Chapter LXVIII: Letter 223: To Mr. Moore

"July 7. 1815.

"'Grata superveniet,' &c. &c. I had written to you again, but burnt
the letter, because I began to think you seriously hurt at my
indolence, and did not know how the buffoonery it contained might
be taken. In the mean time, I have yours, and all is well.

"I had given over all hopes of yours. By-the-by, my 'grata
superveniet' should be in the present tense; for I perceive it
looks now as if it applied to this present scrawl reaching you,
whereas it is to the receipt of thy Kilkenny epistle that I have
tacked that venerable sentiment.

"Poor Whitbread died yesterday morning,--a sudden and severe loss.
His health had been wavering, but so fatal an attack was not
apprehended. He dropped down, and I believe never spoke
afterwards. I perceive Perry attributes his death to Drury Lane,--a
consolatory encouragement to the new Committee. I have no doubt
that * *, who is of a plethoric habit, will be bled immediately;
and as I have, since my marriage, lost much of my paleness,
and--'horresco referens' (for I hate even _moderate_ fat)--that
happy slenderness, to which, when I first knew you, I had attained,
I by no means sit easy under this dispensation of the Morning
Chronicle. Every one must regret the loss of Whitbread; he was
surely a great and very good man.

"Paris is taken for the second time. I presume it, for the future,
will have an anniversary capture. In the late battles, like all the
world, I have lost a connection,--poor Frederick Howard, the best
of his race. I had little intercourse, of late years, with his
family, but I never saw or heard but good of him. Hobhouse's
brother is killed. In short, the havoc has not left a family out of
its tender mercies.

"Every hope of a republic is over, and we must go on under the old
system. But I am sick at heart of politics and slaughters; and the
luck which Providence is pleased to lavish on Lord Castlereagh is
only a proof of the little value the gods set upon prosperity, when
they permit such * * * s as he and that drunken corporal, old
Blucher, to bully their betters. From this, however, Wellington
should be excepted. He is a man,--and the Scipio of our Hannibal.
However, he may thank the Russian frosts, which destroyed the
_real élite_ of the French army, for the successes of Waterloo.

"La! Moore--how you blasphemes about 'Parnassus' and 'Moses!' I am
ashamed for you. Won't you do any thing for the drama? We beseech
an Opera. Kinnaird's blunder was partly mine. I wanted you of all
things in the Committee, and so did he. But we are now glad you
were wiser; for it is, I doubt, a bitter business.

"When shall we see you in England? Sir Ralph Noel (_late_
Milbanke--he don't promise to be _late_ Noel in a hurry), finding
that one man can't inhabit two houses, has given his place in the
north to me for a habitation; and there Lady B. threatens to be
brought to bed in November. Sir R. and my Lady Mother are to
quarter at Kirby--Lord Wentworth's that was. Perhaps you and Mrs.
Moore will pay us a visit at Seaham in the course of the autumn. If
so, you and I (_without_ our _wives_) will take a lark to Edinburgh
and embrace Jeffrey. It is not much above one hundred miles from
us. But all this, and other high matters, we will discuss at
meeting, which I hope will be on your return. We don't leave town
till August.

"Ever," &c.

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