March 2.—­A day of hard work with little interruption, and completed volume second.  I am not much pleased with it.  It wants what I desire it to have, and that is passion.

The two Ballantynes and Mr. Cadell dined with me quietly.  Heard from London; all well.

March 3.—­I set about clearing my desk of unanswered letters, which I had suffered to accumulate to an Augean heap.  I daresay I wrote twenty cards that might have been written at the time without half-a-minute being lost.  To do everything when it ought to be done is the soul of expedition.  But then, if you are interrupted eternally with these petty avocations, the current of the mind is compelled to flow in shallows, and you lose the deep intensity of thought which alone can float plans of depth and magnitude.  I sometimes wish I were one of those formalists who can assign each hour of the day its special occupations, not to be encroached upon; but it always returns upon my mind that I do better a la debandade, than I could with rules of regular study.  A work begun is with me a stone turned over with the purpose of rolling it down hill.  The first revolutions are made with difficulty—­but vires acquirit eundo.  Now, were the said stone arrested in its progress, the whole labour would be to commence again.  To take a less conceited simile:  I am like a spavined horse, who sets out lame and stiff, but when he warms in his gear makes a pretty good trot of it, so that it is better to take a good stage of him while you can get it.  Besides, after all, I have known most of those formalists, who were not men of business or of office to whom hours are prescribed as a part of duty, but who voluntarily make themselves

    “Slaves to an hour, and vassals to a bell,"[142]—­

to be what I call very poor creatures.

General Ainslie looked in, and saddened me by talking of poor Don.  The General is a medallist, and entertains an opinion that the bonnet-piece of James V. is the work of some Scottish artist who died young, and never did anything else.  It is far superior to anything which the Mint produced since the Roman denarii.  He also told me that the name of Andrea de Ferrara is famous in Italy as an armourer.

Dined at home, and went to the Royal Society in the evening after sending off my processes for the Sheriff Court.  Also went after the Society to Mr. James Russell’s symposium.

March 4.—­A letter from Italy signed J.S. with many acute remarks on inaccuracies in the life of Bonaparte.

His tone is hostile decidedly, but that shall not prevent my making use of all his corrections where just.

The wretched publication of Leigh Hunt on the subject of Byron is to bring forward Tom Moore’s life of that distinguished poet, and I am honoured and flattered by the information that he means to dedicate it to me.[143]