[20] In this, I rather think he was misinformed; whatever merit there may be in the jest, I have not, as far as I can recollect, the slightest claim to it.
[21] Thus marked, with impatient strokes of the pen, by himself in the original.
[22] In the original MS. these watch-words are blotted over so as to be illegible.
[23] In this little incident of the music in the streets thus touching so suddenly upon the nerve of memory, and calling away his mind from its dark bodings to a recollection of years and scenes the happiest, perhaps, of his whole life, there is something that appears to me peculiarly affecting.
[24] In Boccacio, the name is, I think, Nastagio.
[25] In another paper-book.
[26] Of this gentleman, the following notice occurs in the "Detached Thoughts:"—"L * * was a good man, a clever man, but a bore. My only revenge or consolation used to be setting him by the ears with some vivacious person who hated bores especially,—Madame de S—— or H——, for example. But I liked L * *; he was a jewel of a man, had he been better set;—I don't mean personally, but less tiresome, for he was tedious, as well as contradictory to every thing and every body. Being short-sighted, when we used to ride out together near the Brenta in the twilight in summer, he made me go before, to pilot him; I am absent at times, especially towards evening; and the consequence of this pilotage was some narrow escapes to the M * * on horseback. Once I led him into a ditch over which I had passed as usual, forgetting to warn my convoy; once I led him nearly into the river, instead of on the moveable bridge which incommodes passengers; and twice did we both run against the Diligence, which, being heavy and slow, did communicate less damage than it received in its leaders, who were terrafied by the charge; thrice did I lose him in the grey of the gloaming, and was obliged to bring-to to his distant signals of distance and distress;—all the time he went on talking without intermission, for he was a man of many words. Poor fellow! he died a martyr to his new riches—of a second visit to Jamaica.
"'I'd give the lands of Deloraine
Dark Musgrave were alive again!'
that is,—
"I would give many a sugar cane
M * * L * * were alive again!"