It was at this time, as we shall see by the letters I am about to produce, and as the features, indeed, of the progeny itself would but too plainly indicate, that he conceived, and wrote some part of, his poem of ’Don Juan;’—­and never did pages more faithfully and, in many respects, lamentably, reflect every variety of feeling, and whim, and passion that, like the wrack of autumn, swept across the author’s mind in writing them.  Nothing less, indeed, than that singular combination of attributes, which existed and were in full activity in his mind at this moment, could have suggested, or been capable of, the execution of such a work.  The cool shrewdness of age, with the vivacity and glowing temperament of youth,—­the wit of a Voltaire, with the sensibility of a Rousseau,—­the minute, practical knowledge of the man of society, with the abstract and self-contemplative spirit of the poet,—­a susceptibility of all that is grandest and most affecting in human virtue, with a deep, withering experience of all that is most fatal to it,—­the two extremes, in short, of man’s mixed and inconsistent nature, now rankly smelling of earth, now breathing of heaven,—­such was the strange assemblage of contrary elements, all meeting together in the same mind, and all brought to bear, in turn, upon the same task, from which alone could have sprung this extraordinary poem,—­the most powerful and, in many respects, painful display of the versatility of genius that has ever been left for succeeding ages to wonder at and deplore.

I shall now proceed with his correspondence,—­having thought some of the preceding observations necessary, not only to explain to the reader much of what he will find in these letters, but to account to him for much that has been necessarily omitted.

* * * * *

LETTER 318.  TO MR. MURRAY.

     “Venice, June 18. 1818.

“Business and the utter and inexplicable silence of all my correspondents renders me impatient and troublesome.  I wrote to Mr. Hanson for a balance which is (or ought to be) in his hands;—­no answer.  I expected the messenger with the Newstead papers two months ago, and instead of him, I received a requisition to proceed to Geneva, which (from * *, who knows my wishes and opinions about approaching England) could only be irony or insult.

“I must, therefore, trouble you to pay into my bankers’ immediately whatever sum or sums you can make it convenient to do on our agreement; otherwise, I shall be put to the severest and most immediate inconvenience; and this at a time when, by every rational prospect and calculation, I ought to be in the receipt of considerable sums.  Pray do not neglect this; you have no idea to what inconvenience you will otherwise put me. * * had some absurd notion about the disposal of this money in annuity (or God knows what),