"Venice, August 12. 1817.
"I have been very sorry to hear of the death of Madame de Staël,
not only because she had been very kind to me at Copet, but because
now I can never requite her. In a general point of view, she will
leave a great gap in society and literature.
"With regard to death, I doubt that we have any right to pity the
dead for their own sakes.
"The copies of Manfred and Tasso are arrived, thanks to Mr.
Croker's cover. You have destroyed the whole effect and moral of
the poem by omitting the last line of Manfred's speaking; and why
this was done, I know not. Why you persist in saying nothing of the
thing itself, I am equally at a loss to conjecture. If it is for
fear of telling me something disagreeable, you are wrong; because
sooner or later I must know it, and I am not so new, nor so raw,
nor so inexperienced, as not to be able to bear, not the mere
paltry, petty disappointments of authorship, but things more
serious,--at least I hope so, and that what you may think
irritability is merely mechanical, and only acts like galvanism on
a dead body, or the muscular motion which survives sensation.
"If it is that you are out of humour, because I wrote to you a
sharp letter, recollect that it was partly from a misconception of
your letter, and partly because you did a thing you had no right to
do without consulting me.
"I have, however, heard good of Manfred from two other quarters,
and from men who would not be scrupulous in saying what they
thought, or what was said; and so 'good morrow to you, good Master
Lieutenant.'
"I wrote to you twice about the fourth Canto, which you will answer
at your pleasure. Mr. Hobhouse and I have come up for a day to the
city; Mr. Lewis is gone to England; and I am
"Yours."
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