“Another scribble from Martin Baldwin the petitioner; I have neither head nor nerves to present it.  That confounded supper at Lewis’s has spoiled my digestion and my philanthropy.  I have no more charity than a cruet of vinegar.  Would I were an ostrich, and dieted on fire-irons,—­or any thing that my gizzard could get the better of.

“To-day saw W. His uncle is dying, and W. don’t much affect our Dutch determinations.  I dine with him on Thursday, provided l’oncle is not dined upon, or peremptorily bespoke by the posthumous epicures before that day.  I wish he may recover—­not for our dinner’s sake, but to disappoint the undertaker, and the rascally reptiles that may well wait, since they will dine at last.

“Gell called—­he of Troy—­after I was out.  Mem.—­to return his visit.  But my Mems. are the very land-marks of forgetfulness;—­something like a light-house, with a ship wrecked under the nose of its lantern.  I never look at a Mem. without seeing that I have remembered to forget.  Mem.—­I have forgotten to pay Pitt’s taxes, and suppose I shall be surcharged.  ’An I do not turn rebel when thou art king’—­oons!  I believe my very biscuit is leavened with that impostor’s imposts.

“Ly.  Me. returns from Jersey’s to-morrow;—­I must call.  A Mr. Thomson has sent a song, which I must applaud.  I hate annoying them with censure or silence;—­and yet I hate lettering.

“Saw Lord Glenbervie and his Prospectus, at Murray’s, of a new Treatise on Timber.  Now here is a man more useful than all the historians and rhymers ever planted.  For, by preserving our woods and forests, he furnishes materials for all the history of Britain worth reading, and all the odes worth nothing.

“Redde a good deal, but desultorily.  My head is crammed with the most useless lumber.  It is odd that when I do read, I can only bear the chicken broth of—­any thing but Novels.  It is many a year since I looked into one, (though they are sometimes ordered, by way of experiment, but never taken,) till I looked yesterday at the worst parts of the Monk.  These descriptions ought to have been written by Tiberius at Caprea—­they are forced—­the philtred ideas of a jaded voluptuary.  It is to me inconceivable how they could have been composed by a man of only twenty—­his age when he wrote them.  They have no nature—­all the sour cream of cantharides.  I should have suspected Buffon of writing them on the death-bed of his detestable dotage.  I had never redde this edition, and merely looked at them from curiosity and recollection of the noise they made, and the name they have left to Lewis.  But they could do no harm, except * * * *.

“Called this evening on my agent—­my business as usual.  Our strange adventures are the only inheritances of our family that have not diminished.