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.

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

To LADY BYRON

A plain statement of facts

Pisa, 17 Nov. 1821,

I have to acknowledge the receipt of ‘Ada’s hair’, which is very soft and pretty, and nearly as dark already as mine was at twelve years old, if I may judge from what I recollect of some in Augusta’s possession, taken at that age.  But it don’t curl,—­perhaps from its being let grow.

I also thank you for the inscription of the date and name, and I will tell you why;—­I believe that they are the only two or three words of your handwriting in my possession.  For your letters I returned; and except the two words, or rather the one word, ‘Household’, written twice in an old account book, I have no other.  I burnt your last note, for two reasons:—­firstly, it was written in a style not very agreeable; and, secondly, I wished to take your word without documents, which are the worldly resources of suspicious people.

I suppose that this note will reach you somewhere about Ada’s birthday—­the 10th of December, I believe.  She will then be six, so that in about twelve more I shall have some chance of meeting her;—­perhaps sooner, if I am obliged to go to England by business or otherwise.  Recollect, however, one thing, either in distance or nearness;—­every day which keeps us asunder should, after so long a period, rather soften our mutual feelings, which must always have one rallying-point as long as our child exists, which I presume we both hope will be long after either of her parents.

The time which has elapsed since the separation has been considerably more than the whole brief period of our union, and the not much longer one of our prior acquaintance.  We both made a bitter mistake; but now it is over, and irrevocably so.  For, at thirty-three on my part, and a few years less on yours, though it is no very extended period of life, still it is one when the habits and thought are generally so formed as to admit of no modification; and as we could not agree when younger, we should with difficulty do so now.