s pretty enough--on
the outside, I shall be in town next week, and in the mean time
wish you a pleasant journey.

"Yours," &c.

* * * * *

LETTER 195. TO MR. MOORE.

"August 12. 1814.

"I was _not_ alone, nor will be while I can help it. Newstead is
not yet decided. Claughton is to make a grand effort by Saturday
week to complete,--if not, he must give up twenty-five thousand
pounds and the estate, with expenses, &c. &c. If I resume the
Abbacy, you shall have due notice, and a cell set apart for your
reception, with a pious welcome. Rogers I have not seen, but Larry
and Jacky came out a few days ago. Of their effect I know nothing.

"There is something very amusing in _your_ being an Edinburgh
Reviewer. You know, I suppose, that T * * is none of the placidest,
and may possibly enact some tragedy on being told that he is only a
fool. If, now, Jeffery were to be slain on account of an article of
yours, there would be a fine conclusion. For my part, as Mrs.
Winifred Jenkins says, 'he has done the handsome thing by me,'
particularly in his last number; so, he is the best of men and the
ablest of critics, and I won't have him killed,--though I dare say
many wish he were, for being so good-humoured.

"Before I left Hastings I got in a passion with an ink bottle,
which I flung out of the window one night with a vengeance;--and
what then? Why, next morning I was horrified by seeing that it had
struck, and split upon, the petticoat of Euterpe's graven image in
the garden, and grimed her as if it were on purpose[45]. Only think
of my distress,--and the epigrams that might be engendered on the
Muse and her misadventure.

"I had an adventure almost as ridiculous, at some private
theatricals near Cambridge--though of a different
description--since I saw you last. I quarrelled with a man in the
dark for asking me who I was (insolently enough to be sure), and
followed him into the green-room (a _stable_) in a rage, amongst a
set of people I never saw before. He turned out to be a low
comedian, engaged to act with the amateurs, and to be a
civil-spoken man enough, when he found out that nothing very
pleasant was to be got by rudeness. But you would have been amused
with the row, and the dialogue, and the dress--or