all the usual term of transportation) I have scribbled to five hundred blockheads on business, etc., without difficulty, though with no great pleasure; and yet, with the notion of addressing you a hundred times in my head, and always in my heart, I have not done what I ought to have done. I can only account for it on the same principle of tremulous anxiety with which one sometimes makes love to a beautiful woman of our own degree, with whom one is enamoured in good earnest ; whereas, we attack a fresh-coloured house-maid without (I speak, of course, of earlier times) any sentimental remorse or mitigation of our virtuous purpose.

« I owe to you far more than the usual obligation for the courtesies of literature and common friendship, for you went out of your way in 1817 to do me a service, when it required not merely kindness, but courage to do so; to have been recorded by you in such a manner would have been a proud memorial at any time, but at such a time, when 'All the world and his wife,' as the proverb goes, were trying to trample upon me, was something still higher to my self-esteem,-I allude to the Quarterly Review of the Third Canto of Childe Harold, which Murray told me was written by you,— and, indeed, I should have known it without his information, as there could not be two who could and would have done this at the time. Had it been a common criticism, however eloquent or panegyrical, I should have felt pleased, undoubtedly, and grateful, but not to the extent which the extraordinary good-heartedness of the whole proceeding must induce in any mind capable of such sensations. The very tardiness of this acknowledgment will, at least, show that I have not forgotten the obligation; and I can assure you that my sense of it has been out at compound interest during the delay.

sure you

I shall only add one word upon the subject, which is that I think that you, and Jeffrey, and Leigh Hunt, were the only literary men of numbers whom I know (and some of whom I had served), who dared venture even an anonymous word in my favour just then; and that, of those three, I had never seen one at all-of the second much less than I desired—and that the third was under no kind of obligation to me whatever; while the two other had been actually attacked by me on a former occasion; one, indeed, with some provocation, but the other wantonly enough. So you see you have been heaping 'coals of fire, etc.'in the true gospel manner, and I can asthat they have burnt down to my very heart. « I am glad that you accepted the inscription. I meant to have inscribed 'the Foscarini' to you instead; but first, I heard that ‘Cain' was thought the least bad of the two as a composition; and, adly, I have abused S * * like a pickpocket, in a note to the Foscarini, and I recollected that he is a friend of yours (though not of mine), and that it would not be the handsome thing to dedicate to one friend any thing containing such matters about another. However, I'll work the Laureate before I have done with him, as soon as I can muster Billingsgate therefor. I like a row, and always did from a boy, in the course of which propensity, I must needs say, that I have found it the most easy of all to be gratified, personally and poetically. You disclaim‘jealousies; but I would ask as Boswell did of Johnson, ‘of whom could you be jealous?'—of none of the living, certainly, and (taking all and all into consideration) of which of the dead? I don't like to bore you about the Scotch novels (as they call them, though two of them are wholly English, and the rest half so), but nothing can or could ever persuade me, since I was the

your letter of last week (which I answered) did not alJude to it, and yet I insured it at the post-office here.

« I have no direct news from England, except on the Noel business, which is proceeding quietly, as I have appointed a gentleman (Sir F. Burdett) for my arbitrator. They, too, have said that they will recall the lawyer whom they had chosen, and will name a gentleman too. This is better, as the arrangement of the estates and of Lady B.'s allowance will thus be settled without quibbling. My lawyers are taking out a licence for the name and arms, which it seems I

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office to make them take more care, and directed it regularly to you at Paris.

<< In the impartial Galignani I perceive an extract from Blackwood's Magazine, in which it is said that there are people who have discovered that you and I are no poets. With regard to one of us, I know that this north-west passage to my magnetic pole had been long discovered by some sages, and I leave them the full benefit of their penetration. I think, as Gibbon says of his History, 'that, perhaps, a hundred years hence it may still continue to be abused.' However, I am far from pretending to compete or compare with that illustrious literary character.

« But, with regard to you, I thought that you had always been allowed to be a poet, even by the stupid as well as the envious-a bad one, to be sure-immoral, lorid, Asiatic, and diabolically popular,-but still alrays a poet, nem. con. This discovery, therefore, has o me all the grace of novelty, as well as of consolation ccording to Rochefoucault) to find myself no-poetized such good company. I am content to 'err with Plato,' can assure you very sincerely, that I would rather eceived a non-poet with you, than be crowned with he bays of (the yet-uncrowned) Lakers in their soI believe you think better of those worthies than I know them *

*

*

*

*

For Southey, the answer to my proposition of a is not yet come. I sent the message, with a e, to him through Douglas Kinnaird, and response is not arrived. If he accepts, I shall to England; but if not, I do not think the s will take me there, as the arbitrators can without my presence, and there do not seem

first ten minutes in your company, that you are not the man. To me those novels have so much of ‘Auld lang syne' (I was bred a canny Scot till ten years old) that I never move without them; and when I removed from Ravenna to Pisa the other day, and sent on my library before, they were the only books that I kept by me, although I already have them by heart.

«I delayed till now concluding, in the hope that I should have got 'the Pirate,' who is under way for me, but has not yet hove in sight. I hear that your daughter is married, and I suppose by this time you are half a grandfather a young one, by the way. I have heard great things of Mrs Lockhart's persona and mental charms, and much good of her lord: that you may live to see as many novel Scotts as there are Scotts' novels, is very bad pun, but sincere wish of

the

<< Yours ever most affectionately, etc. « P.S.-Why dont you take a turn in Italy? You would find yourself as well known and as welcome as in the Highlands among the natives. As for the English, you would be with them as in London; and I need not add, that I should be delighted to see you again, which is far more than I shall ever feel or say for England, or (with a few exceptions of kith, kin, and allies') any thing that it contains. But my 'heart warms to the tartan,' or to any thing of Scotland, which reminds me of Aberdeen and other parts not so far from the Highlands as that town, about Invercauld and Braemar, where I was sent to drink goat's fey in 1795-6, consequence of a threatened decline after the scarlet fever. But I am gossiping, so, good night-and the gods be with your dreams!

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