“Yours of the 5th only yesterday, while I had letters of the 8th from London.  Doth the post dabble into our letters?  Whatever agreement you make with Murray, if satisfactory to you, must be so to me.  There need be no scruple, because, though I used sometimes to buffoon to myself, loving a quibble as well as the barbarian himself (Shakspeare, to wit)—­’that, like a Spartan, I would sell my life as dearly as possible’—­it never was my intention to turn it to personal, pecuniary account, but to bequeath it to a friend—­yourself—­in the event of survivorship.  I anticipated that period, because we happened to meet, and I urged you to make what was possible now by it, for reasons which are obvious.  It has been no possible privation to me, and therefore does not require the acknowledgments you mention.  So, for God’s sake, don’t consider it like * * *

“By the way, when you write to Lady Morgan, will you thank her for her handsome speeches in her book about my books?  I do not know her address.  Her work is fearless and excellent on the subject of Italy—­pray tell her so—­and I know the country.  I wish she had fallen in with me, I could have told her a thing or two that would have confirmed her positions.

     “I am glad you are satisfied with Murray, who seems to value dead
     lords more than live ones.  I have just sent him the following answer
     to a proposition of his,

        “For Orford and for Waldegrave, &c.

“The argument of the above is, that he wanted to ’stint me of my sizings,’ as Lear says,—­that is to say, not to propose an extravagant price for an extravagant poem, as is becoming.  Pray take his guineas, by all means—­I taught him that.  He made me a filthy offer of pounds once, but I told him that, like physicians, poets must be dealt with in guineas, as being the only advantage poets could have in the association with them, as votaries of Apollo.  I write to you in hurry and bustle, which I will expound in my next.

     “Yours ever, &c.

“P.S.  You mention something of an attorney on his way to me on legal business.  I have had no warning of such an apparition.  What can the fellow want?  I have some lawsuits and business, but have not heard of any thing to put me to the expense of a travelling lawyer.  They do enough, in that way, at home.

     “Ah, poor Queen I but perhaps it is for the best, if Herodotus’s
     anecdote is to be believed.

“Remember me to any friendly Angles of our mutual acquaintance.  What are you doing?  Here I have had my hands full with tyrants and their victims.  There never was such oppression, even in Ireland, scarcely!”

* * * * *

LETTER 447.  TO MR. MURRAY.