“Your letter set me at ease; for I really thought (as I hear of your susceptibility) that I had said—I know not what—but something I should have been very sorry for, had it, or I, offended you;—though I don’t see how a man with a beautiful wife—his own children—quiet—fame—competency and friends (I will vouch for a thousand, which is more than I will for a unit in my own behalf), can be offended with any thing.
“Do you know, Moore, I am amazingly inclined—remember I say but inclined—to be seriously enamoured with Lady A. F.—but this * * has ruined all my prospects. However, you know her;—is she clever, or sensible, or good-tempered? either would do—I scratch out the will. I don’t ask as to her beauty—that I see; but my circumstances are mending, and were not my other prospects blackening, I would take a wife, and that should be the woman, had I a chance. I do not yet know her much, but better than I did. * * * *
“I want to get away, but find difficulty in compassing a passage in a ship of war. They had better let me go; if I cannot, patriotism is the word—‘nay, an’ they’ll mouth, I’ll rant as well as they.’ Now, what are you doing?—writing, we all hope, for our own sakes. Remember you must edite my posthumous works, with a Life of the Author, for which I will send you Confessions, dated ‘Lazaretto,’ Smyrna, Malta, or Palermo—one can die any where.
“There is to be a thing on Tuesday ycleped a national fete.
The
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“P.S. The Staël last night attacked me most furiously—said that I had ‘no right to make love—that I had used * * barbarously—that I had no feeling, and was totally insensible to la belle passion, and had been all my life.’ I am very glad to hear it, but did not know it before. Let me hear from you anon.”
