uttered with curses or jeers,' or,' a wretch never named but with curses or jeers.' Becase as how, 'spoke' is not grammar, except in the doubt whether we can say a name spoken,' for mentioned. I have some doubts, too, about ' repay,'-' and for murder repay with a shout and a smile.' Should it not be, and for murder repay him with shouts and a smile,' or 'reward him with shouts and a smile?' « So, pray put your poetical pen through the MS., and take the least bad of the emendations. Also, if there be any further breaking of Priscian's head, will you apply a plaister? I wrote in the greatest hurry and fury, and sent it you the day after; so, doubtless, there will be some awful constructions, and a rather lawless conscription of rhythmus. 6 << With respect to what Anna Seward calls the liberty of transcript,'-when complaining of Miss Matilda Muggleton, the accomplished daughter of a choral vicar of Worcester Cathedral, who had abused the said 'liberty of transcript,' by inserting in the Malvern Mercury Miss Seward's 'Elegy on the South Pole,' as her own production, with her own signature, two years after having taken a copy, by permission of the authoress-with regard, I say, to the liberty of transcript,' I by no means oppose an occasional copy to the benevolent few, provided it does not degenerate into such licentiousness of Verb and Noun as may tend to 'disparage my parts of speech' by the carelessness of the transcribblers. "I do not think that there is much danger of the 'King's Press being abused' upon the occasion, if the publishers of journals have any regard for their remaining liberty of person. It is as pretty a piece of invective as ever put publisher in the way to 'Botany.' Therefore, if they meddle with it, it is at their peril. As for myself, I will answer any jontleman—though I by no means recognise a 'right of search' into an unpublished production and unavowed poem. The same applies to things published sans consent. I hope you like, at least, the concluding lines of the Pome? « What are you doing, and where are you? in England? Nail Murray-nail him to his own counter, till he shells out the thirteens. Since I wrote to you, I have sent him another tragedy-' Cain' by namemaking three in MS. now in his hands, or in the printer's. It is in the Manfred, metaphysical style, and full of some Titanic declamation;-Lucifer being one of the dram. pers., who takes Cain a voyage among the stars, and, afterwards, to Hades,' where he shows him the phantoms of a former world, and its inhabitants. I have gone upon the notion of Cuvier, that the world has been destroyed three or four times, and was inhabited by mammoths, behemoths, and what not; but not by man till the Mosaic period, as, indeed, is proved by the strata of bones found;-those of all unknown animals, and known, being dug out, but none of mankind. I have, therefore, supposed Cain to be shown, in the rational Preadamites, beings endowed with a higher intelligence than man, but totally unlike him in form, and with much greater strength of mind and person. You may suppose the small talk which takes place between him and Lucifer upon these matters is not quite canonical. << The consequence is, that Cain comes back and kills Abel in a fit of dissatisfaction, partly with the politics of Paradise, which had driven them all out of it, and partly because (as it is written in Genesis) Abel's sacrifice was the more acceptable to the Deity. I trust that the Rhapsody has arrived-it is in three acts, and entitled 'A Mystery,' according to the former Christian custom, and in honour of what it probably will remain to the reader. « After the stanza on Grattan, concluding with 'His soul o'er the freedom implored and denied,' will it please you to cause insert the followingAddenda,' which I dreamed of during to-day's Siesta : Ever glorious Grattan! etc. etc. etc. I will tell you what to do. Get me twenty copies of the whole carefully and privately printed off, as your lines were on the Naples affair. Send me six, and distribute the rest according to your own pleasure. <«< I am in a fine vein, 'so full of pastime and prodigality! So, here's to your health in a glass of grog. Pray write, that I may know by return of post-address to me at Pisa. The gods give you joy! << Where are you? in Paris? Let us hear. You will take care that there be no printer's name, nor author's, as in the Naples stanzas, at least for the present.» LETTER CCCCLV. "TO MR MURRAY. " « Ravenna, September 20th, 1821. «You need not send 'the Blues,' which is a mere buffoonery, never meant for publication.1 " The papers to which I allude, in case of survivorship, are collections of letters, etc. since I was sixteen years old, contained in the trunks in the care of Mr Hobhouse. This collection is at least doubled by those I have now here, all received since my last ostracism. To these I should wish the editor to have access, not for the purpose of abusing confidences, nor of hurting the feelings of correspondents living, nor the memories of the dead; but there are things which would do neither, that I have left unnoticed or unexplained, and which (like all such things) time only can permit to be noticed or explained, though some are to my credit. The task will of course require delicacy; but that will not be wanting, if Moore and Hobhouse survive me, and, I may add, yourself; and that you may all three do so is, I assure you, my very sincere wish. I am not sure that long life is desirable for one of my temper, and constitutional depression of spirits, which of course I suppress in society; but which breaks out when alone, and in my writings, in spite of myself. It has been deepened, perhaps, by some long-past events (I do not allude to my marriage, etc.-on the contrary, that raised them by the persecution giving a fillip to my spirits); but I call it constitutional, as I have reason to think it. You know, or you do not know, that my maternal grandfather (a very clever man, and amiable, I am told) was strongly This short satire, which is wholly unworthy of his pen, appeared afterwards in the Liberal. suspected of suicide (he was found drowned in the Avon at Bath), and that another very near relative of the same branch took poison, and was merely saved by antidotes. For the first of these events there was no apparent cause, as he was rich, respected, and of considerable intellectual resources, hardly forty years of age, and not at all addicted to any unhinging vice. It was, however, but a strong suspicion, owing to the manner of his death and his melancholy temper. The second had a cause, but it does not become me to touch upon it: it happened when I was far too young to be aware of it, and I never heard of it till after the death of that relative, many years afterwards. I think, then, that I may call this dejection constitutional. I had always been told that I resembled more my maternal grandfather than any of my father's family—that is, in the gloomier part of his temper, for he was what you call a good-natured man, and I am not. << The Journal here I sent to Moore the other day; but as it is a mere diary, only parts of it would ever do for publication. The other Journal of the Tour in 1816, I should think Augusta might let you have a copy of. "I am much mortified that Gifford don't take to my new dramas. To be sure, they are as opposite to the English drama as one thing can be to another; but I have a notion that, if understood, they will in time find favour (though not on the stage) with the reader. The simplicity of plot is intentional, and the avoidance of rant also, as also the compression of the speeches in the more severe situations. What I seek to show in 'the Foscaris' is the suppressed passions, rather than the rant of the present day. For that matter Nay, if thou 'It mouth, |