now collecting;--but _no
separate_ publication."

[Footnote 34: In a few days after this, he sent me a long rhyming
epistle full of jokes and pleasantries upon every thing and every one
around him, of which the following are the only parts producible:--

'What say _I_?'--not a syllable further in prose;
I'm your man 'of all measures,' dear Tom,--so, here goes!
Here goes, for a swim on the stream of old Time,
On those buoyant supporters the bladders of rhyme.
If our weight breaks them down, and we sink in the flood,
We are smother'd, at least, in respectable mud,
Where the divers of bathos lie drown'd in a heap,
And S * * 's last paean has pillow'd his sleep;--
That 'felo de se' who, half drunk with his malmsey,
Walk'd out of his depth and was lost in a calm sea,
Singing 'Glory to God' in a spick-and-span stanza,
The like (since Tom Sternhold was choked) never man saw.

"The papers have told you, no doubt, of the fusses,
The fetes, and the gapings to get at these Russes,--
Of his Majesty's suite, up from coachman to Hetman,--
And what dignity decks the flat face of the great man.
I saw him, last week, at two balls and a party,--
For a prince, his demeanour was rather too hearty.
You know, _we_ are used to quite different graces,
* * * * *
The Czar's look, I own, was much brighter and brisker,
But then he is sadly deficient in whisker;
And wore but a starless blue coat, and in kersey-
mere breeches whisk'd round in a waltz with the J * *,
Who, lovely as ever, seem'd just as delighted
With majesty's presence as those she invited."
]

[Footnote 35: The Journal from which I have given extracts in the
preceding pages.]

* * * * *

TO MR. MURRAY.

"June 14. 1814.

"I return your packet of this morning. Have you heard that Bertrand
has returned to Paris with the account of Napoleon's having lost
his senses? It is a _report_; but, if true, I must, like Mr.
Fitzgerald and Jeremiah (of lamentable memory), lay claim to
prophecy; that is to say, of saying, that he _ought_ to go out of
his senses, in the penultimate stanza of a certain Ode,--the which,
having been pronounced _nonsense_ by several profound critics, has
a still further pretension, by its unintelligibility, to
inspiration. Ever," &c.