do as you please, but you are about a hopeless experiment.
Eldon will decide against you, were it only that my name is in the
record. You will also recollect that if the publication is
pronounced against, on the grounds you mention, as _indecent and
blasphemous_, that _I_ lose all right in my daughter's
_guardianship_ and _education_, in short, all paternal authority,
and every thing concerning her, except * * * * * * * * It was so
decided in Shelley's case, because he had written Queen Mab, &c.
&c. However, you can ask the lawyers, and do as you like: I do not
inhibit you trying the question; I merely state one of the
consequences to me. With regard to the copyright, it is hard that
you should pay for a nonentity: I will therefore refund it, which I
can very well do, not having spent it, nor begun upon it; and so we
will be quits on that score. It lies at my banker's.

"Of the Chancellor's law I am no judge; but take up Tom Jones, and
read his Mrs. Waters and Molly Seagrim; or Prior's Hans Carvel and
Paulo Purganti: Smollett's Roderick Random, the chapter of Lord
Strutwell, and many others; Peregrine Pickle, the scene of the
Beggar Girl; Johnson's _London_, for coarse expressions; for
instance, the words '* *,' and '* *;' Anstey's Bath Guide, the
'Hearken, Lady Betty, hearken;'--take up, in short, Pope, Prior,
Congreve, Dryden, Fielding, Smollett, and let the counsel select
passages, and what becomes of _their_ copyright, if his Wat Tyler
decision is to pass into a precedent? I have nothing more to say:
you must judge for yourselves.

"I wrote to you some time ago. I have had a tertian ague; my
daughter Allegra has been ill also, and I have been almost obliged
to run away with a married woman; but with some difficulty, and
many internal struggles, I reconciled the lady with her lord, and
cured the fever of the child with bark, and my own with cold water.
I think of setting out for England by the Tyrol in a few days, so
that I could wish you to direct your next letter to Calais. Excuse
my writing in great haste and late in the morning, or night,
whichever you please to call it. The third Canto of 'Don Juan' is
completed, in about two hundred stanzas; very decent, I believe,
but do not know, and it is useless to discuss until it be
ascertaine