into a dreary sleep.  Woke, and was ill all day, till I had galloped a few miles.  Query—­was it the cockles, or what I took to correct them, that caused the commotion?  I think both.  I remarked in my illness the complete inertion, inaction, and destruction of my chief mental faculties.  I tried to rouse them, and yet could not—­and this is the Soul!!! I should believe that it was married to the body, if they did not sympathise so much with each other.  If the one rose, when the other fell, it would be a sign that they longed for the natural state of divorce.  But as it is, they seem to draw together like post-horses.

“Let us hope the best—­it is the grand possession.”

* * * * *

During the two months comprised in this Journal, some of the Letters of the following series were written.  The reader must, therefore, be prepared to find in them occasional notices of the same train of events.

* * * * *

LETTER 404.  TO MR. MOORE.

     “Ravenna, January 2. 1821.

“Your entering into my project for the Memoir is pleasant to me.  But I doubt (contrary to my dear Made Mac F * *, whom I always loved, and always shall—­not only because I really did feel attached to her personally, but because she and about a dozen others of that sex were all who stuck by me in the grand conflict of 1815)—­but I doubt, I say, whether the Memoir could appear in my lifetime;—­and, indeed, I had rather it did not; for a man always looks dead after his Life has appeared, and I should certes not survive the appearance of mine.  The first part I cannot consent to alter, even although Made. de S.’s opinion of B.C. and my remarks upon Lady C.’s beauty (which is surely great, and I suppose that I have said so—­at least, I ought) should go down to our grandchildren in unsophisticated nakedness.

“As to Madame de S * *, I am by no means bound to be her beadsman—­she was always more civil to me in person than during my absence.  Our dear defunct friend, M * * L * [26], who was too great a bore ever to lie, assured me upon his tiresome word of honour, that, at Florence, the said Madame de S * was open-mouthed against me; and when asked, in Switzerland, why she had changed her opinion, replied, with laudable sincerity, that I had named her in a sonnet with Voltaire, Rousseau, &c. &c. and that she could not help it through decency.  Now, I have not forgotten this, but I have been generous,—­as mine acquaintance, the late Captain Whitby, of the navy, used to say to his seamen (when ’married to the gunner’s daughter’)—­’two dozen, and let you off easy.’  The ‘two dozen’ were with the cat-o’-nine tails;—­the ‘let you off easy’ was rather his own opinion than that of the patient.

“My acquaintance with these terms