After doing all she
can to persuade him that--but why do they abuse him for cutting off that
poltroon Cicero's head? Did not Tully tell Brutus it was a pity to have
spared Antony? and did he not speak the Philippics? and are not "_words
things_?" [2] and such "_words_" very pestilent "_things_" too? If he
had had a hundred heads, they deserved (from Antony) a rostrum (his was
stuck up there) apiece--though, after all, he might as well have
pardoned him, for the credit of the thing. But to resume--Cleopatra,
after securing him, says, "yet go--it is your interest," etc.--how like
the sex! and the questions about Octavia--it is woman all over.
To-day received Lord Jersey's invitation to Middleton--to travel sixty
miles to meet Madame De Stael! I once travelled three thousand to get
among silent people; and this same lady writes octavos, and _talks_
folios. I have read her books--like most of them, and delight in the
last; so I won't hear it, as well as read.
Read Burns to-day. What would he have been, if a patrician? We should
have had more polish--less force--just as much verse, but no
immortality--a divorce and a duel or two, the which had he survived, as
his potations must have been less spirituous, he might have lived as
long as Sheridan, and outlived as much as poor Brinsley. What a wreck is
that man! and all from bad pilotage; for no one had ever better gales,
though now and then a little too squally. Poor dear Sherry! I shall
never forget the day he and Rogers and Moore and I passed together; when
_he_ talked, and _we_ listened, without one yawn, from six till one in
the morning.
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