Marshal Wellington; others, that it might be translated into Manager Whitbread; while the ladies of the vicinity of the saloon conceived the last letter to be complimentary to themselves.  I leave this to the commentators to illustrate.  If you don’t answer this, I sha’n’t say what you deserve, but I think I deserve a reply.  Do you conceive there is no Post-Bag but the Twopenny?  Sunburn me, if you are not too bad.”

* * * * *

LETTER 125.  TO MR. MOORE.

     “July 13. 1813.

“Your letter set me at ease; for I really thought (as I hear of your susceptibility) that I had said—­I know not what—­but something I should have been very sorry for, had it, or I, offended you;—­though I don’t see how a man with a beautiful wife—­his own children,—­quiet—­fame—­competency and friends, (I will vouch for a thousand, which is more than I will for a unit in my own behalf,) can be offended with any thing.

“Do you know, Moore, I am amazingly inclined—­remember I say but inclined—­to be seriously enamoured with Lady A.F.—­but this * * has ruined all my prospects.  However, you know her; is she clever, or sensible, or good-tempered? either would do—­I scratch out the will.  I don’t ask as to her beauty—­that I see; but my circumstances are mending, and were not my other prospects blackening, I would take a wife, and that should be the woman, had I a chance.  I do not yet know her much, but better than I did.

“I want to get away, but find difficulty in compassing a passage in a ship of war.  They had better let me go; if I cannot, patriotism is the word—­’nay, an’ they’ll mouth, I’ll rant as well as they.’  Now, what are you doing?—­writing, we all hope, for our own sakes.  Remember you must edite my posthumous works, with a Life of the Author, for which I will send you Confessions, dated, ‘Lazaretto,’ Smyrna, Malta, or Palermo—­one can die any where.

“There is to be a thing on Tuesday ycleped a national fete.  The Regent and * * * are to be there, and every body else, who has shillings enough for what was once a guinea.  Vauxhall is the scene—­there are six tickets issued for the modest women, and it is supposed there will be three to spare.  The passports for the lax are beyond my arithmetic.

“P.S.—­The Stael last night attacked me most furiously—­said that I had ’no right to make love—­that I had used * * barbarously—­that I had no feeling, and was totally insensible to la belle passion, and had been all my life.’  I am very glad to hear it, but did not know it before.  Let me hear from you anon.”

* * * * *

LETTER 126.  TO MR. MOORE.

     “July 25. 1813.