I don't think very much about the matter.

"All convulsions end with me in rhyme; and to solace my midnights,
I have scribbled another Turkish story[86]--not a Fragment--which
you will receive soon after this. It does not trench upon your
kingdom in the least, and if it did, you would soon reduce me to my
proper boundaries. You will think, and justly, that I run some risk
of losing the little I have gained in fame, by this further
experiment on public patience; but I have really ceased to care on
that head. I have written this, and published it, for the sake of
the _employment_,--to wring my thoughts from reality, and take
refuge in 'imaginings,' however 'horrible;' and, as to success!
those who succeed will console me for a failure--excepting yourself
and one or two more, whom luckily I love too well to wish one leaf
of their laurels a tint yellower. This is the work of a week, and
will be the reading of an hour to you, or even less,--and so, let
it go * * * *.

"P.S. Ward and I _talk_ of going to Holland. I want to see how a
Dutch canal looks after the Bosphorus. Pray respond."

[Footnote 86: The Bride of Abydos.]

* * * * *

LETTER 142. TO MR. MOORE.

"December 8. 1813.

"Your letter, like all the best, and even kindest things in this