through a curious atmosphere,
half mist, half rain, famous for rheumatic joints. Yet I felt no
increase of my plaguey malady, but, on the contrary, am rather better. I
had need, otherwise a pair of crutches for life were my prettiest help.

Walter dined with us to-day, Jane remaining with her mother. The good
affectionate creatures leave us to-morrow. God send them a quick passage
through the Irish Channel! They go to Gort, where Walter's troop is
lying--a long journey for winter days.

_January_ 17.--Another proper day of mist, sleet, and rain, through
which I navigated homeward. I imagine the distance to be a mile and a
half. It is a good thing to secure as much exercise.

I observed in the papers my old friend Gifford's funeral. He was a man
of rare attainments and many excellent qualities. The translation of
Juvenal is one of the best versions ever made of a classical author, and
his satire of the Baviad and Maeviad squabashed at one blow a set of
coxcombs who might have humbugged the world long enough.

As a commentator he was capital, could he but have suppressed his
rancour against those who had preceded him in the task, but a
misconstruction or misinterpretation, nay, the misplacing of a comma,
was in Gifford's eyes a crime worthy of the most severe animadversion.
The same fault of extreme severity went through his critical labours,
and in general he flagellated with so little pity, that people lost
their sense of the criminal's guilt in dislike of the savage pleasure
which the executioner seemed to take in inflicting the punishment.

This lack of temper probably arose from indifferent health, for he was
very valetudinary, and realised two verses, wherein he says fortune
assigned him--

"----- One eye not over good,
Two sides that to their cost have stood
A ten years' hectic cough,
Aches, stitches, all the various ills
That swell the dev'lish doctor's bills,
And sweep poor mortals off."

But he might also justly claim, as his gift, the moral qualities
expressed in the next fine stanza--

"------A soul
That spurns the crowd's malign control,
A firm contempt of wrong:
Spirits above afflictions' power,
And skill to soothe the lingering hour
With no inglorious song."[443]

_January_ 18.--To go on with my subject--Gifford was a little man,
dumpled up together, and so ill-made as to seem almost deformed, but
with