good tune. The dramatic poets of that time seem to have possessed as joint-stock a highly poetical and abstract tone of language, so that the worst of them often remind you of the very best. The audience must have had a much stronger sense of poetry in those days than now, since language was received and applauded at the Fortune or at the Red Bull,[309] which could not now be understood by any general audience in Great Britain. This leads far. This morning I wrote two hours, then out with Tom Purdie, and gave directions about thinning all the plantations above Abbotsford properly so called. Came in at one o'clock and now set to work. _Debout, debout, Lyciscas, debout._[310] Finished four leaves. _August_ 2.--Well; and to-day I finished before dinner five leaves more, and I would crow a little about it, but here comes Duty like an old housekeeper to an idle chambermaid. Hear her very words:--