Things are mending in town, and H[urst] and R[obinson] write with confidence, and are, it would seem, strongly supported by wealthy friends.  Cadell and Constable are confident of their making their way through the storm, and the impression of their stability is general in London.  I hear the same from Lockhart.  Indeed, I now believe that they wrote gloomy letters to Constable, chiefly to get as much money out of them as they possibly could.  But they had well-nigh overdone it.  This being Teind Wednesday must be a day of leisure and labour.  Sophia has got a house, 25 Pall Mall.  Dined at home with Lady Scott and Anne.

December 22.—­I wrote six of my close pages yesterday, which is about twenty-four pages in print.  What is more, I think it comes off twangingly.  The story is so very interesting in itself, that there is no fear of the book answering.[89] Superficial it must be, but I do not disown the charge.  Better a superficial book, which brings well and strikingly together the known and acknowledged facts, than a dull boring narrative, pausing to see further into a mill-stone at every moment than the nature of the mill-stone admits.  Nothing is so tiresome as walking through some beautiful scene with a minute philosopher, a botanist, or pebble-gatherer, who is eternally calling your attention from the grand features of the natural scenery to look at grasses and chucky-stones.  Yet, in their way, they give useful information; and so does the minute historian.  Gad, I think that will look well in the preface.  My bile is quite gone.  I really believe it arose from mere anxiety.  What a wonderful connection between the mind and body!

The air of “Bonnie Dundee” running in my head to-day, I [wrote] a few verses to it before dinner, taking the key-note from the story of Clavers leaving the Scottish Convention of Estates in 1688-9.[90] I wonder if they are good.  Ah! poor Will Erskine![91] thou couldst and wouldst have told me.  I must consult J.B., who is as honest as was W.E.  But then, though he has good taste too, there is a little of Big Bow-wow about it.  Can’t say what made me take a frisk so uncommon of late years, as to write verses of freewill.  I suppose the same impulse which makes birds sing when the storm seems blown over.

Dined at Lord Minto’s.  There were Lord and Lady Ruthven, Will Clerk, and Thomas Thomson,—­a right choice party.  There was also my very old friend Mrs. Brydone, the relict of the traveller,[92] and daughter of Principal Robertson, and really worthy of such a connection—­Lady Minto, who is also peculiarly agreeable—­and her sister, Mrs. Admiral Adam, in the evening.

December 23.—­The present Lord Minto is a very agreeable, well-informed, and sensible man, but he possesses neither the high breeding, ease of manner, nor eloquence of his father, the first Earl.  That Sir Gilbert was indeed a man among a thousand.  I knew him very intimately in the beginning of the century, and, which was very agreeable, was much at his house on very easy terms.  He loved the Muses, and worshipped them in secret, and used to read some of his poetry, which was but middling.