"Has Murray shown the work to any one? He may--but I will have no
traps for applause. Of course there are little things I would wish
to alter, and perhaps the two stanzas of a buffooning cast on
London's Sunday are as well left out. I much wish to avoid
identifying Childe Harold's character with mine, and that, in
sooth, is my second objection to my name appearing in the
title-page. When you have made arrangements as to time, size, type,
&c. favour me with a reply. I am giving you an universe of trouble,
which thanks cannot atone for. I made a kind of prose apology for
my scepticism at the head of the MS., which, on recollection, is so
much more like an attack than a defence, that, haply, it might
better be omitted:--perpend, pronounce. After all, I fear Murray
will be in a scrape with the orthodox; but I cannot help it, though
I wish him well through it. As for me, 'I have supped full of
criticism,' and I don't think that the 'most dismal treatise' will
stir and rouse my fell of hair' till 'Birnam wood do come to
Dunsinane.'

"I shall continue to write at intervals, and hope you will pay me
in kind. How does Pratt get on, or rather get off, Joe Blackett's
posthumous stock? You killed that poor man amongst you, in spite
of your Ionian friend and myself, who would have saved him from
Pratt, poetry, present poverty, and posthumous oblivion. Cruel
patronage! to ruin a man at his calling; but then he is a divine
subject for subscription and biography; and Pratt, who makes the
most of his dedications, has inscribed the volume to no less than
five families of distinction.

"I am sorry you don't like Harry White: with a great deal of cant,