“P.S.  I have acquiesced in the request and representation; and having done so, it is idle to detail my arguments in favour of my own self-love and ‘Poeshie;’ but I protest.  If the poem has poetry, it would stand; if not, fall; the rest is ’leather and prunello,’ and has never yet affected any human production ’pro or con.’  Dulness is the only annihilator in such cases.  As to the cant of the day, I despise it, as I have ever done all its other finical fashions, which become you as paint became the ancient Britons.  If you admit this prudery, you must omit half Ariosto, La Fontaine, Shakspeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, Massinger, Ford, all the Charles Second writers; in short, something of most who have written before Pope and are worth reading, and much of Pope himself. Read him—­most of you don’t—­but do—­and I will forgive you; though the inevitable consequence would be that you would burn all I have ever written, and all your other wretched Claudians of the day (except Scott and Crabbe) into the bargain.  I wrong Claudian, who was a poet, by naming him with such fellows; but he was the ‘ultimus Romanorum,’ the tail of the comet, and these persons are the tail of an old gown cut into a waistcoat for Jackey; but being both tails, I have compared the one with the other, though very unlike, like all similes.  I write in a passion and a sirocco, and I was up till six this morning at the Carnival:  but I protest, as I did in my former letter.”

* * * * *

LETTER 326.  TO MR. MURRAY.

“Venice, February 1. 1819.

“After one of the concluding stanzas of the first Canto of ’Don
Juan,’ which ends with (I forget the number)—­

“To have ...
... when the original is dust,
A book, a d——­d bad picture, and worse bust,

insert the following stanza:—­

“What are the hopes of man, &c.

“I have written to you several letters, some with additions, and some upon the subject of the poem itself, which my cursed puritanical committee have protested against publishing.  But we will circumvent them on that point.  I have not yet begun to copy out the second Canto, which is finished, from natural laziness, and the discouragement of the milk and water they have thrown upon the first.  I say all this to them as to you, that is, for you to say to them, for I will have nothing underhand.  If they had told me the poetry was bad, I would have acquiesced; but they say the contrary, and then talk to me about morality—­the first time I ever heard the word from any body who was not a rascal that used it for a purpose.  I maintain that it is the most moral of poems; but if people won’t discover the moral, that is their fault, not mine.  I have already written to beg that in any case you will print fifty for private distribution.