I must set now to a second epistle of Malachi to the Athenians.  If I can but get the sulky Scottish spirit set up, the devil won’t turn them.

    “Cock up your beaver, and cock it fu’ sprush;
    We’ll over the Border, and give them a brush;
    There’s somebody there we’ll teach better behaviour;
    Hey, Johnnie lad, cock up your beaver."[194]

February 26.—­Spent the morning and till dinner on Malachi’s second epistle to the Athenians.  It is difficult to steer betwixt the natural impulse of one’s national feelings setting in one direction, and the prudent regard to the interests of the empire and its internal peace and quiet, recommending less vehement expression.  I will endeavour to keep sight of both.  But were my own interests alone concerned, d—­n me but I would give it them hot!  Had some valuable communications from Colin Mackenzie and Lord Medwyn, which will supply my plentiful lack of facts.

Received an anonymous satire in doggrel, which, having read the first verse and last, I committed to the flames.  Peter Murray, son of the clever Lord Elibank, called and sat half-an-hour—­an old friend, and who, from the peculiarity and originality of his genius, is one of the most entertaining companions I have ever known.[195] But I must finish Malachi.

February 27.—­Malachi is getting on; I must finish him to-night.  I dare say some of my London friends will be displeased—­Canning perhaps, for he is engoue of Huskisson.  Can’t help it.

The place I looked at won’t do; but I really must get some lodging, for, reason or none, Dalgleish[196] will not leave me, and cries and makes a scene.  Now if I stayed alone in a little set of chambers, he would serve greatly for my accommodation.  There are some nice places of the kind in the.  New Buildings, but they are distant from the Court, and I cannot walk well on the pavement.  It is odd enough that just when I had made a resolution to use my coach frequently I ceased to keep one—­in town at least.

February 28.—­Completed Malachi to-day.  It is more serious than the first, and in some places perhaps too peppery.  Never mind, if you would have a horse kick, make a crupper out of a whin-cow,[197] and I trust to see Scotland kick and fling to some purpose. Woodstock lies back for this.  But quid non pro patria?

FOOTNOTES: 

[143] Cause of Truth defended, etc.  Two Trials of the Rev. T. Hill, Methodist Preacher, for defamation of the character of Miss Bell, etc. etc. 8vo.  Hull and London, 1827.

[144] Coleridge’s Christabel, Part II.

[145] James Ferrier, one of the Clerks of Session,—­the father of the authoress of Marriage, The Inheritance, and Destiny.  Mr. Ferrier was born in 1744, and died in 1829.