Saturday, 27 January 1827: 'Read Elizth. de Bruce -- it is very clever but does not show much originality: the characters though very entertaining are in the manner of other authors and the finishd and filldup portraits of which the sketches are to be found elsewhere. One is too apt to feel on such occasions the pettied resentment that you might entertain against one who had poachd on your manor. But [...] a claim set up on having been the first who betook himself to the illustration of some particular class of characters or department of life is no more a right of monopoly than that asserted by the old buccaneers by setting up a wooden cross and killing an Indian or two on some new discovered Island.'