“Be careful in the printing the stanzas beginning,

        “‘Though the day of my destiny,’ &c.

     which I think well of as a composition.

“‘The Antiquary’ is not the best of the three, but much above all the last twenty years, saving its elder brothers.  Holcroft’s Memoirs are valuable as showing strength of endurance in the man, which is worth more than all the talent in the world.

“And so you have been publishing ‘Margaret of Anjou’ and an Assyrian tale, and refusing W.W.’s Waterloo, and the ‘Hue and Cry.’  I know not which most to admire, your rejections or acceptances.  I believe that prose is, after all, the most reputable, for certes, if one could foresee—­but I won’t go on—­that is with this sentence; but poetry is, I fear, incurable.  God help me! if I proceed in this scribbling, I shall have frittered away my mind before I am thirty, but it is at times a real relief to me.  For the present—­good evening.”

* * * * *

LETTER 248.  TO MR. MURRAY.

     “Martigny, October 9. 1816.

     “Thus far on my way to Italy.  We have just passed the ‘Fisse-Vache’
     (one of the first torrents in Switzerland) in time to view the iris
     which the sun flings along it before noon.

“I have written to you twice lately.  Mr. Davies, I hear, is arrived.  He brings the original MS. which you wished to see.  Recollect that the printing is to be from that which Mr. Shelley brought; and recollect, also, that the concluding stanzas of Childe Harold (those to my daughter) which I had not made up my mind whether to publish or not when they were first written (as you will see marked on the margin of the first copy), I had (and have) fully determined to publish with the rest of the Canto, as in the copy which you received by Mr. Shelley, before I sent it to England.

“Our weather is very fine, which is more than the summer has been.—­At Milan I shall expect to hear from you.  Address either to Milan, poste restante, or by way of Geneva, to the care of Monsr.  Hentsch, Banquier.  I write these few lines in case my other letter should not reach you:  I trust one of them will.

“P.S.  My best respects and regards to Mr. Gifford.  Will you tell him it may perhaps be as well to put a short note to that part relating to Clarens, merely to say, that of course the description does not refer to that particular spot so much as to the command of scenery round it?  I do not know that this is necessary, and leave it to Mr. G.’s choice, as my editor,—­if he will allow me to call him so at this distance.”

* * * * *

LETTER 249.  TO MR. MURRAY.

     “Milan, October 15. 1816.