"I thank you most truly for the concluding part of your letter. I have been of late not much accustomed to kindness from any quarter, and am not the less pleased to meet with it again from one where I had known it earliest. I have not changed in all my ramblings,--Harrow, and, of course, yourself never left me, and the
attended me to the very spot to which that sentence alludes in the mind of the fallen Argive--Our intimacy began before we began to date at all, and it rests with you to continue it till the hour which must number it and me with the things that _were_.
"Do read mathematics.--I should think _X plus Y_ at least as amusing as the Curse of Kehama, and much more intelligible. Master S.'s poems _are_, in fact, what parallel lines might be--viz. prolonged _ad infinitum_ without meeting any thing half so absurd as themselves.
"What news, what news? Queen Oreaca, What news of scribblers five? S----, W----, C----e, L----d, and L----e?-- All damn'd, though yet alive.
C----e is lecturing. 'Many an old fool,' said Hannibal to some such lecturer, 'but such as this, never.'
[Footnote 34: The Rev. Robert Bland, one of the authors of "Collections from the Greek Anthology." Lord Byron was, at this time, endeavouring to secure for Mr. Bland the task of translating Lucien Buonaparte's poem.]
"Behold a most formidable sheet, without gilt or black edging, and consequently very vulgar and indecorous, particularly to one of your precision; but this being Sunday, I can procure no better, and will atone for its length by not filling it. Bland I have not seen since my last letter; but on Tuesday he dines with me, and will meet M * * e, the epitome of all that is exquisite in poetical or personal accomplishments. How Bland has settled with Miller, I know not. I have very little interest with either, and they must arrange their concerns according to their own gusto. I have done my endeavours, _at your request_, to bring them together, and hope they may agree to their mutual advantage.
"Coleridge has been lecturing against Campbell. Rogers was present, and from him I derive the information. We are going to make a party to hear this Manichean of poesy. Pole is to marry Miss Long, and will be a very miserable dog for all that. The present ministers are to continue, and his Majesty _does_ continue in the same state; so there's folly and madness for you, both in a breath.