"P.S. Of the praises of that little * * * Keats. I shall observe as Johnson did when Sheridan the actor got a _pension_: 'What! has _he_ got a pension? Then it is time that I should give up _mine_!' Nobody could be prouder of the praise of the Edinburgh than I was, or more alive to their censure, as I showed in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. At present _all the men_ they have ever praised are degraded by that insane article. Why don't they review and praise 'Solomon's Guide to Health?' it is better sense and as much poetry as Johnny Keats.
"Bowles must be _bowled_ down. 'Tis a sad match at cricket if he can get any notches at Pope's expense. If he once get into '_Lord's_ ground,' (to continue the pun, because it is foolish,) I think I could beat him in one innings. You did not know, perhaps, that I was once (_not metaphorically_, but _really_,) a good cricketer, particularly in _batting_, and I played in the Harrow match against the Etonians in 1805, gaining more notches (as one of our chosen eleven) than any, except Lord Ipswich and Brookman, on our side."
[Footnote 12: A celebrated hair-dresser.]
"The 'Hints,' Hobhouse says, will require a good deal of slashing to suit the times, which will be a work of time, for I don't feel at all laborious just now. Whatever effect they are to have would perhaps be greater in a separate form, and they also must have my name to them. Now, if you publish them in the same volume with Don Juan, they identify Don Juan as mine, which I don't think worth a Chancery suit about my daughter's guardianship, as in your present code a facetious poem is sufficient to take away a man's rights over his family.
"Of the state of things here it would be difficult and not very prudent to speak at large, the Huns opening all letters. I wonder if they can read them when they have opened them; if so, they may see, in my MOST LEGIBLE HAND, THAT I THINK THEM DAMNED SCOUNDRELS AND BARBARIANS, and THEIR EMPEROR a FOOL, and themselves more fools than he; all which they may send to Vienna for any thing I care. They have got themselves masters of the Papal police, and are bullying away; but some day or other they will pay for all: it may not be very soon, because these unhappy Italians have no consistency among themselves; but I suppose that Providence will get tired of them at last, *
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