Note 29 — Chapter XXVI

Nor was he, I must add, more able to control some of his minor tastes. I find him writing to Mr. Terry, on the 20th of June, about "that splendid lot of ancient armor, advertised by Winstanley," a celebrated auctioneer in London, of which he had the strongest fancy to make his spoil, though he was at a loss to know where it should be placed when it reached Abbotsford; and on the 2d of July, this acquisition also having been settled, he says to the same correspondent: "I have written to Mr. Winstanley. My bargain with Constable was otherwise arranged, but Little John is to find the needful article, and I shall take care of Mr. Winstanley's interest, who has behaved too handsomely in this matter to be trusted to the mercy of our little friend the Picaroon, who is, notwithstanding his many excellent qualities, a little on the score of old Gobbo—doth somewhat smack—somewhat grow to.[29] We shall be at Abbotsford on the 12th, and hope soon to see you there. I am fitting up a small room above Peter-House, where an unceremonious bachelor may consent to do penance, though the place is a cock-loft, and the access that which leads many a bold fellow to his last nap—a ladder."[30] And a few weeks later, he says, in the same sort, to his sister-in-law, Mrs. Thomas Scott: "In despite of these hard times, which affect my patrons the booksellers very much, I am buying old books and old armor as usual, and adding to what your old friend Burns[31] calls—