“No dreams last night of the dead nor the living, so—­I am ’firm as the marble, founded as the rock,’ till the next earthquake.

“Ward’s dinner went off well.  There was not a disagreeable person there—­unless I offended any body, which I am sure I could not by contradiction, for I said little, and opposed nothing.  Sharpe (a man of elegant mind, and who has lived much with the best—­Fox, Horne Tooke, Windham, Fitzpatrick, and all the agitators of other times and tongues,) told us the particulars of his last interview with Windham, a few days before the fatal operation which sent ’that gallant spirit to aspire the skies.’  Windham,—­the first in one department of oratory and talent, whose only fault was his refinement beyond the intellect of half his hearers,—­Windham, half his life an active participator in the events of the earth, and one of those who governed nations,—­he regretted, and dwelt much on that regret, that ’he had not entirely devoted himself to literature and science!!!’ His mind certainly would have carried him to eminence there, as elsewhere;—­but I cannot comprehend what debility of that mind could suggest such a wish.  I, who have heard him, cannot regret any thing but that I shall never hear him again.  What! would he have been a plodder? a metaphysician?—­perhaps a rhymer? a scribbler?  Such an exchange must have been suggested by illness.  But he is gone, and Time ‘shall not look upon his like again.’

“I am tremendously in arrear with my letters,—­except to * *, and to her my thoughts overpower me:—­my words never compass them.  To Lady Melbourne I write with most pleasure—­and her answers, so sensible, so tactique—­I never met with half her talent.  If she had been a few years younger, what a fool she would have made of me, had she thought it worth her while,—­and I should have lost a valuable and most agreeable friend.  Mem. a mistress never is nor can be a friend.  While you agree, you are lovers; and, when it is over, any thing but friends.

“I have not answered W. Scott’s last letter,—­but I will.  I regret to hear from others that he has lately been unfortunate in pecuniary involvements.  He is undoubtedly the Monarch of Parnassus, and the most English of bards.  I should place Rogers next in the living list (I value him more as the last of the best school)—­Moore and Campbell both third—­Southey and Wordsworth and Coleridge—­the rest, [Greek:  hoi polloi]—­thus:—­

W. SCOTT
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/ ROGERS.\
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/ MOORE.—­CAMPBELL.\
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/ SOUTHEY.—­WORDSWORTH.—­COLERIDGE.\
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/ THE MANY. \
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