tter.

"All convulsions end with me in rhyme; and to solace my midnights,
I have scribbled another Turkish story[86]--not a Fragment--which
you will receive soon after this. It does not trench upon your
kingdom in the least, and if it did, you would soon reduce me to my
proper boundaries. You will think, and justly, that I run some risk
of losing the little I have gained in fame, by this further
experiment on public patience; but I have really ceased to care on
that head. I have written this, and published it, for the sake of
the _employment_,--to wring my thoughts from reality, and take
refuge in 'imaginings,' however 'horrible;' and, as to success!
those who succeed will console me for a failure--excepting yourself
and one or two more, whom luckily I love too well to wish one leaf
of their laurels a tint yellower. This is the work of a week, and
will be the reading of an hour to you, or even less,--and so, let
it go * * * *.

"P.S. Ward and I _talk_ of going to Holland. I want to see how a
Dutch canal looks after the Bosphorus. Pray respond."

[Footnote 86: The Bride of Abydos.]

* * * * *

LETTER 142. TO MR. MOORE.

"December 8. 1813.

"Your letter, like all the best, and even kindest things in this
world, is both painful and pleasing. But, first, to what sits
nearest. Do you know I was actually about to dedicate to you,--not
in a formal inscription, as to one's _elders_,--but through a
short prefatory letter, in which I boasted myself your intimate,
and held forth the prospect of _your_ poem; when, lo! the
recollection of your strict injunctions of secrecy as to the said
poem, more than _once_ repeated by word and letter, flashed upon
me, and marred my intents. I could have no motive for repressing my
own desire of alluding to you (and not a day passes that I do not
think and talk of you), but an idea that you might, yourself,
dislike it. You cannot doubt my sincere admiration, waving personal
friendship for the present, which, by the by, is not less sincere
and deep rooted. I have you by rote and by heart; of which 'ecce
signum!' When I was at * *, on my first visit, I have a habit, in
passing my time a good deal alone, of--I won't call it singing, for
that I never attempt except to myself--but of utterin