"Palazzo Mocenigo, Canal Grande,

"Venice, June 1. 1818.

"Your letter is almost the only news, as yet, of Canto fourth, and
it has by no means settled its fate,--at least, does not tell me
how the 'Poeshie' has been received by the public. But I suspect,
no great things,--firstly, from Murray's 'horrid stillness;'
secondly, from what you say about the stanzas running into each
other[21], which I take _not_ to be _yours_, but a notion you have
been dinned with among the Blues. The fact is, that the terza rima
of the Italians, which always _runs_ on and in, may have led me
into experiments, and carelessness into conceit--or conceit into
carelessness--in either of which events failure will be probable,
and my fair woman, 'superne,' end in a fish; so that Childe Harold
will be like the mermaid, my family crest, with the fourth Canto
for a tail thereunto. I won't quarrel with the public, however, for
the 'Bulgars' are generally right; and if I miss now, I may hit
another time:--and so, the 'gods give us joy.'

"You like Beppo, that's right. I have not had the Fudges yet, but
live in hopes. I need not say that your successes are mine. By the
way, Lydia White is here, and has just borrowed my copy of 'Lalla
Rookh.'

"Hunt's letter is probably the exact piece of vulgar coxcombry you
might expect from his situation. He is a good man, with some
poetical elements in his chaos; but spoilt by the Christ-Church
Hospital and a Sunday newspaper,--to say nothing of the Surrey
gaol, which conceited him into a martyr. But he is a good man. When
I saw 'Rimini' in MS., I told him that I deemed it good poetry at
bottom, disfigured only by a strange style. His answer was, that
his style was a system, or _upon system_, or some such cant; and,
when a man talks of system, his case is hopeless: so I said no more
to him, and very little to any one else.

"He believes his trash of vulgar phrases tortured into compound
barbarisms to be _old_ English; and we may say of it as Aimwell
says of Captain Gibbet's regiment, when the Captain calls it an
'old corps,'--'the _oldest_ in Europe, if I may judge by your
uniform.' He sent out his 'Foliage' by Percy Shelley * * *, and, of
all the ineffable Centaurs that were ever begotten by Self-love
upon a Night-mare, I