Malvern Mercury Miss Seward's 'Elegy on the South Pole,' as her
_own_ production, with her _own_ signature, two years after having
taken a copy, by permission of the authoress--with regard, I say,
to the 'liberty of transcript,' I by no means oppose an occasional
copy to the benevolent few, provided it does not degenerate into
such licentiousness of Verb and Noun as may tend to 'disparage my
parts of speech' by the carelessness of the transcribblers.

"I do not think that there is much danger of the 'King's Press
being abused' upon the occasion, if the publishers of journals have
any regard for their remaining liberty of person. It is as pretty a
piece of invective as ever put publisher in the way to 'Botany.'
Therefore, if _they_ meddle with it, it is at _their_ peril. As for
myself, I will answer any jontleman--though I by no means recognise
a 'right of search' into an unpublished production and unavowed
poem. The same applies to things published _sans_ consent. I hope
you like, at least, the concluding lines of the _Pome_?

"What are you doing, and where are you? in England? Nail
Murray--nail him to his own counter, till he shells out the
thirteens. Since I wrote to you, I have sent him another
tragedy--'Cain' by name--making three in MS. now in his hands, or
in the printer's. It is in the Manfred, metaphysical style, and
full of some Titanic declamation;--Lucifer being one of the dram.
pers. who takes Cain a voyage among the stars, and afterwards to
'Hades,' where he shows him the phantoms of a former world, and its
inhabitants. I have gone upon the notion of Cuvier, that the world
has been destroyed three or four times, and was inhabited by
mammoths, behemoths, and what not; but _not_ by man till the Mosaic
period, as, indeed, is proved by the strata of bones found;--those
of all unknown animals, and known, being dug out, but none of
mankind. I have, therefore, supposed Cain to be shown, in the
_rational_ Preadamites, beings endowed with a higher intelligence
than man, but totally unlike him in form, and with much greater
strength of mind and person. You may suppose the small talk which
takes place between him and Lucifer upon these matters is not quite
canonical.

"The consequence is, that Cain comes back and kills Abel in a fit
of d