This character would ensure him a situation in the establishment of patient Griselda. The servant has come for the little Browns this morning--they have been a toothache to me which I shall enjoy the riddance of--Their little voices are like wasps' stings--Sometimes am I all wound with Browns.[97] We had a claret feast some little while ago. There were Dilke, Reynolds, Skinner, Mancur, John Brown, Martin, Brown and I. We all got a little tipsy--but pleasantly so--I enjoy Claret to a degree. [Later, April 18 or 19.] I have been looking over the correspondence of the pretended Amena and Wells this evening--I now see the whole cruel deception. I think Wells must have had an accomplice in it--Amena's letters are in a Man's language and in a Man's hand imitating a woman's. The instigations to this diabolical scheme were vanity, and the love of intrigue. It was no thoughtless hoax--but a cruel deception on a sanguine Temperament, with every show of friendship. I do not think death too bad for the villain. The world would look upon it in a different light should I expose it--they would call it a frolic--so I must be wary--but I consider it my duty to be prudently revengeful. I will hang over his head like a sword by a hair. I will be opium to his vanity--if I cannot injure his interests--He is a rat and he shall have ratsbane to his vanity--I will harm him all I possibly can--I have no doubt I shall be able to do so--Let us leave him to his misery alone, except when we can throw in a little more. The fifth canto of Dante pleases me more and more--it is that one in which he meets with Paolo and Francesca. I had passed many days in rather a low state of mind, and in the midst of them I dreamt of being in that region of Hell. The dream was one of the most delightful enjoyments I ever had in my life. I floated about the whirling atmosphere, as it is described, with a beautiful figure, to whose lips mine were joined as it seemed for an age--and in the midst of all this cold and darkness I was warm--even flowery tree-tops sprung up, and we rested on them, sometimes with the lightness of a cloud, till the wind blew us away again. I tried a sonnet upon it--there are fourteen lines, but nothing of what I felt in it--O that I could dream it every night-- As Hermes once took to his feathers light When lulled Argus, baffled, swoon'd and slept, So on a delphic reed my idle spright So play'd, so charm'd, so conquer'd, so bereft The Dragon world of all its hundred eyes; And seeing it asleep, so fled away;-- Not to pure Ida with its snow-cold skies, Nor unto Tempe where Jove grieved that day; But to that second circle of sad Hell Where in the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw Of Rain and hailstones, lovers need not tell Their sorrows. Pale were the sweet lips I saw, Pale were the lips I kiss'd, and fair the form I floated with about that melancholy storm.