“January 16. 1821.

“Read—­rode—­fired pistols—­returned—­dined—­wrote—­visited—­heard music—­talked nonsense—­and went home.

“Wrote part of a Tragedy—­advanced in Act 1st with ’all deliberate speed.’  Bought a blanket.  The weather is still muggy as a London May—­mist, mizzle, the air replete with Scotticisms, which, though fine in the descriptions of Ossian, are somewhat tiresome in real, prosaic perspective.  Politics still mysterious.

“January 17. 1821.

“Rode i’ the forest—­fired pistols—­dined.  Arrived a packet of books from England and Lombardy—­English, Italian, French, and Latin.  Read till eight—­went out.

“January 18. 1821.

“To-day, the post arriving late, did not ride.  Read letters—­only two gazettes instead of twelve now due.  Made Lega write to that negligent Galignani, and added a postscript.  Dined.

“At eight proposed to go out.  Lega came in with a letter about a bill unpaid at Venice, which I thought paid months ago.  I flew into a paroxysm of rage, which almost made me faint.  I have not been well ever since.  I deserve it for being such a fool—­but it was provoking—­a set of scoundrels!  It is, however, but five and twenty pounds.

“January 19. 1821.

“Rode.  Winter’s wind somewhat more unkind than ingratitude itself, though Shakspeare says otherwise.  At least, I am so much more accustomed to meet with ingratitude than the north wind, that I thought the latter the sharper of the two.  I had met with both in the course of the twenty-four hours, so could judge.

“Thought of a plan of education for my daughter Allegra, who ought to begin soon with her studies.  Wrote a letter—­afterwards a postscript.  Rather in low spirits—­certainly hippish—­liver touched—­will take a dose of salts.

“I have been reading the Life, by himself and daughter, of Mr. R.L.  Edgeworth, the father of the Miss Edgeworth.  It is altogether a great name.  In 1813, I recollect to have met them in the fashionable world of London (of which I then formed an item, a fraction, the segment of a circle, the unit of a million, the nothing of something) in the assemblies of the hour, and at a breakfast of Sir Humphry and Lady Davy’s, to which I was invited for the nonce.  I had been the lion of 1812; Miss Edgeworth and Madame de Stael, with ‘the Cossack,’ towards the end of 1813, were the exhibitions of the succeeding year.

“I thought Edgeworth a fine old fellow, of a clarety, elderly, red complexion, but active, brisk, and endless.  He was seventy, but did not look fifty—­no, nor forty-eight even.  I had seen poor Fitzpatrick not very long before—­a man of pleasure, wit, eloquence, all things.  He tottered—­but still talked like a gentleman, though feebly.  Edgeworth bounced about, and talked loud and long; but he seemed neither weakly nor decrepit, and hardly old.