1877, Bute as a landowner
Bute was scrupulous and exact in the performance of his duties as a landowner; he kept himself informed of all the details connected with the management of his extensive estates, and never grudged the demands on his time and patience made by the lawyers, agents, and others for business interviews extending over many hours and sometimes even days. That he found these prolonged transactions irksome and fatiguing enough is clear from some expressions in his correspondence; and it was always a pleasure and relief to him to get back to his books and literary work, which were, perhaps, on the whole the chief interest of his life. Although he expended annually a considerable sum on the equipment of his libraries, Bute was no bibliophile in the sense in which that word is now often used. Tall-paper copies, first editions, volumes unique for their rarity, and publications de luxe had no interest for him at all. What he aimed at was to surround himself with a first-rate working library, furnished especially with those works of reference—sources, as the French term is—most likely to be of service to him in the historical and liturgical researches with which he was chiefly occupied. His librarian had standing orders, in the case of new books of interest and utility, to purchase three copies, so that wherever he chanced to be resident he found the tools of his craft ready to his hand.[[6]] A letter written in the autumn of 1877 shows that the work at that time occupying most of his attention was his translation of the Roman Breviary, which after several years of assiduous (though not, of course, continuous) labour was now nearing its completion.
Mountstuart,
August 28, 1877.
At last I am relieved from a more than usually tedious spell of business with lawyers and factors, and am able to fulfil my promise to tell you of my liturgical opus magnum (I call it so, though my office has been but the humble one of the translator). For the present, keep the matter to yourself.
I have been engaged since the winter of 1870 in translating the whole of the Roman Breviary into English; and the MS. is nearly finished, and the printing now going on. I expect it will be published next year. I have learnt Hebrew (more or less) for the purpose, and done an amount of reading which it quite frightens me to think of. This translation is my beloved child. I send you a volume of proof, and will give you a copy of the two volumes when they come out. Please keep it quiet: I don't want to be badgered about it, as I should be if people knew that I was doing it.
I am executing a paraphrase in English prose, with a critical commentary, introduction, notes, analysis, and all the rest of it, of the Scots metrical romance upon the Life of William Wallace, written by "Blind Harry" in the XVth century.
From my Scotch historical reading, I am gradually compiling a skeleton chronology of the History of Scotland, with references to every fact: it is intended to stretch from the fall of Macbeth to that of Mary—i.e. the national, Catholic, and feudal period.
And—pleasure after business—I have in hand a translation of the Targum (Paraphrastic Commentary by the Jewish Fathers) upon the Song of Solomon, from the Latin version published at Antwerp in 1570. This has just been rejected by the Jesuits for one of their publications as "dull." As I did not compose it, I feel free to differ from their verdict. I think now of offering it to Good Words. It is mystic (not fleshly) and very wild, picturesque, and diffuse—indeed, in my opinion, touching not infrequently on the sublime.
So you see I have lots of work in hand.