Some editor of some magazine has _announced_ to Murray his intention of
abusing the thing "_without reading it_." So much the better; if he
redde it first, he would abuse it more.
Allen [3] (Lord Holland's Allen--the best informed and one of the ablest
men I know--a perfect Magliabecchi [4]--a devourer, a _Helluo_ of books,
and an observer of men,) has lent me a quantity of Burns's [5]
unpublished and never-to-be-published Letters. They are full of oaths
and obscene songs. What an antithetical mind!--tenderness,
roughness--delicacy, coarseness--sentiment, sensuality--soaring and
grovelling, dirt and deity--all mixed up in that one compound of
inspired clay!
It seems strange; a true voluptuary will never abandon his mind to the
grossness of reality. It is by exalting the earthly, the material, the
_physique_ of our pleasures, by veiling these ideas, by forgetting them
altogether, or, at least, never naming them hardly to one's self, that
we alone can prevent them from disgusting.
[Footnote 1: Mrs. Packwood is the wife of George Packwood, "the
celebrated Razor Strop Maker and Author of 'The Goldfinch's Nest',"
whose shop was at 16, Gracechurch Street. 'Packwood's Whim; The
Goldfinch's Nest, or the Way to get Money and be Happy', by George
Packwood, was published in 1796, and reached a second edition in 1807.
It is a collection of his advertisements in prose and verse. The poet,
whom Packwood kept, apparently lived in Soho (p. 21), from his verses
which appeared in the 'True Briton' for November 9, 1795:
"If you wish, Sir, to Shave--nay, pray look not grave,
Since nothing on earth can be worse,
To P--d repair, you're shaved to a hair,
Which I mean to exhibit in verse.
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