there) apiece--though, after all, he might as well have
pardoned him, for the credit of the thing. But to resume--Cleopatra,
after securing him, says, 'yet go--it is your interest,' &c.--how like
the sex! and the questions about Octavia--it is woman all over.

"To-day received Lord Jersey's invitation to Middleton--to travel sixty
miles to meet Madame * *! I once travelled three thousand to get among
silent people; and this same lady writes octavos, and _talks_ folios. I
have read her books--like most of them, and delight in the last; so I
won't hear it, as well as read.

"Read Burns to-day. What would he have been, if a patrician? We should
have had more polish--less force--just as much verse, but no
immortality--a divorce and a duel or two, the which had he survived, as
his potations must have been less spirituous, he might have lived as
long as Sheridan, and outlived as much as poor Brinsley. What a wreck is
that man! and all from bad pilotage; for no one had ever better gales,
though now and then a little too squally. Poor dear Sherry! I shall
never forget the day he and Rogers and Moore and I passed together; when
_he_ talked, and _we_ listened, without one yawn, from six till one in
the morning.

"Got my seals * * * * * * Have again forgot a plaything for _ma petite
cousine_ Eliza; but I must send for it to-morrow. I hope Harry will
bring her to me. I sent Lord Holland the proofs of the last 'Giaour,'
and 'The Bride of Abydos.' He won't like the latter, and I don't think
that I shall long. It was written in four nights to distract my dreams
from * *. Were it not thus, it had never been composed; and had I not
done something at that time, I must have gone mad, by eating my own
heart,--bitter diet!--Hodgson likes it better than 'The Giaour,' but
nobody else will,--and he never liked the Fragment. I am sure, had it
not been for Murray, _that_ would never have been published, though the
circumstances which are the groundwork make it * * * heigh-ho!

"To-night I saw both the sisters of * *; my God! the youngest so like! I
thought I should have sprung across the house, and am so glad no one was
with me in Lady H.'s box. I hate those likenesses--the mock-bird, but
not the nightingale--so like as to remind, so different as to be
painful.[89] One quarrels equally with the points of resemblance and of
distinction.

[Footnote 89:

"Earth holds no other like to thee,
Or, if it doth, in vain for me:
For wo