January 21.—­Susannah in Tristram Shandy thinks death is best met in bed.  I am sure trouble and vexation are not.  The watches of the night pass wearily when disturbed by fruitless regrets and disagreeable anticipations.  But let it pass.

    “Well, Goodman Time, or blunt, or keen,
    Move thou quick, or take thy leisure,
    Longest day will have its e’en,
    Weariest life but treads a measure.”

I have seen Cadell, who is very much downcast for the risk of their copyrights being thrown away by a hasty sale.  I suggested that if they went very cheap, some means might be fallen on to keep up their value or purchase them in.  I fear the split betwixt Constable and Cadell will render impossible what might otherwise be hopeful enough.  It is the Italian race-horses, I think, which, instead of riders, have spurs tied to their sides, so as to prick them into a constant gallop.  Cadell tells me their gross profit was sometimes L10,000 a year, but much swallowed up with expenses, and his partner’s draughts, which came to L4000 yearly.  What there is to show for this, God knows.  Constable’s apparent expenses were very much within bounds.

Colin Mackenzie entered, and with his usual kindness engages to use his influence to recommend some moderate proceeding to Constable’s creditors, such as may permit him to go on and turn that species of property to account, which no man alive can manage so well as he.

Followed Mr. Gibson with a most melancholy tale.  Things are so much worse with Constable than I apprehended that I shall neither save Abbotsford nor anything else.  Naked we entered the world, and naked we leave it—­blessed be the name of the Lord!

January 22.—­I feel neither dishonoured nor broken down by the bad—­now really bad news I have received.  I have walked my last on the domains I have planted—­sate the last time in the halls I have built.  But death would have taken them from me if misfortune had spared them.  My poor people whom I loved so well!  There is just another die to turn up against me in this run of ill-luck; i.e. if I should break my magic wand in the fall from this elephant, and lose my popularity with my fortune.  Then Woodstock and Bony may both go to the paper-maker, and I may take to smoking cigars and drinking grog, or turn devotee, and intoxicate the brain another way.  In prospect of absolute ruin, I wonder if they would let me leave the Court of Session.  I would like, methinks, to go abroad,

    “And lay my bones far from the Tweed.”

But I find my eyes moistening, and that will not do.  I will not yield without a fight for it.  It is odd, when I set myself to work doggedly, as Dr. Johnson would say, I am exactly the same man that I ever was, neither low-spirited nor distrait.  In prosperous times I have sometimes felt my fancy and powers of language flag, but adversity is to me at least a tonic and bracer; the fountain is awakened from its inmost recesses, as if the spirit of affliction had troubled it in his passage.