MR. CURRAN TO R. HETHERINGTON, ESQ. DEAR DICK, DUBLIN. My last was in spleen and haste; this is a postscript. I can scarcely add what I should have said, because I forget what I did say: no doubt I was too vain not to brag of the civility I have met, and consequently of the good taste of every body. Did I say anything of the Italian countess, or the French count her uncle, whose legs and thighs are turned into grasshopper springs by a canister-shot at the battle of Novi? She talks of going westward; as Irish scandal does not talk Italian, and as she can't speak English, she may be safe enough, particularly with the assistance of a Venetian blind! Dear Dick, God help us! I find I am recovering fast from the waters; I think I'll drink no more of them; my nerves are much more composed, and my spirits, though far from good, are more quiet. Why may not the wretch of to-morrow be happy to-day? I am not much inclined to abstract optimism, but I often think Pope was right when he said, that "whatever is, is right," though he was perhaps too shallow a moralist to know, not why he thought so, but why he said so; probably 'twas like your own poetry, he made the ends of the lines jingle for the sake of the rhyme. Apropos of jingle. I forgot, I believe, to beg of you to send me two copies of "Oh Sleep!" I wrote it for Braham. I suppose the air not correct. Did I beg of you to see and to direct James as to the erections at the barn? don't forget it; because, perhaps, I may see the Priory once again. I dreamt last night of your four-horse stable, and was glad to find all well. You can scarcely believe what a good humoured compromise I am coming into with human malice, and folly, and unfixedness. By reducing my estimate of myself, every collateral circumstance sets out modestly on the journey of humility and good sense, from the sign of the Colossus to that of the Pigmy, where the apartments are large and ample for the lodger and his train. Just as before, the post is on my heels,Richard has only time to put this in the office. I shall probably soon write more at leisure.— Compliments at the hill: ditto repeated shaking the bottle. J. P. C. The Scotch indorser of this gave me my dinner yesterday;-champagne and soda. He votes with the minister. I gave a lecture, and got glory for rebuking a silly fellow, that tried to sing an improper song in the presence of his son. "Thunders of applause." MR. CURRAN TO R. HETHERINGTON, ESQ. DEAR DICK, DUBLIN. Cheltenham. I HAVE not been well here-these old blue devils, I fear, have got a lease of me. I wonder the more at it, because I have been in a constant round of very kind and pleasant society. Tomorrow Sir Frederick Falkener and I set out for London. I don't turn my face to the metropolis con amore, but the Duke of Sussex might not take it well if I did not call upon him-so I go, being at once an humble friend and a patriot. Low as I have been myself in spirits, I could not but be attracted with the style of society and conversation here, particularly the talents and acquirements of females,-I am sorry to say, few of them our country women. The vulgarity, too, and forwardness of some of our heroes quite terrible. On the whole, however, perhaps, I am the better for the jaunt. MR. CURRAN TO D. LUBE, ESQ. DUBLIN. London, 1814. DEAR LUBE, As I sit down to write, I am broken in upon. In sooth, I had little to say ;-the mere sending this is full proof that I have escaped being supped upon by Jones's landlord, or any of his subjects. I sailed Wednesday night, and arrived here at half past six this morning, soured and sad. Kings and generals are as cheap as dirt, and yet so much more valuable a thing as lodging as dear as two eggs a penny. Saturday, not being a day of business in the house, I met nobody; though I did not go to bed on my arrival. The little I have heard confirms the idea you know I enter. tained of the flatness of a certain political project; it could not pass unopposed, and in such a conflict, the expenditure of money to make a voter a knave, that you might be an honest senator, would, in such a swarm of locusts, surpass all calculation. However, I know nothing distinctly as yet, therefore I merely persevere in the notion I stated to you. I have just seen the immortal Blucher. The gentlemen and ladies of the mob huzza him out of his den, like a wild beast to his offal; and this is repeated every quarter of an hour, to their great delight, and for aught appears, not at all to his dissatisfaction. I am now going to dine with a friend, before whose house the illustrious monarchs proceed to their surfeit at Guildhall. No doubt we shall have the newspapers in a state of eructation for at least a week. But I must close. J. P. C. MR. CURRAN TO D. LUBE, ESQ. DUBLIN. MY DEAR LUBE, London, June, 1814. I AM not many days in London; yet am I as sick of it as ever I was of myself. No doubt it is not a favourable moment for society; politics spoil every thing; it is a perpetual tissue of plots, cabals, low anxiety, and disappointment. Every thing I see disgusts and depresses me: I look back at the streaming of blood for so many years; and every thing every where relapsed into its former degradation. France rechained,— Spain again saddled for the priests,-and Ireland, like a bastinadoed elephant, kneeling to receive the paltry rider: and what makes the idea more cutting, her fate the work of her own ignorance and fury. She has completely lost all sympathy here, and I see no prospect for her, except a vindictive oppression and an endlessly increasing taxation. God give us, not happiness, but patience! I have fixed to set out for Paris on Tuesday with Mr. W. He is a clever man-pleasant, informed, up to every thing, can discount the bad spirits of a friend, and has undertaken all trouble. I don't go for society, it is a mere name; but the thing is to be found nowhere, even in this chilly region. I question if it is much better in Paris. Here the parade is gross, and cold, and vulgar; there it is, no doubt, more flippant, and the attitude more graceful; but in either place is not society equally a tyrant and a slave? The judgment despises it, and the heart renounces it. We seek it because we are idle-we are idle because we are silly; the natural remedy is some social intercourse, of which a few drops would restore; but we swallow the whole phial, and are sicker of the remedy than we were of the disease. We do not reflect that the variety of converse is found only with a very few, selected by our regard, and is ever lost in a promiscuous rabble, in whom wẹ |