fourth canto of 'Childe Harold'. I can't see any point of
resemblance:--he wrote prose, I verse: he was of the people; I of the
aristocracy: he was a philosopher; I am none: he published his first
work at forty; I mine at eighteen: his first essay brought him
universal applause; mine the contrary: he married his housekeeper; I
could not keep house with my wife: he thought all the world in a plot
against him; my little world seems to think me in a plot against it,
if I may judge by their abuse in print and coterie: he liked botany; I
like flowers, herbs, and trees, but know nothing of their pedigrees:
he wrote music; I limit my knowledge of it to what I catch by _ear_--I
never could learn any thing by _study_, not even a _language_--it was
all by rote and ear, and memory: he had a _bad_ memory; I _had_, at
least, an excellent one (ask Hodgson the poet--a good judge, for he
has an astonishing one): he wrote with hesitation and care; I with
rapidity, and rarely with pains: _he_ could never ride, nor swim, nor
'was cunning of fence;' _I_ am an excellent swimmer, a decent, though
not at all a dashing, rider, (having staved in a rib at eighteen, in
the course of scampering,) and was sufficient of fence, particularly
of the Highland broadsword,--not a bad boxer, when I could keep my
temper, which was difficult, but which I strove to do ever since I
knocked down Mr. Purling, and put his knee-pan out (with the gloves
on), in Angelo's and Jackson's rooms in 1806, during the sparring,
--and I was, besides, a very fair cricketer,--one of the Harrow
eleven, when we played against Eton in 1805. Besides, Rousseau's way
of life, his country, his manners, his whole character, were so very
different, that I am at a loss to conceive how such a comparison could
have arisen, as it has done three several times, and all in rather a
remarkable manner. I forgot to say that _he_ was also short-sighted,
and that hitherto my eyes have been the contrary, to such a degree
that, in the largest theatre of Bologna, I distinguished and read some