January 27.—­A great and general thaw, the streets afloat, the snow descending on one’s head from the roofs.  Went to the Court.  There was little to do.  Left about twelve, and took a sitting with Graham, who begs for another.  Sir James Stuart stood bottle-holder on this occasion.  Had rather an unfavourable account of the pictures of James Stuart of Dunearn, which are to be sold.  I had promised to pick up one or two for the Duke of Buccleuch.  Came home and wrote a leaf or two.  I shall be soon done with the second volume of Anne of Geierstein.  I cannot persuade myself to the obvious risk of satisfying the public, although I cannot so well satisfy myself.  I am like Beaumont and Fletcher’s old Merrythought who could not be persuaded that there was a chance of his wanting meat.  I never came into my parlour, said he, but I found the cloth laid and dinner ready; surely it will be always thus.  Use makes perfectness.[245]

My reflections are of the same kind; and if they are unlogical they are perhaps not the less comfortable.  Fretting and struggling does no good.  Wrote to Miss Margaret Ferguson a letter of condolence.

January 28.—­Breakfasted, for a wonder, abroad with Hay Drummond, whose wife appears a pretty and agreeable little woman.  We worshipped his tutelar deity, the Hercules, and saw a good model of the Hercules Bibax, or the drunken Hercules.  Graham and Sir James Stuart were there.  Home-baked bread and soldier’s coffee were the treat.  I came home; and Sir Robert Dundas having taken my duty at the Court, I wrote for some time, but not much.  Burke the murderer hanged this morning.  The mob, which was immense, demanded Knox and Hare, but though greedy for more victims, received with shouts the solitary wretch who found his way to the gallows out of five or six who seem not less guilty than he.  But the story begins to be stale, although I believe a doggerel ballad upon it would be popular, how brutal soever the wit.  This is the progress of human passions.  We ejaculate, exclaim, hold up to Heaven our hand, like the rustic Phidyle[246]—­next morning the mood changes, and we dance a jig to the tune which moved us to tears.  Mr. Bell sends me a specimen of a historical novel, but he goes not the way to write it; he is too general, and not sufficiently minute.  It is not easy to convey this to an author, with the necessary attention to his feelings; and yet, in good faith and sincerity, it must be done.

January 29.—­I had a vacant day once more by the kindness of Sir Robert, unasked, but most kindly afforded.  I have not employed it to much purpose.  I wrote six pages to Croker,[247] who is busied with a new edition of Boswell’s Life of Johnson, to which most entertaining book he hopes to make large additions from Mrs. Piozzi, Hawkins and other sources.  I am bound by many obligations to do as much for him as I can, which can only respect the Scottish Tour.  I wrote only two or three pages of Anne.  I am