“I shall now smoke two cigars, and get me to bed.  The cigars don’t keep well here.  They get as old as a donna di quaranti anni in the sun of Africa.  The Havannah are the best;—­but neither are so pleasant as a hooka or chibouque.  The Turkish tobacco is mild, and their horses entire—­two things as they should be.  I am so far obliged to this Journal, that it preserves me from verse,—­at least from keeping it.  I have just thrown a poem into the fire (which it has relighted to my great comfort), and have smoked out of my head the plan of another.  I wish I could as easily get rid of thinking, or, at least, the confusion of thought.

“Tuesday, December 7.

“Went to bed, and slept dreamlessly, but not refreshingly.  Awoke, and up an hour before being called; but dawdled three hours in dressing.  When one subtracts from life infancy (which is vegetation),—­sleep, eating, and swilling—­buttoning and unbuttoning—­how much remains of downright existence?  The summer of a dormouse.

“Redde the papers and tea-ed and soda-watered, and found out that the fire was badly lighted.  Ld.  Glenbervie wants me to go to Brighton—­um!

“This morning, a very pretty billet from the Stael about meeting her at Ld.  H.’s to-morrow.  She has written, I dare say, twenty such this morning to different people, all equally flattering to each.  So much the better for her and those who believe all she wishes them, or they wish to believe.  She has been pleased to be pleased with my slight eulogy in the note annexed to ‘The Bride.’  This is to be accounted for in several ways,—­firstly, all women like all, or any, praise; secondly, this was unexpected, because I have never courted her; and, thirdly, as Scrub says, those who have been all their lives regularly praised, by regular critics, like a little variety, and are glad when any one goes out of his way to say a civil thing; and, fourthly, she is a very good-natured creature, which is the best reason, after all, and, perhaps, the only one.

“A knock—­knocks single and double.  Bland called.  He says Dutch society (he has been in Holland) is second-hand French; but the women are like women every where else.  This is a bore; I should like to see them a little unlike; but that can’t be expected.

“Went out—­came home—­this, that, and the other—­and ’all is vanity, saith the preacher,’ and so say I, as part of his congregation.  Talking of vanity, whose praise do I prefer?  Why, Mrs. Inchbald’s, and that of the Americans.  The first, because her ‘Simple Story’ and ’Nature and Art’ are, to me, true to their titles; and, consequently, her short note to Rogers about ‘The Giaour’ delighted me more than any thing, except the Edinburgh Review.  I like the Americans, because I happened to be in Asia, while the English Bards and Scotch Reviewers were redde in America.  If I could have had a speech against the Slave Trade, in Africa, and an epitaph on a dog in Europe (i.e. in the Morning Post), my vertex sublimis would certainly have displaced stars enough to overthrow the Newtonian system.