“It will be best not to put my name to our Ode; but you may say as openly as you like that it is mine, and I can inscribe it to Mr. Hobhouse, from the author, which will mark it sufficiently.  After the resolution of not publishing, though it is a thing of little length and less consequence, it will be better altogether that it is anonymous; but we will incorporate it in the first tome of ours that you find time or the wish to publish.  Yours alway, B.

     “P.S.  I hope you got a note of alterations, sent this matin?

     “P.S.  Oh my books! my books! will you never find my books?

     “Alter ‘potent spell’ to ‘quickening spell:’  the first (as
     Polonius says) ‘is a vile phrase,’ and means nothing, besides being
     common-place and Rosa-Matilda-ish.”

* * * * *

TO MR. MURRAY.

     “April 12. 1814.

“I send you a few notes and trifling alterations, and an additional motto from Gibbon, which you will find singularly appropriate.  A ‘Good-natured Friend’ tells me there is a most scurrilous attack on us in the Anti-jacobin Review, which you have not sent.  Send it, as I am in that state of languor which will derive benefit from getting into a passion.  Ever,” &c.

* * * * *

LETTER 175.  TO MR. MOORE.

     “Albany, April 20. 1814.

“I am very glad to hear that you are to be transient from Mayfield so very soon, and was taken in by the first part of your letter.[24] Indeed, for aught I know, you may be treating me, as Slipslop says, with ‘ironing’ even now.  I shall say nothing of the shock, which had nothing of humeur in it; as I am apt to take even a critic, and still more a friend, at his word, and never to doubt that I have been writing cursed nonsense, if they say so.  There was a mental reservation in my pact with the public[25], in behalf of anonymes; and, even had there not, the provocation was such as to make it physically impossible to pass over this damnable epoch of triumphant tameness.  ’Tis a cursed business; and, after all, I shall think higher of rhyme and reason, and very humbly of your heroic people, till—­Elba becomes a volcano, and sends him out again.  I can’t think it all over yet.

“My departure for the Continent depends, in some measure, on the incontinent.  I have two country invitations at home, and don’t know what to say or do.  In the mean time, I have bought a macaw and a parrot, and have got up my books; and I box and fence daily, and go out very little.

“At this present writing, Louis the Gouty is wheeling in triumph into Piccadilly, in all the pomp and rabblement of royalty.  I had an offer of seats to see them pass; but, as I