“I could wish myself in London to be three-and-forty hours nearer the news. Was there ever such a land battle in modern times! The wreck has been as complete as at the Nile. Murray propounds me sweet remuneration to bring it into his next number, which, as I have a French history of Massena’s campaign before me, it will be easy to do, the object of that book being to prove that the French beat us wherever they met us, and that Lord Wellington is no general, and, moreover, exceedingly afraid of them. The battle of Waterloo is a good answer to this. The name which Blucher has given it will do excellently in verse—the field of Fair Alliance! but I do not like it in prose, for we gave them such an English thrashing, that the name ought to be one which comes easily out of an English mouth. If you can help me to any information, I shall know how to use it.
“If Bonaparte
comes here, which is very likely, I hope no magnanimity will prevent us from
delivering him up to Louis XVIII.; unless,
indeed, we could
| 120 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 40. |
“I am sorry Lafayette has opened his mouth in this miserable Assembly. As for the rest of them—gallows, take thy course. . . . . They should all be hanged in their robes for the sake of the spectacle, and the benefit of M. Jean Quetch. What a scene of vile flattery shall we have when the Bourbons are restored!
