“I got your letter this morning, and I kiss the rod,
not only with submission, but with gratitude. Your rebukes of me and your
defence of her are the only things that save my soul from hell. She is my
soul’s idol, and, believe me, those words of yours applied to the
dear creature (‘to lip a
chaste one and
| 178 | WILLIAM HAZLITT. |
“Be it known to you, that while I write this, I am drinking ale* at the Black Bull, celebrated in Blackwood’s. It is owing to your letter. Could I think her ‘honest,’ I am proof even against Edinburgh ale! She, by her silence, makes my ‘dark hour,’ and you dissipate it—for four-and-twenty hours.
“I have seen the great little man,† and he is very gracious to me. I tell him I am dull and out of spirits, but he says he cannot perceive it. He is a person of infinite vivacity. My Sardanapalus is to be in.‡
“In my judgment, Myrrha is just like —— ——, only I am not like Sardanapalus.
“Do you think if she knew how I love her, my depressions and my altitudes, my wanderings and my pertinacity, it would not melt her? She knows it all! I don’t
* He had not for years previously touched anything but water, except his beloved tea, nor did he afterwards, up to the period of his last illness. † Jeffrey. ‡ An article in the Edinburgh Review on Byron’s tragedy so called. |
| WILLIAM HAZLITT. | 179 |
