y whether _all_ sleep has the like visions.
Since I rose, I've been in considerable bodily pain also; but it is
gone, and now, like Lord Ogleby, I am wound up for the day.

"A note from Mountnorris--I dine with Ward;--Canning is to be there,
Frere and Sharpe,--perhaps Gifford. I am to be one of 'the five' (or
rather six), as Lady * * said a little sneeringly yesterday. They are
all good to meet, particularly Canning, and--Ward, when he likes. I wish
I may be well enough to listen to these intellectuals.

"No letters to-day;--so much the better,--there are no answers. I must
not dream again;--it spoils even reality. I will go out of doors, and
see what the fog will do for me. Jackson has been here: the boxing
world much as usual;--but the club increases. I shall dine at Crib's
to-morrow. I like energy--even animal energy--of all kinds; and I have
need of both mental and corporeal. I have not dined out, nor, indeed,
_at all_, lately; have heard no music--have seen nobody. Now for a
_plunge_--high life and low life. 'Amant _alterna_ Camoenae!'

"I have burnt my _Roman_--as I did the first scenes and sketch of my
comedy--and, for aught I see, the pleasure of burning is quite as great
as that of printing. These two last would not have done. I ran into
realities more than ever; and some would have been recognised and others
guessed at.

"Redde the Ruminator--a collection of Essays, by a strange, but able,
old man (Sir E.B.), and a half-wild young one, author of a poem on the
Highlands, called 'Childe Alarique.' The word 'sensibility' (always my
aversion) occurs a thousand times in these Essays; and, it seems, is to
be an excuse for all kinds of discontent. This young man can know
nothing of life; and, if he cherishes the disposition which runs through
his papers, will become useless, and, perhaps, not even a poet, after
all, which he seems determined to be. God help him! no one should be a
rhymer who could be any thing better. And this is what annoys one, to
see Scott and Moore, and Campbell and Rogers, who might have all been
agents and leaders, now mere spectators. For, though they may have other
ostensible avocations, these last are reduced to a secondary
consideration. * *, too, frittering away his time among dowagers and
unmarried girls. If it advanced any _serious_ affair, it were some
excuse; but, with the unmarried, that is a hazardous speculation, and
tiresome enough, too; and, with the veterans, it is not much wo