The sense is kept, and the point blunted in the translation, but so it is in all translations. To Sir James Fellowes. Bath, 10th April, 1815. MY DEAR SIR,-This is a copy of the memorandum I took when the Bishop of Killala (Stock) showed me the fact in Mezeray's History of France. "When Hugh Capet was first set in the seat of power, he consulted an astrologer, who told him his descendants would scarcely wear the crown above 800 years. 6 Will it' (says the King), 'make any difference to the dynasty, if I consent, not to be crown'd at all?' 'Oh yes!' was the reply. They will then sit at least 806 years."" . . . and so they did: for if you add 806 to the year 987 when Hugh Capet was inaugurated, it gives you the year 1793 when his descendant Louis XVII. was murdered in prison. Les Horoscopes étoient fort à la mode en ces Tems là. The bishop said it was 816, I remember, and I took the memorandum in haste: if it was really so, their time was not expired till two years ago. 'Tis an odd circumstance at any rate: an odder still, that you should prefer my version of Hadrian's lines to those of better poets. Gentle soul! a moment stay, Whither wouldst thou wing thy way? See, thy fluttering pinions play; The conversation we had that serious evening last week on the most serious of all subjects, put the verses in my head which you will read over leaf, with your accustomed partiality. I had some of the lines lying unremembered in my mind ever since the year 1809, but I believe never written out. Heart! where heav'd my earliest sigh, Fortress of receding life, Why maintain this useless strife? Weary of their long delay Time and Death demand their prey: Worn with cares, and wearied, thou; : Soon shall Time and Death destroy'd * Thus translated by Pope, whose "Dying Christian to His Soul" was confessedly suggested by it:— "Oh, fleeting spirit, wandering fire, That long has warm'd my tender breast, "Whither, ah! whither art thou flying, Whilst thou thy petty powers shalt ply, For when the trumpet's lofty sound All nature's numerous pulses beat, Touched by the Master's hand: shall come No longer feeble, cold, and slow Retarded still by grief or woe; But firm to mark th' unfinished hour, To Sir James Fellowes. Blake's Hotel, Monday, July 31st, 1815. My dear Sir James Fellowes's friendly heart will feel pleased that the spasms he drove away, returned no more: altho' you were really scarce out of the street before I received a cold short note from Mr. Merrik Hoare, who married one of the sisters, to say that Lord Keith, who married the other, wished to decline purchasing so here I am : no whit nearer disposing of Streatham Park than when I sate still in Bath. Money spent and nothing done: but bills thronging in every hour. Mr. Ward, the solicitor, has sent his demand of 1167. 188. 3d. I think, for expences concerning Salusbury's marriage. I call that the felicity bill: those which produce nothing but infelicity, all refer to Streatham, of course. But you ran away without your epigram translated so much apropos : "Créanciers! maudite canaille, Commissaire, huissiers et recors ; Creditors! ye cursed crew, This wall's too strong for them or you. I must make the most of my house now they have left it on my hands, must I not! may I not? and, like my countrymen at Waterloo, sell my life as dear as I can. Oh terque quaterque beati! those who fell at the battle of St. Jean, when compared to the miseries of Cadiz and Xeres; and oh, happy Sir James Fellowes! whose book*, well disseminated, will save us from these horrors, or from an accumulation of them; when the Cambridge fever shall break out again among the Lincolnshire fens, if we have unfavourable seasons. The best years of my temporal existence-I don't mean the happiest; but the best for powers of improvement, observation, &c.-were past in what is now Park Street, Southwark, but then Deadman's Place; so called because of the pest houses which were established there in the Great Plague of London. From clerks, and black * "Reports of the Pestilential Disorder of Andalusia, &c. &c.; with a Detailed Account of the Epidemic in Gibraltar, in 1804. &c. &c." London: 1815. guards not a few, I learn'd there that Long Lane, Kent Street, and one other place of which the name has slipt my memory, were exempt from infection during the whole time of general sickness, and that their safety was imputed to its being the residence of tanners. I am, however, now convinced from your book, that it was seclusion, not tan, that preserved them. And do not, dear Sir, despise your sibyl's prediction: for that God's judgments are abroad, it is in vain to deny; and though France will support the heaviest weight of them till her phial is run out; our proximity, and fond inclination to connect with her, may, and naturally will produce direful effects in many ways upon the morals, the purses, and the health of Great Britain. Do you observe that there is already a pretender started to the Bourbon throne? You cannot (as I can) recollect in the very early days of the Revolution, that Abbé Sieyes declared he had saved the real Dauphin from Robertspierre, and substituted another baby of equal age to endure the fury of the homicides. Some of us believed the tale, and some, the greater number, laughed at those who did believe it. But an intelligent Italian, since dead, assured me that the last Pope, Braschi, believed it; and marked the youth in consequence of that belief, with a Fleur-de-Lys upon his leg. Whether the young man described in the newspaper as seizing the Duchess d'Angoulesme, is that person or another: or whether some fellow under the influence of national insanity, imagines himself the Dauphin; he is likely enough to disturb them and |