Note 917 — FRIDAY, OCTOBER 22.

Begging pardon of the Doctor and his conductor, I have often seen and partaken of cold sheep's head at as good breakfast-tables as ever they sat at. This protest is something in the manner of the late Culrossie, who fought a duel for the honour of Aberdeen butter. I have passed over all the Doctor's other reproaches upon Scotland, but the sheep's head I will defend totis viribus. Dr. Johnson himself must have forgiven my zeal on this occasion; for if, as he says, dinner be the thing of which a man thinks oftenest during the day, breakfast must be that of which he thinks first in the morning. WALTER SCOTT. I do not know where Johnson says this. Perhaps Scott was thinking of a passage in Mrs. Piozzi's Anec. p. 149, where she writes that he said: 'A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of any thing than he does of his dinner.'