and thin, in despite of difference of years, morals, habits, and even politics, which last would, I believe, if they were in heaven, divide the Trinity; and therefore I feel in a very awkward situation between the two, Mr. G. and my friend H., and can only wish that they had no differences, or that such as they have were accommodated. The answer I have not seen, for—it is odd enough for people so intimate-but Mr. H. and I are very sparing of our literary confidences. For example, the other day he wished to have a MS. of the 3a canto to read over to his brother, etc., which was refused; — and I have never seen his journals, nor he mine-(I only kept the short one of the mountains for my sister) — nor do I think that hardly ever he or I saw any of our own productions previous to their publication.

The article in the E[dinburgh] R[eview] on Coleridge I have not seen; but whether I am attacked in it or not, or in any other of the same journal, I shall never think ill of Mr. Jeffrey on that account, nor forget that his conduct towards me has been certainly most handsome during the last four or more years.

I forgot to mention to you that a kind of Poem 1 in dialogue (in blank verse) or drama, from which "The Incantation "2 is an extract, begun last summer in Switzerland, is finished; it is in three acts; but of a very wild, metaphysical, and inexplicable kind. Almost all the persons - but two or three- are spirits of the earth and air, or

1 "Manfred."

2 The "Incantation" had been published with "The Prisoner of Chillon" the year previous.

the waters; the scene is in the Alps; the hero a kind of magician, who is tormented by a species of remorse, the cause of which is left half unexplained. He wanders about invoking these spirits, which appear to him, and are of no Juse; he at last goes to the very abode of the Evil Principle in propriá personá, to evocate a ghost, which appears, and gives him an ambiguous and disagreeable answer; and in the 3 act he is found by his attendants dying in a tower where he studied his art. You may perceive by this outline that I have no great opinion of this piece of phantasy : but I have at least rendered it quite impossible for the stage, for which my intercourse with D[rury] Lane has given me the greatest contempt.

I have not even copied it off, and feel too lazy at present to attempt the whole; but when I have, I will send it you, and you may either throw it into the fire or not.

TO JOHN MURRAY

VENICE, February 25, 1817.

P. S.

Remember me to Mr. G[iffor]d. I have not

received your parcel or parcels.

Look into Moore's

me; in one of the

(Dr. Moore's) View of Italy for volumes you will find an account of the Doge Valiere (it ought to be Falieri) and his conspiracy, or the motives of it. Get it transcribed for me, and send it in a letter to me soon. I want it, and cannot find so good an account of that business here; though the veiled portrait, and the place where he was once crowned, and afterwards decapitated, still exist and are shown. I have searched all their

histories; but the policy of the old Aristocracy made their writers silent on his motives, which were a private grievance against one of the Patricians.

I mean to write a tragedy upon the subject, which appears to me very dramatic; an old man, jealous, and conspiring against the state of which he was the actually reigning Chief. The last circumstance makes it the most remarkable and only fact of the kind in all history of all nations.

TO THOMAS MOORE

VENICE, February 28, 1817.

And this is your month of going to press by the body of Diana! (a Venetian oath), I feel as anxious but not fearful for you as if it were myself coming out in a work of humour, which would, you know, be the antipodes of all my previous publications. I don't think you have anything to dread but your own reputation. You must keep up to that. As you never showed me a line of your work, I do not even know your measure; but you must send me a copy by Murray forthwith, and then you shall hear what I think. I dare say you are in a pucker. Of all authors, you are the only really modest one I ever met with, which would sound oddly enough to those who recollect young that is, when you were extremely young — I don't mean to stigmatise you either with years or morality.

your

morals when you were

I believe I told you that the E[dinburgh] R[eview]

had attacked me, in an article on Coleridge (I have not seen it)" Et tu, Jeffrey ?"-"there is nothing but roguery in villanous man." But I absolve him of all attacks, present and future; for I think he had already pushed his clemency in my behoof to the utmost, and I shall always think well of him. I only wonder he did not begin before, as my domestic destruction was a fine opening for all the world, of which all who could did well to avail themselves.

If I live ten years longer, you will see, however, that it is not over with me I don't mean in literature, for that is nothing; and it may seem odd enough to say, I do not think it my vocation. But you will see that I shall do something or other the times and fortune permitting that, "like the cosmogony, or creation of the world, will puzzle the philosophers of all ages." But I doubt whether my constitution will hold out. at intervals, exorcised it most devilishly.

TO THOMAS MOORE

I have,

VENICE, March 25, 1817.

I have not the least idea where I am going, nor what I am to do. I wished to have gone to Rome; but at present it is pestilent with English, a parcel of staring boobies, who go about gaping and wishing to be at once cheap and magnificent. A man is a fool who travels now in France or Italy, till this tribe of wretches is swept home again. In two or three years the first rush will be over, and the Continent will be roomy and agreeable.

I stayed at Venice chiefly because it is not one of their "dens of thieves"; and here they but pause and pass. In Switzerland it was really noxious. Luckily, I was early, and had got the prettiest place on all the Lake before they were quickened into motion with the rest of the reptiles. But they crossed me every where. I met a family of children and old women half-way up the Wengen Alp (by the Jungfrau) upon mules, some of them too old and others too young to be the least aware of what they saw.

By the way, I think the Jungfrau, and all that region of Alps, which I traversed in September-going to the very top of the Wengen, which is not the highest (the Jungfrau itself is inaccessible) but the best point of view -much finer than Mont-Blanc and Chamouni, or the Simplon. I kept a journal of the whole for my sister Augusta, part of which she copied and let Murray see.

I wrote a sort of mad Drama, for the sake of introducing the Alpine scenery in description: and this I sent lately to Murray. Almost all the dram. pers. are spirits, ghosts, or magicians, and the scene is in the Alps and the other world, so you may suppose what a Bedlam tragedy; it must be make him show it you. I sent him all three acts piecemeal, by the post, and suppose they have arrived.

TO JOHN MURRAY

VENICE, March 25, 1817.

DEAR SIR,Your letter and enclosure are safe; but English gentlemen" are very rare at least in Venice.