December 8. — Talking of the vixisse, it may not be impertinent to notice that Knox, a young poet of considerable talent, died here a week or two since. His father was a respectable yeoman, and he himself, succeeding to good farms under the Duke of Buccleuch, became too soon his own master, and plunged into dissipation and ruin. His poetical talent, a very fine one, then showed itself in a fine strain of pensive poetry, called, I think, The Lonely Hearth, far superior to those of Michael Bruce, whose consumption, by the way, has been the life of his verses. But poetry, nay, good poetry, is a drug in the present day. I am a wretched patron. I cannot go with a subscription-paper, like a pocketpistol about me, and draw unawares on some honest country-gentleman, who has as much alarm as if I had used the phrase “stand and deliver,” and parts with his money with a grimace, indicating some suspicion that the crown-piece thus levied goes ultimately into the collector’s own pocket. This I see daily done; and I have seen such collectors, when they have exhausted Papa and Mamma, continue their trade among the misses, and conjure out of their pockets those little funds which should carry them to a play or an assembly. It is well people will go through this — it does some good, I suppose, and they have great merit who can sacrifice their pride so far as to attempt it in this way. For my part I am a bad promoter of subscriptions; but I wished to do what I could for this lad, whose talent I really admired; and I am not addicted to admire heaven-born poets, or poetry that is reckoned very good considering. I had him, Knox, at Abbotsford, about ten years ago, but found him unfit for that sort of society. I tried to help him, but there were temptations he could never resist. He scrambled on, writing for the booksellers and magazines, and living like the Otways, and Savages, and Chattertons of former days, though I do not know that he was in actual want. His connection with me terminated in begging a subscription or a guinea now and then. His last works were spiritual hymns, and which he wrote very well. In his own line of society he was said to exhibit infinite humour; but all his works are grave and pensive, a style perhaps, like Master Stephen’s melancholy, affected for the nonce.
Mrs. G[rant] of L. intimates that she will take her pudding — her pension, I mean (see 30th November), and is contrite, as H[enry] M[ackenzie] vouches. I am glad the stout old girl is not foreclosed; faith, cabbing a pension in these times is like hunting a pig with a soap’d tail, monstrous apt to slip through your fingers. Dined at home with Lady S. and Anne.
December 9. — Yesterday I read and wrote the whole day and evening. To-day I shall not be so happy. Having GasLight Company to attend at two, I must be brief in journalising.
The gay world has been kept in hot water lately by the impudent publication of the celebrated Harriet Wilson, — — from earliest possibility, I suppose, who lived with half the gay world at hack and manger, and now obliges such as will not pay hushmoney with a history of whatever she knows or can invent about them. She must have been assisted in the style, spelling, and diction, though the attempt at wit is very poor, that at pathos sickening. But there is some good retailing of conversations, in which the style of the speakers, so far as known to me, is exactly imitated, and some things told, as said by individuals of each other, which will sound unpleasantly in each other’s ears. I admire the address of Lord A — — y, himself very severely handled from time to time. Some one asked him if H.W. had been pretty correct on the whole. “Why, faith,” he replied, “I believe so” — when, raising his eyes, he saw Quentin Dick, whom the little jilt had treated atrociously — ”what concerns the present company always excepted, you know,” added Lord A — — y, with infinite presence of mind. As he was in pari casu with Q.D. no more could be said. After all, H.W. beats Con Philips, Anne Bellamy, and all former demireps out and out. I think I supped once in her company, more than twenty years since, at Mat Lewis’s in Argyle Street, where the company, as the Duke says to Lucio, chanced to be “fairer than honest.” She was far from beautiful, if it be the same chiffonne, but a smart saucy girl, with good eyes and dark hair, and the manners of a wild schoolboy. I am glad this accidental meeting has escaped her memory — or, perhaps, is not accurately recorded in mine — for, being a sort of French falconer, who hawk at all they see, I might have had a distinction which I am far from desiring.
Dined at Sir John Hay’s — a large party; Skenes there, the Newenhams and others, strangers. In the morning a meeting of Oil Gas Committee. The concern lingers a little;
“It may do weel, for ought it’s done yet,
But only — it’s no just begun yet.”
December 10. — A stormy and rainy day. Walked from the Court through the rain. I don’t dislike this. Egad, I rather like it; for no man that ever stepped on heather has less dread than I of catch-cold; and I seem to regain, in buffeting with the wind, a little of the high spirit with which, in younger days, I used to enjoy a Tam-o’-Shanter ride through darkness, wind, and rain, — the boughs groaning and cracking over my head, the good horse free to the road and impatient for home, and feeling the weather as little as I did.
“The storm around might roar and rustle,
We didna mind the storm a whistle.”
Answered two letters — one, answer to a schoolboy, who writes himself Captain of Giggleswick School (a most imposing title), entreating the youngster not to commence editor of a magazine to be entitled the “Yorkshire Muffin,” I think, at seventeen years old; second, to a soldier of the 79th, showing why I cannot oblige him by getting his discharge, and exhorting him rather to bear with the wickedness and profanity of the service, than take the very precarious step of desertion. This is the old receipt of Durandarte — Patience, cousin, and shuffle the cards; and I suppose the correspondents will think I have been too busy in offering my counsel where I was asked for assistance.
A third rogue writes to tell me — rather of the latest, if the matter was of consequence — that he approves of the first three volumes of the H[eart] of Midlothian, but totally condemns the fourth. Doubtless he thinks his opinion worth the sevenpence sterling which his letter costs. However, authors should be reasonably well pleased when three-fourths of their work are acceptable to the reader. The knave demands of me in a postscript, to get back the sword of Sir W[illiam] Wallace from England, where it was carried from Dumbarton Castle. I am not Master-General of the Ordnance, that I know. It was wrong, however, to take away that and Mons Meg. If I go to town this spring, I will renew my negotiation with the Great Duke for recovery of Mons Meg.
There is no theme more awful than to attempt to cast a glance among the clouds and mists which hide the broken extremity of the celebrated bridge of Mirza. Yet, when every day brings us nearer that termination, one would almost think that our views should become clearer, as the regions we are approaching are brought nigher. Alas! it is not so: there is a curtain to be withdrawn, a veil to be rent, before we shall see things as they really are. There are few, I trust, who disbelieve the existence of a God; nay, I doubt if at all times, and in all moods, any single individual ever adopted that hideous creed, though some have professed it. With the belief of a Deity, that of the immortality of the soul and of the state of future rewards and punishments is indissolubly linked. More we are not to know; but neither are we prohibited from our attempts, however vain, to pierce the solemn sacred gloom. The expressions used in Scripture are doubtless metaphorical, for penal fires and heavenly melody are only applicable to bodies endowed with senses; and, at least till the period of the resurrection of the body, the spirits of men, whether entering into the perfection of the just, or committed to the regions of punishment, are incorporeal. Neither is it to be supposed that the glorified bodies which shall arise in the last day will be capable of the same gross indulgences with which they are now solaced. That the idea of Mahomet’s paradise is inconsistent with the purity of our heavenly religion will be readily granted; and see Mark xii. 25. Harmony