ds, you know, are made to
fly, and tumble down and crush all to pieces. Cockchafers are old sport;
then again to a worm, with an apostrophe to anglers,--those patient
tyrants, meek inflictors of pangs intolerable, cool devils; [1] to an
owl; to all snakes, with an apology for their poison; to a cat in boots
or bladders. Your own fancy, if it takes a fancy to these hints, will
suggest many more. A series of such poems, suppose them accompanied with
plates descriptive of animal torments,--cooks roasting lobsters,
fishmongers crimping skates, etc.,--would take excessively, I will
willingly enter into a partnership in the plan with you; I think my
heart and soul would go with it too,--at least, give it a thought. My
plan is but this minute come into my head; but it strikes me
instantaneously as something new, good, and useful, full of pleasure and
full of moral. If old Quarles and Wither could live again, we would
invite them into our firm. Burns hath done his part.

Poor Sam Le Grice! I am afraid the world and the camp and the university
have spoiled him among them. 'Tis certain he had at one time a strong
capacity of turning out something better. I knew him, and that not long
since, when he had a most warm heart. I am ashamed of the indifference I
have sometimes felt towards him. I think the devil is in one's heart. I
am under obligations to that man for the warmest friendship and
heartiest sympathy, [2] even for an agony of sympathy expressed both by
word and deed, and tears for me when I was in my greatest distress. But
I have forgot that,--as, I fear, he has nigh forgot the awful scenes
which were before his eyes when he served the office of a comforter to
me. No service was too mean or troublesome for him to perform. I can't
think what but the devil, "that old spider," could have suck'd my heart
so dry of its sense of all gratitude. If he does come in your way,
Southey, fail not to tell him that I retain a most affectionate
remembrance of his old friendliness, and an earnest wish to resume our
intercourse. In this I am serious. I cannot recommend him to your
society, because I am afraid whether he be quite worthy of it. But I
have no right to dismiss him from _my_ regard. He was at one time, and
in the worst of times, my own familiar friend, and great comfort to me
then. I have known him to play at cards with my father, meal-times
excepted, literally all day long, in long days too, to save me from
being teased by the