“I could be very sentimental now, but I won’t. The truth is, that I have been all my life trying to harden my heart, and have not yet quite succeeded—though there are great hopes—and you do not know how it sunk with your departure. What adds to my regret is having seen so little of you during your stay in this crowded desert, where one ought to be able to bear thirst like a camel,—the springs are so few, and most of them so muddy.
“The newspapers will tell you all that is to be told of emperors, &c.* They have dined, and supped, and shown their flat faces in all
* In a few days after this, he sent me a long rhyming Epistle full of jokes and pleasantries upon every thing and every one around him, of which the following are the only parts producible.
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| 562 | NOTICES OF THE | A. D. 1814. |
“I think of leaving town for Newstead soon. If so, I shall not be remote from your recess, and (unless Mrs. M. detains you at home over the caudle-cup and a new cradle) we will meet. You shall come to me, or I to you, as you like it;—but meet we will. An invitation from Aston has reached me, but I do not think I shall go. I have also heard of * * *—I should like to see her again, for I have not met her for years; and though ‘the light that ne’er can shine again’ is set, I do not know that ‘one dear mile like those of old’ might not make me for a moment forget the ‘dulness’ of ‘life’s stream.’
“I am going to R * *’s to-night—to one of those suppers which ‘ought to be dinners.’ I have hardly seen her, and never him, since you set out. I told you, you were the last link of that chain. As for we have not syllabled one another’s names since. The post will not permit me to continue my scrawl. More anon.
“P.S. Keep the Journal*, I care not what becomes of it, and if it has amused you, I am glad that I kept it. ‘Lara’ is finished. and I am copying him for my third vol., now collecting;—but no separate publication.”
