“Went to bed, and slept dreamlessly, but not refreshingly. Awoke, and up an hour before being called; but dawdled three hours in dressing. When one subtracts from life infancy (which is vegetation)—sleep, eating, and swilling—buttoning and unbuttoning—how much remains of downright existence? The summer of a dormouse. * * * *
“Redde the papers and tea-ed and soda-watered, and found out that the fire was badly lighted. Ld. Glenbervie wants me to go to Brighton—um!
“This morning, a very pretty billet from the Staël about meeting her at Ld.
H.’s to-morrow. She has written, I dare say, twenty such this
morning to different people, all equally flattering to each. So much the better for her
and those who believe all she wishes them, or they wish to believe. She has been pleased
to be pleased with my slight eulogy in the note annexed to the ‘Bride.’ This is to he accounted for in several
ways.—firstly, all women like all, or any, praise; secondly, this was
| 466 | NOTICES OF THE | A. D. 1813. |
“A knock—knocks single and double. Bland called.—He says Dutch society (he has been in Holland) is second-hand French; but the women are like women every where else. This is a bore; I should like to see them a little unlike; but that can’t be expected.
“Went out—came home—this, that, and the other—and ‘all is vanity, saith the preacher,’ and so say I, as part of his congregation. Talking of vanity—whose praise do I prefer? Why, Mrs. Inchbald’s, and that of the Americans. The first, because her ‘Simple Story’ and ‘Nature and Art’ are, to me, true to their titles; and, consequently, her short note to Rogers about the ‘Giaour’ delighted me more than any thing, except the Edinburgh Review. I like the Americans, because I happened to be in Asia, while the English Bards and Scotch Reviewers were redde in America. If I could have had a speech against the Slave Trade, in Africa, and an Epitaph on a Dog, in Europe, (i. e. in the Morning Post), my vertex sublimis would certainly have displaced stars enough to overthrow the Newtonian system.
