which I
have ordered for cancel. Supped (for a wonder) with Colin Mackenzie and
a bachelor party. Mr. Williams[541] was there, whose extensive
information, learning, and lively talent makes him always pleasant
company. Up till twelve--a debauch for me nowadays.

_June_ 30.--_Redd up_ my things for moving,[542] which will clear my
hands a little on the next final flitting. Corrected proof-sheets.
Williams told me an English bull last night. A fellow of a college,
deeply learned, sitting at a public entertainment beside a foreigner,
tried every means to enter into conversation, but the stranger could
speak no dead language, the Doctor no living one but his own. At last
the scholar, in great extremity, was enlightened by a happy "_Nonne
potes loqui cum digitis_?"--said as if the difficulty was solved at
once.

_Abbotsford_.--Reached this about six o'clock.[543]

[Illustration: MAP OF ABBOTS FORD FROM THE ORDNANCE SURVEY 1858.]

FOOTNOTES:

[527] Sheridan's _Critic_, Act I. Sc, 1.

[528] "No sooner had the Sun uttered these words than Fortune, as if she
had been playing on a cymbal, began to unwind her wheel, which, whirling
about like a hurricane, huddled all the world into an unparalleled
confusion. Fortune gave a mighty squeak, saying, 'Fly, wheel, and the
devil drive thee.'"--_Fortune in her Wits_, Quevedo. English trans.
(1798), vol. iii. p. 107.

[529] Burns: "On a Scotch Bard, gone to the West Indies."

[530] _Vivian Grey_, by Benjamin Disraeli, was published anonymously in
5 vols. 12mo, 1826-7.

[531] If the reader turns to December 18, 1825, he will see that this is
not the first allusion in the Journal to his "first love,"--an innocent
attachment, to which we owe the tenderest pages, not only of
_Redgauntlet_ (1824), but of the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_ (1805), and
of _Rokeby_ (1813). In all these works the heroine has certain
distinctive features drawn from one and the same haunting dream. The
lady was "Williamina Belches, sole child and heir of a gentleman who was
a cadet of the ancient family of Invermay, and who afterwards became Sir
John Stuart of Fettercairn." She married Sir William Forbes in 1797 and
died in 1810.--_Life_, vol. i. p. 333; Shairp's _Memoirs of Principal
Forbes_, pp. 4, 5, 8vo, London, 1873, where her portrait, engraved from
a miniature, is given.

[532] Hugh Cleghorn had been Professor of Civil History in St. Andrews
for ten years, afterwards becoming tutor to the Earl of Hom