“I lent Lewis, who is at Venice, (in or on the Canalaccio, the Grand Canal,) your extracts from Lalla Rookh and Manuel[6], and, out of contradiction, it may be, he likes the last, and is not much taken with the first, of these performances.  Of Manuel, I think, with the exception of a few capers, it is as heavy a nightmare as was ever bestrode by indigestion.

“Of the extracts I can but judge as extracts, and I prefer the ‘Peri’ to the ‘Silver Veil.’  He seems not so much at home in his versification of the ‘Silver Veil,’ and a little embarrassed with his horrors; but the conception of the character of the impostor is fine, and the plan of great scope for his genius,—­and I doubt not that, as a whole, it will be very Arabesque and beautiful.

“Your late epistle is not the most abundant in information, and has not yet been succeeded by any other; so that I know nothing of your own concerns, or of any concerns, and as I never hear from any body but yourself who does not tell me something as disagreeable as possible, I should not be sorry to hear from you:  and as it is not very probable,—­if I can, by any device or possible arrangement with regard to my personal affairs, so arrange it,—­that I shall return soon, or reside ever in England, all that you tell me will be all I shall know or enquire after, as to our beloved realm of Grub Street, and the black brethren and blue sisterhood of that extensive suburb of Babylon.  Have you had no new babe of literature sprung up to replace the dead, the distant, the tired, and the retired? no prose, no verse, no nothing?”

[Footnote 6:  A tragedy, by the Rev. Mr. Maturin.]

* * * * *

LETTER 291.  TO MR. MURRAY.

     “Venice, July 20. 1817.

“I write to give you notice that I have completed the fourth and ultimate Canto of Childe Harold.  It consists of 126 stanzas, and is consequently the longest of the four.  It is yet to be copied and polished; and the notes are to come, of which it will require more than the third Canto, as it necessarily treats more of works of art than of nature.  It shall be sent towards autumn;—­and now for our barter.  What do you bid? eh? you shall have samples, an’ it so please you:  but I wish to know what I am to expect (as the saying is) in these hard times, when poetry does not let for half its value.  If you are disposed to do what Mrs. Winifred Jenkins calls ‘the handsome thing,’ I may perhaps throw you some odd matters to the lot,—­translations, or slight originals; there is no saying what may be on the anvil between this and the booking season.  Recollect that it is the last Canto, and completes the work; whether as good as the others, I cannot judge, in course—­least of all as yet,—­but it shall be as little worse as I can help.  I may, perhaps, give some