"March 2. 1815.
"My dear Thom,
"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'nt
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.[72] 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[73], 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'[74] 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 growth of stunted gooseberry bushes in the
garden--that I have neither time nor sense to say more than yours
ever, B.
"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."
[Footnote 72: 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."]
[Footnote 73: The MS. was in the handwriting of Lady Byron.]
[Footnote 74: 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 always so, as may be seen in his
early letters,) of thus harping on some conventional phrase or joke.]
* * * * *