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PDFselfishness. I do not think I shall return to
London immediately, and shall therefore accept
freely what is offered courteously—your
mediation between me and Murray. I don’t
think my name will answer the purpose, and you
must be aware that my plaguy Satire will bring
the north and south Grub Streets down upon the ’Pilgrimage;’—but,
nevertheless, if Murray makes a point of it, and
you coincide with him, I will do it daringly; so let
it be entitled ‘By the Author of English
Bards and Scotch Reviewers.’ My remarks
on the Romaic, &c., once intended to accompany the
’Hints from Horace,’ shall go along
with the other, as being indeed more appropriate;
also the smaller poems now in my possession, with a
few selected from those published in * ’s
Miscellany. I have found amongst my poor
mother’s papers all my letters from the East,
and one in particular of some length from Albania.
From this, if necessary, I can work up a note
or two on that subject. As I kept no journal,
the letters written on the spot are the best.
But of this anon, when we have definitively arranged.
“Has Murray shown the work to any one? He may—but I will have no traps for applause. Of course there are little things I would wish to alter, and perhaps the two stanzas of a buffooning cast on London’s Sunday are as well left out. I much wish to avoid identifying Childe Harold’s character with mine, and that, in sooth, is my second objection to my name appearing in the title-page. When you have made arrangements as to time, size, type, &c. favour me with a reply. I am giving you an universe of trouble, which thanks cannot atone for. I made a kind of prose apology for my scepticism at the head of the MS., which, on recollection, is so much more like an attack than a defence, that, haply, it might better be omitted:—perpend, pronounce. After all, I fear Murray will be in a scrape with the orthodox; but I cannot help it, though I wish him well through it. As for me, ’I have supped full of criticism,’ and I don’t think that the ‘most dismal treatise’ will stir and rouse my fell of hair’ till ’Birnam wood do come to Dunsinane.’
“I shall continue to write at intervals, and hope you will pay me in kind. How does Pratt get on, or rather get off, Joe Blackett’s posthumous stock? You killed that poor man amongst you, in spite of your Ionian friend and myself, who would have saved him from Pratt, poetry, present poverty, and posthumous oblivion. Cruel patronage! to ruin a man at his calling; but then he is a divine subject for subscription and biography; and Pratt, who makes the most of his dedications, has inscribed the volume to no less than five families of distinction.
“I am sorry you don’t like Harry White: with a great deal of cant, which in him was sincere (indeed it killed him as you killed Joe Blackett), certes there is poesy and genius. I don’t say this on account of my simile and rhymes; but surely he was beyond all the Bloomfields
