connection which you strove to prevent, and which, had the H.'s prospered, would not in all probability have continued. As it is, I will not quit them in their adversity, though it should cost me character, fame, money, and the usual et cetera. My original motives I already explained (in the letter which you thought proper to show): they are the true ones, and I abide by them, as I tell you, and I told L H when he questioned me on the subject of that letter. He was violently hurt, and never will forgive me at bottom; but I can't help that. I never meant to make a parade of it; but if he chose to question me, I could only answer the plain truth and I confess I did not see anything in the letter to hurt him, unless I said he was a "bore," which I don't remember. Had their Journal 1 gone on well, and I could have aided to make it better for them, I should then have left them, after my safe pilotage off a lee shore, to make a prosperous voyage by themselves. As it is, I can't, and would not, if I could, leave them amidst the breakers. : As to any community of feeling, thought, or opinion, between L. H. and me, there is little or none: we meet rarely, hardly ever; but I think him a good-principled and able man, and must do as I would be done by. I do not know what world he has lived in, but I have lived in three or four; and none of them like his Keats and Kangaroo terra incognita. Alas! poor Shelley! how 1 The Liberal, fostered by Byron and Shelley, edited by Leigh Hunt, and published by John Hunt, was abandoned after the publication of four numbers. we would have laughed had he lived, and how we used to laugh now and then, at various things which are grave in the Suburbs! You are all mistaken about Shelley. You do not know how mild, how tolerant, how good he was in Society; and as perfect a Gentleman as ever crossed a drawing-room, when he liked, and where he liked. I have some thoughts of taking a run down to Naples (solus, or, at most, cum sola) this spring, and writing, when I have studied the Country, a fifth and sixth Canto of Ch Harolde: but this is merely an idea for the present, and I have other excursions and voyages in my mind. The busts are finished: are you worthy of them? Yours, etc., N. B. P. S.-Mrs. Shelley is residing with the Hunts at some distance from me: I see them very seldom, and generally on account of their business. Mrs. S., I believe, will go to England in the Spring.1 Count Gamba's family, the father and Son and daughter, are residing with me by Mr. Hill's 2 (the minister's) recommendation, as a safer asylum from the political persecutions than they could have in another residence; but they occupy one part of a large house, and I the other, and our establishments are quite separate. Since I have read the Q[uarterly], I shall erase two or three passages in the latter 6 or 7 Cantos, in which I had 1 Mrs. Shelley left Genoa for London, July 25, 1823. 2 William Noel-Hill (1773-1842), British Envoy to the Court of Sardinia (1807-24). lightly stroked over two or three of your authors; but I will not return evil for good. I liked what I read of the article much. Mr. J. Hunt is most likely the publisher of the new Cantos; with what prospects of success I know not, nor does it very much matter, as far as I am concerned; but I hope that it may be of use to him, for he is a stiff sturdy, conscientious man, and I like him he is such a one as Prynne or Pym might be. I bear you no ill will for declining the D. J's., but I cannot commend your conduct to the H.'s. : TO JOHN HUNT GENOA, Mch. 10th, 1823. Liberal, which is no more SIR,I do not know what Mr. Kinnaird intended by desiring the stoppage of The in his power than in mine. (who must have misunderstood me) should have done, was to state, what I mentioned to your brother, that, my assistance neither appearing essential to the publication nor advantageous to you or your brother, and at the same time exciting great disapprobation amongst my friends and connections in England, I craved permission to withdraw. What is stranger is that Mr. Kd. could not have received my letter to this effect till long after the date of your letter to your brother this day received. The Pulci is at your service for the third number, if you think it worth the insertion. With regard to other publications, I know not what to think or to say; for the work, even by your own account, is unsuccessful, and I am not at all sure that this failure does not spring much more from me than any other connection of the work. I am at this moment the most unpopular man in England, and if a whistle would call me to the pinnacle of English fame, I would not utter it. All this, however, is no reason why I should involve others in similar odium, and I have some reason to believe that The Liberal would have more success without my intervention. However this may be, I am willing to do anything I can for your brother or any member of his family, and have the honour to be Your very obed: humble st. N. B. P. S. — I have to add that no secession will take place on my part from The Liberal without serious consideration with your brother. The poems which I have desired to be published separately, required this for obvious reasons of the subject, etc., and also that their publication should be immediate. TO JOHN HUNT GENOA, Mch. 17th 1823. SIR, Your brother will have forwarded by the post a corrected proof of The Blues for some ensuing number of the Journal; but I should think that y Pulci translation had better be preferred for the immediate number, as The Blues will only tend further to indispose a portion of your readers. I still retain my opinion that my connection with the |