_regularly_ out for some years. No man stands higher,--whatever you
may think on a rainy day, in your provincial retreat. 'Aucun homme,
dans aucune langue, n'a été, peut-être, plus completèment le poëte
du coeur et le poëte des femmes. Les critiques lui reprochent de
n'avoir représenté le monde ni tel qu'il est, ni tel qu'il doit
être; _mais les femmes répondent qu'il l'a représenté tel qu'elles
le désirent_.'--I should have thought Sismondi had written this for
you instead of Metastasio.

"Write to me, and tell me of _yourself_. Do you remember what
Rousseau said to some one--'Have we quarrelled? you have talked to
me often, and never once mentioned yourself.'

"P.S.--The last sentence is an indirect apology for my own
egotism,--but I believe in letters it is allowed. I wish it was
_mutual_. I have met with an odd reflection in Grimm; it shall
not--at least the bad part--be applied to you or me, though _one_
of us has certainly an indifferent name--but this it is:--'Many
people have the reputation of being wicked, with whom we should be
too happy to pass our lives.' I need not add it is a woman's
saying--a Mademoiselle de Sommery's."

[Footnote 87: Among the stories intended to be introduced into Lalla
Rookh, which I had begun, but, from various causes, never finished,
there was one which I had made some progress in, at the time of the
appearance of "The Bride," and which, on reading that poem, I found to
contain such singular coincidences with it, not only in locality and
costume, but in plot and characters, that I immediately gave up my story
altogether, and began another on an entirely new subject, the
Fire-worshippers. To this circumstance, which I immediately communicated