also have had very sad
recollections of the bloody results of the two melancholy duels arising
from the same party rancour in February 1821 (Scott and Christie) and in
March 1822 (Stuart and Boswell), with all the untold domestic miseries
accompanying them. It is satisfactory to think that this was about the
last of these uncalled for literary onslaughts, as one finds, in turning
over the pages of _Blackwood_, that in 1834 Professor Wilson in the
_Noctes_ rebukes some one for reviving "forgotten falsehoods," praises
Leigh Hunt's _London Journal_, and adds the ecstatic words, which he
also addressed later on to Lord Jeffrey, "The animosities are mortal,
but the humanities live for ever."

[140] Act III. Sc. 1.

[141] Sholto Douglas, eighteenth Earl of Morton.

MARCH.

_March_ 1.--Wrought a little this morning; always creeping on. We had a
hard pull at the Court, and after it I walked a little for exercise, as
I fear indigestion from dining out so often.

Dined to-day with the bankers who went as delegates to London in Malachi
Malagrowther's days. Sir John Hay Kinnear and Tom Allan were my only
acquaintances of the party; the rest seemed shrewd capable men. I
particularly remarked a Mr. Sandeman with as intellectual a head as I
ever witnessed.

_March_ 2.--A day of hard work with little interruption, and completed
volume second. I am not much pleased with it. It wants what I desire it
to have, and that is passion.

The two Ballantynes and Mr. Cadell dined with me quietly. Heard from
London; all well.

_March_ 3.--I set about clearing my desk of unanswered letters, which I
had suffered to accumulate to an Augean heap. I daresay I wrote twenty
cards that might have been written at the time without half-a-minute
being lost. To do everything when it ought to be done is the soul of
expedition. But then, if you are interrupted eternally with these petty
avocations, the current of the mind is compelled to flow in shallows,
and you lose the deep intensity of thought which alone can float plans
of depth and magnitude. I sometimes wish I were one of those formalists
who can assign each hour of the day its special occupations, not to be
encroached upon; but it always returns upon my mind that I do better _a
la debandade_, than I could with rules of regular study. A work begun is
with me a stone turned over with the purpose of rolling it down hill.
The first revolutions are made with difficulty--but _vires acquirit