Respecting the letters, I picked up from those of Pitt that he was always extremely desirous of peace with France, and even reckoned upon it at a moment when he ought to have despaired.  I suspect this false view of the state of France (for such it was), which induced the British Minister to look for peace when there was no chance of it, damped his ardour in maintaining the war.  He wanted the lofty ideas of his father—­you read it in his handwriting, great statesman as he was.  I saw a letter or two of Burke’s in which there is an epanchement du coeur not visible in those of Pitt, who writes like a Premier to his colleague.  Burke was under the strange hallucination that his son, who predeceased him, was a man of greater talents than himself.  On the contrary, he had little talent and no resolution.  On moving some resolutions in favour of the Catholics, which were ill-received by the House of Commons, young Burke actually ran away, which an Orangeman compared to a cross-reading in the newspapers:—­Yesterday the Catholic resolutions were moved, etc., but, the pistol missing fire, the villains ran off!

May 25.—­After a morning of letter-writing, leave-taking, papers destroying, and God knows what trumpery, Sophia and I set out for Hampton Court, carrying with us the following lions and lionesses—­Samuel Rogers, Tom Moore, Wordsworth, with wife and daughter.  We were very kindly and properly received by Walter and his wife, and a very pleasant party.[214]

May 26.—­An awful confusion with paying of bills, writing of cards, and all species of trumpery business.  Southey, who is just come to town, breakfasted with us.  He looks, I think, but poorly, but it may be owing to family misfortune.  One is always tempted to compare Wordsworth and Southey.  The latter is unquestionably the greater scholar—­I mean possesses the most extensive stock of information, but there is a freshness, vivacity, and spring about Wordsworth’s mind, which, if we may compare two men of uncommon powers, shows more originality.  I say nothing of their poetry.  Wordsworth has a system which disposes him to take the bull by the horns and offend public taste, which, right or wrong, will always be the taste of the public; yet he could be popular if he would,—­witness the Feast at Brougham Castle,—­Song of the Cliffords, I think, is the name.

I walked down to call, with Rogers, on Mrs. D’Arblay.  She showed me some notes which she was making about her novels, which she induced me to believe had been recollected and jotted down in compliance with my suggestions on a former occasion.  It is curious how she contrived to get Evelina printed and published without her father’s knowledge.  Her brother placed it in the hands of one Lowndes, who, after its success, bought it for L20!!! and had the magnanimity to add L10—­the price, I think, of Paradise Lost.  One of her sisters betrayed the secret to her father, who then eagerly lent his ears to hear what was said of the new novel, and the first opinion which saluted his delighted ears was the voice of Johnson energetically recommending it to the perusal of Mrs Thrale.[215]