"* * thinks the Quarterly will attack me next. Let them. I have been
'peppered so highly' in my time, both ways, that it must be cayenne or
aloes to make me taste. I can sincerely say that I am not very much
alive _now_ to criticism. But--in tracing this--I rather believe, that
it proceeds from my not attaching that importance to authorship which
many do, and which, when young, I did also. 'One gets tired of every
thing, my angel,' says Valmont. The 'angels' are the only things of
which I am not a little sick--but I do think the preference of _writers_
to _agents_--the mighty stir made about scribbling and scribes, by
themselves and others--a sign of effeminacy, degeneracy, and
weakness. Who would write, who had any thing better to do?
'Action--action--action'--said Demosthenes: 'Actions--actions,' I say,
and not writing,--least of all, rhyme. Look at the querulous and
monotonous lives of the 'genus;'--except Cervantes, Tasso, Dante,
Ariosto, Kleist (who were brave and active citizens), Aeschylus,
Sophocles, and some other of the antiques also--what a worthless, idle
brood it is!


"12, Mezza notte.

"Just returned from dinner with Jackson (the Emperor of Pugilism) and
another of the select, at Crib's the champion's. I drank more than I
like, and have brought away some three bottles of very fair claret--for
I have no headach. We had Tom * * up after dinner;--very facetious,
though somewhat prolix. He don't like his situation--wants to fight
again--pray Pollux (or Castor, if he was the _miller_) he may! Tom has
been a sailor--a coal heaver--and some other genteel profession, before
he took to the cestus. Tom has been in action at sea, and is now only
three-and-thirty. A great man! has a wife and a mistress, and