[Footnote 26: Of this gentleman, the following notice occurs in the "Detached Thoughts:"--"L * * was a good man, a clever man, but a bore. My only revenge or consolation used to be setting him by the ears with some vivacious person who hated bores especially,--Madame de S---- or H----, for example. But I liked L * *; he was a jewel of a man, had he been better set;--I don't mean _personally_, but less _tiresome_, for he was tedious, as well as contradictory to every thing and every body. Being short-sighted, when we used to ride out together near the Brenta in the twilight in summer, he made me go _before_, to pilot him; I am absent at times, especially towards evening; and the consequence of this pilotage was some narrow escapes to the M * * on horseback. Once I led him into a ditch over which I had passed as usual, forgetting to warn my convoy; once I led him nearly into the river, instead of on the _moveable_ bridge which incommodes passengers; and twice did we both run against the Diligence, which, being heavy and slow, did communicate less damage than it received in its leaders, who were _terra_fied by the charge; thrice did I lose him in the grey of the gloaming, and was obliged to bring-to to his distant signals of distance and distress;--all the time he went on talking without intermission, for he was a man of many words. Poor fellow! he died a martyr to his new riches--of a second visit to Jamaica. "'I'd give the lands of Deloraine Dark Musgrave were alive again!' that is,-- "I would give many a sugar cane M * * L * * were alive again!"] [Footnote 27: The following passage from the letter of mine, to which the above was an answer, will best explain what follows:--With respect to the newspaper, it is odd enough that Lord * * * * and myself had been (about a week or two before I received your letter) speculating upon your assistance in a plan somewhat similar, but more literary and less regularly-periodical in its appearance. Lord * *, as you will see by his volume of Essays, if it reaches you, has a very sly, dry, and pithy way of putting sound truths, upon politics and manners, and whatever scheme we adopt, he will be a very useful and active ally in it, as he has a pleasure in writing quite inconceivable to a poor hack scribe like me, who always feel, about my art, as the French husband did when he found a man making love to his (the Frenchman's) wife:--' Comment, Monsieur,--sans y être _obligé_!' When I say this, however, I mean it only of the executive part of writing; for the imagining, the shadowing out of the future work is, I own, a delicious fool's paradise."] * * * * * LETTER 405. TO MR. MURRAY. "Ravenna, January 4. 1821.