such a state in the
country, reading the county newspaper, &c., 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?'[79]--Do you think 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.[80] I am glad to hear you talk of
Richardson, 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[81],
but still giving us a right to expect a _Shah Nameh_ (is that the
name?) as well as gazels. 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 S * *'s unsaleables,--and these he has contrived to spoil, by
adopting only their most outrageous fictions. His personages don't
interest us, and yours will. You will have no competitor; and, if
you had, you ought to be glad of it. The little I have done in that
way is merely a 'voice in the wilderness' for you; and if it has
had any success, that also will prove that the public are
orientalising, and pave the path for you.

"I have been thinking of a story, grafted on the amours of a Peri
and a mortal--something like, only more _philanthropical_ than,
Cazotte's Diable Amoureux. It would require a good deal of poesy,
and tenderness is not my forte. For that, and other reasons, I have
given up the idea, and merely suggest it to you, because, in
intervals of your greater work, I think it a subject you might make
much of.[82] If you want any more books, there is 'Castellan's
Moeurs des Ottomans,' the best compendium of the kind I ever met
with