us here, and sets sail
from London in a fortnight. I have written by to-day's post with
intelligence of it to Mrs. Fletcher, enclosing her the letter, and
giving her the option of going on board in London, or here. I need not
say we shall attend to her comforts in every respect. The same post
also carries a letter to Mr. Gisborne, stating your wishes, and
wonders respecting _Adonais_. If it is not published before I leave
England, I will publish my criticism upon the Pisa copy,--a criticism
which I think you will like. I take the opportunity of showing the
public why Gifford's review spoke so bitterly of _Prometheus_, and
why it pretends that the most metaphysical passage of your most
metaphysical poem is a specimen of the clearness of your general
style. The wretched priest-like cunning and undertoned malignity of
that review of _Prometheus_ is indeed a homage paid to qualities which
can so provoke it. The _Quarterly_ pretends now, that it never meddles
with you personally,--of course it never did! For this, _Blackwood_
cries out upon it, contrasting its behaviour in those delicate matters
with its own! This is better and better, and the public seem to think
so; for these things, depend upon it, are getting better understood
every day, and shall be better and better understood every day to
come. One circumstance which helps to reconcile me to having been
detained on this coast, is the opportunity it has given me to make
your works speak for themselves wherever I could; and you are in high
lustre, I assure you, with the most intelligent circles in Plymouth,
[Greek: astaer epsos]. I have, indeed, been astonished to find
how well prepared people of intelligence are to fall in with your
aspirations, and despise the mistakes and rascally instincts of your
calumniators. This place, for instance, abounds in _schoolmasters_,
who appear, to a man, to be liberal to an extreme and esoterical
degree. And such, there is reason to believe, is the case over the
greater part of the kingdom, greatly, no doubt, owing to political
causes. Think of the consequences of this with the rising generation.
I delight in _Adonais_. It is the most Delphic poetry I have seen
a long while; full of those embodyings of the most subtle and airy
imaginations,--those arrestings and explanations of the most shadowy
yearnings of our being--which are the most difficult of all things
to put into words, and the most delightful when put. I do not know
whether