ubt, so should I, and am
wellnigh doing so at any rate. But, _fortuna juvante!_ much may be
achieved. At worst, the prospect is not very discouraging to one who
wants little. Methinks I have been like Burns's poor labourer,

"So constantly in Ruin's sight,
The view o't gives me little fright."

_[Edinburgh,] February_ 10.--Went through, for a new day, the task of
buttoning, which seems to me somehow to fill up more of my morning than
usual--not, certainly, that such is really the case, but that my mind
attends to the process, having so little left to hope or fear. The half
hour between waking and rising has all my life proved propitious to any
task which was exercising my invention.[163] When I get over any knotty
difficulty in a story, or have had in former times to fill up a passage
in a poem, it was always when I first opened my eyes that the desired
ideas thronged upon me. This is so much the case that I am in the habit
of relying upon it, and saying to myself, when I am at a loss, "Never
mind, we shall have it at seven o'clock to-morrow morning." If I have
forgot a circumstance, or a name, or a copy of verses, it is the same
thing. There is a passage about this sort of matutinal inspiration in
the Odyssey,[164] which would make a handsome figure here if I could
read or write Greek. I will look into Pope for it, who, ten to one, will
not tell me the real translation. I think the first hour of the morning
is also favourable to the bodily strength. Among other feats, when I was
a young man, I was able at times to lift a smith's anvil with one hand,
by what is called the _horn_, or projecting piece of iron on which
things are beaten to turn them round. But I could only do this before
breakfast, and shortly after rising. It required my full strength,
undiminished by the least exertion, and those who choose to try it will
find the feat no easy one. This morning I had some good ideas respecting
_Woodstock_ which will make the story better. The devil of a difficulty
is, that one puzzles the skein in order to excite curiosity, and then
cannot disentangle it for the satisfaction of the prying fiend they have
raised. A letter from Sir James Mackintosh of condolence, prettily
expressed, and which may be sung to the old tune of "Welcome, welcome,
brother Debtor." A brother son of chivalry dismounted by mischance is
sure to excite the compassion of one laid on the arena before him.

Yesterday I had an anecdote from old