rrupted, however, partly by business, and
partly by vexation of different kinds,--for I have not very long ago lost
a child by fever, and I have had a good deal of petty trouble with the
laws of this lawless country, on account of the prosecution of a servant
for an attack upon a cowardly scoundrel of a dragoon, who drew his sword
upon some unarmed Englishmen, and whom I had done the honour to mistake
for an officer, and to treat like a gentleman. He turned out to be
neither,--like many other with medals, and in uniform; but he paid for his
brutality with a severe and dangerous wound, inflicted by nobody knows
whom, for, of three suspected, and two arrested, they have been able to
identify neither; which is strange, since he was wounded in the presence
of thousands, in a public street, during a feast-day and full promenade.
--But to return to things more analogous to the 'Literary Character,' I
wish to say, that had I known that the book was to fall into your hands,
or that the MS. notes you have thought worthy of publication would have
attracted your attention, I would have made them more copious, and perhaps
not so careless.

"I really cannot know whether I am, or am not, the genius you are pleased
to call me,--but I am very willing to put up with the mistake, if it be
one. It is a title dearly enough bought by most men, to render it
endurable, even when not quite clearly made out, which it never _can_ be,
till the Posterity, whose decisions are merely dreams to ourselves, have
sanctioned or denied it, while it can touch us no further.

"Mr. Murray is in possession of a MS. memoir of mine (not to be published
till I am in my grave), which, strange as it may seem, I never read over
since it was written, and have no desire to read over again. In it I have
told what, as far as I know, is the _truth_--_not the whole_ truth--for if
I had done so, I must have involved much private, and some dissipated
history: but, nevertheless, nothing but truth, as far as regard for others
permitted it to appear.

"I do not know whether you have seen those MSS.; but, as you are curious
in such things as relate to the human mind, I should feel gratified if you
had. I also sent him (Murray), a few days since, a Common-place Book, by
my friend Lord Clare, containing a few things, which may perhaps aid his
publication in case of his surviving me. If there are any questions which
you would like to ask me, as connected with your philosophy of