LETTER 60.  TO MR. HODGSON.

     “Newstead Abbey, August 22. 1811.

“You may have heard of the sudden death of my mother, and poor Matthews, which, with that of Wingfield, (of which I was not fully aware till just before I left town, and indeed hardly believed it,) has made a sad chasm in my connections.  Indeed the blows followed each other so rapidly that I am yet stupid from the shock; and though I do eat, and drink, and talk, and even laugh, at times, yet I can hardly persuade myself that I am awake, did not every morning convince me mournfully to the contrary.—­I shall now wave the subject,—­the dead are at rest, and none but the dead can be so.

“You will feel for poor Hobhouse,—­Matthews was the ’god of his idolatry;’ and if intellect could exalt a man above his fellows, no one could refuse him pre-eminence.  I knew him most intimately, and valued him proportionably; but I am recurring—­so let us talk of life and the living.

“If you should feel a disposition to come here, you will find ’beef and a sea-coal fire,’ and not ungenerous wine.  Whether Otway’s two other requisites for an Englishman or not, I cannot tell, but probably one of them.—­Let me know when I may expect you, that I may tell you when I go and when return.  I have not yet been to Lanes.  Davies has been here, and has invited me to Cambridge for a week in October, so that, peradventure, we may encounter glass to glass.  His gaiety (death cannot mar it) has done me service; but, after all, ours was a hollow laughter.

“You will write to me?  I am solitary, and I never felt solitude irksome before.  Your anxiety about the critique on * ’s book is amusing; as it was anonymous, certes it was of little consequence:  I wish it had produced a little more confusion, being a lover of literary malice.  Are you doing nothing? writing nothing? printing nothing? why not your Satire on Methodism? the subject (supposing the public to be blind to merit) would do wonders.  Besides, it would be as well for a destined deacon to prove his orthodoxy.—­It really would give me pleasure to see you properly appreciated.  I say _really_, as, being an author, my humanity might be suspected.  Believe me, dear H., yours always.”

* * * *

LETTER 61.  TO MR. DALLAS.

     “Newstead, August 21. 1811.

“Your letter gives me credit for more acute feelings than I possess; for though I feel tolerably miserable, yet I am at the same time subject to a kind of hysterical merriment, or rather laughter without merriment, which I can neither account for nor conquer, and yet I do not feel relieved by it; but an indifferent person would think me in excellent spirits.  ’We must forget these things,’ and have recourse to our old selfish comforts, or rather comfortable