not; for a man always looks dead after his life has appeared, and I should certes not survive the appearance of mine. The first part I cannot consent to alter, even although Mad de S.'s opinion of B. C., and my remarks upon Lady C.'s beauty (which is surely great, and I suppose that I have said so—at least, I ought) should go down to our grandchildren in unsophisticated nakedness. « As to Madame de S * *, I am by no means bound to be her beadsman-She was always more civil to me absence. Our dear defunct in person than during my friend, M ** L**,' who was too great a bore ever to lie, assured me upon his tiresome word of honour, that, at

Of this gentleman, the following notice occurs in the Detached Thoughts.»«L** was a good man, a clever man, but a bore. My only revenge or consolation used to be setting him by the ears with some vivacious person who hated bores especially,-Madame de S― or H—, for example. But I liked L**; he was a jewel of a man, had he been better set; -I don't mean personally, but less tiresome, for he was tedious, as well as contradictory to every thing and every body. Being shortsighted, when we used to ride out together near the Brenta in the twilight in summer, he made me go before, to pilot him: I am absent at times, especially towards evening; and the consequence of this pilotage was on horseback. Once I led him into some narrow escapes to the M a ditch over which I had passed as usual, forgetting to warn my convoy; once I led him nearly into the river, instead of on the moveable bridge which incommodes passengers; and twice did we both run against the Diligence, which, being heavy and slow, did communicate less damage than it received in its leaders, who were terrafied by the charge; thrice did I lose him in the gray of the gloaming, and was obliged to bring-to to his distant signals of distance and distress;—all the time he went on talking without intermission, for he was a man of many words. Poor fellow! he died a martyr to his new riches-of a second visit to Jamaica.

that is

I'd give the lands of Deloraine

Dark Musgrave were alive again!

Florence, the said Madame de S** was open-mouthed against me; and, when asked, in Switzerland, why she had changed her opinion, replied, with laudable sincerity, that I had named her in a sonnet with Voltaire, Rousseau, etc. etc. and that she could not help it, through decency. Now, I have not forgotten this, but I have been generous,-as mine acquaintance, the late Captain Whitby, of the navy, used to say to his seamen (when 'married to the gunner's daughter'-' two dozen, and let you off easy.' The 'two dozen' were with the cato'-nine-tails; the 'let you off easy' was rather his own

opinion than that of the patient.

แ

My acquaintance with these terms and practices arises from my having been much conversant with ships of war and naval heroes in the years of my voyages in the Mediterranean. Whitby was in the gallant action off Lissa in 1811. He was brave, but a disciplinarian. When he left his frigate, he left a parrot, which was taught by the crew the following sounds(It must be remarked that Captain Whitby was the image of Fawcett the actor, in voice, face, and figure, and that he squinted).

6

« The Parrot loquitur.

« Whitby! Whitby! funny eye! funny eye! two dozen, and let you off easy. Oh you--!

« Now, if Madame de B. has a parrot, it had better be taught a French parody of the same sounds.

« With regard to our purposed Journal, I will call it what you please, but it should be a newspaper, to make it pay. We can call it ‘The Harp,' if you like—or any thing.

"I feel exactly as you do about our 'art," but it

The following passage from the letter of mine, to which the above was an answer, will best explain what follows :—« With respect to the news

comes over me in a kind of rage every now and then, like * * * and then, if I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad. As to that regular, uninterrupted love of writing, which you describe in your friend, I do not understand it. I feel it as a torture, which I must get rid of, but never as a pleasure. On the contrary, I think composition a great pain.

« I wish you to think seriously of the Journal scheme -for I am as serious as one can be, in this world, about any thing. As to matters here, they are high and mighty-but not for paper. It is much about the state of things betwixt Cain and Abel. There is, in fact, no law or government at all; and it is wonderful how well things go on without them. Excepting a few occasional murders (every body killing whomsoever he pleases, and being killed, in turn, by a friend, or relative, of the defunct), there is as quiet a society and as merry a Carnival as can be met with in a tour through Europe. There is nothing like habit in these things.

«I shall remain here till May or June, and, unless 'honour comes unlooked for,' we may perhaps meet, in France or England, within the

year.

« Yours, etc.

and myself had been (about a

paper, it is odd enough that Lord week or two before I received your letter) speculating upon your assistance in a plan somewhat similar, but more literary and less regularly periodical in its appearance. Lord**, as you will see by his volume of Essays, if it reaches you, has a very sly, dry, and pithy way of putting sound truths, upon politics and manners, and whatever scheme we adopt, he will be a very useful and active ally in it, as he has a pleasure in writing quite inconceivable to a poor hack scribe like me, who always feel, about my art, as the French husband did when he found a man making love to his (the Frenchman's) wife:-' Comment, Monsieur,-sans y être obligé !' When I say this, however, I mean it only of the executive part of writing; for the imagining, the shadowing out of the future work is, I own, a delicious fool's paradise."

« Of course, I cannot explain to you existing circumstances, as they open all letters.

"Will you set me right about your curst Champs Elysées?—are they 'és' or 'ées' for the adjective? I know nothing of French, being all Italian. Though I can read and understand French, I never attempt to speak it; for I hate it. From the second part of the Memoirs cut what you please.">

« I just see, by the papers of Galignani, that there is a new tragedy of great expectation, by Barry Cornwall. Of what I have read of his works, I liked the Dramatic Sketches, but thought his Sicilian Story and Marcian Colonna, in rhyme, quite spoilt, by I know not what affectation of Wordsworth, and Moore, and myself,all mixed up into a kind of chaos. I think him very likely to produce a good tragedy, if he keep to a natural style, and not play tricks to form harlequinades for an audience. As he (Barry Cornwall is not his true name) was a schoolfellow of mine, I take more than common interest in his success, and shall be glad to hear of it speedily. If I had been aware that he was in that line, I should have spoken of him in the preface to Marino Faliero. He will do a world's wonder if he produce a great tragedy. I am, however, persuaded, that this is not to be done by following the old dramatists,--who are full of gross faults, pardoned only for the beauty of their language,—but by writing naturally and regularly and producing regular tragedies, like the Greeks; but

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not in imitation,-merely the outline of their conduct, adapted to our own times and circumstances, and of course no chorus.

If

«You will laugh, and say, 'Why don't you do so?' I have, you see, tried a sketch in Marino Faliero; but many people think my talent essentially undramatic,' and I am not at all clear that they are not right. Marino Faliero don't fall-in the perusal-I shall, perhaps, try again (but not for the stage); and as I think that love is not the principal passion for tragedy (and yet most of ours turn upon it), you will not find me a popular writer. Unless it is love, furious, criminal, and hapless, it ought not to make a tragic subject. When it is melting and maudlin, it does, but it ought not to do; it is then for the gallery and second-price boxes.

that

«If you want to have a notion of what I am trying, take up a translation of any of the Greek tragedians. If I said the original, it would be an impudent presumption of mine; but the translations are so inferior to the originals that I think I may risk it. Then judge of the 'simplicity of plot,' etc. and do not judge me by your old mad dramatists, which is like drinking usquebaugh and then proving a fountain. Yet after all, I suppose you do not mean that spirits is a nobler element than a clear spring bubbling in the sun? and this I take to be the difference between the Greeks and those turbid mountebanks-always excepting Ben Jonson, who was a scholar and a classic. Or, take up a translation of Alfieri, and try the interest, etc. of these my new attempts in the old line, by him in English; and then tell me fairly your opinion. But don't measure me by YOUR OWN old or new tailors' yards. Nothing so easy as intricate confusion of plot and rant. Mrs Centlivre, in comedy, has