She surprised me extremely one evening as she was accompanying me to one of my public readings, by exclaiming, “Oh, how I envy you!  What would I not give to be in your place!” As my vocation, I am sorry to say, oftener appeared to me to justify my own regret than the envy of others, I answered, “What! to read Shakespeare before some hundreds of people?” “Oh no,” she said; “not to read Shakespeare to them, but to have all that mass of people under your control, subject to your influence, and receiving your impressions.”  She then went on to say she would give anything to lecture upon subjects which interested her deeply, and that she should like to advocate with every power she possessed.  Lady Byron, like most enthusiasts, was fond of influencing others and making disciples to her own views.  I made her laugh by telling her that more than once, when looking from my reading-desk over the sea of faces uplifted towards me, a sudden feeling had seized me that I must say something from myself to all those human beings whose attention I felt at that moment entirely at my command, and between whom and myself a sense of sympathy thrilled powerfully and strangely through my heart, as I looked steadfastly at them before opening my lips; but that, on wondering afterwards what I might, could, would, or should have said to them from myself, I never could think of anything but two words:  “Be good!” which as a preface to the reading of one of Shakespeare’s plays ("The Merry Wives of Windsor,” for instance) might have startled them.  Often and strongly as the temptation recurred to me, I never could think of anything better worth saying to my audience.  I have some hope that sometimes in the course of the reading I said it effectually, without shocking them by a departure from my proper calling, or deserving the rebuke of “Ne sutor ultra crepidam.”

In February, 1828, I fell ill of the measles, of which the following note to Miss S——­ is a record.

     MY DEAREST H——­,

I am in a great hurry, because my parcel is not made up yet, and I expect your brother’s emissary to call at every moment.  I send you my play, also an album of mine, also an unfinished sketch of me, also a copy of my will.  The play you must not keep, because it is my only copy; neither must you keep my album, because I want to finish one of the pieces of verse begun in it; my picture—­such as it is—­begun, but never finished, by Dick ——­, I thought you would like better than nothing.  He has finished one that is a very good likeness of me, but it was done for my mother, or I should have wished you to have it.  My will I made last week, while I was in bed with the measles, and want you to keep that.

     I have been very ill for the last fortnight, but am well again now. 
     I am pressed for time to-day, but will soon write to you in
     earnest.