"I must add, that he was a cheerful and most agreeable companion, well informed, and who accommodated himself to the company; and, for all his abstruse learning, was never happier than in a select company of ladies and friends, and fond to engage in a party at whist, of which game he was a complete adept, and, of consequence, successful. He never played deep; never above a shilling, one, two, or three; and I have known him come into Edinburgh for some weeks, pay his residence there, and get a recruit of clothes and necessaries out of his gains; nay, sometimes to have a pound or two to give in assistance to a necessitous relation; and carry back to his brother's house, at Ninewells, the cash he brought with him from that place, in order to defray the expenses of his visit to the metropolis. General Scott of Balcomie, who was a good judge in these matters, was so convinced of his superior skill at whist, that I was assured he offered David his purse to gamble at London; and that he would give him £1000 a-year if he would communicate his winnings. This he refused with disdain, saying, he played for his amusement; and though General Scott would give him ten times more per annum, he would be accessary to no such fraudulent doings.
"It was very remarkable, that, though from study and reading the purest authors in the English language he learnt to write in a correct and elegant style, yet, in conversing, he spoke with the tone, idiom, and vulgar voice of the commonalty in the Merse or Berwickshire. This, I presume, arose from his having been greatly, in his early years, about his brother's house, conversing with servants, &c.; and having no ear (though a foreign or even a dead language, which he acquired by grammar and rules, he wrote pointedly,) it was impossible for him to attain, in speaking, any other dialect of the Scots than that he caught in his childhood: besides, he had but a creeping voice, rather effeminate than manly.
"I could give you several anecdotes with regard to him; I shall content myself with one. One day when he was advancing some irreligious maxims in a sarcastical style, I said to him, 'L----, David, ye are much altered in your sentiments since you professed yourself a sincere Roman Catholic, confessed yourself to the priests, declared yourself a sincere penitent, got absolution, and even extreme unction.' He was much offended at this, as he believed none knew, in this country, that all this had happened to him at Nice. He answered in a huff, 'I was in a high fever then, and did not know what I said, or they did with me.' I replied, 'You put me in mind of Patie Birnie's answer to the minister of Kinghorn, who, stumbling o'er him in a passage dead drunk, said, 'Ah! Patie, is this your promise that you would never be fu' again, if the Lord spared you?'--'Wow,' quo' Pate, 'I wonder to hear ane of your honour's sense mind what ony body says in a red raving fever; I kent naithing of what was ga'en.' David and I, for years after, were tolerable good friends, but never so cordial as before. G. N." [These initials are supposed to be those of George Nichol, M. P.]