and my legal advisers, are to meet to-morrow, the said purchaser having first taken special care to enquire ’whether I would meet him with temper?’—­Certainly.  The question is this—­I shall either have the estate back, which is as good as ruin, or I shall go on with him dawdling, which is rather worse.  I have brought my pigs to a Mussulman market.  If I had but a wife now, and children, of whose paternity I entertained doubts, I should be happy, or rather fortunate, as Candide or Scarmentado.  In the mean time, if you don’t come and see me, I shall think that Sam.’s bank is broke too; and that you, having assets there, are despairing of more than a piastre in the pound for your dividend.  Ever,” &c.

* * * * *

TO MR. MURRAY.

     “July 11. 1814.

“You shall have one of the pictures.  I wish you to send the proof of ‘Lara’ to Mr. Moore, 33.  Bury Street, to-night, as he leaves town to-morrow, and wishes to see it before he goes[40]; and I am also willing to have the benefit of his remarks.  Yours,” &c.

[Footnote 40:  In a note which I wrote to him, before starting, next day, I find the following:—­“I got Lara at three o’clock this morning—­read him before I slept, and was enraptured.  I take the proofs with me.”]

* * * * *

TO MR. MURRAY.

     “July 18. 1814.

“I think you will be satisfied even to repletion with our northern friends[41], and I won’t deprive you longer of what I think will give you pleasure; for my own part, my modesty, or my vanity, must be silent.

     “P.S.  If you could spare it for an hour in the evening, I wish you
     to send it up to Mrs. Leigh, your neighbour, at the London Hotel,
     Albemarle Street.”

[Footnote 41:  He here refers to an article in the number of the Edinburgh Review, just then published (No. 45.), on The Corsair and Bride of Abydos.]

* * * * *

LETTER 189.  TO MR. MURRAY.

     “July 23. 1814.

“I am sorry to say that the print[42] is by no means approved of by those who have seen it, who are pretty conversant with the original, as well as the picture from whence it is taken.  I rather suspect that it is from the copy and not the exhibited portrait, and in this dilemma would recommend a suspension, if not an abandonment, of the prefixion to the volumes which you purpose inflicting upon the public.

“With regard to Lara, don’t be in any hurry.  I have not yet made up my mind on the subject, nor know what to think or do till I hear from you; and Mr. Moore appeared to me in a similar state of indetermination.  I do not know that it may not be better to reserve it for the entire publication you proposed, and not adventure in hardy singleness, or even backed by the fairy Jacqueline.  I have been seized with all kinds of doubts, &c. &c. since I left London.

     “Pray let me hear from you, and believe me,” &c.