u never showed me a line of your work, I do
not even know your measure; but you must send me a copy by Murray
forthwith, and then you shall hear what I think. I dare say you are
in a pucker. Of all authors, you are the only really _modest_ one I
ever met with,--which would sound oddly enough to those who
recollect your morals when you were young--that is, when you were
_extremely_ young--don't mean to stigmatise you either with years
or morality.

"I believe I told you that the E.R. had attacked me, in an article
on Coleridge (I have not seen it)--'_Et tu_, Jeffrey?'--'there is
nothing but roguery in villanous man.' But I absolve him of all
attacks, present and future; for I think he had already pushed his
clemency in my behoof to the utmost, and I shall always think well
of him. I only wonder he did not begin before, as my domestic
destruction was a fine opening for all the world, of which all who
could did well to avail themselves.

"If I live ten years longer, you will see, however, that it is not
over with me--I don't mean in literature, for that is nothing; and
it may seem odd enough to say, I do not think it my vocation. But
you will see that I shall do something or other--the times and
fortune permitting--that, 'like the cosmogony, or creation of the
world, will puzzle the philosophers of all ages.' But I doubt
whether my constitution will hold out. I have, at intervals,
ex_or_cised it most devilishly.

"I have not yet fixed a time of return, but I think of the spring.
I shall have been away a year in April next. You never mention
Rogers, nor Hodgson, your clerical neighbour, who has lately got a
living near you. Has he also got a child yet?--his desideratum,
when I saw him last.

"Pray let me hear from you, at your time and leisure, believing me
ever and truly and affectionately," &c.

* * * * *

LETTER 264. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Venice, March 3. 1817.

"In acknowledging the arrival of the article from the
'Quarterly[129],' which I received two days ago, I cannot express
myself better than in the words of my sister Augusta, who (speaking
of it) says, that it is written in a spirit 'of the most feeling
and kind nature.' It is, however, something more; it seems to me
(as far as the subject of it m