Hear of Miss White's death. Poor Lydia! she had a party at dinner on the Friday before, and had written with her own hand invitations for another party. Twenty years ago she used to tease me with her youthful affectations--her dressing like the Queen of Chimney-sweeps on May-day morning, and sometimes with rather a free turn in conversation, when she let her wit run wild. But she was a woman of much wit, and had a feeling and kind heart. She made her point good, a _bas-bleu_ in London to a point not easily attained, and contrived to have every evening a very good literary _mêlée_, and little dinners which were very entertaining. She had also the newest lions upon town. In a word, she was not and would not be forgotten, even when disease obliged her, as it did for years, to confine herself to her couch; and the world, much abused for hard-heartedness, was kind in her case--so she lived in the society she liked. No great expenditure was necessary for this. She had an easy fortune, but not more. Poor Lydia! I saw the Duke of York and her in London, when Death, it seems, was brandishing his dart over them.[460] "The view o't gave them little fright."[461] Did not get quite a day's work finished to-day, thanks to my walk. _February_ 3.--There is nought but care on every hand. James Hogg writes that he is to lose his farm,[462] on which he laid out, or rather threw away, the profit of all his publications. Then Terry has been pressed by Gibson for my debt to him. That I may get managed. I sometimes doubt if I am in what the good people call the right way. Not to sing my own praises, I have been willing always to do my friends what good was in my power, and have not shunned personal responsibility. But then that was in money matters, to which I am naturally indifferent, unless when the consequences press on me. But then I am a bad comforter in case of inevitable calamity; and feeling proudly able to endure in my own case, I cannot sympathise with those whose nerves are of a feebler texture. Dined at Jeffrey's, with Lord and Lady Minto, John Murray and his lady,[463] a Mr. Featherstone, an Americo-Yorkshireman, and some others. Mrs. Murray is a very amiable person, and seems highly accomplished; plays most brilliantly. _February_ 4.--R.R. These two letters, you must understand, do not signify, as in Bibliomania phrase, a double degree of rarity, but, chirurgically, a double degree of rheumatism. The wine gets to weak places, Ross says. I have a letter from no less a person than that pink of booksellers, Sir Richard Phillips, who, it seems, has been ruined, and as he sees me floating down the same dark tide, sings out his _nos poma natamus_.