I've turn'd him off! He's gone! I've made the ninny stir
His stumps! For on my stomach his pathetic,
His Cockney rurals, drivellings, phrases sinister,
And affectations act as an emetic.
Besides, he thinks he's fit to be prime minister!
The whimpering, simpering, Horsemonger ascetic![52]
And there, he's grown so horribly familiar,
And paws and 'dears' one so—I vow 'twould kill you."
There, my dear friend—and this is from one radical to another!—the root of all this is, that I did once hint to him that I thought myself a better poet than he; more antique and to-the-heartish, giving my verses an Italian twang, and so forth. As to his allusion to my thinking myself fit to be prime minister, I merely threw out an idea that way, once when we were re-modelling. No. V. of our Liberal Magazine shortly. Let tyrants tremble!—Yours ever.