June, 28.—­Another hot morning, and something like an idle day, though I have read a good deal.  But I have slept also, corrected proofs, and prepared for a great start, by filling myself with facts and ideas.

June 29.—­I walked out for an hour last night, and made one or two calls—­the evening was delightful—­

    “Day its sultry fires had wasted,
      Calm and cool the moonbeam rose;
    Even a captive’s bosom tasted
      Half oblivion of his woes."[290]

I wonder often how Tom Campbell, with so much real genius, has not maintained a greater figure in the public eye than he has done of late.  The Magazine seems to have paralysed him.  The author, not only of the Pleasures of Hope, but of Hohenlinden, Lochiel, etc., should have been at the very top of the tree.  Somehow he wants audacity, fears the public, and, what is worse, fears the shadow of his own reputation.  He is a great corrector too, which succeeds as ill in composition as in education.  Many a clever boy is flogged into a dunce, and many an original composition corrected into mediocrity.  Yet Tom Campbell ought to have done a great deal more.  His youthful promise was great.  John Leyden introduced me to him.  They afterwards quarrelled.  When I repeated Hohenlinden to Leyden, he said, “Dash it, man, tell the fellow that I hate him, but, dash him, he has written the finest verses that have been published these fifty years.”  I did mine errand as faithfully as one of Homer’s messengers, and had for answer, “Tell Leyden that I detest him, but I know the value of his critical approbation.”  This feud was therefore in the way of being taken up.  “When Leyden comes back from India,” said Tom Campbell, “what cannibals he will have eaten and what tigers he will have torn to pieces!”

Gave a poor poetess L1.  Gibson writes me that L2300 is offered for the poor house; it is worth L300 more, but I will not oppose my own opinion, or convenience to good and well-meant counsel:  so farewell, poor No. 39.  What a portion of my life has been spent there!  It has sheltered me from the prime of life to its decline; and now I must bid good-bye to it.  I have bid good-bye to my poor wife, so long its courteous and kind mistress,—­and I need not care about the empty rooms; yet it gives me a turn.  I have been so long a citizen of Edinburgh, now an indweller only.  Never mind; all in the day’s work.

J. Ballantyne and B. Cadell dined with me, and, as Pepys would say, all was very handsome.  Drank amongst us one bottle of champagne, one of claret, a glass or two of port, and each a tumbler of whisky toddy.  J.B. had courage to drink his with hot water; mine was iced.

June 30.—­Here is another dreadful warm day, fit for nobody but the flies.  And then one is confined to town.