idness of
those charges: for instance, he talked a good deal about horses,
meaning to ride in Ireland, and described very cleverly an old hunter
he had hired once,--how it galloped and could not walk; also he
propounded a theory of the true method of behaving in the saddle when
a horse rears, which I besought him only to practise in fancy on the
sofa, where he lay telling it. So much for professing his ignorance in
that matter! On a sofa he does throw himself--but when thrown there,
he can talk, with Miss Mitford's leave, admirably,--I never heard
better stories than Horne's--some Spanish-American incidents of travel
want printing--or have been printed, for aught I know. That he cares
for nobody's poetry is _false_, he praises more unregardingly of his
own retreat, more unprovidingly for his own fortune,--(do I speak
clearly?)--less like a man who himself has written somewhat in the
'line' of the other man he is praising--which 'somewhat' has to be
guarded in its interests, &c., less like the poor professional praise
of the 'craft' than any other I ever met--instance after instance
starting into my mind as I write. To his income I never heard him
allude--unless one should so interpret a remark to me this last time
we met, that he had been on some occasion put to inconvenience by
somebody's withholding ten or twelve pounds due to him for an article,
and promised in the confidence of getting them to a tradesman, which
does not look like 'boasting of his income'! As for the heiresses--I
don't believe one word of it, of the succession and transition and
trafficking. Altogether, what miserable 'set-offs' to the achievement
of an 'Orion,' a 'Marlowe,' a 'Delora'! Miss Martineau understands him
better.

Now I come to myself and my health. I am quite well now--at all
events, much better, just a little turning in the head--since you
appeal to my sincerity. For the coffee--thank you, indeed thank you,
but nothing after the '_oenomel_' and before half past six. _I_ know
all about that song and its Greek original if Horne does not--and can
tell you--, how truly...!

The thirst that from the soul doth rise
Doth ask a drink divine--
But might I of Jove's nectar sup
I would not change for thine! _No, no, no!_

And by the bye, I have misled you as my wont is, on the subject of
wine, 'that I do not touch it'--not habitually, nor so as to feel the
loss of it, that on a principle; but every now and then of cours