his vile Ebrew nasalities? Have I not told you it was all Kinnaird's doing, and my own exquisite facility of temper? But thou wilt be a wag, Thomas; and see what you get for it. Now for my revenge.

"Depend-and perpend-upon it that your opinion of -'s poem will travel through one or other of the quintuple correspondents, till it reaches the ear and the liver of the author. Your adventure, however, is truly laughable --but how could you be such a potato? You 'a brother' (of the quill) too, 'near the throne,' to confide to a man's own publisher (who has 'bought,' or rather sold, 'golden opinions' about him) such a damnatory parenthesis! 'Between you and me, quotha-it reminds me of a passage in the Heir-at-Law - 'Tête-à-tête with Lady Duberly, I suppose.'-'No-Tête-à-tête with five hundred people; and your confidential communication will doubtless be in circulation to that amount, in a short time, with several additions, and in several letters, all signed L. H. R. O. B., etc. etc. etc.

"We leave this place to-morrow, and shall stop on our way to town (in the interval of taking a house there) at Colonel Leigh's, near Newmarket, where any epistle of yours will find its welcome way.

"I have been very comfortable here, -listening to that d-d monologue, which elderly gentlemen call conversation, and in which my pious father-in-law repeats himself every evening-save one, when he played upon the fiddle. However, they have been very kind and hospitable, and I like them and the place vastly, and I hope they will live many happy months. Bell is in health, and unvaried goodhumour and behaviour. But we are all in the agonies of packing and parting; and, I suppose, by this time to-morrow I shall be stuck in the chariot with my chin upon a bandbox. I have prepared, however, another carriage for the abigail, and all the trumpery which our wives drag along with them. "Ever thine, most affectionately, "B."

TO MR. MOORE.*

"13 Piccadilly Terrace, June 12, 1815.

"I have nothing to offer in behalf of my late silence, except the most inveterate and ineffable laziness; but I am too supine to invent a lie, or I certainly should, being ashamed of the truth. Kinnaird, I hope, has appeased your magnanimous indignation at his blunders. I wished and wish you were in the Committee, with all my heart.† It seems so hopeless a business, that the company of a friend would be quite consoling, but more of this when we meet. In the meantime, you are entreated to prevail upon Mrs. Esterre to engage herself. I believe she has been written to, but your influence, in person or proxy, would probably go further than our proposals. What they are, I know not; all my new function consists in listening to the despair of Cavendish Bradshaw, the hopes of Kinnaird, the wishes of Lord Essex, the complaints of Whitbread, and the calculations of Peter Moore, all of which, and whom, seem totally at variance. C. Bradshaw wants to light the theatre with gas, which may, perhaps (if the vulgar be believed), poison half the audience, and all the dramatis persona. Essex has endeavoured to persuade Kean not to get drunk; the consequence of which is, that he has never been sober since. Kinnaird, with equal success, would have convinced Raymond that he, the said Raymond, had too much salary. Whitbread wants us to assess the pit another sixpence, -а d-d insidious proposition, which will end in an O. P. combustion. To crown all, Robins, the auctioneer, has the - impudence to be displeased, because he has no dividend. The villain is a proprietor of shares, and a long-lunged

* This and the following letter were addressed to me in Ireland, whither I had gone about the middle of the preceding month.

+ He had lately become one of the members of the Sub-Committee (consisting, besides himself, of the persons mentioned in this letter) who had taken upon themselves the management of Drury Lane Theatre; and it had been his wish, on the first construction of the Committee, that I should be one of his colleagues. To some mistake in the mode of conveying this proposal to me, he alludes in the preceding sentence.

orator in the meetings. I hear he has prophesied our incapacity, 'a foregone conclusion,' whereof I hope to give him signal proofs before we are done.

"Will you give us an opera? No, I'll be sworn; but I wish you would.

"To go on with the poetical world, Walter Scott has gone back to Scotland, Murray, the bookseller, has been cruelly cudgelled of misbegotten knaves, 'in Kendal Green,' at Newington Butts, in his way home from a purlieu dinner, -and robbed-would you believe it? - of three or four bonds of forty pound a-piece, and a seal-ring of his grandfather's, worth a million! This is his version, but others opine that D'Israeli, with whom he dined, knocked him down with his last publication, 'The Quarrels of Authors,' in a dispute about copyright. Be that as it may, the newspapers have teemed with his 'injuria formæ,' and he has been embrocated, and invisible to all but the apothecary ever since.

"Lady B. is better than three months advanced in her progress towards maternity, and, we hope, likely to go well through with it. We have been very little out this season, as I wish to keep her quiet in her present situation. Her father and mother have changed their names to Noel, in compliance with Lord Wentworth's will, and in complaisance to the property bequeathed by him.

"I hear that you have been gloriously received by the Irish, and so you ought. But don't let them kill you with claret and kindness at the national dinner in your honour, which, I hear and hope, is in contemplation. If you will tell me the day, I'll get drunk myself on this side of the water, and waft you an applauding hiccup over the Channel.

"Of politics, we have nothing but the yell for war; and Ch [Castlereagh] is preparing his head for the pike, on which we shall see it carried before he has done. The loan has made everybody sulky. I hear often from Paris, but in direct contradiction to the home statements of our hirelings. Of domestic doings, there has been nothing since Lady

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D. Not a divorce stirring, -but a good many in embryo, in the shape of marriages.

"I enclose you an epistle received this morning from I know not whom; but I think it will amuse you. The writer must be a rare fellow.*

"P.S.-A gentleman named D'Alton (not your Dalton) has sent me a National Poem called 'Dermid.' The same cause which prevented my writing to you operated against my wish to write to him an epistle of thanks. If you see him, will you make all kinds of fine speeches for me, and tell him that I am the laziest and most ungrateful of mortals?

"A word more; - don't let Sir John Stevenson (as an evidence on trials for copyright, etc.) talk about the price of your next poem, or they will come upon you for the property tax for it. I am serious, and have just heard a long story of the rascally tax-men making Scott pay for his.† So, take care. Three hundred is a devil of a deduction out of three thousand."

* The following is the enclosure here referred to :

"Darlington, June 3, 1815.

"My Lord, I have lately purchased a set of your works, and am quite vexed that you have not cancelled the 'Ode to Buonaparte.' It certainly was prematurely written, without thought or reflection. Providence has not brought him to reign over millions again, while the same Providence keeps as it were in a garrison another potentate, who, in the language of Mr Burke, 'he hurled from his throne.' See if you cannot make amends for your folly, and consider that, in almost every respect, human nature is the same, in every clime and in every period, and don't act the part of a foolish boy. -Let not Englishmen talk of the stretch of tyrants, while the torrents of blood shed in the East Indies cry aloud to Heaven for retaliation. Learn, good sir, not to cast the first stone.

"I remain your Lordship's servant,

"J. R.."

+ Such a claim was set up by the income tax commissioners in 1813; but Sir Walter Scott resisted, and ultimately carried his point. -See Lockhart's Life of Sir W. Scott, vol. iii. p. 100.

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TO MR. MOORE.

"July 7, 1815.

""Grata superveniet,' etc. etc. I had written to you again, but burnt the letter, because I began to think you seriously hurt at my indolence, and did not know how the buffoonery it contained might be taken. In the meantime, I have yours, and all is well.

"I had given over all hopes of yours. By-the-bye, my 'grata superveniet' should be in the present tense; for I perceive it looks now as if it applied to this present scrawl reaching you, whereas it is to the receipt of thy Kilkenny epistle that I have tacked that venerable sentiment.

"Poor Whitbread died yesterday morning, -a sudden and severe loss. His health had been wavering, but so fatal an attack was not apprehended. He dropped down, and I believe never spoke afterwards. I perceive Perry attributes his death to Drury Lane, -a consolatory encouragement to the new Committee. I have no doubt that -, who is of a plethoric habit, will be bled immediately; and as I have, since my marriage, lost much of my paleness, and-'horresco referens' (for I hate even moderate fat)-that happy slenderness, to which, when I first knew you, I had attained, I by no means sit easy under this dispensation of the Morning Chronicle. Every one must regret the loss of Whitbread; he was surely a great and very good man.

"Paris is taken for the second time. I presume it, for the future, will have an anniversary capture. In the late battles, like all the world, I have lost a connection, -poor Frederic Howard, the best of his race. I had little intercourse, of late years, with his family, but I never saw or heard but good of him. Hobhouse's brother is killed. In short, the havoc has not left a family out of its tender mercies.

"Every hope of a republic is over, and we must go on under the old system. But I am sick at heart of politics and slaughters; and the luck which Providence is pleased to lavish on Lord Castlereagh is only a proof of the little