had been seen--_to drink
beer_!"

Some of the Beau's letters at this period are given; but they are not
fortunate specimens of his taste: even in writing to women they are
quaint, affected, and approaching to that unpardonable crime, dulness.
His letters written in his wane of life, and under the realities of
suffering, are much more striking, contain some pathetic and even some
powerful language, and show that fashion and his own follies had
obscured a mind of natural talent, if not of original tenderness.

The following letter we look upon as quite sufficient to have excluded
him from the recollections of any Lady Jane on earth, if she happened to
know the difference between coxcombry and common feeling:--

"MY DEAR LADY JANE,--With the miniature, it seems, I am not to be
trusted even for two _pitiful_ hours. My own memory must be then my
only _disconsolate_ expedient to obtain a resemblance.

"As I am unwilling to merit the imputation of committing myself by
too flagrant a liberty in retaining your glove, which you
charitably sent at my head yesterday, as you would have extended an
_eleemosynary sixpence_ to the _supplicating hat_ of a mendicant, I
restore it to you. And, allow me to assure you, that I have too
much regard and respect for you, and too little practical vanity
myself, (whatever appearances may be against me,) to have
entertained, for one _treacherous_ instant, the impertinent
intention to defraud you of it. You are angry, perhaps irreparably
incensed against me for this _petty larceny_. I have no defence to
offer in mitigation but that of _frenzy_. But you know that you are
an _angel_ visiting these sublunary spheres, and therefore your
first quality should be that of mercy. Yet you are sometimes
wayward and volatile in your _seraphic_ disposition. Though you
have no wings yet you have weapons, and those are resentment and
estrangement from me.--With sentiments of the deepest
_compunction_, I am always your _miserable slave_,

"GEORGE BRUMMELL."

We have not a doubt that he perused this toilsome performance a dozen
times before he folded it up, advanced to his mirror to see how so
brilliant a correspondent must look after so astonishing a production,
moved round the room in a minuet step; and, when he sent it away at
last, followed it with a sigh at the burial of so much renown in a
woman's