wit is all his own,'

as Hobhouse sarcastically says of somebody (not unlikely myself, as we
are old friends);--but were it to come over again, I would _not_. I have
since redde[94] the cause of my couplets, and it is not adequate to the
effect. C * * told me that it was believed I alluded to poor Lord
Carlisle's nervous disorder in one of the lines. I thank Heaven I did
not know it--and would not, could not, if I had. I must naturally be the
last person to be pointed on defects or maladies.

"Rogers is silent,--and, it is said, severe. When he does talk, he talks
well; and, on all subjects of taste, his delicacy of expression is pure
as his poetry. If you enter his house--his drawing-room--his
library--you of yourself say, this is not the dwelling of a common mind.
There is not a gem, a coin, a book thrown aside on his chimney-piece,
his sofa, his table, that does not bespeak an almost fastidious elegance
in the possessor. But this very delicacy must be the misery of his
existence. Oh the jarrings his disposition must have encountered through
life!

"Southey, I have not seen much of. His appearance is _Epic_; and he is
the only existing entire man of letters. All the others have some
pursuit annexed to their authorship. His manners are mild, but not
those of a man of the world, and his talents of the first order. His
prose is perfect. Of his poetry there are various opinions: there is,
perhaps, too much of it for the present generation;--posterity will
probably select. He has passages equal to any thing. At present, he has
a party, but no public--except for his prose writings. The life of
Nelson is beautiful.

"* * is a _Litterateur_, the Oracle of the Coteries, of the * * s, L * W
* (Sydney Smith's 'Tory Virgin'), Mrs. Wilmot, (she, at least, is a
swan, and might frequent a purer stream,) Lady B * *, and all the Blues,
with Lady C * * at their head--but I say nothing of _her_--'look in her
face and you forget them all,' and every thing else. Oh that face!--by
'te, Diva potens Cypri,' I would, to be beloved by that woman, build and
burn another Troy.

"M * * e has a peculiarity of talent, or rather talents,--poetry, music,
voice, all his own; and an expression in each, which never was, nor will
be, possessed by another. But he is capable of still higher flights in
poetry. By the by, what humour, what--every thing, in the 'Post-Bag!'
There is nothing M * * e may not do, if he will but seriously set about
it. In so