"Venice, February 15. 1817.
"I have received your two letters, but not the parcel you mention.
As the Waterloo spoils are arrived, I will make you a present of
them, if you choose to accept of them; pray do.
"I do not exactly understand from your letter what has been
omitted, or what not, in the publication; but I shall see probably
some day or other. I could not attribute any but a _good_ motive to
Mr. Gifford or yourself in such omission; but as our politics are
so very opposite, we should probably differ as to the passages.
However, if it is only a _note_ or notes, or a line or so, it
cannot signify. You say 'a _poem_;' _what_ poem? You can tell me in
your next.
"Of Mr. Hobhouse's quarrel with the Quarterly Review, I know very
little except * * 's article itself, which was certainly harsh
enough; but I quite agree that it would have been better not to
answer--particularly after Mr. _W.W._, who never more will trouble
you, trouble you. I have been uneasy, because Mr. H. told me that
his letter or preface was to be addressed to me. Now, he and I are
friends of many years; I have many obligations to him, and he none
to me, which have not been cancelled and more than repaid; but Mr.
Gifford and I are friends also, and he has moreover been literally
so, through thick and thin, in despite of difference of years,
morals, habits, and even _politics_; and therefore I feel in a very
awkward situation between the two, Mr. Gifford and my friend
Hobhouse, and can only wish that they had no difference, or that
such as they have were accommodated. The Answer I have not seen,
for--it is odd enough for people so intimate--but Mr. Hobhouse and
I are very sparing of our literary confidences. For example, the
other day he wished to have a MS. of the third Canto to read over
to his brother, &c., which was refused;--and I have never seen his
journals, nor he mine--(I only kept the short one of the mountains
for my sister)--nor do I think that hardly ever he or I saw any of
the other's productions previous to their publication.
"The article in the Edinburgh Review on Coleridge I have not seen;
but whether I am attacked in it or not, or in any other of the same
journal, I shall never think ill of Mr. Jeffrey on that account,
nor forget that his conduct towards me has been certainly most
handsome during the last four or more years.
"I forgot to mention to you that a kind of Poem in dialogue[128]
(in blank verse) or Drama, from which 'The Incantation' is an
extract, begun last summer in Switzerland, is finished; it is in
three acts; but of a very wild, metaphysical, and inexplicable
kind. Almost all the persons--but two or three--are Spirits of the
earth and air, or the waters; the scene is in the Alps; the hero a
kind of magician, who is tormented by a species of remorse, the
cause of which is left half unexplained. He wanders about invoking
these Spirits, which appear to him, and are of no use; he at last
goes to the very abode of the Evil Principle, _in propriâ personâ_,
to evocate a ghost, which appears, and gives him an ambiguous and
disagreeable answer; and in the third act he is found by his
attendants dying in a tower where he had studied his art. You may
perceive by this outline that I have no great opinion of this piece
of fantasy; but I have at least rendered it _quite impossible_ for
the stage, for which my intercourse with Drury Lane has given me
the greatest contempt.
"I have not even copied it off, and feel too lazy at present to
attempt the whole; but when I have, I will send it you, and you may
either throw it into the fire or not."
[Footnote 128: Manfred.]
* * * * *