ers manage their affairs better--hold off--avoid
committing themselves, but throw their _vis inertiae_ into the opposite
scale, and neutralise the feelings which they cannot combat. To force
them to fight on disadvantageous ground is our policy. But we have more
sneakers after Ministerial favour than men who love their country, and
who upon a liberal scale would serve their party. For to force the Whigs
to avow an unpopular doctrine in popular assemblies, or to wrench the
government of such bodies from them, would be a _coup de maitre_. But
they are alike destitute of manly resolution and sound policy. D--n the
whole nest of them! I have corrected the last of _Malachi_, and let the
thing take its chance. I have made enemies enough, and indisposed enough
of friends.

_March_ 8.--At the Court, though a teind day. A foolish thing happened
while the Court were engaged with the teinds. I amused myself with
writing on a sheet of paper notes on Frederick Maitland's account of the
capture of Bonaparte; and I have lost these notes--shuffled in perhaps
among my own papers, or those of the teind clerks. What a curious
document to be found in a process of valuation!

Being jaded and sleepy, I took up Le Due de Guise on Naples.[207] I
think this, with the old Memoires on the same subject which I have at
Abbotsford, would enable me to make a pretty essay for the _Quarterly_.
We must take up _Woodstock_ now in good earnest. Mr. Cowan, a good and
able man, is chosen trustee in Constable's affairs, with full power.
From what I hear, the poor man is not sensible of the nature of his own
situation; for myself, I have succeeded in putting the matters perfectly
out of my mind since I cannot help them, and have arrived at a
_flocci-pauci-nihili-pili-_fication of money, and I thank Shenstone for
inventing that long word.[208] They are removing the wine, etc., to the
carts, and you will judge if our flitting is not making a noise in the
world--or in the street at least.

_March_ 9.--I foresaw justly,

"When first I set this dangerous stone a-rolling,
'Twould fall upon myself."[209]

Sir Robert Dundas to-day put into my hands a letter of between thirty
and forty pages, in angry and bitter reprobation of _Malachi_, full of
general averments and very untenable arguments, all written at me by
name, but of which I am to have no copy, and which is to be shown to me
_in extenso_, and circulated to other special friends, to whom it may be