“Dallas’s nephew (son to the American Attorney-general) is arrived in this country, and tells Dallas that my rhymes are very popular in the United States.  These are the first tidings that have ever sounded like Fame to my ears—­to be redde on the banks of the Ohio!  The greatest pleasure I ever derived, of this kind, was from an extract, in Cooke the actor’s life, from his Journal, stating that in the reading-room at Albany, near Washington, he perused English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.  To be popular in a rising and far country has a kind of posthumous feel, very different from the ephemeral eclat and fete-ing, buzzing and party-ing compliments of the well-dressed multitude.  I can safely say that, during my reign in the spring of 1812, I regretted nothing but its duration of six weeks instead of a fortnight, and was heartily glad to resign.

“Last night I supped with Lewis;—­and, as usual, though I neither exceeded in solids nor fluids, have been half dead ever since.  My stomach is entirely destroyed by long abstinence, and the rest will probably follow.  Let it—­I only wish the pain over.  The ’leap in the dark’ is the least to be dreaded.

“The Duke of * * called.  I have told them forty times that, except to half-a-dozen old and specified acquaintances, I am invisible.  His Grace is a good, noble, ducal person; but I am content to think so at a distance, and so—­I was not at home.

“Galt called.—­Mem.—­to ask some one to speak to Raymond in favour of his play.  We are old fellow-travellers, and, with all his eccentricities, he has much strong sense, experience of the world, and is, as far as I have seen, a good-natured philosophical fellow.  I showed him Sligo’s letter on the reports of the Turkish girl’s aventure at Athens soon after it happened.  He and Lord Holland, Lewis, and Moore, and Rogers, and Lady Melbourne have seen it.  Murray has a copy.  I thought it had been unknown, and wish it were; but Sligo arrived only some days after, and the rumours are the subject of his letter.  That I shall preserve,—­it is as well.  Lewis and Galt were both horrified; and L. wondered I did not introduce the situation into ‘The Giaour.’  He may wonder;—­he might wonder more at that production’s being written at all.  But to describe the feelings of that situation were impossible—­it is icy even to recollect them.

“The Bride of Abydos was published on Thursday the second of December; but how it is liked or disliked, I know not.  Whether it succeeds or not is no fault of the public, against whom I can have no complaint.  But I am much more indebted to the tale than I can ever be to the most partial reader; as it wrung my thoughts from reality to imagination—­from selfish regrets to vivid recollections—­and recalled me to a country replete with the brightest and darkest, but always most lively colours of my memory.  Sharpe called, but was not let in—­which I regret.