talk Greek with Porson, politics with Thelwall, conjecture with George
Dyer, nonsense with me, and anything with anybody: a great farmer,
somewhat concerned in an agricultural magazine--reads no poetry but
Shakspeare, very intimate with Southey, but never reads his poetry:
relishes George Dyer, thoroughly penetrates into the ridiculous wherever
found, understands the _first time_ (a great desideratum in common
minds)--you need never twice speak to him; does not want explanations,
translations, limitations, as Professor Godwin does when you make an
assertion: _up_ to anything, _down_ to everything--whatever _sapit
hominem_. A perfect _man_. All this farrago, which must perplex you to
read, and has put me to a little trouble to _select_, only proves how
impossible it is to describe a _pleasant hand_. You must see Rickman to
know him, for he is a species in one. A new class. An exotic, any slip
of which I am proud to put in my garden-pot. The clearest-headed fellow.
Fullest of matter with least verbosity. If there be any alloy in my
fortune to have met with such a man, it is that he commonly divides his
time between town and country, having some foolish family ties at
Christchurch, by which means he can only gladden our London hemisphere
with returns of light. He is now going for six weeks.

At last I have written to Kemble, to know the event of my play, which
was presented last Christmas. As I suspected, came an answer back that
the copy was lost, and could not be found--no hint that anybody had to
this day ever looked into it--with a courteous (reasonable!) request of
another copy (if I had one by me,) and a promise of a definite answer in
a week. I could not resist so facile and moderate a demand, so scribbled
out another, omitting sundry things, such as the witch story, about half
of the forest scene (which is too leisurely for story), and transposing
that damn'd soliloquy about England getting drunk, which, like its
reciter, stupidly stood alone, nothing prevenient or antevenient, and