Having omitted to carry on my Diary for two or three days, I lost heart
to make it up, and left it unfilled for many a month and day. During
this period nothing has happened worth particular notice. The same
occupations, the same amusements, the same occasional alternations of
spirits, gay or depressed, the same absence of all sensible or rational
cause for the one or the other. I half grieve to take up my pen, and
doubt if it is worth while to record such an infinite quantity of
nothing, but hang it! I hate to be beat, so here goes for better
behaviour.
_January_ 10.--I resume my task at Abbotsford. We are here alone, except
Lockhart, on a flying visit. Morritt, his niece, Sir James Stuart,
Skene, and an occasional friend or two, have been my guests since 31st
December. I cannot say I have been happy, for the feeling of increasing
weakness in my lame leg is a great affliction. I walk now with pain and
difficulty at all times, and it sinks my soul to think how soon I may be
altogether a disabled cripple. I am tedious to my friends, and I doubt
the sense of it makes me fretful.
Everything else goes off well enough. My cash affairs are clearing, and
though last year was an expensive one, I have been paying debt. Yet I
have a dull contest before me which will probably outlast my life. If
well maintained, however, it will be an honourable one, and if the
_Magnum Opus_ succeed, it will afford me some repose.
_January_ 11.--I did not write above a page yesterday; most weary,
stale, and unprofitable have been my labours. Received a letter I
suppose from Mad. T.----, proposing a string of historical subjects not
proper for my purpose. People will not consider that a thing may already
be so well told in history, that romance ought not in prudence to meddle
with it.
The ground covered with snow, which, by slipperiness and the pain
occasioned by my lameness, renders walking unpleasant.
_January_ 12.--This is the third day I have not walked out, pain and
lameness being the cause. This bodes very ill for my future life. I made
a search yesterday and to-day for letters of Lord Byron to send to Tom
Moore, but I could only find two. I had several others, and am shocked
at missing them. The one which he sent me with a silver cup I regret
particularly. It was stolen out of the cup itself by some vile
inhospitable scoundrel, for a servant would not have thought such a
theft worth while.
My spirits are low, yet I wot not why. I have been writing to my sons.
Walter's majority was like to be reduced, but is spared for the present.
Charles is going on well I trust at the Foreign Office, so I hope all is
well.
Loitered out a useless day, half arranging half disarranging books and
papers, and packing the things I shall want. _Der Abschiedstag ist da_.
_January_ 13.--The day of return to Edinburgh is come. I don't know why,
but I am more happy at the change than usual. I am not working hard, and
it is what I ought to do, and must do. Every hour of laziness cries fie
upon me. But there is a perplexing sinking of the heart which one cannot
always overcome. At such times I have wished myself a clerk,
quill-driving for twopence per page. You have at least application, and
that is all that is necessary, whereas unless your lively faculties are
awake and propitious, your application will do you as little good as if
you strained your sinews to lift Arthur's Seat.
_January_ 14, [_Edinburgh_].--Got home last night after a freezing
journey. This morning I got back some of the last copy, and tugged as
hard as ever did soutar to make ends meet. Then I will be reconciled to
my task, which at present disgusts me. Visited Lady Jane, then called on
Mr. Robison and instructed him to call a meeting of the Council of the
Royal Society, as Mr. Knox proposes to read an essay on some
dissections. A bold proposal truly from one who has had so lately the
boldness of trading so deep in human flesh! I will oppose his reading in
the present circumstances if I should stand alone, but I hope he will be
wrought upon to withdraw his essay or postpone it at least. It is very
bad taste to push himself forward just now. Lockhart dined with us,
which made the evening a pleasant but an idle one. Well! I must rouse
myself.
"Awake! Arise, or be for ever fallen."[232]
_January_ 15.--Day began with beggars as usual, and John Nicolson has
not sense to keep them out. I never yield, however, to this importunity,
thinking it wrong that what I can spare to meritorious poverty, of which
I hear and see too much, should be diverted by impudent importunity. I
was detained at the Parliament House till nearly three by the great case
concerning prescription, Maule _v_. Maule.[233] This was made up to me
by hearing an excellent opinion from Lord Corehouse, with a curious
discussion _in apicibus juris._ I disappointed Graham[234] of a sitting
for my picture.
I went to the Council of the Royal Society, which was convened at my
request, to consider whether we ought to hear a paper on anatomical
subjects read by Mr. Knox, whose name has of late been deeply implicated
in a criminal prosecution against certain wretches, who had murdered
many persons and sold their bodies to professors of the anatomical
science. Some thought that our declining to receive the paper would be a
declaration unfavourable to Dr. Knox. I think hearing it before Mr. Knox
has made any defence (as he is stated to have in view) would be an
intimation of our preference of the cause of science to those of
morality and common humanity. Mr. Knox's friends undertook to deal with
him about suffering the paper to be omitted for the present, while
_adhuc coram judice lis est_.[235]
_January_ 16.--Nothing on the roll to-day, so I did not go to the
Parliament House, but fagged at my desk till two.
Dr. Ross called to relieve me of a corn, which, though my lameness
needs no addition, had tormented me vilely. I again met the Royal
Society Council. Dr. Knox consents to withdraw his paper, or rather
suffers the reading to be postponed. There is some great error in the
law on the subject. If it was left to itself many bodies would be
imported from France and Ireland, and doubtless many would be found in
our hospitals for the service of the anatomical science. But the total
and severe exclusion of foreign supplies of this kind raises the price
of the "subjects," as they are called technically, to such a height,
that wretches are found willing to break into "the bloody house of
life,"[236] merely to supply the anatomists' table. The law which, as a
deeper sentence on the guilt of murder, declares that the body of the
convicted criminal should be given up to anatomy, is certainly not
without effect, for criminals have been known to shrink from that part
of the sentence which seems to affect them more than the doom of death
itself, with all its terrors here and hereafter. On the other hand,
while this idea of the infamy attending the exposition of the person is
thus recognised by the law, it is impossible to adopt regulations which
would effectually prevent such horrid crimes as the murder of vagrant
wretches who can be snatched from society without their being missed, as
in the case of the late conspiracy. For instance, if it was now to be
enacted, as seems reasonable, that persons dying in hospitals and
almshouses, who die without their friends claiming their remains, should
be given up to the men of science, this would be subjecting poverty to
the penalty of these atrocious criminals whom law distinguishes by the
heaviest posthumous disgrace which it can inflict. Even cultivated minds
revolt from the exposure on an anatomical table, when the case is
supposed to be that of one who is dear to them. I should, I am
conscious, be willing that I myself should be dissected in public, if
doing so could produce any advantage to society, but when I think on
relations and friends being rent from the grave the case is very
different, and I would fight knee-deep to prevent or punish such an
exposure. So inconsistent we are all upon matters of this nature.