. . . . . . .

’Wednesday.—­This day two years my last hope and pleasure in life was taken from me, and my dear child was called to heaven.  Has he joined his neglected brother there, whom I suffered to grow up unheeded by my side:  and whom the tyranny of the monster to whom I am united drove to exile, and perhaps to death?  Or is the child alive, as my fond heart sometimes deems?  Charles Bullingdon! come to the aid of a wretched mother, who acknowledges her crimes, her coldness towards thee, and now bitterly pays for her error!  But no, he cannot live!  I am distracted!  My only hope is in you, my cousin—­ you whom I had once thought to salute by a still fonder title, my dear George Poynings!  Oh, be my knight and my preserver, the true chivalric being thou ever wert, and rescue me from the thrall of the felon caitiff who holds me captive—­rescue me from him, and from Stycorax, the vile Irish witch, his mother!’

(Here follow some verses, such as her Ladyship was in the habit of composing by reams, in which she compares herself to Sabra, in the ‘Seven Champions,’ and beseeches her George to rescue her from the dragon, meaning Mrs. Barry.  I omit the lines, and proceed:)—­

’Even my poor child, who perished untimely on this sad anniversary, the tyrant who governs me had taught to despise and dislike me.  ’Twas in disobedience to my orders, my prayers, that he went on the fatal journey.  What sufferings, what humiliations have I had to endure since then!  I am a prisoner in my own halls.  I should fear poison, but that I know the wretch has a sordid interest in keeping me alive, and that my death would be the signal for his ruin.  But I dare not stir without my odious, hideous, vulgar gaoler, the horrid Irishwoman, who pursues my every step.  I am locked into my chamber at night, like a felon, and only suffered to leave it when ordered into the presence of my lord (I ordered!), to be present at his orgies with his boon companions, and to hear his odious converse as he lapses into the disgusting madness of intoxication!  He has given up even the semblance of constancy—­he, who swore that I alone could attach or charm him!  And now he brings his vulgar mistresses before my very eyes, and would have had me acknowledge, as heir to my own property, his child by another!

’No, I never will submit!  Thou, and thou only, my George, my early friend, shalt be heir to the estates of Lyndon.  Why did not Fate join me to thee, instead of to the odious man who holds me under his sway, and make the poor Calista happy?’

. . . . . . .

So the letters would run on for sheets upon sheets, in the closest cramped handwriting; and I leave any unprejudiced reader to say whether the writer of such documents must not have been as silly and vain a creature as ever lived, and whether she did not want being taken care of?  I could copy out yards of rhapsody