"Allen (Lord Holland's Allen--the best informed and one of the ablest men I know--a perfect Magliabecchi--a devourer, a Helluo of books, and an observer of men,) has lent me a quantity of Burns's unpublished, and never-to-be published, Letters. They are full of oaths and obscene songs. What an antithetical mind!--tenderness, roughness--delicacy, coarseness--sentiment, sensuality--soaring and grovelling, dirt and deity--all mixed up in that one compound of inspired clay! "It seems strange; a true voluptuary will never abandon his mind to the grossness of reality. It is by exalting the earthly, the material, the _physique_ of our pleasures, by veiling these ideas, by forgetting them altogether, or, at least, never naming them hardly to one's self, that we alone can prevent them from disgusting. "December 14, 15, 16. "Much done, but nothing to record. It is quite enough to set down my thoughts,--my actions will rarely bear retrospection. "December 17, 18. "Lord Holland told me a curious piece of sentimentality in Sheridan.[100] The other night we were all delivering our respective and various opinions on him and other _hommes marquans_, and mine was this:--'Whatever Sheridan has done or chosen to do has been, _par excellence_, always the _best_ of its kind. He has written the _best_ comedy (School for Scandal), the _best_ drama, (in my mind, far before that St. Giles's lampoon, the Beggar's Opera,) the best farce (the Critic--it is only too good for a farce), and the best Address (Monologue on Garrick), and, to crown all, delivered the very best Oration (the famous Begum Speech) ever conceived or heard in this country.' Somebody told S. this the next day, and on hearing it, he burst into tears! "Poor Brinsley! if they were tears of pleasure, I would rather have said these few, but most sincere, words than have written the Iliad or made his own celebrated Philippic. Nay, his own comedy never gratified me more than to hear that he had derived a moment's gratification from any praise of mine, humble as it must appear to 'my elders and my betters.'