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*Sept. 15, 1815. Piccadilly Terrace.

*DEAR SIR, van' is accepted, and will be put in progress on Kean's arrival.

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"I am sorry you should feel uneasy at what has by no means troubled me.* If your Editor, his correspondents, and readers, are amused, I have no objection to be the theme of all the ballads he can find room for,-provided his lucubrations are confined to me only.

"It is a long time since things of this kind have ceased to 'fright me from my propriety;' nor do I know any similar "The theatrical gentlemen have a confident hope of its attack which would induce me to turn again,-unless it success. I know not that any alterations for the stage will involved those connected with me, whose qualities, I hope, be necessary: if any, they will be trifling, and you shall be are such as to exempt them in the eyes of those who bear duly apprized. I would suggest that you should not attend no good-will to myself. In such a case, supposing it to any except the latter rehearsals-the managers have re-occur-to reverse the saying of Dr. Johnson, what the quested me to state this to you. You can see them, viz. law could not do for me, I would do for myself, be the Dibdin and Rae, whenever you please, and I will do any consequences what they might. thing you wish to be done, on your suggestion, in the mean "I return you, with many thanks, Colman and the letters. The Poems, I hope, you intended me to keep-at least, I "Mrs. Mardyn is not yet out, and nothing can be deter-shall do so, till I hear the contrary. mined till she has made her appearance-I mean as to her capacity for the part you mention, which I take it for granted is not in Ivan-as I think Ivan may be performed. very well without her. But of that hereafter.

time.

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"Very truly yours"

LETTER CCLXXIV.
TO MR. MURRAY.

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DEAR SIR,

LETTER CCLXXII.

TO MR. SOTHEBY.

"Sept. 25, 1815.

LETTER CCLXXV.

TO MR. MURRAY.

"Sept. 27, 1815. "I think it would be adviseable for you to see the acting "That's right, and splendid, and becoming a publisher of managers when convenient, as these must be points on high degree. Mr. Concanen (the translator) will be dewhich you will want to confer; the objection I stated was lighted, and pay his washerwoman; and in reward for your merely on the part of the performers, and is general and bountiful behaviour in this instance, I won't ask you to not particular to this instance. I thought it as well to publish any more for Drury-lane, or any lane whatever ention it at once-and some of the rehearsals you will again. You will have no tragedy or any thing else from doubtless see, notwithstanding. me, I assure you, and may think yourself lucky in having "Rae, I rather think, has his eye on Naritzen for him-got rid of me, for good and all, without more damage. Bui self. He is a more popular performer than Bartley, and certainly the cast will be stronger with him in it; besides, he is one of the managers, and will feel doubly interested if he can act in both capacities. Mrs. Bartley will be Petrowna;-as to the Empress, I know not what to say or think. The truth is, we are not amply furnished with tragic women; but make the best of those we have, you can take your choice of them. We have all great hopes of the success-on which, setting aside other considerations, we are particularly anxious, as being the first tragedy to be brought out since the old Committee.

"By-the-way-I have a charge against you. As the great Mr. Dennis roared out on a similar occasion-'By G-d, that is my thunder!' so do I exclaim 'This is my lightning I allude to a speech of Ivan's, in the scene with Petrowna and the Empress, where the thought and almost expression are similar to Conrad's in the 3d Canto of the Corsair. I, however, do not say this to accuse you, but to exempt myself from suspicion, as there is a priority of six months' publication, on my part, between the appearance of that composition and of your tragedies.

"George Lambe meant to have written to you. If you don't like to confer with the managers at present, I will attend to your wishes-so state them.

"Yours very truly,

A Tragedy, by Mr. Sotheby.

"BYRON."

I'll tell you what we will do for you,-act Sotheby's Ivan, which will succeed; and then your present and next im pression of the dramas of that dramatic gentleman will be expedited to your heart's content; and if there is any thing very good, you shall have the refusal; but you sha'n't have any more requests.

"Sotheby has got a thought, and almost the words, from the third Canto of the Corsair, which, you know, was published six months before his tragedy. It is from the storm in Conrad's cell. I have written to Mr. Sotheby to claim it; and, as Dennis roared out of the pit, 'By G-d, that's my thunder! so do I, and will I, exclaim, 'By G-d, that's my lightning? that electrical fluid being, in fact, the subject of the said passage.

"You will have a print of Fanny Kelly, in the Maid, to prefix, which is honestly worth twice the money you have given for the MS. Pray what did you do with the note I "Ever &c." gave you about Mungo Park?

LETTER CCLXXVI.

TO MR. HUNT.

"13, Terrace, Piccadilly, Oct. 7, 1815

"MY DEAR HUNT,

"I had written a long answer to your last, which I tur

An attack on Lord and Lady Byron, in the Sun newspaper, of wind. Mr. Taylor was proprietor.

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LETTERS, 1815.

into the fire, partly, because it was a repetition of what I have already said, and next, because I considered what my opinions are worth, before postage, as your proximity lays you within the jaws of made you pay double the tremendous Twopenny,' and beyond the verge of franking, the only parliamentary privilege, (saving one other,) of much avail in these costermonger' days. "Pray don't make me an exception to the 'Long live King Richard' of your bards in the Feast.' I do allow him to be the prince of the bards of his time,' upon the judgment of those who must judge more impartially than I probably do. I acknowledge him as I acknowledge the Houses of Hanover and Bourbon, the-not the 'one-eyed monarch of the blind,'-but the blind monarch of the one-eyed. I merely take the liberty of a free subject to vituperate certain of his edicts, and that only in private. I shall be very glad to see you, or your remaining canto; if both together, so much the better.-I am interrupted."

LETTER CCLXXVII.

"DEAR HUNT,

TO MR. HUNT.

"Oct. 15, 1815.

"I send you a thing whose greatest value is its present rarity; the present copy contains some manuscript corrections previous to an edition which was printed, but not published, and, in short, all that is in the suppressed edition, the fifth, except twenty lines in addition, for which there was not room in the copy before me. There are in it many opinions I have altered, and some which I retain; upon the whole, I wish that it had never been written, though my sending you this copy (the only one in my possession, unless one of Lady B.'s be excepted) may seem at variance with this statement: but my reason for this is very different; it is, however, the only gift I have made of the kind this many a day.

"P.S. You probably know that it is not in print for sale, nor ever will be (if I can help it) again."

LETTER CCLXXVIII.

TO MR. HUNT.

"MY DEAR HUNT,

"Oct. 22, 1815.

sion, which shan't be longer than I can make it. My motive for writing that poem was, I fear, not so fair as you are witty, and, fighting in a crowd, dealt about my blows against willing to believe it; I was angry, and determined to be all alike, without distinction or discernment. When I came home from the East, among other new acquaintances and which county I am a landholder, and Lord Holland Refriends, politics and the state of the Nottingham rioters, (of corder of the town,) led me by the good offices of Mr. Rogers, into the society of Lord Holland, who, with Lady Holland, was particularly kind to me; about March, 1812, this introduction took place, when I made my first speech on the Frame Bill, in the same debate in which Lord Hol land spoke. Soon after this, I was correcting the fifth edition of 'E. B.' for the press, when Rogers represented to me that he knew Lord and Lady Holland would not be sorry if I suppressed any farther publication of that Poem; and I immediately acquiesced, and with great pleasure, for I had attacked them upon a fancied and false provocation, with many others; and neither was, nor am sorry, to have done what I could to stifle that ferocious rhapsody. This was subsequent to my acquaintance with Lord Hollana, and was neither expressed nor understood, as a condition of that acquaintance. Rogers told me he thought I ought and that's all. I sent you my copy, because I consider your to suppress it; I thought so too, and did as far as I could, having it much the same as having it myself. Lady Byron has one; I desire not to have any other, and sent it only as a curiosity and a memento."

"You are,

LETTER CCLXXIX.

TO MR. MOORE.

13, Terrace, Piccadilly, Oct. 28, 1815. because I did not answer your last Irish letter. When did it seems, England again, as I am to hear from every body but yourself; and I suppose you punctilious you leave the 'swate country? Never mind, I forgive you; -a strong proof of─I know not what-to give the lie to

'He never pardons who hath done the wrong.'

"You have written to **. You have also written to Perry, who intimates hope of an Opera from you. Coleridge has promised a Tragedy. Now, if you keep Perry's word, and Coleridge keeps his own, Drury-lane will be set up;-and, sooth to say, it is in grievous want of such a lift We began at speed, and are blown already. When I say

can count, which none of the rest of the Committee can.

has an ac

"You have excelled yourself, if not all your contempo-we,' I mean Kinnaird, who is the 'all in all sufficient,' and raries, in the canto which I have just finished. I think it above the former books; but that is as it should be; it rises with the subject, the conception appears to me perfect, and stir of these strutters and fretters go; and, if the concer "It is really very good fun, as far as the daily and nightly the execution perhaps as nearly so as verse will admit. could be brought to pay a shilling in the pound, would do There is more originality than I recollect to have seen else- much credit to the management Mr. where within the same compass, and frequent and great cepted tragedy, *****, whose first scene is in his sleep, happiness of expression. In short, I must turn to the faults, (I don't mean the author's.) It was forwarded to us as a or what appear to be such to me: these are not many, nor prodigious favourite of Kean's; but the said Kean, upon such as may not be easily altered, being almost all verbal; interrogation, denies his eulogy, and protests against his and of the same kind as I pretended to point out in the part. How it will end, I know not. former cantos, viz. occasional quaintness and obscurity, and a kind of harsh and yet colloquial compounding of epithets, as if to avoid saying common things in the common way; difficile est propriè communia dicere,' seems at times to have met with in you a literal translator. I have made a few, and but a few pencil marks on the MS. which you can follow, or not, as you please.

thing else alive in London at this season. All the world "I say so much about the theatre, because there is noare out of it, except us, who remain to lie in,-in December or perhaps earlier. Lady B. is very ponderous and prosperous, apparently, and I wish it well over.

"There is a play before me from a personage who signs "The Poem, as a whole, will give you a very high station; and king; and the villain and usurper, Turgesius the Dane. himself 'Hibernicus.' The hero is Malachi, the Irishman but where is the conclusion? Don't let it cool in the com- The conclusion is fine. Turgesius is chained by the leg position! You can always delay as long as you like re-(vide stage direction) to a pillar on the stage; and King vising, though I am not sure, in the very face of Horace, that the 'nonum,' &c. is attended with advantage, unless we read 'months' for 'years.' I am glad the book sent eached you. I forgot to tell you the story of its suppres

Wordsworth.

A copy of the English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.

Malachi makes him a speech, not unlike Lord Castle-
reagh's about the balance of power and the lawfulness of
legitimacy, which puts Turgesius into a phrensy-as Cas-
He draws a dagger and rushes at the orator; but, finding
tlereagh's would, if his audience was chained by the leg.
himself at the end of his tether, he sticks it into his own
carcass, and dies. saying, he has fulfilled a prophecy.

"Now, this is serious, downright matter of fact, and the carry their dead very far; they must have lived near to gravest part of a tragedy which is not intended for bur-where they were buried. There are no cemeteries in lesque. I tell it you for the honour of Ireland. The writer 'remote places,' except such as have the cypress and the hopes it will be represented:-but what is Hope? nothing tombstone still left, where the olive and the habitation of but the paint on the face of Existence; the least touch of the living have perished.... These things I was struck Truth rubs it off, and then we see what a hollow-cheeked with, as coming peculiarly in my own way; and in both of harlot we have got hold of. I am not sure that I have not these he is wrong: yet I should have noticed neither, but said this last superfine reflection before. But never mind; for his attack on Pope for a like blunder, and a peevish -it will do for the tragedy of Turgesius, to which I can affectation about him of despising a popularity which he append it. will never obtain. I write in great haste, and, I doubt, ne! "Well, but how dost thou do? thou bard, not of a thou- much to the purpose, but you have it hot and hot, just as it sand, but three thousand! I wish your friend, Sir John comes, and so let it go. By-the-way, both he and you go Piano-forte, had kept that to himself, and not made it pub-too far against Pope's 'So when the moon,' &c.; it is no lic at the trial of the song-seller in Dublin. I tell you why; translation, I know; but it is not such false description as it is a liberal thing for Longman to do, and honourable for asserted. I have read it on the spot; there is a burst, and you to obtain; but it will set all the 'hungry and dinnerless a lightness, and a glow about the night in the Troad, which lank-jawed judges' upon the fortunate author. But they makes the 'planets vivid,' and the 'pole glaring.' The moon be d-d-the 'Jeffrey and the Moore together are confi-is, at least the sky is, clearness itself; and I know no more dent against the world in ink By-the-way, if poor Cole-appropriate expression for the expansion of such a heaven ndge who is a man of wonderful talent, and in distress, o'er the scene-the plain-the sea-the sky-Ida-the and about to publish two vols. of Poesy and Biography, Hellespont-Simois-Scamander-and the Isles-than and who has been worse used by the critics than ever we that of a 'flood of glory.' I am getting horribly lengthy, were-will you, if he comes out, promise me to review him and must stop: to the whole of your letter I say 'ditto to favourably in the E. R.? Praise him. I think you must, but you will also praise him well,—of all things the most difficult. It will be the making of him.

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13, Terrace, Piccadilly, Sept.-Oct. 30, 1815. MY DEAR HUNT,

Many thanks for your books, of which you already know my opinion: their external splendour should not disaurb you as inappropriate-they have still more within than without. I take leave to differ from you on Wordsworth, as freely as I once agreed with you; at that time I gave hirn credit for a promise, which is unfulfilled. I still think his capacity warrants all you say of it only, but that his performances since 'Lyrical Ballads' are miserably inadequate to the ability which lurks within him: there is undoubtedly much natural talent spilt over the 'Excursion,' but it is rain upon rocks, where it stands and stagnates, or rain upon sands, where it falls without fertilizing. Who can understand him? Let those who do, make him intelligible. Jacob Behmen, Swedenborg, and Joanna Southcote, are mere types of this arch-apostle of mystery and mysticism. But I have done, no, I have not done, for I have two petty, and perhaps unworthy objections in small matters to make to him, which, with his pretensions to accurate observations, and fury against Pope's false translation of the moonlight scene in Homer,' I wonder he should have fallen into: these be they:-He says of Greece in the body of his book, that it is a land of

'Rivera, fertile plains, and sounding shores,
Under a cope of variegated sky.'

Mr. Burke,' as the Bristol candidate cried by way of
electioneering harangue. You need not speak of morbid
feelings and vexations to me; I have plenty; but I must
blame partly the times, and chiefly myself: but let us forget
them. I shall be very apt to do so when I see you next.
Will you come to the theatre and see our new manage-
ment? You shall cut it up to your heart's content. root
and branch, afterwards, if you like, but come and see it!
If not, I must come and see you.
"Ever yours,
"Very truly and affectionately,

"BYRON.

"P. S. Not a word from Moore for these two months. Pray let me have the rest of Rimini. You have two excellent points in that Poem, originality and Italianism. I will back you as a Bard against half the fellows on whom you have thrown away much good criticism and eulogy; but don't let your bookseller publish in quarto, it is the worst size possible for circulation. I say this on bibliopolical authority. "Again, yours ever, "B."

LETTER CCLXXXI.

TO MR. MOORE.

"Terrace, Piccadilly, Oct. 31, 1815. "I have not been able to ascertain precisely the time of for selling out, and I hope so. First, because I shall see duration of the stock market; but I believe it is a good time you; and, next, because I shall receive certain moneys on behalf of Lady B. the which will materially conduce to my comfort,-1 wanting (as the duns say) 'to make up a sum. were Sheridan and Colman, Harry Harris of C. G. and his "Yesterday, I dined out with a largeish party, where brother, Sir Gilbert Heathcote, Ds. Kinnaird, and others of note and notoriety. Like other parties of the kind, it was first silent, then talky, then argumentative, then disputatious, then unintelligible, then altogethery, then inarticulate, and then drunk. When we had reached the last step of this glorious ladder, it was difficult to get down again The rivers are dry half the year, the plains are barren, and without stumbling;—and, to crown all, Kinnaird and I had the shores still and tideless as the Mediterranean can make to conduct Sheridan down a d-d corkscrew staircase, them; the sky is any thing but variegated, being for months which had certainly been constructed before the discovery and months but 'darkly, deeply, beautifully blue.'-The of fermented liquors, and to which no legs, however crooked next is in his notes, where he talks of our 'Monuments crowded together in the busy, &c. of a large town,' as compared with the 'still seclusion of a Turkish cemetery in some remote place. This is pure stuff; for one monument In our churchyards there are ten in the Turkish, and so crowded that you cannot walk between them; that is, divided merely by a path or road; and as to 'remote places, anen never take the trouble, in a barbarous country, to

could possibly accommodate themselves. We deposited him safe at home, where his man, evidently used to the business, waited to receive him in the hall.

"Both he and Colman were, as usual, very good; but I carried away much wine, and the wine had previously carried away my memory; so that all was hiccup and happiness for the last hour or so, and I am not impregnated with any of the conversation. Perhaps you heard of a late

*

answer of Sheridan to the watchman who found him bereft think most highly of it, and feel anxious that you should be of that 'divine particle of air,' called reason,— *the publisher; but if you are not, I do not despair of finding * *. He, the watchman, found those who will. Sherry in the street, fuddled and bewildered, and almost "I have written to Mr. Leigh Hunt, stating your willinginsensible. 'Who are you, sir?-no answer. 'What's ness to treat with him, which, when I saw you, I understood your name?—a hiccup. 'What's your name?—Answer, you to be. Terms and time I leave to his pleasure and in a slow, deliberate, and impassive tone,-'Wilber-your discernment; but this I will say, that I think it the force!!! Is not that Sherry all over?-and to my mind safest thing you ever engaged in. I speak to you as a man excellent. Poor fellow, his very dregs are better than the of business: were I to talk to you as a reader or a critic, I 'first sprightly runnings' of others. should say, it was a very wonderful and beautiful perform ance, with just enough of fault to make its beauties more remarked and remarkable.

"My paper is full, and I have a grievous headach. "P. S. Lady B. is in full progress. Next month will bring to light (with the aid of 'Juno Lucina, fer opem,' or rather opes, for the last are most wanted) the tenth wonder of the world; Gil Blas being the eighth, and he (my son's father) the ninth."

LETTER CCLXXXII.

"And now to the last; my own, which I feel ashamed of after the others:-publish or not as you like, I don't care one dumn. If you do n't, no one else shall, and I never thought or dreamed of it, except as one in the collection. If it is worth being in the fourth volume, put it there and nowhere else; and if not, put it in the fire. "Yours,

"N."

TO MR. MOORE.

"Nov. 4, 1815.

Had you not bewildered my head with the 'stocks,' your letter would have been answered directly. Had n't I to go to the city? and had n't I to remember what to ask when I got there? and had n't I forgotten it?

"I should be undoubtedly delighted to see you; but I don't like to urge against your reasons my own inclinations. Come you must soon, for stay you won't. I know you of old;-you have been too much leavened with London to keep long out of it.

"Lewis is going to Jamaica to suck his sugar-canes. He sails in two days; I enclose you his farewell note. I saw him last night at D. L. T. for the last time previous to his voyage. Poor fellow! he is really a good man; an excellent man; he left me his walking-stick and a pot of preserved ginger. I shall never eat the last without tears n my eyes, it is so hot. We have had a devil of a row among our ballarinas: Miss Smith has been wronged about a hornpipe. The Committee have interfered; but Byrne, the d-d ballet-master, won't budge a step. I am furious, so is George Lambe. Kinnaird is very glad, because-he don't know why; and I am very sorry, for the same reason. To-day I dine with Kd.-we are to have Sheridan and Colman again; and to-morrow, once more, at Sir Gilbert Heathcote's.

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LETTER CCLXXXIV.

TO MR. MURRAY.

"Nov. 14, 1815.

"I return you your bills not accepted, but certainly not unhonoured. Your present offer is a favour which I would accept from you, if I accepted such from any man. Had such been my intention, I can assure you I would have asked you fairly, and as freely as you would give; and I cannot say more of my confidence or your conduct.

"The circumstances which induce me to part with my books, though sufficiently, are not immediately, pressing I have made up my mind to them, and there's an end.

"Had I been disposed to trespass on your kindness in this way, it would have been before now; but I am not sorry to have an opportunity of declining it, as it sets my opinion of you, and indeed of human nature, in a different light from that in which I have been accustomed to consider it. Believe me very truly, &c."

LETTER CCLXXXV.

TO MR. MURRAY.

"Dcc. 25, 1815.

"I send some lines, written some time ago, and intended as an opening to the 'Siege of Corinth.' I had forgotten them, and am not sure that they had not better be left out now: on that, you and your Synod can determine.†

"Yours, &c."

"Leigh Hunt has written a real good and very original Poem, which I think will be a great hit. You can have no notion how very well it is written, nor should I, had I not redde it. As to us, Tom-eh, when art thou out? If you think the verses worth it, I would rather they were embalmed in the Irish Melodies, than scattered abroad in a separate song; much rather. But when are thy great things out? I mean the Po of Pos; thy Shah Nameh. It is very kind in Jeffrey to like the Hebrew Melodies. FRAGMENTS OF LETTERS WRITTEN ABOUT THIS TIME Some of the fellows here preferred Sternhold and Hopkins, and said so;-'the fiend receive their souls therefor!

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TO MR. Hunt.

"With regard to the English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, I have no concealments, nor desire to have any from you or yours; the suppression occurred (I am as sure as I can be of any thing) in the manner stated: I have never regretted that, but very often the composition, that is, the humeur of a great deal in it. As to the quotation you allude to, I have no right, nor indeed desire, to prevent it ; but, on the contrary, in common with all other writers, I do and ought to take it as a compliment.

"The paper on the Methodists I redde, and agree with the writer on one point, in which you and he perhaps differ;

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that an addiction to poetry is very generally the result of 'an uneasy mind in an uneasy body; disease or deformity have been the attendants of many of our best. Collins mad -Chatterton. I think, mad-Cowper mad-Pope crooked -Milton blind-Gray (I have heard that the last was afflicted by an incurable and very grievous distemper, though not generally known) and others-I have somewhere read, however, that poets rarely go mad. I suppose the writer means that their insanity effervesces and evapo

rates in verse-may be so.

"I have not had time to attack your system, which ought to be done, were it only because it is a system. So, by and by, have at you. "Yours, ever, "BYRON."

"Of 'Rimini,' Sir Henry Englefield, a mighty man in the blue circles, and a very clever man any where, sent to Murray, in terms of the highest eulogy; and with regard to the common reader, my sister and cousin (who are now all my family, and the last since gone away to be married) were in fixed perusal and delight with it, and they are 'not critical,' but fair, natural, unaffected, and understanding persons. Frere, and all the arch-literati, I hear, are also unanimous in a high opinion of the Poem."

LETTER CCLXXXVI.

TO MR. MOORE.

"Jan. 5, 1816.

"I hope Mrs. M. is quite re-established. The little girl was born on the 10th of December last: her name is Augusta Ada, (the second a very antique family name,-I believe not used since the reign of King John.) She was, and is, very flourishing and fat, and reckoned very large for her days squalls and sucks incessantly. Are you answered? Her mother is doing very well, and up again. "I have now been married a year on the second of this moth-heigh-ho! I have seen nobody lately much worth noting, except S ** and another general of the Gauls, once or twice at dinners out of doors. S is a fine, foreign, välainous-looking, intelligent, and very agreeable man; his compatriot is more of the petit-maître, and younger, but I should think not at all of the same intellectual calibre with the Corsican-which S * *, you know, is, and a cousin of Napoleon's.

*Are you never to be expected in town again? To be nure, there is no one here of the 1500 fillers of hot rooms, called the fashionable world. My approaching papa-ship detained us for advice, &c. &c.-though I would as soon be here as any where else on this side of the straits of Gibraltar.

"I would gladly-or, rather, sorrowfully-comply with your request of a dirge for the poor girl you mention. But how can I write on one I have never seen or known? Besides, you will do it much better yourself. I could not write upon any thing, without some personal experience and foundation; far less on a theme so peculiar. Now, you have both in this case; and, if you had neither, you have more imagination, and would never fail.

"This is but a dull scrawl, and I am but a dull fellow. Just at present, I am absorbed in 500 contradictory contemplations, though with but one object in view-which will probably end in nothing, as most things we wish do. But never mind-as somebody says, 'for the blue sky bends over all.' I only could be glad, if it bent over me where it is a little bluer; like the 'skyish top of blue Olympus,' which, by-the-way, looked very white when I last saw it. "Ever, &c."

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"I return your extract with thanks for the perusal, and hope you are by this time on the verge of publication. My pencil-marks on the margin of your former manuscripts I no such meaning as you imagine for their being withheld never thought worth the trouble of deciphering, but I had from Murray, from whom I differ entirely as to the terms of your agreement; nor do I think you asked a piastre 100 much for the Poem. However, I doubt not he will deal fairly by you on the whole; he is really a very good fellow, and his faults are merely the leaven of his 'trade'-'the trade! the slave-trade of many an unlucky writer.

"The said Murray and I are just at present in no good humour with each other; but he is not the worse for that; I feel sure that he will give your work as fair or a fairer chance in every way than your late publishers; and what he can't do for it, it will do for itself.

*Continual business and occasional indisposition have been the causes of my negligence (for I deny neglect) in not writing to you immediately. These are excuses; I wish they may be more satisfactory to you than they are to me. I opened my eyes yesterday morning on your compliment of Sunday. If you knew what a hopeless and lethargic den of dulness and drawling our hospital is during a debate; and what a mass of corruption in its patients, you would wonder, not that I very seldom speak, but that I ever attempted it, feeling, as I trust I do, independently. How ever, when a proper spirit is manifested without doors,' I will endeavour not to be idle within. Do you think such a time is coming? Methinks there are gleams of it. My forefathers were of the other side of the question in Charles' days, and the fruit of it was a title and the loss of an enor mous property.

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"If the old struggle comes on, I may lose the one, and shall never regain the other, but no matter; there are things, even in this world, better than either. Very truly, ever yours, "B."

LETTER CCLXXXVIII.

TO MR. ROGERS.

"Feb. 8, 1816.

"Do not mistake me-I really returned your book for the reason assigned, and no other. It is too good for so careless a fellow. I have parted with all my own books, and positively won't deprive you of so valuable ‘a drop of that immortal man.'

"I shall be very glad to see you, if you like to call, though I am at present contending with 'the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,' some of which have struck at me from a quarter whence I did not indeed expect them. But no matter, 'there is a world elsewhere,' and I will cut my way through this as I can.

"If you write to Moore, will you tell him that I shall answer his letter the moment I can muster time and spirits? "Ever yours, "Bx."

LETTER CCLXXXIX.

TO MR. MOORE.

"Feb. 29, 1816.

"I have not answered your letter for a time; and, at present, the reply to part of it might extend to such a length, that I shall delay it till it can be made in person, and then I will shorten it as much as I can.

"In the mean time, I am at war with all the world and I had mentioned to him, as a subject worthy of his best powers of his wife; or rather, 'all the world and my wife' are at war pathos, a melancholy event which had just occurred in my neighbourhood, with me, and have not yet crushed me whatever they may and to which i have myself made allusion in one of the Sacred Melodies-do. I don't know that in the course of a hair readth

Weep not for her."-Moore.

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