[Footnote 17: This letter is addressed to the writer.]
[Footnote 18: His youngest daughter had had a mild attack of scarlet fever, from which she was completely recovered before he left home.]
"I dined yesterday with the Vindicator,[19] when Horne, who you know is now Dean of Faculty, was in all his glory. On Monday I dined with Everest, dined also with Ellice and Colonel Mure, the member for Renfrewshire--rather too much gaiety, but I have no other engagement. I don't yet see when I shall get away, but will let you know whenever I myself know.
[Footnote 19: Mr Hosack, author of an ingenious and exhaustive work, 'Mary Queen of Scots and her Accusers,' in which he vindicates the character of Queen Mary. Notwithstanding their difference of opinion on that fruitful subject of dispute, the two authors were fast friends.]
"I sent Will an engineering work yesterday, which I hope will profit and please him.--Love to all from your affectionate J.H. BURTON."
Constitutionally irritable, energetic, and utterly persistent, Dr Burton did not know what dulness or depression of spirits was. With grief he was indeed acquainted, and while such a feeling lasted it engrossed him; but his spirits were naturally elastic, and both by nature and on principle he discouraged in himself and others any dwelling on the sad or pathetic aspects of life. He has said that the nearest approach he had ever felt to low spirits was when he had finished some great work, and had not yet begun another.
Such blanks in his life were short, and ever shorter and fewer. He found necessary excitement in his work, and, when he joined his family, needed no particular encouragement or inducement to lead him to talk either about what he was doing or something else. As he advanced in years his family learned more and more to leave the choice of subjects of conversation entirely to him. Any subject not chosen by himself was apt to prove irritating. Sometimes even his own did. Often his irritations were amusing. If his wife, or some one else, chose to affect a ludicrous degree of ignorance on some of his special subjects, they might probably elicit a volley of information which would not have been vouchsafed to them in answer to a serious question. Old reminiscences sometimes led on to those laughable sayings in which Dr Burton's talk was rich. For instance,--He had once rented an old inn at Pettycur as summer quarters, and a favourite amusement, both at the time and afterwards, was to imagine and describe the visitors who might have called on him there in ignorance of the changed destination of the house. He would imagine and mimic the tones of a drouthy Highland drover demanding refreshment,--which, by the way, he would have been sure to get had he so applied to Dr Burton; of an entirely drunk Lowlander, persisting in representing himself as a _bonâ fide_ traveller; of a highly Conservative old nobleman, posting up to town with his carriage-and-four in spite of railways: this story ended with, "A wicked and perverse generation shall come seeking a _Sign_, and no sign shall be given them."