Wet to the skin coming from the Court.  Called on Skene, to give him, for the Antiquarian Society, a heart, human apparently, stuck full of pins.  It was found lying opposite to the threshold of an old tenement, in [Dalkeith], a little below the surface; it is in perfect preservation.  Dined at the Bannatyne Club, where I am chairman.  We admitted a batch of new members, chiefly noblemen and men connected with the public offices and records in London, such as Palgrave, Petrie, etc.  We drank to our old Scottish heroes, poets, historians, and printers, and were funny enough, though, like Shylock, I had no will to go abroad.  I was supported by Lord Minto and Lord Eldin.

FOOTNOTES: 

[438] “A half-crazy sentimental person.”—­Edin.  Rev.  No. xxiii. p. 135.—­J.G.L.

[439] Mme. de Boufflers’s saying to the author of Julie.

[440] Merry Wives of Windsor, Act I. Sc. 1.—­J.G.L.

[441] Mr. Sharpe was doing what he could by voice and pen to prevent the destruction of many historic buildings in Edinburgh, which the craze for “improvements” caused at this time.  St. Giles’ Church was unfortunately left to its fate.  Witness its external condition at the present day!

The immediate cause of Mr. Sharpe’s letter was a hint to him from the Court, “that one person is all-powerful in everything regarding Scotland, I mean Sir W.S.”  This was not the only appeal made to Scott to interpose, and that he had done so at least in one case effectually may be seen by referring to Sharpe’s Letters, vol. ii. pp. 380, 388, 389.

[442] Scott sent a biographical notice of the Duke of York to the Weekly Journal on this day.  It is now included in the Misc.  Prose Works, vol. iv. pp. 400-416.

[443] Gifford’s Maeviad, 12mo, Lond. 1797; Ode to Rev. John Ireland, slightly altered.

[444] William Gifford, editor of the Anti-Jacobin in 1797, and the Quarterly from 1809 to 1824.  His political opponent, Leigh Hunt, wrote of him in 1812:—­

’William Gifford’s a name, I think, pretty well known.  Oh! now I remember,’ said Phoebus;—­’ah true—­ My thanks to that name are undoubtedly due.  The rod that got rid of the Cruscas and Lauras, That plague of the butterflies saved me the horrors, The Juvenal too stops a gap in my shelf, At least in what Dryden has not done himself, And there’s something which even, distaste must respect In the self-taught example that conquered neglect.’—­Feast of the Poets.

[445] See Miscell.  Prose Works, vol. iv. pp. 120-70.

[446] James Ferrier, Esq.—­See p. 103, February 3. 1826.

[447] See Midsummer Night’s Dream; a parody on Helena’s

  “O weary night O long and tedious night.”

[448] John James Audubon was born in Louisiana in the United States in 1780, but educated in France.—­Buchanan’s Life of Audubon, p. 4.