“I don’t know what to say about ‘friendship.’  I never was in friendship but once, in my nineteenth year, and then it gave me as much trouble as love.  I am afraid, as Whitbread’s sire said to the king, when he wanted to knight him, that I am ‘too old:’  but, nevertheless, no one wishes you more friends, fame, and felicity, than Yours,” &c.

* * * * *

Having relinquished his design of accompanying the Oxfords to Sicily, he again thought of the East, as will be seen by the following letters, and proceeded so far in his preparations for the voyage as to purchase of Love, the jeweller, of Old Bond Street, about a dozen snuff-boxes, as presents for some of his old Turkish acquaintances.

LETTER 124.  TO MR. MOORE.

     “4.  Benedictine Street, St. James’s, July 8. 1813.

“I presume by your silence that I have blundered into something noxious in my reply to your letter, for the which I beg leave to send beforehand a sweeping apology, which you may apply to any, or all, parts of that unfortunate epistle.  If I err in my conjecture, I expect the like from you, in putting our correspondence so long in quarantine.  God he knows what I have said; but he also knows (if he is not as indifferent to mortals as the nonchalant deities of Lucretius), that you are the last person I want to offend.  So, if I have,—­why the devil don’t you say it at once, and expectorate your spleen?

“Rogers is out of town with Madame de Stael, who hath published an Essay against Suicide, which, I presume, will make somebody shoot himself;—­as a sermon by Blinkensop, in proof of Christianity, sent a hitherto most orthodox acquaintance of mine out of a chapel of ease a perfect atheist.  Have you found or founded a residence yet? and have you begun or finished a poem?  If you won’t tell me what I have done, pray say what you have done, or left undone, yourself.  I am still in equipment for voyaging, and anxious to hear from, or of, you before I go, which anxiety you should remove more readily, as you think I sha’n’t cogitate about you afterwards.  I shall give the lie to that calumny by fifty foreign letters, particularly from any place where the plague is rife,—­without a drop of vinegar or a whiff of sulphur to save you from infection.

“The Oxfords have sailed almost a fortnight, and my sister is in town, which is a great comfort—­for, never having been much together, we are naturally more attached to each other.  I presume the illuminations have conflagrated to Derby (or wherever you are) by this time.  We are just recovering from tumult and train oil, and transparent fripperies, and all the noise and nonsense of victory.  Drury Lane had a large M.W., which some thought was