Lady Holland, Dec. 1828.—“I not only was never better, but never half so well: indeed I find I have been very ill all my life, without knowing it. Let me state some of the goods arising from abstaining from all fermented liquors. First, sweet sleep; having never known what sweet sleep was, I sleep like a baby or a ploughboy. . . . If I dream, it is not of lions and tigers, but of Easter dues and tithes. . . . My understanding is improved, and I comprehend Political Economy. I see better without wine and spectacles than when I used both. Only one evil ensues from it: I am in such extravagant spirits that I must lose blood, or look out for some one who will bore and depress me.”
Lady Holland, July 1831.—“I thank God heartily for my comfortable situation in my old age,—above my deserts, and beyond my former hopes.”
Mrs Meynell, Sept. 1831.—“I am just stepping into the carriage to be installed by the Bishop. . . . It is, I believe, a very good thing, and puts me at my ease for life. I asked for nothing—never did anything shabby to procure preferment. These are pleasing recollections.”
(It was a Prebendal Stall at St Paul’s, given to him by Lord Grey.)
Countess of Morley, 1831.—“I went to court, and, horrible to relate! with strings to my shoes instead of buckles—not from Jacobinism, but
ignorance. I saw two or three Tory Lords look at me with dismay.”
The Clerk of the Closet spoke to Sydney, who had to gather his sacerdotal petticoats about him “like a lady conscious of thick ankles.”
R. Sharpe, 1835.—“You have met, I hear, with an agreeable clergyman: the existence of such a being has been hitherto denied by the naturalists; measure him, and put down on paper what he eats.”
Sir Wilmot Horton, 1835.—“No book has appeared for a long time more agreeable than the Life of Mackintosh; it is full of important judgments on important men, books, and things.” Elsewhere he speaks of travelling one hundred and fifty miles in his carriage, with a green parrot and the Life of Mackintosh.
Mrs ---, 7th Sept. 1835.—“I send you a list of all the papers written by me in the Edinburgh Review. Catch me, if you can, in any one illiberal sentiment, or in any opinion which I have need to recant; and that after twenty years scribbling upon all subjects.”