r
full four days, and it seems a moon. I am full of cramps and
rheumatisms, and cold internally, so that fire won't warm me; yet I bear
all for virtue's sake. Must I then leave you, gin, rum, brandy,
_aqua-vitae_, pleasant, jolly fellows? Damn temperance and he that first
invented it!--some Anti-Noahite. Coleridge has powdered his head, and
looks like Bacchus,--Bacchus ever sleek and young. He is going to turn
sober, but his clock has not struck yet; meantime he pours down goblet
after goblet, the second to see where the first is gone, the third to
see no harm happens to the second, a fourth to say there is another
coming, and a fifth to say he is not sure he is the last. C. L.

[1] An experiment in total abstinence; it did not last long.

LII.

TO WORDSWORTH

_October_ 19, 1810.

Dear W.,--Mary has been very ill, which you have heard, I suppose, from
the Montagues. She is very weak and low-spirited now, I was much pleased
with your continuation of the "Essay on Epitaphs," [1] It is the only
sensible thing which has been written on that subject, and it goes to
the bottom. In particular I was pleased with your translation of that
turgid epitaph into the plain feeling under it. It is perfectly a test.
But what is the reason we have no good epitaphs after all?

A very striking instance of your position might be found in the
churchyard of Ditton-upon-Thames, if you know such a place.
Ditton-upon-Thames has been blessed by the residence of a poet who, for
love or money, I do not well know which, has dignified every gravestone
for the last few years with brand new verses, all different and all
ingenious, with the author's name at the bottom of each. This sweet Swan
of Thames has so artfully diversified his strains and his rhymes that
the same thought never occurs twice,--more justly, perhaps, as no
thought ever occurs at all, there was a physical impossibility that the
same thought should recur, It is long since I saw and read these
inscriptions; but I remember the impression was of a smug usher at his
desk in the intervals of instruction, levelling his pen. Of death, as it
consists of dust and worms, and mourners and uncertainty, he had never
thought; but the word "death" he had often seen separate and conjunct
with other words, till he had learned to speak of all its attributes as
glibly as Unitarian Belsham will discuss you the attributes of the word
"God" in a pulpit, and will talk of infinity with a tongue t