“’Tis good for book, ’tis good for work,
    For cup and can, or knife and fork.”

April 22.—­Wrote till twelve o’clock, then sallied forth, and walked to Huntly Burn with Tom; and so, look you, sir, I drove home in the carriage.  Wrought in the afternoon, and tried to read De Vere, a sensible but heavy book, written by an able hand—­but a great bore for all that.[506] Wrote in the evening.

April 23.—­Snowy morning.  White as my shirt.  The little Bainbridges came over; invited to see the armoury, etc., which I stood showman to.  It is odd how much less cubbish the English boys are than the Scotch.  Well-mannered and sensible are the southern boys.  I suppose the sun brings them forward.  Here comes six o’clock at night, and it is snowing as if it had not snowed these forty years before.  Well, I’ll work away a couple of chapters—­three at most will finish Napoleon.

April 24.—­Still deep snow—­a foot thick in the courtyard, I dare say.  Severe welcome to the poor lambs now coming into the world.  But what signifies whether they die just now, or a little while after to be united with salad at luncheon-time?  It signifies a good deal too.  There is a period, though a short one, when they dance among the gowans, and seem happy.  As for your aged sheep or wether, the sooner they pass to the Norman side of the vocabulary the better.  They are like some old dowager ladies and gentlemen of my acquaintance,—­no one cares about them till they come to be cut up, and then we see how the tallow lies on the kidneys and the chine.

April 25.—­Snow yet, and it prevents my walking, and I grow bilious.  I wrote hard though.  I have now got Boney pegg’d up in the knotty entrails of Saint Helena, and may make a short pause.

So I finished the review of John Home’s works, which, after all, are poorer than I thought them.  Good blank verse and stately sentiment, but something lukewarmish, excepting Douglas, which is certainly a masterpiece.  Even that does not stand the closet.  Its merits are for the stage; but it is certainly one of the best acting plays going.  Perhaps a play, to act well, should not be too poetical.

There is a talk in London of bringing in the Marquis of Lansdowne, then Lauderdale will perhaps come in here.  It is certain the old Tory party is down the wind, not from political opinions, but from personal aversion to Canning.  Perhaps his satirical temper has partly occasioned this; but I rather consider emulation as the source of it, the head and front of the offending.  Croker no longer rhymes to joker.  He has made a good coup, it is said, by securing Lord Hertford for the new administration.  D.W. calls him their viper.  After all, I cannot sympathise with that delicacy which throws up office, because the most eloquent man in England, and certainly the only man who can manage the House of Commons, is named Minister.[507]