Chapter 61

"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.]

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