hour. On another occasion, Fletcher confessed to Mr. Walton
his having given a bill to a man in Carrara for L30; and the
marble-merchant having asked, "And pray, Fletcher, have you arranged to
meet it when it falls due?" Fletcher at once replied, "Yes," and to the
marble-merchant's farther enquiry "how?" added, in his politest manner,
"I have arranged to blow my brains out the day before!" The poor fellow
did afterwards almost as much self-violence without intending it, dying
of fever caught in night-wanderings through Liverpool half-clothed amid
storms of rain.

[104] Sydney died on the 22nd of February ('45), in his 77th year.

[105] A remark on this, made in my reply, elicited what follows in a
letter during his travel home: "Odd enough that remark of yours. I had
been wondering at Rome that Juvenal (which I have been always lugging
out of a bag, on all occasions) never used the fire-flies for an
illustration. But even now, they are only partially seen; and no where I
believe in such enormous numbers as on the Mediterranean coast-road,
between Genoa and Spezzia. I will ascertain for curiosity's sake,
whether there are any at this time in Rome, or between it and the
country-house of Maecenas--on the ground of Horace's journey. I know
there is a place on the French side of Genoa, where they begin at a
particular boundary-line, and are never seen beyond it. . . . All wild to
see you at Brussels! What a meeting we will have, please God!"

CHAPTER IX.

AGAIN IN ENGLAND. 1845-1846.

Proposed Weekly Paper--Christmas Book of
1845--Stage Studies--Private
Theatricals--Dickens as Performer and as
Manager--Second Raven's Death--Busy with the
_Cricket_--Disturbing Engagements--Prospectus
written by him--New Book to be written in
Switzerland--Leaves England.

HIS first letter after again taking possession of Devonshire-terrace
revived a subject on which opinions had been from time to time
interchanged during his absence, and to which there was allusion in the
agreement executed before his departure. The desire was still as strong
with him as when he started _Master Humphrey's Clock_ to establish a
periodical, that, while relieving his own pen by enabling him to receive
frequent help from other writers, might yet retain always the popularity
of his name. "I really think I have an idea, and not a bad one, for the
periodical. I have turned it over, the last two d