Page:Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron (1824).djvu/119

 commending him to Lord ; and it is difficult for a young physician to get into practice at home, however clever, particularly a foreigner, or one with a foreigner’s name. From that time, instead of making out prescriptions, he took to writing romances; a very unprofitable and fatal exchange, as it turned out.

“I told you I was not oppressed in spirits last night without a reason. Who can help being superstitious? Scott believes in second-sight. Rousseau tried whether he was to be d—d or not, by aiming at a tree with a stone: I forget whether he hit or missed. Goëthe trusted to the chance of a knife’s striking the water, to determine whether he was to prosper in some undertaking. The Italians think the dropping of oil very unlucky. Pietro (Count Gamba) dropped some the night before his exile, and that of his family, from Ravenna. Have you ever had your fortune told? Mrs. Williams told mine. She predicted that twenty-seven and thirty-seven were to be dangerous ages in my life. One has come true.”