Another widowed dame, whose claim is having read Marmion and the Lady of the Lake, besides a promise to read all my other works—­Gad, it is a rash engagement!—­demands that I shall either pay L200 to get her cub into some place or other, or settle him in a seminary of education.  Really this is very much after the fashion of the husbandman of Miguel Turra’s requests of Sancho when Governor.[232] “Have you anything else to ask, honest man?” quoth Sancho.  But what are the demands of an honest man to those of an honest woman, and she a widow to boot?  I do believe your destitute widow, especially if she hath a charge of children, and one or two fit for patronage, is one of the most impudent animals living.

Went to Galashiels and settled the dispute about Sandie’s wall.

March 28.—­We have now been in solitude for some time—­myself nearly totally so, excepting at meals, or on a call as yesterday from Henry and William Scott of Harden.  One is tempted to ask himself, knocking at the door of his own heart, Do you love this extreme loneliness?  I can answer conscientiously, I do.  The love of solitude was with me a passion of early youth; when in my teens, I used to fly from company to indulge in visions and airy castles of my own, the disposal of ideal wealth, and the exercise of imaginary power.  This feeling prevailed even till I was eighteen, when love and ambition awakening with other passions threw me more into society, from which I have, however, at times withdrawn myself, and have been always even glad to do so.  I have risen from a feast satiated; and unless it be one or two persons of very strong intellect, or whose spirits and good-humour amuse me, I wish neither to see the high, the low, nor the middling class of society.  This is a feeling without the least tinge of misanthropy, which I always consider as a kind of blasphemy of a shocking description.  If God bears with the very worst of us, we may surely endure each other.  If thrown into society, I always have, and always will endeavour to bring pleasure with me, at least to show willingness to please.  But for all this “I had rather live alone,” and I wish my appointment, so convenient otherwise, did not require my going to Edinburgh.  But this must be, and in my little lodging I will be lonely enough.

Had a very kind letter from Croker disowning the least idea of personal attack in his answer to Malachi.

Reading at intervals a novel called Granby; one of that very difficult class which aspires to describe the actual current of society, whose colours are so evanescent that it is difficult to fix them on the canvas.  It is well written, but over-laboured—­too much attempt to put the reader exactly up to the thoughts and sentiments of the parties.  The women do this better:  Edgeworth, Ferrier, Austen have all had their portraits of real society, far superior to anything man, vain man, has produced of the like nature.[233]