A letter this morning from Sir Henry Lushington about Monk Lewis. He is rather averse to a biographical sketch, because he thinks a true account of his life and character would not do him credit, and adds a sketch of the latter, which is not flattering. Lord Melbourne told me the other day a queer trait of Lewis. He had a long-standing quarrel with Lushington. Having occasion to go to Naples, he wrote beforehand to him, to say that their quarrel had better be _suspended_, and he went and lived with him and his sister (Lady L.) in perfect cordiality during his stay. When he departed he wrote to Lushington to say that now they should resume their quarrel, and put matters in the 'status quo ante pacem,' and accordingly he did resume it, with rather more _acharnement_ than before. Charles Wood came into my room yesterday, and talked of the King's letter, said he understood the Archbishop had imparted it to the seven Bishops who had voted, that nothing would come of it, for it was a private letter which nobody had a right to take up. I see the Government are not displeased at such an evidence of the King's goodwill. The King and Taylor both love letter-writing, and both are voluminously inclined. Wood told me that last year Lord Grey got one letter from them (for Taylor writes and the King approves) of seven sheets; what a mass of silly verbiage there must have been to wade through.[1] [1] [This is not just. The published correspondence of King William IV. and Earl Grey proves that the King's letters were written by Sir Herbert Taylor with the greatest ability.] July 3rd, 1833 {p.002} Nothing to put down these last two days, unless I go back to my old practice of recording what I read, and which I rather think I left off because I read nothing, and had nothing to put down; but in the last two days I have read a little of Cicero's 'Second Philippic,' Voltaire's 'Siècle de Louis XIV.,' Coleridge's 'Journey to the West Indies;' bought some books, went to the opera to hear Bellini's 'Norma,' and thought it heavy, Pasta's voice not what it was. Everybody talking yesterday of Althorp's exhibition in the House of Commons the night before (for particulars of which see newspapers and Parliamentary debates). It is too ludicrous, too melancholy, to think of the finances of this country being _managed_ by such a man: what will not people endure? What a strange medley politics produce: a wretched clerk in an office who makes some unimportant blunder, some clerical error, or who exhibits signs of incapacity for work, which it does not much signify whether it be well or ill done, is got rid of, and here this man, this good-natured, popular, liked-and-laughed-at good fellow, more of a grazier than a statesman, blurts out his utter ignorance before a Reformed Parliament, and people lift up their eyes, shrug their shoulders, and laugh and chuckle, but still on he goes. July 4th, 1833 {p.003}