Bursledon Lodge, Dec., 1819.
Your good wishes have been fulfilled as to the health and spirits of your friend. I have had but one day of painful headache since my return to the little green nest, which is now almost entirely overgrown by the luxuriance of this summer’s extraordinary spirit of vegetation. We are beginning to cut our way out, as they do in the forests of America; but, as far as good will goes, with more difficulty; for though we both acknowledge in theory the necessity of admitting the breeze and the sunbeam, yet each patronizes every particular tree, shrub, or plant, which the other proposes to remove. I hope you can give me a favourable account of Lady —— and her latest treasure, and that you now enjoy the pleasure of seeing her free from the anxiety and apprehension that, even in her serene well-regulated mind, must occur on the eve of an event of so mixed a nature. It is really the ‘web of mingled yarn,’ where fear and hope, pain and pleasure, are more closely and abruptly mingled and entwined than in any other incident of common recurrence.
Have you read the new Tales of my Landlord? The catastrophe of the Bride of Lammermoor is unnatural, and so shocking, that its truth should rather have been a reason for consigning it to oblivion, than for embodying it in a work of imagination. In Montrose we meet an oglio of all the strange and horrid events contained in Walter Scott’s notes to a former work, yet it has to me, as far as I have gone, a sort of wild interest.
I have just received verses as wonderful, with reference to the age of the writer, as any can be; an Ode to the Duke of Wellington, and other poems, Greek, Latin, and English, written between the age of eleven and fourteen, by the youngest son of Sir George Dallas. They are, I believe, allowed to be the best ever written by a boy so young; yet they do not inspire with the idea that young Dallas will be a great poet. They are more to be admired for finished neatness and exact knowledge of the technical part of poetry than for strong impressions of nature and of life. Their merits are more the effects of a fine ear, and a memory filled by what has been said by other poets, than of deep feeling and close observation of realities.
Dec. 13, 1819.—I saw Lord —— yesterday. He is said to have been much afflicted by the loss of his valuable wife. Oh how I envied one who, after such an affliction, in looks, in voice, in calmness, in propriety of manner, is exactly as before, in less than three months. I know that time wears down the appearance of every sorrow in us all, but happy are they in whom this effect is so soon produced. This is not, as some might think, a criticism in masquerade, or an assumption of superior sensibility. No, it is a real expression of a simple feeling. If we examine the cause of our criticizing a too rapid forgetfulness of the departed, we may find it proceeds from selfishness; we do not like to be reminded how soon we may be forgotten ourselves.
Dec. 31.—It is not wholly our refinement, as we are apt to think, which has banished social and sprightly amusements from our drawing-rooms. Commerce, contracts, loans, and war prices have poured an influx of wealth into hands not hitherto in contact with the Corinthian pillars of society. Many persons were suddenly raised, as well by wealth as by alliances, places, and Court favours, to mingle with those, of whom some boast a long line of distinguished ancestors, others all the advantages of the best education, and not a few unite both. The patricians were not delighted with the intimacy with such persons which playing at cards for a low stake, private acting, domestic dancing without the formality of previous preparation, or small plays, naturally produced; nor in general could the merely wealthy shine, where ease, sprightliness, and accomplishment were required. Accordingly they invited their noble friends to splendid dinners in apartments of Eastern magnificence; and from the moment these invitations were accepted, our English nobility declined from those habits of simple enjoyment by which they were formerly distinguished. They were disinclined to be much inferior in recherche and expense to these new acquaintances, and invited them to entertainments more luxurious and more formal than they had themselves habitually given—more luxurious from contagion, more formal, in part to preserve their own dignity—thus adding insensibly to the far-sought delicacies of the table, and the ornament of their houses; till at last all society, saving Almack’s, which is a ‘bright particular star,’ and that dignified delightful scene of dozing, the Ancient Music, has taken one uniform colour. The duke, the commoner, the contractor, all entertain, as it is called, in gay apartments, full of pomp and gold;
‘And one eternal dinner swallows all.’