e to-day.

_February_ 15.--Rheumatism returns with the snow. I had thoughts of
going to Abbotsford on Saturday, but if this lasts, it will not do; and,
sooth to speak, it ought not to do; though it would do me much pleasure
if it would do.

I have a letter from Baron Von Goethe,[472] which I must have read to
me; for though I know German, I have forgot their written hand. I make
it a rule seldom to read, and never to answer, foreign letters from
literary folks. It leads to nothing but the battle-dore and shuttle-cock
intercourse of compliments, as light as cork and feathers. But Goethe is
different, and a wonderful fellow, the Ariosto at once, and almost the
Voltaire of Germany. Who could have told me thirty years ago I should
correspond, and be on something like an equal footing, with the author
of _Goetz_? Ay, and who could have told me fifty things else that have
befallen me?[473]

_February_ 16.--R. Still snow; and, alas! no time for work, so hard am I
fagged by the Court and the good company of Edinburgh. I almost wish my
rheumatics were bad enough to give me an apology for staying a week at
home. But we have Sunday and Monday clear. If not better, I will cribb
off Tuesday; and Wednesday is Teind day. We dined to-day with Mr.
Borthwick, younger of Crookston.

_February_ 17.--James Ferguson ill of the rheumatism in head and neck,
and Hector B. Macdonald in neck and shoulders. I wonder, as Commodore
Trunnion says, what the blackguard hell's-baby has to say to the Clerks
of Session.[474] Went to the Second Division to assist Hector.
_N.B._--Don't like it half so well as my own, for the speeches are much
longer. Home at dinner, and wrought in the evening.

_February_ 18.--Very cold weather. I am rather glad I am not in the
country. What says Dean Swift--

"When frost and snow come both together,
Then sit by the fire and save shoe leather."
Wrought all morning and finished five pages. Missie dined with us.

_February_ 19.--As well I give up Abbotsford, for Hamilton is laid up
with the gout. The snow, too, continues, with a hard frost. I have seen
the day I would have liked it all the better. I read and wrote at the
bitter account of the French retreat from Moscow, in 1812, till the
little room and coal fire seemed snug by comparison. I felt cold in its
rigour in my childhood and boyhood, but not since. In youth and advanced
life we get less sensible to it, but I remember thinking it worse than
hunger. U