“Do you want the last page immediately!  I have doubts about the lines being worth printing; at any rate, I must see them again and alter some passages, before they go forth in any shape into the ocean of circulation;—­a very conceited phrase, by the by:  well then—­channel of publication will do.

“‘I am not i’ the vein,’ or I could knock off a stanza or three for the Ode, that might answer the purpose better.[26] At all events, I must see the lines again first, as there be two I have altered in my mind’s manuscript already.  Has any one seen or judged of them? that is the criterion by which I will abide—­only give me a fair report, and ‘nothing extenuate,’ as I will in that case do something else.

     “Ever,” &c.

     “I want Moreri, and an Athenaeus.”

[Footnote 26:  Mr. Murray had requested of him to make some additions to the Ode, so as to save the stamp duty imposed upon publications not exceeding a single sheet; and he afterwards added, in successive editions, five or six stanzas, the original number being but eleven.  There were also three more stanzas, which he never printed, but which, for the just tribute they contain to Washington, are worthy of being preserved:—­

    “There was a day—­there was an hour,
      While earth was Gaul’s—­Gaul thine—­
    When that immeasurable power
      Unsated to resign
    Had been an act of purer fame
    Than gathers round Marengo’s name
      And gilded thy decline,
    Through the long twilight of all time,
    Despite some passing clouds of crime.

    “But thou, forsooth, must be a king,
      And don the purple vest,
    As if that foolish robe could wring
      Remembrance from thy breast. 
    Where is that faded garment? where
    The gewgaws thou wert fond to wear,
      The star—­the string—­the crest? 
    Vain froward child of empire! say,
    Are all thy playthings snatch’d away?

    “Where may the wearied eye repose
      When gazing on the great;
    Where neither guilty glory glows,
      Nor despicable state? 
    Yes—­one—­the first—­the last—­the best—­
    The Cincinnatus of the West,
      Whom envy dared not hate,
    Bequeathed the name of Washington,
    To make man blush there was but One!”
]

* * * * *

LETTER 178.  TO MR. MURRAY.

     “April 26. 1814.

“I have been thinking that it might be as well to publish no more of the Ode separately, but incorporate it with any of the other things, and include the smaller poem too (in that case)—­which I must previously correct, nevertheless.  I can’t, for the head of me, add a line worth scribbling; my ‘vein’ is quite gone, and my present occupations are