of from twenty to twenty-five. It is a very good institution; we pay two
guineas only for six dinners in the year, present or absent. Dine at
five, or rather half-past five, at the Royal Hotel, where we have an
excellent dinner, with soups, fish, etc., and all in good order; port
and sherry till half-past seven, then coffee, and we go to the Society.
This has great influence in keeping up the attendance, it being found
that this preface of a good dinner, to be paid for whether you partake
or not, brings out many a philosopher who might not otherwise have
attended the Society. Harry Mackenzie, now in his eighty-second or third
year, read part of an Essay on Dreams. Supped at Dr. Russell's usual
party,[56] which shall serve for one while.
_December_ 6. - A rare thing this literature, or love of fame or
notoriety which accompanies it. Here is Mr. H[enry] M[ackenzie] on the
very brink of human dissolution, as actively anxious about it as if the
curtain must not soon be closed on that and everything else.[57] He
calls me his literary confessor; and I am sure I am glad to return the
kindnesses which he showed me long since in George Square. No man is
less known from his writings. We would suppose a retired, modest,
somewhat affected man, with a white handkerchief, and a sigh ready for
every sentiment. No such thing: H.M. is alert as a contracting tailor's
needle in every sort of business - a politician and a sportsman - shoots
and fishes in a sort even to this day - and is the life of the company
with anecdote and fun. Sometimes, his daughter tells me, he is in low
spirits at home, but really I never see anything of it in society.
There is a maxim almost universal in Scotland, which I should like much
to see controlled. Every youth, of every temper and almost every
description of character, is sent either to study for the bar, or to a
writer's office as an apprentice. The Scottish seem to conceive Themis
the most powerful of goddesses. Is a lad stupid, the law will sharpen
him; - is he too mercurial, the law will make him sedate; - has he an
estate, he may get a sheriffdom; - is he poor, the richest lawyers have
emerged from poverty; - is he a Tory, he may become a
depute-advocate; - is he a Whig, he may with far better hope expect to
become, in reputation at least, that rising counsel Mr. - - , when in
fact he only rises at tavern dinners. Upon some such wild views lawyers
and writers multiply till there is no life for them, and men give up the
chase, hopeless and exhausted, and go into the army at five-and-twenty,
instead of eighteen, with a turn for expense perhaps - almost certainly
for profligacy, and with a heart embittered against the loving parents
or friends who compelled them to lose six or seven years in dusting the
rails of the stair with their black gowns, or scribbling nonsense for
twopence a page all day, and laying out twice their earnings at night in
whisky-punch. Here is R.L. now. Four or five years ago, from certain
indications, I assured his friends he would never be a writer.
Good-natured lad, too, when Bacchus is out of the question; but at other
times so pugnacious, that it was wished he could only be properly placed
where fighting was to be a part of his duty, regulated by time and
place, and paid for accordingly. Well, time, money, and instruction have
been thrown away, and now, after fighting two regular boxing matches and
a duel with pistols in the course of one week, he tells them roundly he
will be no writer, which common-sense might have told them before. He
has now perhaps acquired habits of insubordination, unfitting him for
the army, where he might have been tamed at an earlier period. He is too
old for the navy, and so he must go to India, a guinea-pig on board a
Chinaman, with what hope or view it is melancholy to guess. His elder
brother did all man could to get his friends to consent to his going
into the army in time. The lad has good-humour, courage, and most
gentlemanlike feelings, but he is incurably dissipated, I hear; so goes
to die in youth in a foreign land. Thank God, I let Walter take his own
way; and I trust he will be a useful, honoured soldier, being, for his
time, high in the service; whereas at home he would probably have been a
wine-bibbing, moorfowl-shooting, fox-hunting Fife squire - living at
Lochore without either aim or end - and well if he were no worse. Dined
at home with Lady S. and Anne. Wrote in the evening.
_December_ 7. - Teind day;[58] - at home of course. Wrote answers to one
or two letters which have been lying on my desk like snakes, hissing at
me for my dilatoriness. Bespoke a tun of palm-oil for Sir John Forbes.
Received a letter from Sir W. Knighton, mentioning that the King
acquiesced in my proposal that Constable's Miscellany should be
dedicated to him. Enjoined, however, not to make this public, till the
draft of dedication shall be approved. This letter tarried so long, I
thought some one had insinuated the proposal was _infra dig_. I don't
think so. The purpose is to bring all the standard works, both in
sciences and the liberal arts, within the reach of the lower classes,
and enable them thus to use with advantage the education which is given
them at every hand. To make boys learn to read, and then place no good
books within their reach, is to give men an appetite, and leave nothing
in the pantry save unwholesome and poisonous food, which, depend upon
it, they will eat rather than starve. Sir William, it seems, has been in
Germany.
Mighty dark this morning; it is past ten, and I am using my lamp. The
vast number of houses built beneath us to the north certainly render our
street darker during the days when frost or haze prevents the smoke from
rising. After all, it may be my older eyes. I remember two years ago,
when Lord H. began to fail somewhat in his limbs, he observed that Lord
S.[59] came to Court at a more early hour than usual, whereas it was he
himself who took longer time to walk the usual distance betwixt his
house and the Parliament Square. I suspect old gentlemen often make such
mistakes. A letter from Southey in a very pleasant strain as to Lockhart
and myself. Of Murray he has perhaps ground to complain as well for
consulting him late in the business, as for the manner in which he
intimated to young Coleridge, who had no reason to think himself
handsomely treated, though he has acquiesced in the arrangement in a
very gentlemanlike tone. With these matters we, of course, have nothing
to do; having no doubt that the situation was vacant when M. offered it
as such. Southey says, in alteration of Byron's phrase, that M. is the
most timorous, not of God's, but of the devil's, booksellers. The truth
I take to be that Murray was pushed in the change of Editor (which was
really become necessary) probably by Gifford, Canning, Ellis, etc.; and
when he had fixed with Lockhart by their advice his constitutional
nervousness made him delay entering upon a full explanation with
Coleridge. But it is all settled now - I hope Lockhart will be able to
mitigate their High Church bigotry. It is not for the present day,
savouring too much of _jure divino_.
Dined quiet with Lady S. and Anne. Anne is practising Scots songs, which
I take as a kind compliment to my own taste, as hers leads her chiefly
to foreign music. I think the good girl sees that I want and must miss
her sister's peculiar talent in singing the airs of our native country,
which, imperfect as my musical ear is, make, and always have made, the
most pleasing impression on me. And so if she puts a constraint on
herself for my sake, I can only say, in requital, God bless her.
I have much to comfort me in the present aspect of my family. My eldest
son, independent in fortune, united to an affectionate wife - and of good
hopes in his profession; my second, with a good deal of talent, and in
the way, I trust, of cultivating it to good purpose; Anne, an honest,
downright, good Scots lass, in whom I would only wish to correct a
spirit of satire; and Lockhart is Lockhart, to whom I can most willingly
confide the happiness of the daughter who chose him, and whom he has
chosen. My dear wife, the partner of early cares and successes, is, I
fear, frail in health - though I trust and pray she may see me out.
Indeed, if this troublesome complaint goes on - it bodes no long
existence. My brother was affected with the same weakness, which, before
he was fifty, brought on mortal symptoms. The poor Major had been rather
a free liver. But my father, the most abstemious of men, save when the
duties of hospitality required him to be very moderately free with his
bottle, and that was very seldom, had the same weakness which now annoys
me, and he, I think, was not above seventy when cut off. Square the
odds, and good-night Sir Walter about sixty. I care not, if I leave my
name unstained, and my family properly settled. _Sat est vixisse_.
_December 8._ - Talking of the _vixisse_, it may not be impertinent to
notice that Knox, a young poet of considerable talent, died here a week
or two since. His father was a respectable yeoman, and he himself,
succeeding to good farms under the Duke of Buccleuch, became too soon
his own master, and plunged into dissipation and ruin. His poetical
talent, a very fine one, then showed itself in a fine strain of pensive
poetry, called, I think, _The Lonely Hearth_, far superior to those of
Michael Bruce, whose consumption, by the way, has been the _life_ of his
verses. But poetry, nay, good poetry, is a drug in the present day. I am
a wretched patron. I cannot go with a subscription-paper, like a
pocket-pistol about me, and draw unawares on some honest
country-gentleman, who has as much alarm as if I had used the phrase
"stand and deliver," and parts with his money with a grimace, indicating
some suspicion that the crown-piece thus levied goes ultimately into the
collector's own pocket. This I see daily done; and I have seen such
collectors, when they have exhausted Papa and Mamma, continue their
trade among the misses, and conjure out of their pockets those little
funds which should carry them to a play or an assembly. It is well
people will go through this - it does some good, I suppose, and they have
great merit who can sacrifice their pride so far as to attempt it in
this way. For my part I am a bad promoter of subscriptions; but I wished
to do what I could for this lad, whose talent I really admired; and I am
not addicted to admire heaven-born poets, or poetry that is reckoned
very good _considering_. I had him, Knox,[60] at Abbotsford, about ten
years ago, but found him unfit for that sort of society. I tried to help
him, but there were temptations he could never resist. He scrambled on,
writing for the booksellers and magazines, and living like the Otways,
and Savages, and Chattertons of former days, though I do not know that
he was in actual want. His connection with me terminated in begging a
subscription or a guinea now and then. His last works were spiritual
hymns, and which he wrote very well. In his own line of society he was
said to exhibit infinite humour; but all his works are grave and
pensive, a style perhaps, like Master Stephen's melancholy,[61]
affected for the nonce.
Mrs. G[rant] of L. intimates that she will take her pudding - her
pension, I mean (see 30th November), and is contrite, as H[enry]
M[ackenzie] vouches. I am glad the stout old girl is not foreclosed;
faith, cabbing a pension in these times is like hunting a pig with a
soap'd tail, monstrous apt to slip through your fingers.[62] Dined at
home with Lady S. and Anne.
_December_ 9. - Yesterday I read and wrote the whole day and evening.
To-day I shall not be so happy. Having Gas-Light Company to attend at
two, I must be brief in journalising.
The gay world has been kept in hot water lately by the impudent
publication of the celebrated Harriet Wilson, - - from earliest
possibility, I suppose, who lived with half the gay world at hack and
manger, and now obliges such as will not pay hush-money with a history
of whatever she knows or can invent about them. She must have been
assisted in the style, spelling, and diction, though the attempt at wit
is very poor, that at pathos sickening. But there is some good retailing
of conversations, in which the style of the speakers, so far as known to
me, is exactly imitated, and some things told, as said by individuals of
each other, which will sound unpleasantly in each other's ears. I admire
the address of Lord A - - y, himself very severely handled from time to
time. Some one asked him if H.W. had been pretty correct on the whole.
"Why, faith," he replied, "I believe so" - when, raising his eyes, he saw
Quentin Dick, whom the little jilt had treated atrociously - "what
concerns the present company always excepted, you know," added Lord
A - - y, with infinite presence of mind. As he was _in pari casu_ with
Q.D. no more could be said. After all, H.W. beats Con Philips, Anne
Bellamy, and all former demireps out and out. I think I supped once in
her company, more than twenty years since, at Mat Lewis's in Argyle
Street, where the company, as the Duke says to Lucio, chanced to be
"fairer than honest."[63] She was far from beautiful, if it be the same
_chiffonne_, but a smart saucy girl, with good eyes and dark hair, and
the manners of a wild schoolboy. I am glad this accidental meeting has
escaped her memory - or, perhaps, is not accurately recorded in
mine - for, being a sort of French falconer, who hawk at all they see, I
might have had a distinction which I am far from desiring.
Dined at Sir John Hay's - a large party; Skenes there, the Newenhams and
others, strangers. In the morning a meeting of Oil Gas Committee. The
concern lingers a little;
"It may do weel, for ought it's done yet,
But only - it's no just begun yet."[64]
_December 10._ - A stormy and rainy day. Walked from the Court through
the rain. I don't dislike this. Egad, I rather like it; for no man that
ever stepped on heather has less dread than I of catch-cold; and I seem
to regain, in buffeting with the wind, a little of the high spirit with
which, in younger days, I used to enjoy a Tam-o'-Shanter ride through
darkness, wind, and rain, - the boughs groaning and cracking over my
head, the good horse free to the road and impatient for home, and
feeling the weather as little as I did.
"The storm around might roar and rustle,
We didna mind the storm a whistle."
Answered two letters - one, answer to a schoolboy, who writes himself
Captain of Giggleswick School (a most imposing title), entreating the
youngster not to commence editor of a magazine to be entitled the
"Yorkshire Muffin," I think, at seventeen years old; second, to a
soldier of the 79th, showing why I cannot oblige him by getting his
discharge, and exhorting him rather to bear with the wickedness and
profanity of the service, than take the very precarious step of
desertion. This is the old receipt of Durandarte - _Patience, cousin, and
shuffle the cards_;[65] and I suppose the correspondents will think I
have been too busy in offering my counsel where I was asked for
assistance.
A third rogue writes to tell me - rather of the latest, if the matter was
of consequence - that he approves of the first three volumes of the
_H[eart] of Midlothian_, but totally condemns the fourth. Doubtless he
thinks his opinion worth the sevenpence sterling which his letter costs.
However, authors should be reasonably well pleased when three-fourths of
their work are acceptable to the reader. The knave demands of me in a
postscript, to get back the sword of Sir W[illiam] Wallace from England,
where it was carried from Dumbarton Castle. I am not Master-General of
the Ordnance, that I know. It was wrong, however, to take away that and
Mons Meg. If I go to town this spring, I will renew my negotiation with
the Great Duke for recovery of Mons Meg.
There is no theme more awful than to attempt to cast a glance among the
clouds and mists which hide the broken extremity of the celebrated
bridge of Mirza.[66] Yet, when every day brings us nearer that
termination, one would almost think that our views should become
clearer, as the regions we are approaching are brought nigher. Alas! it
is not so: there is a curtain to be withdrawn, a veil to be rent, before
we shall see things as they really are. There are few, I trust, who
disbelieve the existence of a God; nay, I doubt if at all times, and in
all moods, any single individual ever adopted that hideous creed, though
some have professed it. With the belief of a Deity, that of the
immortality of the soul and of the state of future rewards and
punishments is indissolubly linked. More we are not to know; but neither
are we prohibited from our attempts, however vain, to pierce the solemn
sacred gloom. The expressions used in Scripture are doubtless
metaphorical, for penal fires and heavenly melody are only applicable to
bodies endowed with senses; and, at least till the period of the
resurrection of the body, the spirits of men, whether entering into the
perfection of the just, or committed to the regions of punishment, are
incorporeal. Neither is it to be supposed that the glorified bodies
which shall arise in the last day will be capable of the same gross
indulgences with which they are now solaced. That the idea of Mahomet's
paradise is inconsistent with the purity of our heavenly religion will
be readily granted; and see Mark xii. 25. Harmony is obviously chosen as
the least corporeal of all gratifications of the sense, and as the type
of love, unity, and a state of peace and perfect happiness. But they
have a poor idea of the Deity, and the rewards which are destined for
the just made perfect, who can only adopt the literal sense of an
eternal concert - a never-ending Birthday Ode. I rather suppose there
should be understood some commission from the Highest, some duty to
discharge with the applause of a satisfied conscience. That the Deity,
who himself must be supposed to feel love and affection for the beings
he has called into existence, should delegate a portion of those powers,
I for one cannot conceive altogether so wrong a conjecture. We would
then find reality in Milton's sublime machinery of the guardian saints
or genii of kingdoms. Nay, we would approach to the Catholic idea of the
employment of saints, though without approaching the absurdity of
saint-worship, which degrades their religion. There would be, we must
suppose, in these employments difficulties to be overcome, and exertions
to be made, for all which the celestial beings employed would have
certain appropriate powers. I cannot help thinking that a life of active
benevolence is more consistent with my ideas than an eternity of music.
But it is all speculation, and it is impossible even to guess what we
shall [do], unless we could ascertain the equally difficult previous
question, what we are to be. But there is a God, and a just God - a
judgment and a future life - and all who own so much let them act
according to the faith that is in them. I would [not], of course, limit
the range of my genii to this confined earth. There is the universe,
with all its endless extent of worlds.
Company at home - Sir Adam Ferguson and his Lady; Colonel and Miss
Russell; Count Davidoff, and Mr. Collyer. By the by, I observe that all
men whose names are obviously derived from some mechanical trade,
endeavour to disguise and antiquate, as it were, their names, by
spelling them after some quaint manner or other. Thus we have Collyer,
Smythe, Tailleure; as much as to say, My ancestor was indeed a mechanic,
but it was a world of time ago, when the word was spelled very
[differently]. Then we had young Whytbank and Will Allan the artist[67],
a very agreeable, simple-mannered, and pleasant man.
_December_ 11. - A touch of the _morbus eruditorum_, to which I am as
little subject as most folks, and have it less now than when young. It
is a tremor of the heart, the pulsation of which becomes painfully
sensible - a disposition to causeless alarm - much lassitude - and decay of
vigour of mind and activity of intellect. The reins feel weary and
painful, and the mind is apt to receive and encourage gloomy
apprehensions and causeless fears. Fighting with this fiend is not
always the best way to conquer him. I have always found exercise and the
open air better than reasoning. But such weather as is now without doors
does not encourage _la petite guerre_, so we must give him battle in
form, by letting both mind and body know that, supposing one the House
of Commons and the other the House of Peers, my will is sovereign over
both. There is a good description of this species of mental weakness in
the fine play of Beaumont and Fletcher called _The Lover's Progress_,
where the man, warned that his death is approaching, works himself into
an agony of fear, and calls for assistance, though there is no apparent
danger. The apparition of the innkeeper's ghost, in the same play,
hovers between the ludicrous and [the terrible]. To me the touches of
the former quality which it contains seem to augment the effect of the
latter - - they seem to give reality to the supernatural, as being
circumstances with which an inventor would hardly have garnished his
story.[68]
Will Clerk says he has a theory on the vitrified forts. I wonder if he
and I agree. I think accidental conflagration is the cause.
_December_ 12. - Hogg came to breakfast this morning, having taken and
brought for his companion the Galashiels bard, David Thomson,[69] as to
a meeting of "huzz Tividale poets." The honest grunter opines with a
delightful _naïveté_ that Moore's verses are far owre sweet - answered by
Thomson that Moore's ear or notes, I forget which, were finely strung.
"They are far owre finely strung," replied he of the Forest, "for mine
are just reeght." It reminded me of Queen Bess, when questioning
Melville sharply and closely whether Queen [Mary] was taller than her,
and, extracting an answer in the affirmative, she replied, "Then your
Queen is too tall, for I am just the proper height."
Was engaged the whole day with Sheriff Court processes. There is
something sickening in seeing poor devils drawn into great expense
about trifles by interested attorneys. But too cheap access to
litigation has its evils on the other hand, for the proneness of the
lower class to gratify spite and revenge in this way would be a dreadful
evil were they able to endure the expense. Very few cases come before
the Sheriff-court of Selkirkshire that ought to come anywhere. Wretched
wranglings about a few pounds, begun in spleen, and carried on from
obstinacy, and at length from fear of the conclusion to the banquet of
ill-humour, "D - n - n of expenses."[70] I try to check it as well as I
can; "but so 'twill be when I am gone."
_December_ 12. - Dined at home, and spent the evening in writing - Anne
and Lady Scott at the theatre to see Mathews; a very clever man my
friend Mathews; but it is tiresome to be funny for a whole evening, so I
was content and stupid at home.
An odd optical delusion has amused me these two last nights. I have been
of late, for the first time, condemned to the constant use of
spectacles. Now, when I have laid them aside to step into a room dimly
lighted, out of the strong light which I use for writing, I have seen,
or seemed to see, through the rims of the same spectacles which I have
left behind me. At first the impression was so lively that I put my hand
to my eyes believing I had the actual spectacles on at the moment. But
what I saw was only the eidolon or image of said useful servants. This
fortifies some of Dr. Hibbert's positions about spectral appearances.
_December_ 13. - Letter from Lady Stafford - kind and friendly after the
wont of Banzu-Mohr-ar-chat.[71] This is wrong spelled, I know. Her
countenance is something for Sophia, whose company should be - as ladies
are said to choose their liquor - little and good. To be acquainted with
persons of mere _ton_ is a nuisance and a scrape - to be known to persons
of real fashion and fortune is in London a very great advantage. She is
besides sure of the hereditary and constant friendship of the Buccleuch
ladies, as well as those of Montagu and of the Harden family, of the
Marchioness of Northampton, Lady Melville, and others, also the Miss
Ardens, upon whose kind offices I have some claim, and would count upon
them whether such claim existed or no. So she is well enough established
among the Right-hand file, which is very necessary in London where
second-rate fashion is like false jewels.
Went to the yearly court of the Edinburgh Assurance Company, to which I