“Sir Dennis Brand, and on so poor a steed."[421]

I believe detestable folly of this kind is the very last that leaves us.  One would have thought I ought to have little vanity at this time o’ day; but it is an abiding appurtenance of the old Adam, and I write for penance what, like a fool, I actually felt.

January 19.—­Wrote on by Mr. Laidlaw’s assistance.  Things go bobbishly enough; we have a good deal finished before dinner.  Henry Scott comes to dine with me vis-a-vis, and we have a grand dish of politics.  The friends of old Scotland want but a signal.  A certain great lawyer says that if Sir W.S. wrote another Malachi it would set more men on fire than a dozen associations.  This almost tempts me.  But the canny lad says moreover that to appeal to national partiality, i.e. that you should call on Scotsmen to act like Scotsmen, is unfair, and he would be sorry it was known he, late and future placeman, should encourage such paw-paw doings.  Yet if Sir W.S. could be got to stand forlorn hope, the legal gentleman would suggest, etc. etc.  Suggest and be d—­d.  Sir W.S. knows when to [doff] his bonnet, and when to cock it in the face of all and sundry.  Moreover, he will not be made a cat’s-paw of, look you now.

January 20.—­Wrought all morning; a monstrous packet of letters at mid-day.  Borrow honest Laidlaw’s fingers in the evening.  I hope his pay will recompense him:  it is better than “grieve-ing” or playing Triptolemus.[422] Should be, if I am hard-working, 100 guineas, which, with his house, cow, and free rent, would save, I believe, some painful thoughts to him and his amiable wife and children.  We will see how the matter fudges.  Almost finished the first volume.

January 21.—­James Ballantyne in ecstasies at our plan of an amanuensis.  I myself am sensible that my fingers begin to stammer—­that is, to write one word instead of another very often.  I impute this to fancy, the terrible agency of which is too visible in my illness, and it encourages me to hope the fatal warning is yet deferred.  I feel lighter by a million ton since I made this discovery.  If I can dictate freely, and without hesitation, my fear to speak at the meeting about the road was vain terror, and so Andiamo Caracci. Wrote some letters this afternoon.

January 22.—­Mr. Laidlaw rather late of coming.  One of his daughters has been ill, and he is an approved physician.  Pity when one so gifted employs his skill on himself and family for all patients.  We got on, however, to page 46.

January 23.—­I wrought a little to-day.  Walked to Chiefswood, or rather from it, as far only as Habbie’s Howe.  Came home, cold indeed, but hearty.  Slept after dinner.  I think the peep, real or imaginary, at the gates of death has given me firmness not to mind little afflictions.  I have jumbled this and the preceding day strangely, when I went to Chiefswood and Huntly Burn.  I thought this a week-day.