And, worst of all, that heartless praise
Echoed from what another says."
The poet, she assures us,
"But dreams a dream of life and light,
And grasps the rainbow, that appears
Afar all beautiful and bright
And finds it only form'd of tears."
The end of the adventure being invariably and inevitably,
"To sigh for all the toil, the care,
The wrong which he has had to bear."
This was written shortly after the death of Lord Byron, and expresses nothing more than that sympathy which a spirit so imaginative, and a temper so generous as hers, must necessarily have felt, with the wrongs and sufferings, real and unreal, of that extraordinary person. But L. E. L. was soon admitted to a full and most keen experience of some of the wrongs she so touchingly associates with the attainment of poetic honours. Of this presently. In the meantime, with the remark that the success of the "Troubadour," with respect both to fame and fortune, equalled her highest hopes, let us turn to another subject.
The Christmas of this year, 1825, L. E. L. spent at the house of her uncle, the Rev. James Landon, at Aberford, near Wetherby, in Yorkshire. One of the friends with whom she was always most delighted to correspond was, just at that period, making a first appearance in the "atmosphere of authorship;" and the occasion called forth a letter, which, though written in a vein of the liveliest and most playful humour, expresses some sentiments which she very seriously enter-
