On my back all day: mercy, how it ached too! the ship reeled about like a drunken thing. I lay down, and began reading Byron's life. As far as I have gone (which is to his leaving England) there is nothing in it but what I expected to find,--the fairly-sown seeds of the after-harvest he bore. Had he been less of an egotist, would he have been so great a poet?--I question it. His fury and wrath at the severe injustice of his critics reminds me, by the by, of those few lines in the Athenæum, which I read the other day, about poetical shoemakers, dairy-maids, ploughmen, and myself. After all, what matters it?--"If this thing be of God," the devil can't overthrow it; if it be not, why the printer's devil may. What can it signify what is said? If truth be truth to the end of reckoning, why, that share of her, if any, which I possess, must endure when recorded as long as truth endures. I almost wonder Byron was moved by criticism: I should have thought him at once too highly armed, and too self-wrapped, to care for it;--however, if a wasp's sting have such virtue in it, 'tis as well it should have been felt as keenly as it was.--Ate nothing but figs and raisins; in the evening some of our gentlemen came into our cabin, and sat with us; I, in very desperation and sea-sickness, began embroidering one of my old nightcaps, wherein I persevered till sleep overtook me. _Saturday, 18th._ Rose at about half-past eight, dawdled about as usual, breakfasted in the round-house--by the by, before I got out of bed, read a few more pages of Byron's life. I don't exactly understand the species of sentimental _galimatias_ Moore talks about Byron's writing with the same penfull of ink, "Adieu, adieu, my native land!" and "Hurra! Hodgson, we are going." It proves nothing except what I firmly believe, that we must not look for the real feelings of writers in their works--or rather, that what they give us, and what we take for heart feeling, is head weaving--a species of emotion engendered somewhere betwixt the bosom and the brain, and bearing the same proportion of resemblance to reality that a picture does; that is--like feeling, but not feeling--like sadness, but not sadness--like what it appears, but not indeed that very thing: and the greater a man's power of thus producing _sham realities_, the greater his main qualification for being a poet. After breakfast, sat, like Lady Alice in the old song, embroidering my midnight coif. Got Colonel ---- to read Quentin Durward to us as we sat working under our canvass pavilion. * * * * *