rlds 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?' 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 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. The British Critic, in their Rokeby Review, have presupposed
a comparison, which I am sure my friends never thought of, and W.
Scott's subjects are injudicious in descending to. I like the man--and
admire his works to what Mr. Braham calls _Entusymusy_. All such stuff
can only vex him, and do me no good. Many hate his politics--(I hate all
politics); and, here, a man's politics are like the Greek _soul_--an
[Greek: eidolon], besides God knows what _other soul_; but their
estimate of the two generally go together.

"Harry has not brought _ma petite cousine_. I want us to go to the play
together;--she has been but once. Another short note from Jersey,
inviting Rogers and me on the 23d. I must see my agent to-night. I
wonder when that Newstead business will be finished. It cost me more
than words to part with it--and to _have_ parted with it! What matters
it what I do? or what becomes of me?--but let me remember Job's saying,
and console myself with being 'a living man.'

"I wish I could settle to reading again,--my life is monotonous, and yet
desultory. I take up books, and fling t