"Ravenna, April 26. 1821.
"I sent you by last _postis_ a large packet, which will _not_ do
for publication (I suspect), being, as the apprentices say, 'damned
low.' I put off also for a week or two sending the Italian scrawl
which will form a note to it. The reason is that, letters being
opened, I wish to 'bide a wee.'
"Well, have you published the Tragedy? and does the Letter take?
"Is it true, what Shelley writes me, that poor John Keats died at
Rome of the Quarterly Review? I am very sorry for it, though I
think he took the wrong line as a poet, and was spoilt by
Cockneyfying, and suburbing, and versifying Tooke's Pantheon and
Lempriere's Dictionary. I know, by experience, that a savage review
is hemlock to a sucking author; and the one on me (which produced
the English Bards, &c.) knocked me down--but I got up again.
Instead of bursting a blood-vessel, I drank three bottles of
claret, and began an answer, finding that there was nothing in the
article for which I could lawfully knock Jeffrey on the head, in an
honourable way. However, I would not be the person who wrote the
homicidal article for all the honour and glory in the world, though
I by no means approve of that school of scribbling which it treats
upon.
"You see the Italians have made a sad business of it,--all owing to
treachery and disunion amongst themselves. It has given me great
vexation. The execrations heaped upon the Neapolitans by the other
Italians are quite in unison with those of the rest of Europe.
"Yours, &c.
"P.S. Your latest packet of books is on its way here, but not
arrived. Kenilworth excellent. Thanks for the pocket-books, of
which I have made presents to those ladies who like cuts, and
landscapes, and all that. I have got an Italian book or two which I
should like to send you if I had an opportunity.
"I am not at present in the very highest health,--spring probably;
so I have lowered my diet and taken to Epsom salts.
"As you say my _prose_ is good, why don't you treat with _Moore_
for the reversion of the Memoirs?--_conditionally, recollect_; not
to be published before decease. _He_ has the permission to dispose
of them, and I advised him to do so."
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