"The incongruity of, and objections to, the story of 'Ada Reis' can only
be got over by power of writing, beauty of sentiment, striking and
effective situation, etc. If Mr. Gifford thinks there is in the first
two volumes anything of excellence sufficient to overbalance their
manifest faults, I still hope that he will press upon Lady Caroline the
absolute necessity of carefully reconsidering and revising the third
volume, and particularly the conclusion of the novel.

"Mr. Gifford, I dare say, will agree with me that since the time of
Lucian all the representations of the infernal regions, which have been
attempted by satirical writers, such as 'Fielding's Journey from this
World to the Next,' have been feeble and flat. The sketch in "Ada Reis"
is commonplace in its observations and altogether insufficient, and it
would not do now to come with a decisive failure in an attempt of
considerable boldness. I think, if it were thought that anything could
be done with the novel, and that the faults of its design and structure
can be got over, that I could put her in the way of writing up this part
a little, and giving it something of strength, spirit, and novelty, and
of making it at once more moral and more interesting. I wish you would
communicate these my hasty suggestions to Mr. Gifford, and he will see
the propriety of pressing Lady Caroline to take a little more time to
this part of the novel. She will be guided by his authority, and her
fault at present is to be too hasty and too impatient of the trouble of
correcting and recasting what is faulty."

"Ada Reis" was published in March 1823.

Another of England's Prime Ministers, Lord John Russell, had in
contemplation a History of Europe, and consulted Mr. Murray on the
subject. A first volume, entitled "The Affairs of Europe," was published
without the author's name on the title-page, and a few years later
another volume was published, but it remained an unfinished work. Lord
John was an ambitious and restless author; without steady perseverance
in any branch of literature; he went from poems to tragedies, from
tragedies to memoirs, then to history, tales, translations of part of
the "Odyssey," essays (by the Gentleman who left his Lodgings), and then
to memoirs and histories again. Mr. Croker said of his "Don Carlos": "It
is not easy to find any poetry, or even oratory, of the present day
delivered with such cold and heavy diction, such distorted tropes and
disjoi