himself in handing the cup to his charmer, to the great shame of his nankeen breeches?  Did he never swim in the sea at noonday with the sun in his eyes and on his head, which all the foam of ocean could not cool?  Did he never draw his foot out of too hot water, d——­ning his eyes and his valet’s?  Did he never tumble into a river or lake, fishing, and sit in his wet clothes in the boat, or on the bank, afterwards ‘scorched and drenched,’ like a true sportsman?  ’Oh for breath to utter!’—­but make him my compliments; he is a clever fellow for all that—­a very clever fellow.

“You ask me for the plan of Donny Johnny:  I have no plan; I had no plan; but I had or have materials; though if, like Tony Lumpkin, ‘I am to be snubbed so when I am in spirits,’ the poem will be naught, and the poet turn serious again.  If it don’t take, I will leave it off where it is, with all due respect to the public; but if continued, it must be in my own way.  You might as well make Hamlet (or Diggory) ‘act mad’ in a strait waistcoat as trammel my buffoonery, if I am to be a buffoon; their gestures and my thoughts would only be pitiably absurd and ludicrously constrained.  Why, man, the soul of such writing is its licence; at least the liberty of that licence, if one likes—­not that one should abuse it.  It is like Trial by Jury and Peerage and the Habeas Corpus—­a very fine thing, but chiefly in the reversion; because no one wishes to be tried for the mere pleasure of proving his possession of the privilege.

“But a truce with these reflections.  You are too earnest and eager about a work never intended to be serious.  Do you suppose that I could have any intention but to giggle and make giggle?—­a playful satire, with as little poetry as could be helped, was what I meant.  And as to the indecency, do, pray, read in Boswell what Johnson, the sullen moralist, says of Prior and Paulo Purgante.

“Will you get a favour done for me? You can, by your government friends, Croker, Canning, or my old schoolfellow Peel, and I can’t.  Here it is.  Will you ask them to appoint (without salary or emolument) a noble Italian (whom I will name afterwards) consul or vice-consul for Ravenna?  He is a man of very large property,—­noble, too; but he wishes to have a British protection, in case of changes.  Ravenna is near the sea.  He wants no emolument whatever.  That his office might be useful, I know; as I lately sent off from Ravenna to Trieste a poor devil of an English sailor, who had remained there sick, sorry, and pennyless (having been set ashore in 1814), from the want of any accredited agent able or willing to help him homewards.  Will you get this done?  If you do, I will then send his name and condition, subject, of course, to rejection, if not approved when known.

“I know that in the Levant you