“The Noel affairs, I hope, will not take me to England.  I have no desire to revisit that country, unless it be to keep you out of a prison (if this can be effected by my taking your place), or perhaps to get myself into one, by exacting satisfaction from one or two persons who take advantage of my absence to abuse me.  Further than this, I have no business nor connection with England, nor desire to have, out of my own family and friends, to whom I wish all prosperity.  Indeed, I have lived upon the whole so little in England (about five years since I was one-and-twenty), that my habits are too continental, and your climate would please me as little as the society.

     “I saw the Chancellor’s Report in a French paper.  Pray, why don’t
     they prosecute the translation of Lucretius? or the original with
     its

        “‘Primus in orbe Deos fecit Timor,’

     or

        “‘Tantum Religio potuit suadere malorum?’

     “You must really get something done for Mr. * ’s Commentary:  what
     can I say to him?

     “Yours,” &c.

* * * * *

LETTER 487.  TO MR. MURRAY.

     “Pisa, April 13. 1822.

“Mr. Kinnaird writes that there has been an ‘excellent Defence’ of ‘Cain,’ against ‘Oxoniensis;’ you have sent me nothing but a not very excellent of-fence of the same poem.  If there be such a ‘Defender of the Faith,’ you may send me his thirty-nine articles, as a counterbalance to some of your late communications.

“Are you to publish, or not, what Moore and Mr. Kinnaird have in hand, and the ‘Vision of Judgment?’ If you publish the latter in a very cheap edition, so as to baffle the pirates by a low price, you will find that it will do.  The ‘Mystery’ I look upon as good, and ‘Werner’ too, and I expect that you will publish them speedily.  You need not put your name to Quevedo, but publish it as a foreign edition, and let it make its way.  Douglas Kinnaird has it still, with the preface, I believe.

     “I refer you to him for documents on the late row here.  I sent them
     a week ago.

     “Yours,” &c.

* * * * *

LETTER 488.  TO MR. MURRAY.

     “Pisa, April 18. 1822.

“I have received the Defence of ‘Cain.’  Who is my Warburton?—­for he has done for me what the bishop did for the poet against Crousaz.  His reply seems to me conclusive; and if you understood your own interest, you would print it together with the poem.

“It is very odd that I do not hear from you.  I have forwarded to Mr. Douglas Kinnaird the documents on a squabble here, which occurred about a month ago.  The affair is still going on; but they make nothing of it hitherto.  I think, what with home and abroad, there has been hot water enough for one while.  Mr. Dawkins, the English minister, has behaved in the handsomest and most gentlemanly manner throughout the whole business.

     “Yours ever, &c.