January 24.—­Constable came yesterday, and saw me for half an hour.  He seemed irritable, but kept his temper under command.  Was a little shocked when I intimated that I was disposed to regard the present works in progress as my own.  I think I saw two things:—­(1) That he is desirous to return into the management of his own affairs without Cadell, if he can. (2) That he relies on my connection as the way of helping us out of the slough.  Indeed he said he was ruined utterly without my countenance.  I certainly will befriend him if I can, but Constable without Cadell is like getting the clock without the pendulum—­the one having the ingenuity, the other the caution of the business.  I will see my way before making any bargain, and I will help them, I am sure, if I can, without endangering my last cast for freedom.  Worked out my task yesterday.  My kind friend Mrs. Coutts has got the cadet-ship for Pringle Shortreed, in which he was peculiarly interested.

I went to the Court for the first time to-day, and, like the man with the large nose, thought everybody was thinking of me and my mishaps.  Many were, undoubtedly, and all rather regrettingly; some obviously affected.  It is singular to see the difference of men’s manner whilst they strive to be kind or civil in their way of addressing me.  Some smile as they wish me good-day, as if to say, “Think nothing about it, my lad; it is quite out of our thoughts.”  Others greeted me with the affected gravity which one sees and despises at a funeral.  The best bred—­all, I believe, meaning equally well—­just shook hands and went on.  A foolish puff in the papers, calling on men and gods to assist a popular author, who, having choused the public of many thousands, had not the sense to keep wealth when he had it.  If I am hard pressed, and measures used against me, I must use all means of legal defence, and subscribe myself bankrupt in a petition for sequestration.  It is the course I would have advised a client to take, and would have the effect of saving my land, which is secured by my son’s contract of marriage.  I might save my library, etc., by assistance of friends, and bid my creditors defiance.  But for this I would, in a court of honour, deserve to lose my spurs.  No, if they permit me, I will be their vassal for life, and dig in the mine of my imagination to find diamonds (or what may sell for such) to make good my engagements, not to enrich myself.  And this from no reluctance to allow myself to be called the Insolvent, which I probably am, but because I will not put out of the [power] of my creditors the resources, mental or literary, which yet remain to me.

Went to the funeral of Chevalier Yelin, the literary foreigner mentioned on 22d.  How many and how various are the ways of affliction!  Here is this poor man dying at a distance from home, his proud heart broken, his wife and family anxiously expecting letters, and doomed only to learn they have lost a husband and father for ever.  He lies buried on the Calton Hill, near learned and scientific dust—­the graves of David Hume and John Playfair being side by side.