After all, we must end in marriage; and I
can conceive nothing more delightful than such a state in the country,
reading the county newspaper, etc., and kissing one's wife's maid.
Seriously, I would incorporate with any woman of decent demeanour
to-morrow--that is, I would a month ago, but, at present,----
Why don't you "parody that Ode?"--Do you think [2] I should be _tetchy?_
or have you done it, and won't tell me?--You are quite right about
Giamschid, and I have reduced it to a dissyllable within this half hour
[3].
I am glad to hear you talk of Richardson [4], because it tells me what
you won't--that you are going to beat Lucien. At least tell me how far
you have proceeded. Do you think me less interested about your works, or
less sincere than our friend Ruggiero? I am not--and never was. In that
thing of mine, the _English Bards_, at the time when I was angry with
all the world, I never "disparaged your parts," although I did not know
you personally;--and have always regretted that you don't give us an
_entire_ work, and not sprinkle yourself in detached pieces--beautiful,
I allow, and quite _alone_ in our language, but still giving us a right
to expect a _Shah Nameh_ [5] (is that the name?) as well as gazelles.
Stick to the East;--the oracle, Stael, told me it was the only poetical
policy. The North, South, and West, have all been exhausted; but from
the East, we have nothing but Southey's unsaleables,--and these he has
contrived to spoil, by adopting only their most outrageous fictions.
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