January 17.—­My knee so swelled and the weather so cold that I stayed from Court.  I nibbled for an hour or two at Napoleon, then took handsomely to my gear, and wrote with great ease and fluency six pages of the Chronicles.  If they are but tolerable I shall be satisfied.  In fact, such as they are, they must do, for I shall get warm as I work, as has happened on former occasions.  The fact is, I scarce know what is to succeed or not; but this is the consequence of writing too much and too often.  I must get some breathing space.  But how is that to be managed?  There is the rub.

January 18-19.—­Remained still at home, and wrought hard.  The fountain trickles free enough, but God knows whether the waters will be worth drinking.  However, I have finished a good deal of hard work,—­that’s the humour of it.

January 20.—­Wrought hard in the forenoon.  At dinner we had Helen Erskine,—­whom circumstances lead to go to India in search of the domestic affection which she cannot find here,—­Mrs. George Swinton, and two young strangers:  one, a son of my old friend Dr. Stoddart of the Times, a well-mannered and intelligent youth, the other that unnatural character, a tame Irishman, resembling a formal Englishman.

January 21.—­This morning I sent J.B. as far as page forty-three, being fully two-thirds of the volume.  The rest I will drive on, trusting that, contrary to the liberated posthorse in John Gilpin, the lumber of the wheels rattling behind me may put spirit in the poor brute who has to drag it.

Mr. and Mrs. Moscheles were here at breakfast.  She is a very pretty little Jewess; he one of the greatest performers on the pianoforte of the day,—­certainly most surprising and, what I rather did not expect, pleasing.

I have this day the melancholy news of Glengarry’s death, and was greatly shocked.  The eccentric parts of his character, the pretensions which he supported with violence and assumption of rank and authority, were obvious subjects of censure and ridicule, which in some points were not undeserved.  He played the part of a chieftain too nigh the life to be popular among an altered race, with whom he thought, felt, and acted, I may say in right and wrong, as a chieftain of a hundred years since would have done, while his conduct was viewed entirely by modern eyes, and tried by modern rules.[117]

January 22.—­I am, I find, in serious danger of losing the habit of my Journal; and, having carried it on so long, that would be pity.  But I am now, on the 1st February, fishing for the lost recollections of the days since the 21st January.  Luckily there is not very much to remember or forget, and perhaps the best way would be to skip and go on.