January 10.—­Enter rheumatism, and takes me by the knee.  So much for playing the peacemaker in a shower of rain.  Nothing for it but patience, cataplasm of camomile, and labour in my own room the whole day till dinner-time—­then company and reading in the evening.

January 11.—­Ditto repeated.  I should have thought I would have made more of these solitary days than I find I can do.  A morning, or two or three hours before dinner, have often done more efficient work than six or seven of these hours of languor, I cannot say of illness, can produce.  A bow that is slackly strung will never send an arrow very far.  Heavy snow.  We are engaged at Mr. Scrope’s, but I think I shall not be able to go.  I remained at home accordingly, and, having nothing else to do, worked hard and effectively.  I believe my sluggishness was partly owing to the gnawing rheumatic pain in my knee, for after all I am of opinion pain is an evil, let Stoics say what they will.  Thank God, it is an evil which is mending with me.

January 12.—­All this day occupied with camomile poultices and pen and ink.  It is now four o’clock, and I have written yesterday and to-day ten of my pages—­that is, one-tenth of one of these large volumes—­moreover, I have corrected three proof-sheets.  I wish it may not prove fool’s haste, yet I take as much pains too as is in my nature.

January 13.—­The Fergusons, with my neighbours Mr. Scrope and Mr. Bainbridge and young Hume, eat a haunch of venison from Drummond Castle, and seemed happy.  We had music and a little dancing, and enjoyed in others the buoyancy of spirit that we no longer possess ourselves.  Yet I do not think the young people of this age so gay as we were.  There is a turn for persiflage, a fear of ridicule among them, which stifles the honest emotions of gaiety and lightness of spirit; and people, when they give in the least to the expansion of their natural feelings, are always kept under by the fear of becoming ludicrous.  To restrain your feelings and check your enthusiasm in the cause even of pleasure is now a rule among people of fashion, as much as it used to be among philosophers.

January 14.—­Well—­my holidays are out—­and I may count my gains and losses as honest Robinson Crusoe used to balance his accounts of good and evil.

I have not been able, during three weeks, to stir above once or twice from the house.  But then I have executed a great deal of work, which would be otherwise unfinished.

Again I have sustained long and sleepless nights and much pain.  True; but no one is the worse of the thoughts which arise in the watches of the night; and for pain, the complaint which brought on this rheumatism was not so painful perhaps, but was infinitely more disagreeable and depressing.

Something there has been of dulness in our little reunions of society which did not use to cloud them.  But I have seen all my own old and kind friends, with my dear children (Charles alone excepted); and if we did not rejoice with perfect joy, it was overshadowed from the same sense of regret.