“Why don’t you publish my Pulci—­the best thing I ever wrote,—­with the Italian to it?  I wish I was alongside of you; nothing is ever done in a man’s absence; every body runs counter, because they can.  If ever I do return to England, (which I sha’n’t, though,) I will write a poem to which ‘English Bards,’ &c. shall be new milk, in comparison.  Your present literary world of mountebanks stands in need of such an Avatar.  But I am not yet quite bilious enough:  a season or two more, and a provocation or two, will wind me up to the point, and then have at the whole set!

“I have no patience with the sort of trash you send me out by way of books; except Scott’s novels, and three or four other things, I never saw such work, or works.  Campbell is lecturing—­Moore idling—­S * * twaddling—­W * * drivelling—­C * * muddling—­* * piddling—­B * * quibbling, squabbling, and snivelling. * * will do, if he don’t cant too much, nor imitate Southey; the fellow has poesy in him; but he is envious, and unhappy, as all the envious are.  Still he is among the best of the day.  B * * C * * will do better by-and-by, I dare say, if he don’t get spoiled by green tea, and the praises of Pentonville and Paradise Row.  The pity of these men is, that they never lived in high life, nor in solitude:  there is no medium for the knowledge of the busy or the still world.  If admitted into high life for a season, it is merely as spectators—­they form no part of the mechanism thereof.  Now Moore and I, the one by circumstances, and the other by birth, happened to be free of the corporation, and to have entered into its pulses and passions, quarum partes fuimus.  Both of us have learnt by this much which nothing else could have taught us.

     “Yours.

“P.S.  I saw one of your brethren, another of the allied sovereigns of Grub Street, the other day, Mawman the Great, by whom I sent due homage to your imperial self.  To-morrow’s post may perhaps bring a letter from you, but you are the most ungrateful and ungracious of correspondents.  But there is some excuse for you, with your perpetual levee of politicians, parsons, scribblers, and loungers.  Some day I will give you a poetical catalogue of them.”

* * * * *

LETTER 452.  TO MR. MOORE.

     “Ravenna, September 17. 1821.

     “The enclosed lines[52], as you will directly perceive, are written
     by the Rev. W.L.B * *.  Of course it is for him to deny them if
     they are not.

     “Believe me yours ever and most affectionately,

     “B.