"
'Don Juan', Canto III. stanza lxxxviii.]
[Footnote 3:
"-----my weal, my woe,
My hope on high--my all below;
Earth holds no other like to thee,
Or, if it doth, in vain for me:
For worlds I dare not view the dame
Resembling thee, yet not the same."
'The Giaour'.]
* * * * *
Nov. 17.
No letter from----; but I must not complain. The respectable Job says,
"Why should a _living man_ complain?" [1] I really don't know, except it
be that a _dead man_ can't; and he, the said patriarch, _did_ complain,
nevertheless, till his friends were tired and his wife recommended that
pious prologue,"Curse--and die;" the only time, I suppose, when but
little relief is to be found in swearing. I have had a most kind letter
from Lord Holland on "_The Bride of Abydos_," which he likes, and so
does Lady H. This is very good-natured in both, from whom I don't
deserve any quarter. Yet I _did_ think, at the time, that my cause of
enmity proceeded from Holland House, and am glad I was wrong, and wish I
had not been in such a hurry with that confounded satire, of which I
would suppress even the memory;--but people, now they can't get it, make
a fuss, I verily believe, out of contradiction.
George Ellis [2] and Murray have been talking something about Scott and
me, George _pro Scoto_,--and very right too. If they want to depose him,
I only wish they would not set me up as a competitor. Even if I had my
choice, I would rather be the Earl of Warwick than all the _kings_ he
ever made! Jeffrey and Gifford I take to be the monarch-makers in poetry
and prose.
Pages:
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440