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of the sentence on Pope's Homer, where I prefer it to Cowper's and quote Dr. Clarke in favour of its accuracy.

"Upon all these points, take an opinion; take the sense (or nonsense) of your learned visitants, and act thereby. I am very tractable

-in PROSE.

"Whether I have made out the case for Pope, I know not; but I am very sure that I have been zealous in the attempt. If it comes to the proofs, we shall beat the blackguards. I will show more imagery in twenty lines of Pope than in any equal length of quotation in English poesy, and that in places where they least expect it. For instance, in his lines on Sporus,—now, do just read them over-the subject is of no consequence (whether it be satire or epic)—we are talking of poetry and imagery from nature and art. Now mark the images separately and arithmetically:

1. The thing of silk.

2. Curd of ass's milk.
3. The butterfly.

4. The wheel.

5. Bug with gilded wings.

6. Painted child of dirt.
7. Whose buzz.

8. Well-bred spaniels.

9. Shallow streams run dimpling.

10. Florid impotence.

11. Prompter. Puppet squeaks.

12. The ear of Eve.

13. Familiar toad.

14. Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad.

15. Fop at the toilet.

16. Flatterer at the board.

17. Amphibious thing.

18. Now trips a lady.

19. Now struts a lord.

20. A cherub's face.

21. A reptile all the rest.

22. The Rabbins.

23. Pride that licks the dust

'Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust,
Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.'

"Now, is there a line of all the passage without the most forcible imagery (for his purpose)? Look at the variety-at the poetry of the passage at the imagination: there is hardly a line from which a painting might not be made, and is. But this is nothing in comparison with his higher passages in the Essay on Man, and many of his other poems, serious and comic. There never was such an unjust outcry in this world as that which these fellows are trying against Pope. "Ask Mr. Gifford if, in the fifth act of the Doge,' you could not contrive (where the sentence of the Veil is passed) to insert the following lines in Marino Faliero's answer?

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6 But let it be so. It will be in vain:

The veil which blackens o'er this blighted name,
And hides, or seems to hide, these lineaments,

Shall draw more gazers than the thousand portraits
Which glitter round it in their painted trappings,
Your delegated slaves-the people's tyrants.*

"Yours truly, &c.

"P.S. Upon public matters here I say little you will all hear soon enough of a general row throughout Italy. There never was a more foolish step than the expedition to Naples by these fellows.

"I wish to propose to Holmes, the miniature painter, to come out to me this spring. I will pay his expenses, and any sum in reason. I wish him to take my daughter's picture (who is in a convent) and the Countess G.'s, and the head of a peasant girl, which latter would make a study for Raphael. It is a complete peasant face, but an Italian peasant's, and quite in the Raphael Fornarina style. Her figure is tall, but rather large, and not at all comparable to her face, which is really superb. She is not seventeen, and I am anxious to have her face while it lasts. Madame G. is also very handsome, but ti is quite in a different style-completely blonde and fair-very uncommon in Italy; yet not an English fairness, but more likely a Swede or a Norwegian. Her figure, too, particularly the bust, is uncommonly good. It must be Holmes: I like him because he takes such inveterate likenesses. There is a war here; but a solitary traveller, with little baggage, and nothing to do with politics, has nothing to fear. Pack him up in the Diligence. Do n't forget."

LETTER CCCCXVII.

TO MR. HOPPNER.

"Ravenna, April 3d, 1821.

"Thanks for the translation. I have sent you some books, which I do not know whether you have read or no-you need not return them, in any case. I enclose you also a letter from Pisa. I have neither spared trouble nor expense in the care of the child; and as she was now four years old complete, and quite above the control of the servantsand as a man living without any woman at the head of his house cannot much attend to a nursery-I had no resource but to place her for a time (at a high pension too) in the convent of Bagna-Cavalli (twelve miles off), where the air is good, and where she will, at least, have her learning advanced, and her morals and religion inculcated. I had also another reason;-things were and are in such a state here, that I had no reason to look upon my own personal safety as particularly ensurable; and I thought the infant best out of harm's way for the present.

"It is also fit that I should add that I by no means intended, nor intend, to give a natural child an English education, because with the *These lines, perhaps from some difficulty in introducing them,—were never inserted in the Tragedy.

With such anxiety did he look to this essential part of his daughter's education, that, notwithstanding the many advantages she was sure to derive from the kind and feminine superintendence of Mrs. Shelley, his apprehensions lest her feeling upon religious subjects might be disturbed by the conversation of Shelley himself, prevented him from allowing her to remain under his friend's roof.

disadvantages of her birth, her after-settlement would be doubly difficult. Abroad, with a fair foreign education and a portion of five or six thousand pounds, she might and may marry very respectably. In England such a dowry would be a pittance, while elsewhere it is a fortune. It is, besides, my wish that she should be a Roman Catholic, which I look upon as the best religion, as it is assuredly the oldest of the various branches of Christianity. I have now explained my notions as to the place where she now is-it is the best I could find for the present; but I have no prejudices in its favour.

"I do not speak of politics, because it seems a hopeless subject, as long as those scoundrels are to be permitted to bully states out of their independence. Believe me

"Yours ever and truly.

"P.S. There is a report here of a change in France; but with what truth is not yet known.

"P.S. My respects to Mrs. H. I have the best opinion' of her countrywomen; and at my time of life (three-and-thirty, 22d January, 1821), that is to say, after the life I have led, a good opinion is the only rational one which a man should entertain of the whole sex :-up to thirty, the worst possible opinion a man can have of them in general, the better for himself. Afterward, it is a matter of no importance to them, nor to him either, what opinion he entertains-his day is over, or, at least, should be.

"You see how sober I am become."

LETTER CCCCXVIII.

TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, April 21st, 1821.

"I enclose you another letter on Bowles. But I premise that it is not like the former, and that I am not at all sure how much, if any of it should be published. Upon this point you can consult with Mr. Gifford, and think twice before you publish it at all.

"Yours truly,

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"P.S. You may make my subscription for Mr. Scott's widow, &c. thirty instead of the proposed ten pounds: but do not put down my name; put down N. N. only. The reason is, that, as I have mentioned him in the enclosed pamphlet, it would look indelicate. I would give more, but my disappointments last year about Rochdale and the transfer from the funds render me more economical for the present."

LETTER CCCCXIX.

TO MR. SHELLEY.

"Ravenna, April 26th, 1821. "The child continues doing well, and the accounts are regular and favourable. It is gratifying to me that you and Mrs. Shelley do not disapprove of the step which I have taken, which is merely temporary.

"I am very sorry to hear what you say of Keats-is it actually true? I did not think criticism had been so killing. Though I differ from you essentially in your estimate of his performances, I so much abhor all unnecessary pain, that I would rather he had been seated on the highest peak of Parnassus than have perished in such a manner. Poor fellow! though with such inordinate self-love he would probably have not been very happy. I read the review of 'Endymion' in the Quarterly. It was severe, but surely not so severe as my reviews in that and other journals upon others.

"I recollect the effect on me of the Edinburgh on my first poem; it was rage, and resistance, and redress-but not despondency nor despair. I grant that those are not amiable feelings; but, in this world of bustle and broil, and especially in the career of writing, a man should calculate upon his powers of resistance before he goes into the arena.

'Expect not life from pain nor danger free,

Nor deem the doom of man reversed for thee.'

"You know my opinion of that second-hand school of poetry. You also know my high opinion of your own poetry,-because it is of no school. I read Cenci-but, besides that I think the subject essentially undramatic, I am not an admirer of our old dramatists, as models. I deny that the English have hitherto had a drama at all. Your Cenci, however, was a work of power and poetry. As to my drama, pray revenge yourself upon it, by being as free as I have been with yours. "I have not yet got your Prometheus, which I long to see. I have heard nothing of mine, and do not know that it is yet published. I have published a pamphlet on the Pope controversy, which you will not like. Had I known that Keats was dead-or that he was alive and so sensitive-I should have omitted some remarks upon his poetry, to which I was provoked by his attack upon Pope, and my disapprobation of his own style of writing.

"You want me to undertake a great Poem-I have not the inclination nor the power. As I grow older, the indifference-not to life, for we love it by instinct-but to the stimuli of life, increases. Besides, this late failure of the Italians has latterly disappointed me for many reasons, some public, some personal. My respects to Mrs. S. #6 Yours ever.

"P.S. Could not you and I contrive to meet this summer? Could not you take a run here alone?

LETTER CCCCXX.

TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, April 26th, 1821.

"I sent you by last postis a large packet, which will not do for publication (I suspect), being, as the apprentices say, 'damned low.' I put off also for a week or two sending the Italian scrawl which will form a note to it. The reason is, that letters being opened, I wish to 'bide a wee.'

"Well, have you published the Tragedy? and does the Letter take?

"Is it true what Shelley writes me, that poor John Keats died at Rome of the Quarterly Review? I am very sorry for it, though I think he took the wrong line as a poet, and was spoiled by Cockneyfying, and suburbing, and versifying Tooke's Pantheon and Lempriere's Dictionary. I know, by experience, that a savage review is hemlock to a sucking author; and the one on me (which produced the English Bards, &c.) knocked me down-but I got up again. Instead of bursting a blood-vessel, I drank three bottles of claret, and begun_an answer, finding that there was nothing in the article for which I could lawfully knock Jeffrey on the head, in an honourable way. However, I would not be the person who wrote the homicidal article for all the honour and glory in the world, though I by no means approve of that school of scribbling which it treats upon.

"You see the Italians have made a sad business of it,-all owing to treachery and disunion among themselves. It has given me great vexation. The execrations heaped upon the Neapolitans by the other Italians are quite in unison with those of the rest of Europe.

66 Yours, &c.

"P.S. Your latest packet of books is on its way here, but not arrived. Kenilworth excellent. Thanks for the pocket-books, of which I have made presents to those ladies who like cuts, and landscapes, and all that. I have got an Italian book or two which I should like to send you if I had an opportunity.

"I am not at present in the very highest health,-spring, probably; so I have lowered my diet and taken to Epsom salts.

"As you say my prose is good, why do n't you treat with Moore for the reversion of the Memoirs ?-conditionally, recollect; not to be published before decease. He has the permission to dispose of them, and I advised him to do so."

LETTER CCCCXXI.

TO MR. MOORE.

"Ravenna, April 28th, 1821. "You cannot have been more disappointed than myself, nor so much deceived. I have been so at some personal risk also, which is not yet done away with. However, no time nor circumstances shall alter my tone nor my feelings of indignation against tyranny triumphant. The present business has been as much a work of treachery as of cowardice,-though both may have done their part. If ever you and I meet again, I will have a talk with you upon the subject. At present, for obvious reasons, I can write but little, as all letters are opened. In mine they shall always find my sentiments, but nothing that can lead to the oppression of others.

"You will please to recollect that the Neapolitans are nowhere now more execrated than in Italy, and not blame a whole people for the vices of a province. That would be like condemning Great Britain because they plunder wrecks in Cornwall

"And now, let us be literary;-a sad falling off, but it is always a consolation. If Othello's occupation be gone,' let us take to the next best; and, if we cannot contribute to make mankind more free and wise, we may amuse ourselves and those who like it. What are

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