"8. St. James's Street, Dec. 6. 1811.
"My dear Harness,
"I write again, but don't suppose I mean to lay such a tax on your
pen and patience as to expect regular replies. When you are
inclined, write; when silent, I shall have the consolation of
knowing that you are much better employed. Yesterday, Bland and I
called on Mr. Miller, who, being then out, will call on Bland[34]
to-day or to-morrow. I shall certainly endeavour to bring them
together.--You are censorious, child; when you are a little older,
you will learn to dislike every body, but abuse nobody.
"With regard to the person of whom you speak, your own good sense
must direct you. I never pretend to advise, being an implicit
believer in the old proverb. This present frost is detestable. It
is the first I have felt for these three years, though I longed for
one in the oriental summer, when no such thing is to be had, unless
I had gone to the top of Hymettus for it.
"I thank you most truly for the concluding part of your letter. I
have been of late not much accustomed to kindness from any quarter,
and am not the less pleased to meet with it again from one where I
had known it earliest. I have not changed in all my
ramblings,--Harrow, and, of course, yourself never left me, and the
"'Dulces reminiscitur Argos'
attended me to the very spot to which that sentence alludes in the
mind of the fallen Argive--Our intimacy began before we began to
date at all, and it rests with you to continue it till the hour
which must number it and me with the things that _were_.
"Do read mathematics.--I should think _X plus Y_ at least as
amusing as the Curse of Kehama, and much more intelligible. Master
S.'s poems _are_, in fact, what parallel lines might be--viz.
prolonged _ad infinitum_ without meeting any thing half so absurd
as themselves.
"What news, what news? Queen Oreaca,
What news of scribblers five?
S----, W----, C----e, L----d, and L----e?--
All damn'd, though yet alive.
C----e is lecturing. 'Many an old fool,' said Hannibal to some such
lecturer, 'but such as this, never.'
"Ever yours, &c."
[Footnote 34: The Rev. Robert Bland, one of the authors of "Collections
from the Greek Anthology." Lord Byron was, at this time, endeavouring to
secure for Mr. Bland the task of translating Lucien Buonaparte's poem.]
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