was a se'nnight; the
first symptom which struck my eye and gave me incontrovertible proof of
the fatal truth was a pair of nankeen pantaloons four times too big for
him, which the said Heathen did pertinaciously affirm to be new.

They were absolutely ingrained with the accumulated dirt of ages; but he
affirmed them to be clean. He was going to visit a lady that was nice
about those things, and that's the reason he wore nankeen that day. And
then he danced, and capered, and fidgeted, and pulled up his pantaloons,
and hugged his intolerable flannel vestment closer about his poetic
loins; anon he gave it loose to the zephyrs which plentifully insinuate
their tiny bodies through every crevice, door, window, or wainscot,
expressly formed for the exclusion of such impertinents. Then he caught
at a proof-sheet, and catched up a laundress's bill instead; made a dart
at Bloomfield's Poems, and threw them in agony aside. I could not bring
him to one direct reply; he could not maintain his jumping mind in a
right line for the tithe of a moment by Clifford's Inn clock. He must go
to the printer's immediately,--the most unlucky accident; he had struck
off five hundred impressions of his Poems, which were ready for delivery
to subscribers, and the Preface must all be expunged. There were eighty
pages of Preface, and not till that morning had he discovered that in
the very first page of said Preface he had set out with a principle of
criticism fundamentally wrong, which vitiated all his following
reasoning. The Preface must be expunged, although it cost him L30,--the
lowest calculation, taking in paper and printing! In vain have his real
friends remonstrated against this Midsummer madness; George is as
obstinate as a Primitive Christian, and wards and parries off all our
thrusts with one unanswerable fence,--"Sir, it's of great consequence
that the _world_ is not _misled!_"

* * * * *

Man of many snipes, I will sup with thee, _Deo volente ei diabolo
nolente_, on Monday night the 5th of January, in the new year, and crush
a cup to the infant century.

A word or two of my progress. Embark at six o'clock in the morning, with
a fresh gale, on a Cambridge one-decker; very cold till eight at night;
land at St. Mary's lighthouse, muffins and coffee upon table (or any
other curious production of Turkey or both Indies), snipes exactly at
nine, punch to commence at ten, with _argument_; difference of opinion