to beat Lucien. At least tell me how far you have proceeded. Do you
think me less interested about your works, or less sincere than our
friend Ruggiero? I am not--and never was. In that thing of mine,
the 'English Bards,' at the time when I was angry with all the
world, I never 'disparaged your parts,' although I did not know you
personally;--and have always regretted that you don't give us an
_entire_ work, and not sprinkle yourself in detached
pieces--beautiful, I allow, and quite _alone_ in our language[81],
but still giving us a right to expect a _Shah Nameh_ (is that the
name?) as well as gazels. Stick to the East;--the oracle, Staël,
told me it was the only poetical policy. The North, South, and
West, have all been exhausted; but from the East, we have nothing
but S * *'s unsaleables,--and these he has contrived to spoil, by
adopting only their most outrageous fictions. His personages don't
interest us, and yours will. You will have no competitor; and, if
you had, you ought to be glad of it. The little I have done in that
way is merely a 'voice in the wilderness' for you; and if it has
had any success, that also will prove that the public are
orientalising, and pave the path for you.

"I have been thinking of a story, grafted on the amours of a Peri
and a mortal--something like, only more _philanthropical_ than,
Cazotte's Diable Amoureux. It would require a good deal of poesy,
and tenderness is not my forte. For that, and other reasons, I have
given up the idea, and merely suggest it to you, because, in
intervals of your greater work, I think it a subject you might make
much of.[82] If you want any more books, there is 'Castellan's
Moeurs des Ottomans,' the best compendium of the kind I ever met
with, in six small tomes. I am really taking a liberty by talking
in this style to my 'elders and my betters;'--pardon it, and don't