ence, 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,
which in him was sincere (indeed it killed him as you killed Joe
Blackett), certes there is poesy and genius. I don't say this on
account of my simile and rhymes; but surely he was beyond all the
Bloomfields and Blacketts, and their collateral cobblers, whom
Lofft and Pratt have or may kidnap from their calling into the
service of the trade. You must excuse my flippancy, for I am
writing I know not what, to escape from myself. Hobhouse is gone to
Ireland. Mr. Davies has been here on his way to Harrowgate.

"You did not know M.: he was a man of the most astonishing powers,
as he sufficiently proved at Cambridge, by carrying off more prizes
and fellow-ships, against the ablest candidates, than any other
graduate on record; but a most decided atheist, indeed noxiously
so, for he proclaimed his principles in all societies. I knew him
well, and feel a loss not easily to be supplied to myself--to
Hobhouse never. Let me hear from you, and believe me," &c.

* * * * *

The progress towards publication of his two forthcoming works will be
best traced in his letters to Mr. Murray and Mr. Dallas.

LETTER 62. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Newstead Abbey, Notts., August 23. 1811.

"Sir,

"A domestic calamity in the death of a near relation has hitherto
prevented my addre