ntion a person of whom I knew nothing but that he was an honest and
intelligent man. All seemed to acquiesce, and agreed to move the thing
to the party concerned this morning, and so Mr. G. and Mr. C. left me,
when J.B. let out that it was their unanimous opinion that we should be
in great trouble were the individual appointed, from faults of temper,
etc., which would make it difficult to get on with him. With a hearty
curse I hurried J.B. to let them know that I had no partiality for the
man whatever, and only named him because he had been proposed for a
similar situation elsewhere. This is provoking enough, that they would
let me embarrass my affairs with a bad man (an unfit one, I mean)
rather than contradict me. I dare say great men are often used so.

I laboured freely yesterday. The stream rose fast--if clearly, is
another question; but there is bulk for it, at least--about thirty
printed pages.

"And now again, boys, to the oar."

_January_ 31.--There being nothing in the roll to-day, I stay at home
from the Court, and add another day's perfect labour to _Woodstock_,
which is worth five days of snatched intervals, when the current of
thought and invention is broken in upon, and the mind shaken and
diverted from its purpose by a succession of petty interruptions. I have
now no pecuniary provisions to embarrass me, and I think, now the shock
of the discovery is past and over, I am much better off on the whole; I
am as if I had shaken off from my shoulders a great mass of garments,
rich, indeed, but cumbrous, and always more a burden than a comfort. I
am free of an hundred petty public duties imposed on me as a man of
consideration--of the expense of a great hospitality--and, what is
better, of the great waste of time connected with it. I have known, in
my day, all kinds of society, and can pretty well estimate how much or
how little one loses by retiring from all but that which is very
intimate. I sleep and eat, and work as I was wont; and if I could see
those about me as indifferent to the loss of rank as I am, I should be
completely happy. As it is, Time must salve that sore, and to Time I
trust it.

Since the 14th of this month no guest has broken bread in my house save
G.H. Gordon[142] one morning at breakfast. This happened never before
since I had a house of my own. But I have played Abou Hassan long
enough; and if the Caliph came I would turn him back again.

FOOTNOTES:

[107] The parsimonious yet