LORD  BYRON  and  his  TIMES
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Leigh Hunt to Vincent Novello, 24 July 1823
INTRODUCTION & INDEXES
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Contents
Preface
Chapter I.
Chapter II.
Chapter III.
Chapter IV.
Chapter V.
Chapter VI.
Chapter VII.
Chapter VIII.
Chapter IX
John Keats
Charles Lamb
Mary Lamb
Leigh Hunt
Douglas Jerrold
Charles Dickens
Index
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Albaro, July 24th, 1823.

My dear Novello,—Mary Wollstonecraft’s daughter brings you this letter. I know you would receive her with all your kindness and respect for that designation alone; but there are a hundred other reasons why you will do so, including her own extraordinary talents (which, at the same time, no woman can be less obtrusive with), the pleasure you will find in her society, and last not least, her love of music and regard for a certain professor of ditto—but I have spoken of this introduction already. I do not send you a long letter, for reasons given in the same place; but I trust it will be as good as a long letter in its returns to me, because it sets you the example of writing a short one when you cannot do more. How I envy Mary Shelley the power of taking you all by the hands and joining your kind-hearted circle! But I am there very often myself, I assure you; invisible, it is true, and behind the curtain: but it is possible, you know, to be behind a curtain and yet be very intensely present besides. But do
LEIGH HUNT AND HIS LETTERS.219
not let any one consider Mary S. in the light of a Blue, of which she has a great horror, but as an unaffected person, with her faults and good qualities like the rest of us; the former extremely corrected by all she has seen and endured, the latter inclining her, like a wise and kind being, to receive all the consolation which the good and the kind can give her. She will be grave with your gravities and laugh as much as you please with your merriments. For the rest, she is as quiet as a mouse, and will drink in as much Mozart and Paesiello as you choose to afford her, with an enjoyment that you might take for a Quaker’s, unless you could contrive some day to put her into a state of pain, when she will immediately grow as eloquent and say as many fine pleasurable things as she can discourse in a novel.

God bless you, dear Novello. From Florence I shall send you some music, especially what you wanted in Rome.

From this place I can send you nothing except a ring of my hair, which you must wear for the sake of your affectionate friend,

L. H.