_doxy_ about 'Ion.' Its author[32] made me very proud by sending it to me, although we do not know him personally. I have _heard_ that he is a most amiable man (who else could have written 'Ion'?), but that he was a little _elevated_ by his popularity last year!... I have read Combe's 'Phrenology,' but not the 'Constitution of Man.' The 'Phrenology' is very clever, and amusing; but I do not think it logical or satisfactory. I forget whether 'slowness of the pulse' _is_ mentioned in it as a symptom of the poetical aestus. I am afraid, if it be a symptom, I dare not take my place even in the 'forlorn hope of poets' in this age so forlorn as to its poetry; for my pulse is in a continual flutter and my feet not half cold enough for a pedestal--so I must make my honours over to poor papa straightway. He has been shivering and shuddering through the cold weather; and partaking our influenza in the warmer. I am very sorry that you should have been a sufferer too. It seems to have been a universal pestilence, even down in Devonshire, where dear Bummy and the whole colony have had their share of 'groans.' And one of my doves shook its pretty head and ruffled its feathers and shut its eyes, and became subject to pap and nursing and other infirmities for two or three days, until I was in great consternation for the result. But it is well again--cooing as usual; and so indeed we all are. But indeed, I can't write a sentence more without saying some of the evil it deserves--of the utilitarianisms of this corrupt age--among some of the chief of which are steel pens!