“Jeffrey has sent me the most friendly of all possible letters, and has accepted * *’s article. He says he has long liked not only, &c. &c. but my ‘character.’ This must be your doing, you dog—ar’n’t you ashamed of yourself, knowing me so well? This is what one gets for having you for a father confessor.
“I feel merry enough to send you a sad song*. You once asked me for some words which you would set. Now you may set or not, as you like,—but there they are, in a legible hand†, and not in mine, but of my own scribbling; so you may say of them what you please. Why don’t you write to me? I shall make you ‘a speech‡’ If you don’t respond quickly.
“I am in such a state of sameness and stagnation, and so totally occupied in consuming the fruits—and sauntering—and playing dull games at cards—and yawning—and trying to read old Annual Registers and the daily papers—and gathering shells on the shore—and watching
* The verses enclosed were those melancholy ones, now printed in his works. “There’s not a joy the world can give like those it takes away.” |
† The MS. was in the handwriting of Lady Byron. |
‡ These allusions to “a speech” are connected with a little incident, not worth mentioning, which had amused us both when I was in town. He was rather fond (and had been so, always so, as may be seen in his early letters) of thus harping an some conventional phrase or joke. |
| A. D. 1815. | LIFE OF LORD BYRON. | 609 |
“P.S. I open my letter again to put a question to you. What would Lady C—k, or any other fashionable Pidcock, give to collect you and Jeffrey and me to one party? I have been answering his letter, which suggested this dainty query. I can’t help laughing at the thoughts of your face and mine; and our anxiety to keep the Aristarch in good humour during the early part of a compotation, till we got drunk enough to make him ‘a speech.’ I think the critic would have much the best of us—of one, at least—for I don’t think diffidence (I mean social) is a disease of yours.”
