creatures.  If, then, he has no self, and if I am a poet, where is the wonder that I should say I would write no more?  Might I not at that very instant have been cogitating on the characters of Saturn and Ops?  It is a wretched thing to confess, but it is a very fact, that not one word I ever utter can be taken for granted as an opinion growing out of my identical nature.  How can it, when I have no nature?  When I am in a room with people, if I ever am free from speculating on creations of my own brain, then, not myself goes home to myself, but the identity of every one in the room begins to press upon me, [so] that I am in a very little time annihilated—­not only among men; it would be the same in a nursery of children.  I know not whether I make myself wholly understood:  I hope enough so to let you see that no dependence is to be placed on what I said that day.

In the second place, I will speak of my views, and of the life I purpose to myself.  I am ambitious of doing the world some good:  if I should be spared, that may be the work of maturer years—­in the interval I will assay to reach to as high a summit in poetry as the nerve bestowed upon me will suffer.  The faint conceptions I have of poems to come bring the blood frequently into my forehead.  All I hope is, that I may not lose all interest in human affairs—­that the solitary indifference I feel for applause, even from the finest spirits, will not blunt any acuteness of vision I may have.  I do not think it will.  I feel assured I should write from the mere yearning and fondness I have for the beautiful, even if my night’s labours should be burnt every morning, and no eye ever shine upon them.  But even now I am perhaps not speaking from myself, but from some character in whose soul I now live ...

TO PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

Returning advice

Hampstead, 10 Aug. 1820.

MY DEAR SHELLEY,

I am very much gratified that you, in a foreign country, and with a mind almost over-occupied, should write to me in the strain of the letter beside me.  If I do not take advantage of your invitation, it will be prevented by a circumstance I have very much at heart to prophesy.  There is no doubt that an English winter would put an end to me, and do so in a lingering, hateful manner.  Therefore, I must either voyage or journey to Italy, as a soldier marches up to a battery.  My nerves at present are the worst part of me, yet they feel soothed that, come what extreme may, I shall not be destined to remain in one spot long enough to take a hatred of any four particular bedposts.  I am glad you take any pleasure in my poor poem, which I would willingly take the trouble to unwrite, if possible, did I care so much as I have done about reputation.  I received a copy of the Cenci, as from yourself, from Hunt.  There is only one part of it I am judge of—­the poetry and dramatic effect, which by many spirits nowadays