"La Mira, near Venice, July 15. 1817.
"I have finished (that is, written--the file comes afterwards)
ninety and eight stanzas of the fourth Canto, which I mean to be
the concluding one. It will probably be about the same length as
the _third_, being already of the dimensions of the first or second
Cantos. I look upon parts of it as very good, that is, if the three
former are good, but this we shall see; and at any rate, good or
not, it is rather a different style from the last--less
metaphysical--which, at any rate, will be a variety. I sent you the
shaft of the column as a specimen the other day, _i.e._ the first
stanza. So you may be thinking of its arrival towards autumn, whose
winds will not be the only ones to be raised, _if so be as how
that_ it is ready by that time.
"I lent Lewis, who is at Venice, (in or on the Canalaccio, the
Grand Canal,) your extracts from Lalla Rookh and Manuel[6], and,
out of contradiction, it may be, he likes the last, and is not much
taken with the first, of these performances. Of Manuel, I think,
with the exception of a few capers, it is as heavy a nightmare as
was ever bestrode by indigestion.
"Of the extracts I can but judge as extracts, and I prefer the
'Peri' to the 'Silver Veil.' He seems not so much at home in his
versification of the 'Silver Veil,' and a little embarrassed with
his horrors; but the conception of the character of the impostor
is fine, and the plan of great scope for his genius,--and I doubt
not that, as a whole, it will be very Arabesque and beautiful.
"Your late epistle is not the most abundant in information, and has
not yet been succeeded by any other; so that I know nothing of your
own concerns, or of any concerns, and as I never hear from any body
but yourself who does not tell me something as disagreeable as
possible, I should not be sorry to hear from you: and as it is not
very probable,--if I can, by any device or possible arrangement
with regard to my personal affairs, so arrange it,--that I shall
return soon, or reside ever in England, all that you tell me will
be all I shall know or enquire after, as to our beloved realm of
Grub Street, and the black brethren and blue sisterhood of that
extensive suburb of Babylon. Have you had no new babe of literature
sprung up to replace the dead, the distant, the tired, and the
_re_tired? no prose, no verse, no _nothing_?"
[Footnote 6: A tragedy, by the Rev. Mr. Maturin.]
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