My dear Sir,—Your letter has given me very great pleasure, both from the welcome things it contains about my book and the proof it affords that you are not angry with me for my seeming neglect of the first with which you favoured me. But I was really so hard run as I approached the goal (having gone to press with about a fourth of the book unwritten) that I had not a minute to give for love or money, and was obliged to trust to the good nature of my friends for forgiveness of the numberless omissions I was guilty of.
It indeed delights me to find that you are pleased with the Poems. Praise from you is fame, and I feel it accordingly. You will be glad too, I am sure, to hear that I sell well, which is, after all, the great test of success. No matter how good the blood is, if it doesn’t circulate, it’s all over with the patient. But I am revising now for a third edition!
Our friend Byron’s
‘Manfred’ will
be out in a few days. It is wilder than his wildest. ‘Enter Seven
Spirits.’ A friend of mine supplied their names, ‘Rum, Brandy,
Hollands,’ &c., &c. Glorious things in it though, as there needs
must in LETTER FROM MOORE. 89
The sea of Hell, . . . which beats upon a living shore, Heap’d with the damn’d like pebbles. |
He does not seem now to think of coming home. Has he written to you?
We are romancing about a trip to Derbyshire in the autumn. If we realise it, how happy shall I be to bring Mrs. Moore and Mrs. Hodgson acquainted!
