Asia Minor. 'Oh quando te aspiciam?'


"November 16.

"Went last night with Lewis to see the first of Antony and Cleopatra. It
was admirably got up, and well acted--a salad of Shakspeare and Dryden,
Cleopatra strikes me as the epitome of her sex--fond, lively, sad,
tender, teasing, humble, haughty, beautiful, the devil!--coquettish to
the last, as well with the 'asp' as with Antony. After doing all she can
to persuade him that--but why do they abuse him for cutting off that
poltroon Cicero's head? Did not Tully tell Brutus it was a pity to have
spared Antony? and did he not speak the Philippics? and are not '_words
things_?' and such '_words_' very pestilent '_things_' too? If he had
had a hundred heads, they deserved (from Antony) a rostrum (his was
stuck up there) apiece--though, after all, he might as well have
pardoned him, for the credit of the thing. But to resume--Cleopatra,
after securing him, says, 'yet go--it is your interest,' &c.--how like
the sex! and the questions about Octavia--it is woman all over.

"To-day received Lord Jersey's invitation to Middleton--to travel sixty
miles to meet Madame * *! I once travelled three thousand to get among
silent people; and this same lady writes octavos, and _talks_ folios. I
have read her books--like most of them, and delight in the last; so I
won't hear it, as well as read.

"Read Burns to-day. What would he have been, if a patrician? We should
have had more polish--less force--just as much verse, but no
immortality--a divorce and a duel or two, the which had he survived, as
his potations must have been less spirituous, he might have lived as