ssay brought him
universal applause; mine the contrary: he married his housekeeper; I
could not keep house with my wife: he thought all the world in a plot
against him; my little world seems to think me in a plot against it,
if I may judge by their abuse in print and coterie: he liked botany; I
like flowers, herbs, and trees, but know nothing of their pedigrees:
he wrote music; I limit my knowledge of it to what I catch by _ear_--I
never could learn any thing by _study_, not even a _language_--it was
all by rote, and ear, and memory: he had a _bad_ memory; I _had_, at
least, an excellent one (ask Hodgson the poet--a good judge, for he
has an astonishing one): he wrote with hesitation and care; I with
rapidity, and rarely with pains: _he_ could never ride, nor swim, nor
'was cunning of fence;' _I_ am an excellent swimmer, a decent, though
not at all a dashing, rider, (having staved in a rib at eighteen, in
the course of scampering), and was sufficient of fence, particularly
of the Highland broadsword,--not a bad boxer, when I could keep my
temper, which was difficult, but which I strove to do ever since I
knocked down Mr. Purling, and put his knee-pan out (with the gloves
on), in Angelo's and Jackson's rooms in 1806, during the
sparring,--and I was, besides, a very fair cricketer,--one of the
Harrow eleven, when we played against Eton in 1805. Besides,
Rousseau's way of life, his country, his manners, his whole character,
were so very different, that I am at a loss to conceive how such a
comparison could have arisen, as it has done three several times, and
all in rather a remarkable manner. I forgot to say that _he_ was also
short-sighted, and that hitherto my eyes have been the contrary, to
such a degree that, in the largest theatre of Bologna, I distinguished
and read some busts and inscriptions, painted near the stage, from a
box so distant and so _darkly_ lighted, that none of the company
(composed of young and very bright-eyed people, some of them in the
same box,) could make out a letter, and thought it was a trick, though
I had never been in that theatre before.

"Altogether, I think myself justified in thinking the comparison not
well founded. I don't say this out of pique, for Rousseau was a great
man; and the thing, if true, were flattering enough;--but I have no
idea of being pleased with the chimera."

In another letter to his mother, dated some weeks after the preceding
one, he explains further his plans b