"Went to my box at Covent Garden to night; and my delicacy felt a little shocked at seeing S * * *'s mistress (who, to my certain knowledge, was actually educated, from her birth, for her profession) sitting with her mother, 'a three-piled b----d, b----d-Major to the army,' in a private box opposite. I felt rather indignant; but, casting my eyes round the house, in the next box to me, and the next, and the next, were the most distinguished old and young Babylonians of quality;--so I burst out a laughing. It was really odd; Lady * * _divorced_--Lady * * and her daughter, Lady * *, both _divorceable_--Mrs. * *[101], in the next, the _like_, and still nearer * * * * * *! What an assemblage to _me_, who know all their histories. It was as if the house had been divided between your public and your _understood_ courtesans;--but the intriguantes much outnumbered the regular mercenaries. On the other side were only Pauline and _her_ mother, and, next box to her, three of inferior note. Now, where lay the difference between _her_ and _mamma_, and Lady * * and daughter? except that the two last may enter Carleton and any _other house_, and the two first are limited to the opera and b----house. How I do delight in observing life as it really is!--and myself, after all, the worst of any. But no matter--I must avoid egotism, which, just now, would be no vanity. "I have lately written a wild, rambling, unfinished rhapsody, called 'The Devil's Drive[102],' the notion of which I took from Porson's 'Devil's Walk.' "Redde some Italian, and wrote two Sonnets on * * *. I never wrote but one sonnet before, and that was not in earnest, and many years ago, as an exercise--and I will never write another. They are the most puling, petrifying, stupidly platonic compositions. I detest the Petrarch so much[104], that I would not be the man even to have obtained his Laura, which the metaphysical, whining dotard never could. [Footnote 100: This passage of the Journal has already appeared in my Life of Sheridan.] [Footnote 101: These names are all left blank in the original.] [Footnote 102: Of this strange, wild poem, which extends to about two hundred and fifty lines, the only copy that Lord Byron, I believe, ever wrote, he presented to Lord Holland. Though with a good deal of vigour and imagination, it is, for the most part, rather clumsily executed, wanting the point and condensation of those clever verses of Mr. Coleridge[103], which Lord Byron, adopting a notion long prevalent, has attributed to Professor Person. There are, however, some of the stanzas of "The Devil's Drive" well worth preserving. 1.