Chapter 63

"June 22. 1813.

"Yesterday I dined in company with '* *, the Epicene,' whose politics are sadly changed. She is for the Lord of Israel and the Lord of Liverpool--a vile antithesis of a Methodist and a Tory--talks of nothing but devotion and the ministry, and, I presume, expects that God and the government will help her to a pension.

"Murray, the [Greek: anax] of publishers, the Anac of stationers, has a design upon you in the paper line. He wants you to become the staple and stipendiary editor of a periodical work. What say you? Will you be bound, like 'Kit Smart, to write for ninety-nine years in the Universal Visiter?' Seriously he talks of hundreds a year, and--though I hate prating of the beggarly elements--his proposal may be to your honour and profit, and, I am very sure, will be to our pleasure.

"I don't know what to say about 'friendship.' I never was in friendship but once, in my nineteenth year, and then it gave me as much trouble as love. I am afraid, as Whitbread's sire said to the king, when he wanted to knight him, that I am 'too old:' but, nevertheless, no one wishes you more friends, fame, and felicity, than Yours," &c.

* * * * *

Having relinquished his design of accompanying the Oxfords to Sicily, he again thought of the East, as will be seen by the following letters, and proceeded so far in his preparations for the voyage as to purchase of Love, the jeweller, of Old Bond Street, about a dozen snuff-boxes, as presents for some of his old Turkish acquaintances.