I don’t care whether I go or no!  And yet it is unpleasant to see how one’s motions depend on scoundrels like these.  Besides, I would like to be there, were it but to see how the cat jumps.  One knows nothing of the world, if you are absent from it so long as I have been.

October 8.—­Locker left me this morning.  He is of opinion the ministry must soon assume another form, but that the Whigs will not come in.  Lord Liverpool holds much by Lord Melville—­well in point of judgment—­and by the Duke of Wellington—­still better, but then the Duke is a soldier—­a bad education for a statesman in a free country.  The Chancellor is also consulted by the Premier on all law affairs.  Canning and Huskisson are at the head of the other party, who may be said to have taken the Cabinet by storm, through sheer dint of talent.  I should like to see how these ingredients are working; but by the grace of God, I will take care of putting my finger into the cleft stick.

Locker has promised to get my young cousin Walter Scott on some quarter-deck or other.

Received from Mr. Cadell the second instalment advance of cash on Canongate.  It is in English bills and money, in case of my going to town.

October 9.—­A gracious letter from Messrs. Abud and Son, bill-brokers, etc.; assure Mr. Gibson that they will institute no legal proceedings against me for four or five weeks.  And so I am permitted to spend my money and my leisure to improve the means of paying them their debts, for that is the only use of my present journey.  They are Jews:  I suppose the devil baits for Jews with a pork griskin.  Were I not to exert myself, I wonder where their money is to come from.

A letter from Gillies menacing the world with a foreign miscellany.  The plan is a good one, but “he canna haud it,” as John Moodie[354] says.  He will think all is done when he has got a set of names, and he will find the difficulty consists not in that, but in getting articles.  I wrote on the prose works.

Lord and Lady Minto dined and spent the night at Abbotsford.

October 10.—­Well, I must prepare for going to London, and perhaps to Paris.  The morning frittered away.  I slept till eight o’clock, then our guests till twelve; then walked out to direct some alterations on the quarry, which I think may at little expense be rendered a pretty recess.  Wordsworth swears by an old quarry, and is in some degree a supreme authority on such points.  Rain came on; returned completely wet.  I had next the displeasure to find that I had lost the conclusion of vol. v. of Napoleon, seven or eight pages at least, which I shall have to write over again, unless I can find it.  Well, as Othello says, “that’s not much.”  My cousin James Scott came to dinner.

I have great unwillingness to set out on this journey; I almost think it ominous; but

    “They that look to freits, my master dear,
    Their freits will follow them."[355]