Sydney Smith to Lord Murray-A Hundred Persons Starved by his Voracity

LI.-A HUNDRED PERSONS STARVED BY HIS VORACITY.

Sydney Smith to Lord Murray.

COMBE FLOREY, Sept. 29th, 1843.
written to me to say he
This I think a very great
I am sure he ought to

MY DEAR MURRAY; Jeffrey has means to dedicate his essays to me. honor, and it pleases me very much. resign. He has very feeble health; a mild climate would suit the state of his throat. Mrs. Jeffrey thinks he could not employ himself. Wives know a great deal about husbands, but if she is right I should be surprised. I have thought he had a canine appetite for books, though this sometimes declines in the decline of life. I am beautifying my house in Green street; a comfortable house is a great source of happiness. It ranks immediately after health and a good conscience. I see your religious war is begun in Scotland. I suppose Jeffrey will be at the head of the Free Church troops. Do you think he has any military talents?

You are, I hear, attending more to diet than heretofore. If you wish for any thing like happiness in the fifth act of life, eat and drink about one-half what you could eat and drink. Did I ever tell you my calculation about eating and drinking? Having ascertained the weight of what I could live upon, so as to preserve health and strength, and what I did live upon, I found that, between ten and seventy years of age, I had eaten and drunk forty-four horse wagon loads of meat and drink more than would have preserved me in life and health! The value of this mass of nourishment I considered to be worth seven thousand pounds sterling. It occurred to me that I must, by my voracity, have starved to death fully a hundred persons. This is a

Lady Blessington to Walter Savage Landor-Reflections on the loss of Friends.

frightful calculation, but irresistibly true; and I think, dear Murray, your wagons would require an additional horse each!

Lord and Lady Lansdowne, who are rambling about this fine country, are to spend a day here next week. You must really come to see the west of England. From Combe Florey we will go together to Linton and Lynmouth-than which there is nothing finer in this island. Two of our acquaintances died this week-Stewart Mackenzie and Bell. We must close our ranks. God bless you, my dear Murray!

SYDNEY SMITH.

LII.-REFLECTIONS ON THE LOSS OF FRIENDS.

Lady Blessington to Walter Savage Landor.

GORE HOUSE, KENSINGTON GORE, March 10th, 1836. I write to you from my new residence in what I call the country, being a mile from London. I have not forgotten that your last letter announced the pleasing intelligence that you were to be in London in April, and I write to request that you will take up your residence at my house. I have a comfortable room to offer you, and, what is better still, a cordial welcome. Pray bear this in mind, and let me have the pleasure of having you under my roof. Have you heard of the death of poor Sir William Gell? He expired at Naples on the 4th of February, literally exhausted by his bodily infirmity.

Poor Gell! I regret him much; he was gentle, kind-hearted, and good-tempered, possessed a great fund of information, which was always at the service of any one requiring it, and if free from passion (not always, in my opinion, a desirable thing), totally exempt from prejudice, which I hold to be most desirable.

Walter Savage Landor to Lady Blessington-Compliments. Arabian Nights.

How much more frequently we think of a friend we have lost than when he lived! I have thought of poor Gell continually since I got Mr. Craven's melancholy letter announcing his demise, yet when he lived I have passed weeks without bestowing a thought on him. Is not this a curious fact in all our natures, that we only begin to know the value of friends when they are lost to us forever? It ought to teach us to turn with increased tenderness to those that remain; and I always feel that my affection for living friends is enlivened by the reflection that they too may pass away.

If we were only half as lenient to the living as we are to the dead, how much happiness might we render them, and from how much vain and bitter remorse might we be spared, when the grave, the all-atoning grave, has closed over them. I long to read your book; it will be to me like water in the desert to the parched pilgrim. Let me hear from you, and, above all, tell me that you will take up your abode with me, where quiet and friendship await you.

M. BLESSINGTON.

LIII.-COMPLIMENTS—ARABIÁN NIGHTS.

Walter Savage Landor to Lady Blessington.

January 13th, 1835.

Arnold is so mischievous as to show me, at this moment, the portrait of the Duchess of, and to say she ought to have been put in the index or notes. Sure enough she never was a beauty. The Duke had so little idea of countenance, that he remarked a wonderful resemblance between me and Perhaps he thought to compliment both parties. Now you had better find a ghost than a resemblance. If an ugly woman is

Walter Savage Landor to Lady Blessington-Compliments. Arabian Nights.

compared to a beautiful one, she will tell you, "This is the first time I was ever taken for an idiot." If a sensible woman is compared to Madame de Stael, she shows you her foot and thanks God she has not yet taken to rouge.

The

I have been reading Beckford's Travels and Vatheck. last pleases me less than it did forty years ago, and yet the Arabian Nights have lost none of their charms for me. All the learned and wiseacres in England cried out against this wonderful work upon its first appearance-Gray among the rest. Yet I doubt whether any man, except Shakespeare, has afforded so much delight, if we open our hearts to receive it. The author of the Arabian Nights was the greatest benefactor the East ever had, not excepting Mohammed. How many hours of pure happiness has he bestowed upon six-and-twenty millions of hearers? All the springs of the desert have less refreshed the Arabs than those delightful tales, and they cast their gems and genii over our benighted and foggy regions.

B——, in his second letter, says that two or three of Rosa da Tivoli's landscapes merit observation, and in the next he scorns P. Potter. Now all Rosa da Tivoli's works are not worth a blade of grass from the hand of P. Potter. The one was a consummate artist; the other one of the coarsest that ever bedaubed a canvas. He talks of the worst roads that ever pretended to be made use of,” and of a dish of tea, without giving us the ladle or the carving knife for it. When I read such things I rub my eyes and awaken my recollections. I not only fancy that I am older than I am in reality (which is old enough, in all conscience), but that I have begun to lose my acquaintance with our idiom. Those who desire to write upon light matters gracefully, must read with attention the writings of

Walter Savage Landor to Lady Blessington-Determination not to write after Seventy.

Pope, Lady M. W. Montagu, and Lord Chesterfield-three ladies of the first water.

I am sorry you sent my "Examination" by a private hand. Nothing affects me but pain and disappointment. Hannah More says “there are no evils in the world but sin and bile." They fall upon me very unequally. I would give a good quantity of bile for a trifle of sin, and yet my philosophy would induce me to throw it aside. No man ever began so early to abolish hopes and wishes. Happy he who is resolved to walk with Epicurus on his right and Epictetus on his left, and to shut his ears to every other voice along the road.

W. S. LANDOR.

LIV.-DETERMINATION NOT TO WRITE AFTER SEVENTY.

Walter Savage Landor to Lady Blessington.

P. M.-BATH, Nov. 5th, 1844.

Always kind and considerate. I have indeed had a touch of the rheumatism- -a mere touch; not a blow-and the rheumatism you know (or rather I hope you do not know) always comes with a heavy cudgel. It was caused by my imprudence in rising up in my bed to fix a thought on paper; night is not the time to pin a butterfly on a blank leaf. Four hot baths have now almost buoyed up this monster from oppressing me. Of its four legs I feel only one upon me, and, indeed, just the extremity of the hoof. At Gore House I should forget it; there I forgot the plague when I had it. But Bath air is the best air in the world; in twenty minutes we can have three climates.

I hope in the spring I may be able to pay you my respects. Where else can I find so much wit and so much wisdom? The rest of the earth may pretend it can collect (but I doubt it) as