Chapter 59

"Ravenna, September 19, 1821.

"I am in all the sweat, dust, and blasphemy of an universal packing of all my things, furniture, &c. for Pisa, whither I go for the winter. The cause has been the exile of all my fellow Carbonics, and, amongst them, of the whole family of Madame G.; who, you know, was divorced from her husband last week, 'on account of P.P. clerk of this parish,' and who is obliged to join her father and relatives, now in exile there, to avoid being shut up in a monastery, because the Pope's decree of separation required her to reside in _casa paterna_, or else, for decorum's sake, in a convent. As I could not say with Hamlet, 'Get thee to a nunnery,' I am preparing to follow them.

"It is awful work, this love, and prevents all a man's projects of good or glory. I wanted to go to Greece lately (as every thing seems up here) with her brother, who is a very fine, brave fellow (I have seen him put to the proof), and wild about liberty. But the tears of a woman who has left her husband for a man, and the weakness of one's own heart, are paramount to these projects, and I can hardly indulge them.

"We were divided in choice between Switzerland and Tuscany, and I gave my vote for Pisa, as nearer the Mediterranean, which I love for the sake of the shores which it washes, and for my young recollections of 1809. Switzerland is a curst selfish, swinish country of brutes, placed in the most romantic region of the world. I never could bear the inhabitants, and still less their English visiters; for which reason, after writing for some information about houses, upon hearing that there was a colony of English all over the cantons of Geneva, &c. I immediately gave up the thought, and persuaded the Gambas to do the same.

"By the last post I sent you 'The Irish Avatar,'--what think you? The last line--'a name never spoke but with curses or jeers'--must run either 'a name only uttered with curses or jeers,' or, 'a wretch never named but with curses or jeers.' Be_case_ as _how_, 'spoke' is not grammar, except in the House of Commons; and I doubt whether we can say 'a name _spoken_,' for _mentioned_. I have some doubts, too, about 'repay,'--'and for murder repay with a shout and a smile.' Should it not be, 'and for murder repay him with shouts and a smile, 'or '_reward_ him with shouts and a smile?'

"So, pray put your poetical pen through the MS. and take the least bad of the emendations. Also, if there be any further breaking of Priscian's head, will you apply a plaster? I wrote in the greatest hurry and fury, and sent it to you the day after; so, doubtless, there will be some awful constructions, and a rather lawless conscription of rhythmus.

"With respect to what Anna Seward calls 'the liberty of transcript,'--when complaining of Miss Matilda Muggleton, the accomplished daughter of a choral vicar of Worcester Cathedral, who had abused the said 'liberty of transcript,' by inserting in the Malvern Mercury Miss Seward's 'Elegy on the South Pole,' as her _own_ production, with her _own_ signature, two years after having taken a copy, by permission of the authoress--with regard, I say, to the 'liberty of transcript,' I by no means oppose an occasional copy to the benevolent few, provided it does not degenerate into such licentiousness of Verb and Noun as may tend to 'disparage my parts of speech' by the carelessness of the transcribblers.

"I do not think that there is much danger of the 'King's Press being abused' upon the occasion, if the publishers of journals have any regard for their remaining liberty of person. It is as pretty a piece of invective as ever put publisher in the way to 'Botany.' Therefore, if _they_ meddle with it, it is at _their_ peril. As for myself, I will answer any jontleman--though I by no means recognise a 'right of search' into an unpublished production and unavowed poem. The same applies to things published _sans_ consent. I hope you like, at least, the concluding lines of the _Pome_?

"What are you doing, and where are you? in England? Nail Murray--nail him to his own counter, till he shells out the thirteens. Since I wrote to you, I have sent him another tragedy--'Cain' by name--making three in MS. now in his hands, or in the printer's. It is in the Manfred, metaphysical style, and full of some Titanic declamation;--Lucifer being one of the dram. pers. who takes Cain a voyage among the stars, and afterwards to 'Hades,' where he shows him the phantoms of a former world, and its inhabitants. I have gone upon the notion of Cuvier, that the world has been destroyed three or four times, and was inhabited by mammoths, behemoths, and what not; but _not_ by man till the Mosaic period, as, indeed, is proved by the strata of bones found;--those of all unknown animals, and known, being dug out, but none of mankind. I have, therefore, supposed Cain to be shown, in the _rational_ Preadamites, beings endowed with a higher intelligence than man, but totally unlike him in form, and with much greater strength of mind and person. You may suppose the small talk which takes place between him and Lucifer upon these matters is not quite canonical.

"The consequence is, that Cain comes back and kills Abel in a fit of dissatisfaction, partly with the politics of Paradise, which had driven them all out of it, and partly because (as it is written in Genesis) Abel's sacrifice was the more acceptable to the Deity. I trust that the Rhapsody has arrived--it is in three acts, and entitled 'A Mystery,' according to the former Christian custom, and in honour of what it probably will remain to the reader.

"Yours," &c.

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