shooting—­considering the difference of powder and pistols—­as when, in 1809, 1810, 1811, 1812, 1813, 1814, it was my luck to split walking-sticks, wafers, half-crowns, shillings, and even the eye of a walking-stick, at twelve paces, with a single bullet—­and all by eye and calculation; for my hand is not steady, and apt to change with the very weather.  To the prowess which I here note, Joe Manton and others can bear testimony! for the former taught, and the latter has seen me do, these feats.

“Dined—­visited—­came home—­read.  Remarked on an anecdote in Grimm’s Correspondence, which says that ’Regnard et la plupart des poetes comiques etaient gens bilieux et melancoliques; et que M. de Voltaire, qui est tres gai, n’a jamais fait que des tragedies—­et que la comedie gaie est le seul genre ou il n’ait point reussi.  C’est que celui qui rit et celui qui fait rire sont deux hommes fort differens.’—­Vol.  VI.

“At this moment I feel as bilious as the best comic writer of them all, (even as Regnard himself, the next to Moliere, who has written some of the best comedies in any language, and who is supposed to have committed suicide,) and am not in spirits to continue my proposed tragedy of Sardanapalus, which I have, for some days, ceased to compose.

“To-morrow is my birth-day—­that is to say, at twelve o’ the clock, midnight, i.e. in twelve minutes, I shall have completed thirty and three years of age!!!—­and I go to my bed with a heaviness of heart at having lived so long, and to so little purpose.

“It is three minutes past twelve.—­’Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,’ and I am now thirty-three!

    “Eheu, fugaces, Posthume, Posthume,
    Labuntur anni;—­

but I don’t regret them so much for what I have done, as for what I might have done.

“Through life’s road, so dim and dirty,
I have dragged to three-and-thirty. 
What have these years left to me? 
Nothing—­except thirty-three.

“January 22. 1821.

1821. 
Here lies
interred in the Eternity
of the Past,
from whence there is no
Resurrection
for the Days—­whatever there may be
for the Dust—­
the Thirty-Third Year
of an ill-spent Life,
Which, after
a lingering disease of many months,
sunk into a lethargy,
and expired,
January 22d, 1821, A.D. 
Leaving a successor
Inconsolable
for the very loss which
occasioned its
Existence.

“January 23. 1821.

“Fine day.  Read—­rode—­fired pistols, and returned.  Dined—­read.  Went out at eight—­made the usual visit.  Heard of nothing but war,—­’the cry is still, They come.’  The Cari. seem to have no plan—­nothing fixed among themselves, how, when, or what to do.  In that case, they will make nothing of this project, so often postponed, and never put in action.