“Redde the ‘Quarrels of Authors’ (another sort of sparring)—­a new work, by that most entertaining and researching writer, Israeli.  They seem to be an irritable set, and I wish myself well out of it.  ’I’ll not march through Coventry with them, that’s flat.’  What the devil had I to do with scribbling?  It is too late to enquire, and all regret is useless.  But, an’ it were to do again,—­I should write again, I suppose.  Such is human nature, at least my share of it;—­though I shall think better of myself, if I have sense to stop now.  If I have a wife, and that wife has a son—­by any body—­I will bring up mine heir in the most anti-poetical way—­make him a lawyer, or a pirate, or—­any thing.  But, if he writes too, I shall be sure he is none of mine, and cut him off with a Bank token.  Must write a letter—­three o’clock.

“Sunday, March 20.

“I intended to go to Lady Hardwicke’s, but won’t.  I always begin the day with a bias towards going to parties; but, as the evening advances, my stimulus fails, and I hardly ever go out—­and, when I do, always regret it.  This might have been a pleasant one;—­at least, the hostess is a very superior woman.  Lady Lansdowne’s to morrow—­Lady Heathcote’s Wednesday.  Um!—­I must spur myself into going to some of them, or it will look like rudeness, and it is better to do as other people do—­confound them!

“Redde Machiavel, parts of Chardin, and Sismondi, and Bandello—­by starts.  Redde the Edinburgh, 44, just come out.  In the beginning of the article on ‘Edgeworth’s Patronage,’ I have gotten a high compliment, I perceive.  Whether this is creditable to me, I know not; but it does honour to the editor, because he once abused me.  Many a man will retract praise; none but a high-spirited mind will revoke its censure, or can praise the man it has once attacked.  I have often, since my return to England, heard Jeffrey most highly commended by those who know him for things independent of his talents.  I admire him for this—­not because he has praised me, (I have been so praised elsewhere and abused, alternately, that mere habit has rendered me as indifferent to both as a man at twenty-six can be to any thing,) but because he is, perhaps, the only man who, under the relations in which he and I stand, or stood, with regard to each other, would have had the liberality to act thus; none but a great soul dared hazard it.  The height on which he stands has not made him giddy:—­a little scribbler would have gone on cavilling to the end of the chapter.  As to the justice of his panegyric, that is matter of taste.  There are plenty to question it, and glad, too, of the opportunity.

“Lord Erskine called to-day.  He means to carry down his reflections on the war—­or rather wars—­to the present day.  I trust that he will.  Must send to Mr. Murray to get the binding of my copy of his pamphlet finished, as Lord E. has promised me to correct it, and add some marginal notes to it.  Any thing in his handwriting will be a treasure, which will gather compound interest from years.  Erskine has high expectations of Mackintosh’s promised History.  Undoubtedly it must be a classic, when finished.