"Ever, &c.
"P.S. My best remembrances to Mr. Gifford. Pray say all that can be said from me to him.
"I am sorry that Mr. Maturin did not like Phillips's picture. I thought it was reckoned a good one. If he had made the speech on the original, perhaps he would have been more readily forgiven by the proprietor and the painter of the portrait * * *."
LETTER 246. TO MR. MURRAY.
"Diodati, Sept. 30. 1816.
"I answered your obliging letters yesterday: to-day the Monody arrived with its title-page, which is, I presume, a separate publication. 'The request of a friend:'—
'Obliged by hunger and request of friends.'
I will request you to expunge that same, unless you please to add, 'by a person of quality,' or 'of wit and honour about town.' Merely say, 'written to be spoken at Drury Lane.' To-morrow I dine at Copet. Saturday I strike tents for Italy. This evening, on the lake in my boat with Mr. Hobhouse, the pole which sustains the mainsail slipped in tacking, and struck me so violently on one of my legs (the worst, luckily) as to make me do a foolish thing, viz. to faint—a downright swoon; the thing must have jarred some nerve or other, for the bone is not injured, and hardly painful (it is six hours since), and cost Mr. Hobhouse some apprehension and much sprinkling of water to recover me. The sensation was a very odd one: I never had but two such before, once from a cut on the head from a stone, several years ago, and once (long ago also) in falling into a great wreath of snow;—a sort of grey giddiness first, then nothingness, and a total loss of memory on beginning to recover. The last part is not disagreeable, if one did not find it again.
"You want the original MSS. Mr. Davies has the first fair copy in my own hand, and I have the rough composition here, and will send or save it for you, since you wish it.