eak of this production moderately
(not modestly), it is the most miserable of all miserable versions of
the class. It was completed (in the first place) in thirteen days--the
iambics thrown into blank verse, the lyrics into rhymed octosyllabics
and the like,--and the whole together as cold as Caucasus, and as flat
as the nearest plain. To account for this, the haste may be something;
but if my mind had been properly awakened at the time, I might have
made still more haste and done it better. Well,--the comfort is, that
the little book was unadvertised and unknown, and that most of the
copies (through my entreaty of my father) are shut up in the wardrobe
of his bedroom. If ever I get well I shall show my joy by making a
bonfire of them. In the meantime, the recollection of this sin of mine
has been my nightmare and daymare too, and the sin has been the 'Blot
on my escutcheon.' I could look in nobody's face, with a 'Thou canst
not say I did it'--I know, I did it. And so I resolved to wash away
the transgression, and translate the tragedy over again. It was an
honest straightforward proof of repentance--was it not? and I have
completed it, except the transcription and last polishing. If
AEschylus stands at the foot of my bed now, I shall have a little
breath to front him. I have done my duty by him, not indeed according
to his claims, but in proportion to my faculty. Whether I shall ever
publish or not (remember) remains to be considered--that is a
different side of the subject. If I do, it _may_ be in a
magazine--or--but this is another ground. And then, I have in my head
to associate with the version, a monodrama of my own,--not a long
poem, but a monologue of AEschylus as he sate a blind exile on the
flats of Sicily and recounted the past to his own soul, just before
the eagle cracked his great massy skull with a stone.

But my chief _intention_ just now is the writing of a sort of
novel-poem--a poem as completely modern as 'Geraldine's Courtship,'
running into the midst of our conventions, and rushing into
drawing-rooms and the like, 'where angels fear to tread'; and so,
meeting face to face and without mask the Humanity of the age, and
speaking the truth as I conceive of it out plainly. That is my
intention. It is not mature enough yet to be called a plan. I am
waiting for a story, and I won't take one, because I want to make one,
and I like to make my own stories, because then I can take liberties
with them in the t