Everything else goes off well enough.  My cash affairs are clearing, and though last year was an expensive one, I have been paying debt.  Yet I have a dull contest before me which will probably outlast my life.  If well maintained, however, it will be an honourable one, and if the Magnum Opus succeed, it will afford me some repose.

January 11.—­I did not write above a page yesterday; most weary, stale, and unprofitable have been my labours.  Received a letter I suppose from Mad.  T.——­, proposing a string of historical subjects not proper for my purpose.  People will not consider that a thing may already be so well told in history, that romance ought not in prudence to meddle with it.

The ground covered with snow, which, by slipperiness and the pain occasioned by my lameness, renders walking unpleasant.

January 12.—­This is the third day I have not walked out, pain and lameness being the cause.  This bodes very ill for my future life.  I made a search yesterday and to-day for letters of Lord Byron to send to Tom Moore, but I could only find two.  I had several others, and am shocked at missing them.  The one which he sent me with a silver cup I regret particularly.  It was stolen out of the cup itself by some vile inhospitable scoundrel, for a servant would not have thought such a theft worth while.

My spirits are low, yet I wot not why.  I have been writing to my sons.  Walter’s majority was like to be reduced, but is spared for the present.  Charles is going on well I trust at the Foreign Office, so I hope all is well.

Loitered out a useless day, half arranging half disarranging books and papers, and packing the things I shall want. Der Abschiedstag ist da.

January 13.—­The day of return to Edinburgh is come.  I don’t know why, but I am more happy at the change than usual.  I am not working hard, and it is what I ought to do, and must do.  Every hour of laziness cries fie upon me.  But there is a perplexing sinking of the heart which one cannot always overcome.  At such times I have wished myself a clerk, quill-driving for twopence per page.  You have at least application, and that is all that is necessary, whereas unless your lively faculties are awake and propitious, your application will do you as little good as if you strained your sinews to lift Arthur’s Seat.

January 14, [Edinburgh].—­Got home last night after a freezing journey.  This morning I got back some of the last copy, and tugged as hard as ever did soutar to make ends meet.  Then I will be reconciled to my task, which at present disgusts me.  Visited Lady Jane, then called on Mr. Robison and instructed him to call a meeting of the Council of the Royal Society, as Mr. Knox proposes to read an essay on some dissections.  A bold proposal truly from one who has had so lately the boldness of trading so deep in human flesh!  I will oppose his reading in the present circumstances if I should stand alone, but I hope he will be wrought upon to withdraw his essay or postpone it at least.  It is very bad taste to push himself forward just now.  Lockhart dined with us, which made the evening a pleasant but an idle one.  Well!  I must rouse myself.