such as they have were accommodated.  The Answer I have not seen, for—­it is odd enough for people so intimate—­but Mr. Hobhouse and I are very sparing of our literary confidences.  For example, the other day he wished to have a MS. of the third Canto to read over to his brother, &c., which was refused;—­and I have never seen his journals, nor he mine—­(I only kept the short one of the mountains for my sister)—­nor do I think that hardly ever he or I saw any of the other’s productions previous to their publication.

“The article in the Edinburgh Review on Coleridge I have not seen; but whether I am attacked in it or not, or in any other of the same journal, I shall never think ill of Mr. Jeffrey on that account, nor forget that his conduct towards me has been certainly most handsome during the last four or more years.

“I forgot to mention to you that a kind of Poem in dialogue[128] (in blank verse) or Drama, from which ‘The Incantation’ is an extract, begun last summer in Switzerland, is finished; it is in three acts; but of a very wild, metaphysical, and inexplicable kind.  Almost all the persons—­but two or three—­are Spirits of the earth and air, or the waters; the scene is in the Alps; the hero a kind of magician, who is tormented by a species of remorse, the cause of which is left half unexplained.  He wanders about invoking these Spirits, which appear to him, and are of no use; he at last goes to the very abode of the Evil Principle, in propria persona, to evocate a ghost, which appears, and gives him an ambiguous and disagreeable answer; and in the third act he is found by his attendants dying in a tower where he had studied his art.  You may perceive by this outline that I have no great opinion of this piece of fantasy; but I have at least rendered it quite impossible for the stage, for which my intercourse with Drury Lane has given me the greatest contempt.

     “I have not even copied it off, and feel too lazy at present to
     attempt the whole; but when I have, I will send it you, and you may
     either throw it into the fire or not.”

[Footnote 128:  Manfred.]

* * * * *

LETTER 262.  TO MR. MURRAY.

     “Venice, February 25. 1817.

     “I wrote to you the other day in answer to your letter; at present
     I would trouble you with a commission, if you would be kind enough
     to undertake it.

“You, perhaps, know Mr. Love, the jeweller, of Old Bond Street?  In 1813, when in the intention of returning to Turkey, I purchased of him, and paid (argent comptant) for about a dozen snuff-boxes, of more or less value, as presents for some of my Mussulman acquaintance.  These I have now with me.  The other day, having occasion to make an alteration in the lid of one (to place a portrait in it), it has turned out