deal; and when one is angry and edits a paper, I should think the temptation too strong for literary nature, which is not always human. I can't conceive in what, and for what, he abuses you: what have you done? you are not an author, nor a politician, nor a public character; I know no scrape you have tumbled into. I am the more sorry for this, because I introduced you to Hunt, and because I believe him to be a good man; but till I know the particulars, I can give no opinion. "Let me know about 'Lalla Rookh,' which must be out by this time. "I restore the proofs, but the punctuation should be corrected. I feel too lazy to have at it myself; so beg and pray Mr. Gifford for me. - Address to Venice. In a few days I go to my villeggiatura, in a casino near the Brenta, a few miles only on the mainland. I have determined on another year, and many years of residence if I can compass them. Marianna is with me, hardly recovered of the fever, which has been attacking all Italy last winter. I am afraid she is a little hectic; but I hope the best. "Ever, etc." TO MR. MOORE. "La Mira, Venice, July 10, 1817. "Murray, the Mokanna of booksellers, has contrived to send me extracts from 'Lalla Rookh' by the post. They are taken from some magazine, and contain a short outline and quotations from the two first poems. I am very much delighted with what is before me, and very thirsty for the rest. You have caught the colours as if you had been in the rainbow, and the tone of the East is perfectly preserved. I am glad you have changed the title from 'Persian Tale.' "I suspect you have written a devilish fine composition, and I rejoice in it from my heart; because 'the Douglas and the Percy both together are confident against a world in arms.' I hope you won't be affronted at my looking on us as 'birds of a feather;' though, on whatever subject you had written, I should have been very happy in your success. "There is a simile of an orange tree's 'flowers and fruits,' which I should have liked better if I did not believe it to be a reflection on .* "Do you remember Thurlow's poem to Sam-'When Rogers;' and that d-d supper at Rancliffe's that ought to have been a dinner? 'Ah, Master Shallow, we have heard the chimes at midnight.' But, "My boat is on the shore, And my bark is on the sea; "Here's a sigh to those who love me, "Though the ocean roar around me, "Were't the last drop in the well, "With that water, as this wine, "This should have been written fifteen moons ago-the first stanza was. I am just come out from an hour's swim * "Just then beneath some orange trees, Like Age at play with Infancy."-Lalla Rookh. in the Adriatic; and I write to you with a black-eyed Venetian girl before me, reading Boccacio. "Last week I had a row on the road (I came up to Venice from my casino, a few miles on the Paduan road, this blessed day, to bathe) with a fellow in a carriage, who was impudent to my horse. I gave him a swingeing box on the ear, which sent him to the police, who dismissed his complaint. Witnesses had seen the transaction. He first shouted, in an unseemly way, to frighten my palfrey. I wheeled round, rode up to the window, and asked him what he meant. He grinned, and said some foolery, which produced him an immediate slap in the face, to his utter discomfiture. Much blasphemy ensued, and some menace, which I stopped by dismounting and opening the carriagedoor, and intimating an intention of mending the road with his immediate remains if he did not hold his tongue. He held it. So is Sam-so is "Monk Lewis is here- how pleasant!* He is a very good fellow, and very much yours. everybody-and amongst the number, "Yours ever, "P.S.-What think you of Manfred?" TO MR. MURRAY. "В. "Venice, August 12, 1817. "I have been very sorry to hear of the death of Madame de Stael, not only because she had been very kind to me at Copet, but because now I can never requite her. In a general point of view, she will leave a great gap in society and literature. "With regard to death, I doubt that we have any right to pity the dead for their own sakes. "The copies of 'Manfred' and 'Tasso' are arrived, thanks to Mr. Croker's cover. You have destroyed the whole * An allusion (such as often occurs in these letters) to an anecdote with which he had been amused. effect and moral of the poem by omitting the last line of Manfred's speaking ;* and why this was done, I know not. Why you persist in saying nothing of the thing itself, I am equally at a loss to conjecture. If it is for fear of telling me something disagreeable, you are wrong; because sooner or later I must know it, and I am not so new, nor so raw, nor so inexperienced, as not to be able to bear, not the mere paltry, petty disappointments of authorship, but things more serious-at least I hope so, and that what you may think irritability is merely mechanical, and only acts like galvanism on a dead body, or the muscular motion which survives sensation. "If it is that you are out of humour, because I wrote to you a sharp letter, recollect that it was partly from a misconception of your letter, and partly because you did a thing you had no right to do without consulting me. "I have, however, heard good of 'Manfred' from two other quarters, and from men who would not be scrupulous in saying what they thought, or what was said; and so 'good morrow to you, good Master Lieutenant.' "I wrote to you twice about the fourth canto, which you will answer at your pleasure. Mr. Hobhouse and I have come up for a day to the city; Mr. Lewis is gone to England; and I am "Yours." TO MR. MURRAY. "September 15, 1817. "I enclose a sheet for correction, if ever you get to another edition. You will observe that the blunder in printing makes it appear as if the Château was over St. Gingo, instead of being on the opposite shore of the Lake, over Clarens. So, separate the paragraphs, otherwise my topography will seem as inaccurate as your typography on this occasion. "The other day I wrote to convey my proposition with * "Old man! 'tis not so difficult to die." regard to the fourth and concluding canto. I have gone over and extended it to one hundred and fifty stanzas, which is almost as long as the two first were originally, and longer by itself than any of the smaller poems except 'The Corsair.' Mr. Hobhouse has made some very valuable and accurate notes of considerable length, and you may be sure that I will do for the text all that I can to finish with decency. I look upon 'Childe Harold' as my best; and as I begun, I think of concluding with it. But I make no resolutions on that head, as I broke my former intention with regard to 'The Corsair.' However, I fear that I shall never do better; and yet, not being thirty years of age, for some moons to come, one ought to be progressive as far as intellect goes for many a good year. But I have had a devilish deal of wear and tear of mind and body in my time, besides having published too often and much already. God grant me some judgment to do what may be most fitting in that and everything else, for I doubt my own exceedingly. "I have read 'Lalla Rookh,' but not with sufficient attention yet, for I ride about, and lounge, and ponder, and -two or three other things; so that my reading is very desultory, and not so attentive as it used to be. I am very glad to hear of its popularity, for Moore is a very noble fellow in all respects, and will enjoy it without any bad feelings which success good or evil - sometimes engenders in the men of rhyme. Of the poem itself, I will tell you my opinion when I have mastered it: I say of the poem, for I don't like the prose at all-at all; in the meantime, the 'Fire-Worshippers' is the best, and the 'Veiled Prophet' the worst, of the volume. "With regard to poetry in general, I am convinced, the more I think of it, that he and all of us-Scott, Southey, Wordsworth, Moore, Campbell, I are all in the wrong, one as much as another; that we are upon a wrong revolutionary poetical system, or systems, not worth a damn in itself, and from which none but Rogers and Crabbe are free; and that the present and next generations will finally |