July 9.—­Rather slumbrous to-day from having sat up till twelve last night.  We settled, or seemed to settle, on an election for the Bannatyne Club.  There are people who would wish to confine it much to one party.  But those who were together last night saw it in the true and liberal point of view, as a great national institution, which may do much good in the way of publishing our old records, providing we do not fall into the usual habit of antiquarians, and neglect what is useful for things that are merely curious.  Thomson is a host for such an undertaking.  I wrote a good day’s work at the Canongate matter, notwithstanding the intervention of two naps.  I get sleepy oftener than usual.  It is the weather I suppose—­Naboclish![297] I am near the end of the first volume, and every step is one out of difficulty.

July 10.—­Slept too long this morning.  It was eight before I rose—­half-past eight ere I came into the parlour.  Terry and J. Ballantyne dined with me yesterday, and I suppose the wassail, though there was little enough of it, had stuck to my pillow.

This morning I was visited by a Mr. Lewis, a smart Cockney, whose object is to amend the handwriting.  He uses as a mechanical aid a sort of puzzle of wire and ivory, which is put upon the fingers to keep them in the desired position, like the muzzle on a dog’s nose to make him bear himself right in the field.  It is ingenious, and may be useful.  If the man comes here, as he proposes, in winter, I will take lessons.  Bear witness, good reader, that if W.S. writes a cramp hand, as is the case, he is desirous to mend it.

Dined with John Swinton en famille.  He told me an odd circumstance.  Coming from Berwickshire in the mail coach he met with a passenger who seemed more like a military man than anything else.  They talked on all sorts of subjects, at length on politics. Malachi’s letters were mentioned, when the stranger observed they were much more seditious than some expressions for which he had three or four years ago been nearly sent to Botany Bay.  And perceiving John Swinton surprised at this avowal, he added, “I am Kinloch of Kinloch.”  This gentleman had got engaged in the radical business (the only real gentleman by the way who did), and harangued the weavers of Dundee with such emphasis that he would have been tried and sent to Botany Bay had he not fled abroad.  He was outlawed, and only restored to his status on a composition with Government.  It seems to have escaped Mr. Kinloch that the conduct of a man who places a lighted coal in the middle of combustibles, and upon the floor, is a little different from that of one who places the same quantity of burning fuel in a fire-grate![298]