TO MRS. LEADBEATER.
Salthill, May 17, 1819.
I seize a quiet hour at Salthill, where we came yesterday for the purpose of breathing a little fresh air, and sitting under the shade of the lime-trees, to converse with you in peace, to ask of the health and welfare of your friends and family, and to complain a little of my own—I mean of my health, which has never been passable for four-and-twenty hours together since I left the country. You, I am sure, wonder why I came to town, and why I stay there; but you must know London operates as a magnet when one is absent from it, and is full of the glue Mad. de Sévigné speaks of as abounding in the society of les dévots du Faubourg—I forget which,—when one is in it. Be dissipated or domestic, sick or well, good or bad, wise or foolish, London, once tasted, will be required again and again. This is a mystery, and I leave it to wiser heads to explain. It is a good hint to country gentlemen not to be too anxious to give their wives a sip of this enchanted Cup.
TO CHARLES MANNERS ST. GEORGE, ESQ.
London, July 2, 1819.
Mazeppa, like some portraits of the Regent by Cosway, is rather a description of the Horse and his Rider than vice versâ. The horse is certainly the hero. Where he and Mazeppa are united, all the pictures of this new Centaur are hold, impressive, and energetic. We are breathless with suspense and terror during Mazeppa’s perilous course, which recals, and perhaps excels in force and beauty, that of Leonora’s unknown horseman. It seems as if the author had tried his strength, in awaking so deep an interest without displaying any other feeling of the mind than the mere instinct of self-preservation, as in ancient Greek tragedies our sympathy is excited by an excess of physical suffering alone. Mazeppa’s indifference to the fate of his mistress is something worse than I could have expected even from the proverbial ingratitude of man.