Veil.' He seems not so much at home in his
versification of the 'Silver Veil,' and a little embarrassed with
his horrors; but the conception of the character of the impostor
is fine, and the plan of great scope for his genius,--and I doubt
not that, as a whole, it will be very Arabesque and beautiful.

"Your late epistle is not the most abundant in information, and has
not yet been succeeded by any other; so that I know nothing of your
own concerns, or of any concerns, and as I never hear from any body
but yourself who does not tell me something as disagreeable as
possible, I should not be sorry to hear from you: and as it is not
very probable,--if I can, by any device or possible arrangement
with regard to my personal affairs, so arrange it,--that I shall
return soon, or reside ever in England, all that you tell me will
be all I shall know or enquire after, as to our beloved realm of
Grub Street, and the black brethren and blue sisterhood of that
extensive suburb of Babylon. Have you had no new babe of literature
sprung up to replace the dead, the distant, the tired, and the
_re_tired? no prose, no verse, no _nothing_?"

[Footnote 6: A tragedy, by the Rev. Mr. Maturin.]

* * * * *

LETTER 291. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Venice, July 20. 1817.

"I write to give you notice that I have completed the _fourth_ and
_ultimate_ Canto of Childe Harold. It consists of 126 stanzas, and
is consequently the longest of the four. It is yet to be copied and
polished; and the notes are to come, of which it will require more
than the _third_ Canto, as it necessarily treats more of works of
art than of nature. It shall be sent towards autumn;--and now for
our barter. What do you bid? eh? you shall have samples, an' it so
please you: but I wish to know what I am to expect (as the saying
is) in these hard times, when poetry does not let for half its
value. If you are disposed to do what Mrs. Winifred Jenkins calls
'the handsome thing,' I may perhaps throw you some odd matters to
the lot,--translations, or slight originals; there is no saying
what may be on the anvil between this and the booking season.
Recollect that it is the _last_ Canto, and completes the work;
whether as good as the others, I cannot judge, in course--least of
all as yet,--bu