Lockhart writes me that Croker is the author of the Letters in the Courier against Malachi, and that Canning is to make another attack on me in the House of Commons.[226] These things would make a man proud.  I will not answer, because I must show up Sir William Rae, and even Lord Melville, and I have done enough to draw public attention, which is all I want.  Let them call me ungrateful, unkind, and all sorts of names, so they keep their own fingers free of this most threatening measure.  It is very curious that each of these angry friends—­Melville, Canning, and Croker—­has in former days appealed to me in confidence against each other.

While I smoked my cigar after dinner, my mind has been running into four threads of bitter fancies, or rather into three decidedly bitter, and one that is indifferent.  There is the distress incumbent on the country by these most untimely proceedings, which I would stop with my life were that adequate to prevent them. 2d, there is the unpleasant feeling of seeing a number of valued friends pass from me; that I cannot help. 3d, there is the gnawing misery about that sweet child and its parents. 4th, there is the necessity of pursuing my own labours, for which perhaps I ought to be thankful, since it always wrenches one’s mind aside from what it must dwell on with pain.  It is odd that the state of excitation with me rather increases than abates the power of labour, I must finish Woodstock well if I can:  otherwise how the Philistines will rejoice!

March 18.—­Slept indifferently, and under the influence of Queen Mab, seldom auspicious to me, dreamed of reading the tale of the Prince of the Black Marble Islands to little Johnnie, extended on a paralytic chair, and yet telling all his pretty stories about Ha-papa, as he calls me, and Chiefswood—­and waked to think I should see the little darling no more, or see him as a thing that had better never have existed.  Oh, misery! misery! that the best I can wish for him is early death, with all the wretchedness to his parents that is like to ensue!  I intended to have stayed at home to-day; but Tom more wisely had resolved that I should walk, and hung about the window with his axe and my own in his hand till I turned out with him, and helped to cut some fine paling.

March 19.—­I have a most melancholy letter from Anne.  Lady S., the faithful and true companion of my fortunes, good and bad, for so many years, has, but with difficulty, been prevailed on to see Dr. Abercrombie, and his opinion is far from favourable.  Her asthmatic complaints are fast terminating in hydropsy, as I have long suspected; yet the avowal of the truth and its probable consequences are overwhelming.  They are to stay a little longer in town to try the effects of a new medicine.  On Wednesday they propose to return hither—­a new affliction, where there was enough before; yet her constitution is so good that if she will be guided by advice, things may be yet ameliorated.  God grant it! for really these misfortunes come too close upon each other.