Poets are as plenty as blackberries-indeed much more so, unless blackberries mean sloes. And as for travellers-good Jehovah! I think I am safe in saying that there have appeared at least twenty different lucubrations in that way concerning Paris alone within these last eighteen months. Old crambe-recocta stuff out of Horace Walpole and Sir Joshua-spouted by one boy of eighteen, who had never seen in his life but one or two Edinburgh exhibitions and profound disquisitions on national character and Napoleon by another, who never had seen the tenth milestone from Auld Reekie, or read anything better than Jeffray and Cobbet's Parliamentary debates. I have passed my trials in the Civil Law, which cost me a little fagging, and am now seriously at work on the Scots. "Hamilton and I have been amusing ourselves with doing into English 'the Relation' of the Battle of Waterloo. I have done my half, and H. is sitting by me at his. I have much amusement in seeing his ways-primo, he is against all French terms and fought hard for Fieldassistant, loco, 'Aide-de-camp.' Secundo, he insists upon having the pages marked with Roman numerals, having lately imbibed a bitter spite against the d-d Arabic cipher. Tertio, he has just been reading Longinus, and would fain have an imitation of his manner in a note. We are promised half profits by Laing, and I hope to touch £25 for my quarter. I have got a few articles in |