Have you any commands to Iceland? My young friend Mr. Holland proposes going there from Edinburgh in April. Sir George Mackenzie is the chief mover of the expedition.
This epigram or epitaph was written by Lord I-don't-know-who, upon Doctor Addington—Pitt's Addington—in old French:
Cy dessous reposant
Le sieur Addington git:
Politique soi-disant,
Médecin malgré lui.
March 19.
The other day we had a visit from a Mrs. Coffy—no relation, she says, to your Mrs. Coffy. She looked exactly like one of the pictures of the old London Cries. She came to tell us that she had been at Verdun, and had seen Lovell. From her description of the place and of him, we had no doubt she had actually seen him. She came over to Ireland to prove that some man who is a prisoner at Verdun, and who is a life in a lease, is not dead, but "all alive, ho!" and my father certified for her that he believed she had been there. She knew nothing of Lovell but that he was well, and fat, and a very merry gentleman two years ago. She had been taken by a French privateer as she was going to see her sons in Jersey, and left Verdun at a quarter of an hour's notice, as the women were allowed to come home, and she had not time to tell this to Lovell, or get a letter from him to his friends. She was, as Kitty said, "a comical body," but very entertaining, and acted a woman chopping bread and selling un liv'—deux liv'—trois liv'—Ah, bon, bon, as well as Molly Coffy [Footnote: Mrs. Molly Coffy, for fifty years Mrs. Ruxton's housekeeper.] herself acted the elephant. She was children's maid to Mr. Estwick, and Mr. Estwick is, my father says, son to a Mr. Estwick who used to be your partner and admirer at Bath in former times!!
To C. SNEYD EDGEWORTH, IN LONDON.
EDGEWORTHSTOWN, April 1810.
I do not like Lord Byron's English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, though, as my father says, the lines are very strong, and worthy of Pope and The Dunciad. But I was so much prejudiced against the whole by the first lines I opened upon about the "paralytic muse" of the man who had been his guardian, and is his relation, and to whom he had dedicated his first poems, that I could not relish his wit. He may have great talents, but I am sure he has neither a great nor good mind; and I feel dislike and disgust for his Lordship.
To MISS RUXTON.
EDGEWORTHSTOWN, May 1810.