13–19 December 1813

Called at three places—read, and got ready to leave town to-morrow. Murray has had a letter from his brother bibliopole of Edinburgh, who says, "he is lucky in having such a poet"—something as if one was a packhorse, or "ass, or any thing that is his;" or, like Mrs. Packwood, who replied to some inquiry after the Odes on Razors,—"Laws, sir, we keeps a poet." The same illustrious Edinburgh bookseller once sent an order for books, poesy, and cookery, with this agreeable postscript—"The Harold and Cookery are much wanted." Such is fame, and, after all, quite as good as any other "life in others' breath." 'Tis much the same to divide purchasers with Hannah Glasse or Hannah More. 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 (Lord Holland's Allen—the best informed and one of the ablest men I know—a perfect Magliabecchi—a devourer, a Helluo of books, and an observer of men,) has lent me a quantity of Burns's unpublished and never-to-be-published Letters.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.

Much done, but nothing to record. It is quite enough to set down my thoughts,—my actions will rarely bear retrospection.

Lord Holland told me a curious piece of sentimentality in Sheridan. The other night we were all delivering our respective and various opinions on him and other hommes marquans, and mine was this:—"Whatever Sheridan has done or chosen to do has been, par excellence, always the best of its kind. He has written the best comedy (School for Scandal), the best drama (in my mind, far before that St. Giles's lampoon, the Beggar's Opera), the best farce (the Critic—it is only too good for a farce), and the best Address (Monologue on Garrick), and, to crown all, delivered the very best Oration (the famous Begum Speech) ever conceived or heard in this country." Somebody told S. this the next day, and on hearing it he burst into tears! Poor Brinsley! if they were tears of pleasure, I would rather have said these few, but most sincere, words than have written the Iliad or made his own celebrated Philippic. Nay, his own comedy never gratified me more than to hear that he had derived a moment's gratification from any praise of mine, humble as it must appear to "my elders and my betters." Went to my box at Covent Garden to-night; and my delicacy felt a little shocked at seeing S——'s mistress (who, to my certain knowledge, was actually educated, from her birth, for her profession) sitting with her mother, "a three-piled b——d, b——d Major to the army," in a private box opposite. I felt rather indignant; but, casting my eyes round the house, in the next box to me, and the next, and the next, were the most distinguished old and young Babylonians of quality;—so I burst out a laughing. It was really odd; Lady —— divorced—Lady —— and her daughter, Lady ——, both divorceable—Mrs. ——, in the next the like, and still nearer ———! What an assemblage to me, who know all their histories. It was as if the house had been divided between your public and your understood courtesans;—but the intriguantes much outnumbered the regular mercenaries. On the other side were only Pauline and her mother, and, next box to her, three of inferior note. Now, where lay the difference between her and mamma, and Lady —— and daughter? except that the two last may enter Carleton and any other house, and the two first are limited to the opera and b—— house. How I do delight in observing life as it really is!—and myself, after all, the worst of any. But no matter—I must avoid egotism, which, just now, would be no vanity. I have lately written a wild, rambling, unfinished rhapsody, called "The Devil's Drive" the notion of which I took from Person's "Devil's Walk." Redde some Italian, and wrote two Sonnets on ——. I never wrote but one sonnet before, and that was not in earnest, and many years ago, as an exercise—and I will never write another. They are the most puling, petrifying, stupidly platonic compositions. I detest the Petrarch so much, that I would not be the man even to have obtained his Laura, which the metaphysical, whining dotard never could.