December 27th.—­Slept twelve hours at a stretch, being much exhausted.  Totally without pain to-day, but uncomfortable from the effects of calomel, which, with me at least, is like the assistance of an auxiliary army, just one degree more tolerable than the enemy it chases away.  Calomel contemplations are not worth recording.  I wrote an introduction and a few notes to the Memoirs of Madame La Rochejacquelin,[98] being all that I was equal to.

Sir Adam Ferguson came over and tried to marry my verses to the tune of “Bonnie Dundee.”  They seem well adapted to each other.  Dined with Lady Scott and Anne.

Worked at Pepys in the evening, with the purpose of review for Lockhart.[99] Notwithstanding the depressing effects of the calomel, I feel the pleasure of being alone and uninterrupted.  Few men, leading a quiet life, and without any strong or highly varied change of circumstances, have seen more variety of society than I—­few have enjoyed it more, or been bored, as it is called, less by the company of tiresome people.  I have rarely, if ever, found any one, out of whom I could not extract amusement or edification; and were I obliged to account for hints afforded on such occasions, I should make an ample deduction from my inventive powers.  Still, however, from the earliest time I can remember, I preferred the pleasure of being alone to waiting for visitors, and have often taken a bannock and a bit of cheese to the wood or hill, to avoid dining with company.  As I grew from boyhood to manhood I saw this would not do; and that to gain a place in men’s esteem I must mix and bustle with them.  Pride and an excitation of spirits supplied the real pleasure which others seem to feel in society, and certainly upon many occasions it was real.  Still, if the question was, eternal company, without the power of retiring within yourself, or solitary confinement for life, I should say, “Turnkey, lock the cell!” My life, though not without its fits of waking and strong exertion, has been a sort of dream, spent in

    “Chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy."[100]

I have worn a wishing-cap, the power of which has been to divert present griefs by a touch of the wand of imagination, and gild over the future prospect by prospects more fair than can ever be realised.  Somewhere it is said that this castle-building—­this wielding of the aerial trowel—­is fatal to exertions in actual life.  I cannot tell, I have not found it so.  I cannot, indeed, say like Madame Genlis, that in the imaginary scenes in which I have acted a part I ever prepared myself for anything which actually befell me; but I have certainly fashioned out much that made the present hour pass pleasantly away, and much that has enabled me to contribute to the amusement of the public.  Since I was five years old I cannot remember the time when I had not some ideal part to play for my own solitary amusement.