Be that as it may, the newspapers have teemed with his ‘injuria formae,’ and he has been embrocated, and invisible to all but the apothecary ever since.

“Lady B. is better than three months advanced in her progress towards maternity, and, we hope, likely to go well through with it.  We have been very little out this season, as I wish to keep her quiet in her present situation.  Her father and mother have changed their names to Noel, in compliance with Lord Wentworth’s will, and in complaisance to the property bequeathed by him.

“I hear that you have been gloriously received by the Irish,—­and so you ought.  But don’t let them kill you with claret and kindness at the national dinner in your honour, which, I hear and hope, is in contemplation.  If you will tell me the day, I’ll get drunk myself on this side of the water, and waft you an applauding hiccup over the Channel.

“Of politics, we have nothing but the yell for war; and C * * h is preparing his head for the pike, on which we shall see it carried before he has done.  The loan has made every body sulky.  I hear often from Paris, but in direct contradiction to the home statements of our hirelings.  Of domestic doings, there has been nothing since Lady D * *.  Not a divorce stirring,—­but a good many in embryo, in the shape of marriages.

     “I enclose you an epistle received this morning from I know not
     whom; but I think it will amuse you.  The writer must be a rare
     fellow.[83]

“P.S.  A gentleman named D’Alton (not your Dalton) has sent me a National Poem called ‘Dermid.’  The same cause which prevented my writing to you operated against my wish to write to him an epistle of thanks.  If you see him, will you make all kinds of fine speeches for me, and tell him that I am the laziest and most ungrateful of mortals?

“A word more;—­don’t let Sir John Stevenson (as an evidence on trials for copy-right, &c.) talk about the price of your next poem, or they will come upon you for the property tax for it.  I am serious, and have just heard a long story of the rascally tax-men making Scott pay for his.  So, take care.  Three hundred is a devil of a deduction out of three thousand.”

[Footnote 81:  This and the following letter were addressed to me in Ireland, whither I had gone about the middle of the preceding month.]

[Footnote 82:  He had lately become one of the members of the Sub-Committee, (consisting, besides himself, of the persons mentioned in this letter,) who had taken upon themselves the management of Drury Lane Theatre; and it had been his wish, on the first construction of the Committee, that I should be one of his colleagues.  To some mistake in the mode of conveying this proposal to me, he alludes in the preceding sentence.]

[Footnote 83:  The following is the enclosure here referred to:—­