it was written to drive my thoughts from the recollection of--

'Dear sacred name, rest ever unreveal'd.'

At least, even here, my hand would tremble to write it. This afternoon I
have burnt the scenes of my commenced comedy. I have some idea of
expectorating a romance, or rather a tale in prose;--but what romance
could equal the events--

'quæque ipse ...vidi,
Et quorum pars magna fui.'

"To-day Henry Byron called on me with my little cousin Eliza. She will
grow up a beauty and a plague; but, in the mean time, it is the
prettiest child! dark eyes and eyelashes, black and long as the wing of
a raven. I think she is prettier even than my niece, Georgina,--yet I
don't like to think so neither; and though older, she is not so clever.

"Dallas called before I was up, so we did not meet. Lewis, too,--who
seems out of humour with every thing. What can be the matter? he is not
married--has he lost his own mistress, or any other person's wife?
Hodgson, too, came. He is going to be married, and he is the kind of man
who will be the happier. He has talent, cheerfulness, every thing that
can make him a pleasing companion; and his intended is handsome and
young, and all that. But I never see any one much improved by matrimony.
All my coupled contemporaries are bald and discontented. W. and S. have
both lost their hair and good humour; and the last of the two had a good
deal to lose. But it don't much signify what falls _off_ a man's temples
in that state.