Here is a matter for a May morning, but much fitter for a November one.  The general distress in the city has affected H. and R.,[15] Constable’s great agents.  Should they go, it is not likely that Constable can stand, and such an event would lead to great distress and perplexity on the part of J.B. and myself.  Thank God, I have enough at least to pay forty shillings in the pound, taking matters at the very worst.  But much distress and inconvenience must be the consequence.  I had a lesson in 1814 which should have done good upon me, but success and abundance erased it from my mind.  But this is no time for journalising or moralising either.  Necessity is like a sour-faced cook-maid, and I a turn-spit whom she has flogged ere now, till he mounted his wheel.  If W-st-k[16] can be out by 25th January it will do much, and it is possible.

------’s son has saved his comrade on shipboard by throwing himself
overboard and keeping the other afloat—­a very gallant thing.  But the
Gran giag’ Asso[17] asks me to write a poem on the civic crown, of
which he sends me a description quoted from Adam’s Antiquities, which
mellifluous performance is to persuade the Admiralty to give the young
conservator promotion.  Oh! he is a rare head-piece, an admirable Merron. 
I do not believe there is in nature such a full-acorned Boar.[18]

Could not write to purpose for thick-coming fancies; the wheel would not turn easily, and cannot be forced.

    “My spinning-wheel is auld and stiff,
      The rock o’t winna stand, sir;
    To keep the temper-pin in tiff
      Employs aft my hand, sir."[19]

Went to dine at the L[ord] J[ustice]-C[lerk’s][20] as I thought by invitation, but it was for Tuesday se’nnight.  Returned very well pleased, not being exactly in the humour for company, and had a beef-steak.  My appetite is surely, excepting in quantity, that of a farmer; for, eating moderately of anything, my Epicurean pleasure is in the most simple diet.  Wine I seldom taste when alone, and use instead a little spirits and water.  I have of late diminished the quantity, for fear of a weakness inductive to a diabetes—­a disease which broke up my father’s health, though one of the most temperate men who ever lived.  I smoke a couple of cigars instead, which operates equally as a sedative—­

    “Just to drive the cold winter away,
    And drown the fatigues of the day.”

I smoked a good deal about twenty years ago when at Ashestiel; but, coming down one morning to the parlour, I found, as the room was small and confined, that the smell was unpleasant, and laid aside the use of the Nicotian weed for many years; but was again led to use it by the example of my son, a hussar officer, and my son-in-law, an Oxford student.  I could lay it aside to-morrow; I laugh at the dominion of custom in this and many things.

    “We make the giants first, and then—­do not kill them.”