_For the Table Book._
There is nothing I find so difficult to fill up as my spare time. Talk
as they will about liberty, it is after all nothing but a sort of
independent _ennui_--a freedom we are better without, if we do not know
how to use it. To instance myself:--the first thing I do on the
cessation of my daily avocations, which terminate rather early, is to
throw my two legs upon one chair, and recline my back against
another--when, after a provoking yawn of most ambiguous import, I
propound to myself with great gravity--what the deuce shall I do? A
series of questions instantly occur, which are as instantly
answered--generally in the negative. Shall I read Blackstone?--no: Coke
upon Littleton?--worse still: Fearne on Contingent Remainders?--horrid
idea!--it was recommended the other day to a young friend of mine, who
before he got to the end of the first page was taken with a shivering
fit, from which he has not yet recovered--no, no; confound the law! I
had enough of that this morning--What’s to be done then? The _Table
Book_ does not come out till to-morrow--Scott’s novels (unfashionable
wretch) I don’t like,--have read the Epicurean already twenty times--and
know Byron by heart. Take up my flute, mouthpiece mislaid, and can’t
play without--determined to try, notwithstanding it should be my three
thousandth failure; accordingly, blow like a bellows for about half an
hour--can make nothing of it, suddenly stop, and throw the instrument to
the other end of the room--forgetting the glass in the bookcase, the
largest pane of which it goes through with a loud crash. Still musical,
persist in humming a favourite air I have just thought of--hit the tune
to a T, and immediately strike up a most delightful strain, beginning
“Sounds delicious,” &c., when a cry comes from the parlour, “We really
must leave the house if that horrid noise is to be continued!”--Rather
galled by this rub--begin to get angry--start up from my two chairs and
walk briskly to the fireplace--arrange my hair pettishly--then stick my
hands in my pockets, and begin to muse--glass catches my eye--neckcloth
abominably out of order, instinctively untie and tie it again--tired of
standing--sit down to my desk--commence a Sonnet to the Moon, get on
swimmingly to the fifth line, and then--a dead stop--no rhyme to be got,
and the finest idea I ever had in my life in danger of being lost--this
will never do--determined to bring it in somewhere, and after a little
alteration introduce it most satisfactorily into a poem I had begun
yesterday on Patience, till, upon reading the whole over, I find it has
nothing whatever to do with the subject; and disgusted with the failure
tear up both poem and sonnet in a tremendous rage. Still at a loss what
to do--at length I have it--got a communication for the _Table
Book_--I’ll take a walk and leave it--