"March 8. 1815.
"An event--the death of poor Dorset--and the recollection of what I
once felt, and ought to have felt now, but could not--set me
pondering, and finally into the train of thought which you have in
your hands. I am very glad you like them, for I flatter myself they
will pass as an imitation of your style. If I could imitate it
well, I should have no great ambition of originality--I wish I
could make you exclaim with Dennis, 'That's my thunder, by G----d!'
I wrote them with a view to your setting them, and as a present to
Power, if he would accept the words, and _you_ did not think
yourself degraded, for once in a way, by marrying them to music.
"Sun-burn N * *!--why do you always twit me with his vile Ebrew
nasalities? Have I not told you it was all K.'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.[75] Your
adventure, however, is truly laughable--but how could you be such
a potatoe? 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-a-tête with Lady Duberly, I
suppose.'--'No--tête-a-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., &c. &c. &c.
"We leave this place to-morrow, and shall stop on our way to town
(in the interval of taking a house there) at Col. 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
good-humour 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 band-box. 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."
[Footnote 75: He here alludes to a circumstance which I had communicated
to him in a preceding letter. In writing to one of the numerous partners
of a well-known publishing establishment (with which I have since been
lucky enough to form a more intimate connection), I had said
confidentially (as I thought), in reference to a poem that had just
appeared,--"Between you and me, I do not much admire Mr. * *'s poem."
The letter being chiefly upon business, was answered through the regular
business channel, and, to my dismay, concluded with the following
words:--"_We_ are very sorry that you do not approve of Mr. * *'s new
poem, and are your obedient, &c. &c. L.H.R.O., &c. &c."]
* * * * *