“I have written to you lately, but not in answer to your last letter of about a fortnight ago. I wish to know (and request an answer to that point) what became of the stanzas to Wellington (intended to open a canto of Don Juan with), which I sent you several months ago. If they have fallen into Murray’s hands, he and the Tories will suppress them, as those lines rate that hero at his real value. Pray be explicit on this, as I have no other copy, having sent you the original; and if you have them, let me have that again, or a copy correct. * * * * * * *.
“I subscribed at Leghorn two hundred Tuscan crowns to your
Irishism committee: it is about a thousand francs, more or less. As
| 606 | NOTICES OF THE | A. D. 1822. |
“Leigh Hunt is here, after a voyage of eight months, during which he has, I presume, made the Periplus of Hanno the Carthaginian, and with much the same speed. He is setting up a Journal, to which I have promised to contribute; and in the first number the ‘Vision of Judgment, by Quevedo Redivivus,’ will probably appear, with other articles.
“Can you give us any thing? He seems sanguine about the matter, but (entre nous) I am not. I do not, however, like to put him out of spirits by saying so; for he is bilious and unwell. Do, pray, answer this letter immediately.
“Do send Hunt any thing, in prose or verse, of yours, to start him handsomely—any lyrical, irical, or what you please.
“Has not your Potatoe Committee been blundering? Your advertisement says, that Mr. L. Callaghan (a queer name for a banker) hath been disposing of money in Ireland ‘sans authority of the Committee.’ I suppose it will end in Callaghan’s calling out the Committee, the chairman of which carries pistols in his pocket, of course.
“When you can spare time from duetting, coquetting, and claretting with your Hibernians of both sexes, let me have a line from you. I doubt whether Paris is a good place for the composition of your new poesy.”
