the time, we laughed at a good deal: A Miss ----, with three young ladies, one of them Martin's sister, had come a-gadding in the Isle of Wight and took for a few days a cottage opposite ours. We dined with them one day, and as I was saying they had fish. Miss ---- said she thought _they tasted of the boat_. "No" says Martin, very seriously, "they haven't been kept long enough." I saw Haslam. He is very much occupied with love and business, being one of Mr. Saunders' executors and lover to a young woman. He showed me her picture by Severn. I think she is, though not very cunning, too cunning for him. Nothing strikes me so forcibly with a sense of the ridiculous as love. A man in love I do think cuts the sorriest figure in the world; queer, when I know a poor fool to be really in pain about it, I could burst out laughing in his face. His pathetic visage becomes irresistible. Not that I take Haslam as a pattern for lovers; he is a very worthy man and a good friend. His love is very amusing. Somewhere in the Spectator is related an account of a man inviting a party of stutterers and squinters to his table. It would please me more to scrape together a party of lovers--not to dinner, but to tea. There would be no fighting as among knights of old. Pensive they sit, and roll their languid eyes, Nibble their toast and cool their tea with sighs; Or else forget the purpose of the night, Forget their tea, forget their appetite. See, with cross'd arms they sit--Ah! hapless crew, The fire is going out and no one rings For coals, and therefore no coals Betty brings. A fly is in the milk-pot. Must he die Circled by a humane society? No, no; there, Mr. Werter takes his spoon, Inserts it, dips the handle, and lo! soon The little straggler, sav'd from perils dark, Across the tea-board draws a long wet mark. Romeo! Arise take snuffers by the handle, There's a large cauliflower in each candle. A winding sheet--ah, me! I must away To No. 7, just beyond the circus gay. Alas, my friend, your coat sits very well; Where may your Taylor live? I may not tell. O pardon me. I'm absent now and then. Where _might_ my Taylor live? I say again I cannot tell. Let me no more be teased; He lives in Wapping, might live where he pleased. You see, I cannot get on without writing, as boys do at school, a few nonsense verses. I begin them, and before I have written six the whim has passed--if there is anything deserving so respectable a name in them. I shall put in a bit of information anywhere, just as it strikes me. Mr. Abbey is to write to me as soon as he can bring matters to bear, and then I am to go to town and tell him the means of forwarding to you through Capper and Hazlewood. I wonder I did not put this before. I shall go on to-morrow; it is so fine now I must take a bit of a walk. Saturday [September 18].