Chapter 65

"July 13. 1813.

"Your letter set me at ease; for I really thought (as I hear of your susceptibility) that I had said--I know not what--but something I should have been very sorry for, had it, or I, offended you;--though I don't see how a man with a beautiful wife--_his own_ children,--quiet--fame--competency and friends, (I will vouch for a thousand, which is more than I will for a unit in my own behalf,) can be offended with any thing.

"Do you know, Moore, I am amazingly inclined--remember I say but _inclined_--to be seriously enamoured with Lady A.F.--but this * * has ruined all my prospects. However, you know her; is she _clever_, or sensible, or good-tempered? either _would_ do--I scratch out the _will_. I don't ask as to her beauty--that I see; but my circumstances are mending, and were not my other prospects blackening, I would take a wife, and that should be the woman, had I a chance. I do not yet know her much, but better than I did.

"I want to get away, but find difficulty in compassing a passage in a ship of war. They had better let me go; if I cannot, patriotism is the word--'nay, an' they'll mouth, I'll rant as well as they.' Now, what are you doing?--writing, we all hope, for our own sakes. Remember you must edite my posthumous works, with a Life of the Author, for which I will send you Confessions, dated, 'Lazaretto,' Smyrna, Malta, or Palermo--one can die any where.

"There is to be a thing on Tuesday ycleped a national fête. The Regent and * * * are to be there, and every body else, who has shillings enough for what was once a guinea. Vauxhall is the scene--there are six tickets issued for the modest women, and it is supposed there will be three to spare. The passports for the lax are beyond my arithmetic.

"P.S.--The Staël last night attacked me most furiously--said that I had 'no right to make love--that I had used * * barbarously--that I had no feeling, and was totally insensible to _la belle passion_, and _had_ been all my life.' I am very glad to hear it, but did not know it before. Let me hear from you anon."

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