hangers-on; and would prevent the unhallow'd names of Liberty and humanity from ever being whispered in ears polite! You, sir, do you not all this? I cry you mercy then: I took you for the Editor of the Quarterly Review." This is the sort of feu de joie he keeps up. There is another extract or two--one especially which I will copy to-morrow--for the candles are burnt down and I am using the wax taper--which has a long snuff on it--the fire is at its last click--I am sitting with my back to it with one foot rather askew upon the rug and the other with the heel a little elevated from the carpet--I am writing this on the Maid's Tragedy, which I have read since tea with great pleasure--Besides this volume of Beaumont and Fletcher, there are on the table two volumes of Chaucer and a new work of Tom Moore's, called Tom Cribb's Memorial to Congress--nothing in it. These are trifles--but I require nothing so much of you but that you will give one a like description of yourselves, however it may be when you are writing to me. Could I see the same thing done of any great Man long since dead it would be a great delight: as to know in what position Shakspeare sat when he began "To be or not to be"--such things become interesting from distance of time or place. I hope you are both now in that sweet sleep which no two beings deserve more than you do--I must fancy so--and please myself in the fancy of speaking a prayer and a blessing over you and your lives--God bless you--I whisper good-night in your ears, and you will dream of me. March 13, Saturday. I have written to Fanny this morning and received a note from Haslam. I was to have dined with him to-morrow: he gives me a bad account of his Father, who has not been in Town for five weeks, and is not well enough for company. Haslam is well--and from the prosperous state of some love affair he does not mind the double tides he has to work. I have been a Walk past west end--and was going to call at Mr. Monkhouse's--but I did not, not being in the humour. I know not why Poetry and I have been so distant lately; I must make some advances soon or she will cut me entirely. Hazlitt has this fine Passage in his Letter: Gifford in his Review of Hazlitt's characters of Shakspeare's plays attacks the Coriolanus critique. He says that Hazlitt has slandered Shakspeare in saying that he had a leaning to the arbitrary side of the question. Hazlitt thus defends himself,