"Venice, January 25. 1819.
"You will do me the favour to print privately (for private
distribution) fifty copies of 'Don Juan.' The list of the men to
whom I wish it to be presented, I will send hereafter. The other
two poems had best be added to the collective edition: I do not
approve of _their_ being published separately. Print Don Juan
_entire_, omitting, of course, the lines on Castlereagh, as I am
not on the spot to meet him. I have a second Canto ready, which
will be sent by and by. By this post, I have written to Mr.
Hobhouse, addressed to your care.
"Yours, &c.
"P.S. I have acquiesced in the request and representation; and
having done so, it is idle to detail my arguments in favour of my
own self-love and 'Poeshie;' but I _protest_. If the poem has
poetry, it would stand; if not, fall; the rest is 'leather and
prunello,' and has never yet affected any human production 'pro or
con.' Dulness is the only annihilator in such cases. As to the cant
of the day, I despise it, as I have ever done all its other finical
fashions, which become you as paint became the ancient Britons. If
you admit this prudery, you must omit half Ariosto, La Fontaine,
Shakspeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, Massinger, Ford, all the Charles
Second writers; in short, _something_ of most who have written
before Pope and are worth reading, and much of Pope himself. _Read
him_--most of you _don't_--but _do_--and I will forgive you; though
the inevitable consequence would be that you would burn all I have
ever written, and all your other wretched Claudians of the day
(except Scott and Crabbe) into the bargain. I wrong Claudian, who
_was_ a _poet_, by naming him with such fellows; but he was the
'ultimus Romanorum,' the tail of the comet, and these persons are
the tail of an old gown cut into a waistcoat for Jackey; but being
both _tails_, I have compared the one with the other, though very
unlike, like all similes. I write in a passion and a sirocco, and I
was up till six this morning at the Carnival: but I _protest_, as I
did in my former letter."
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