o tell him to take it back.

"Ever faithfully yours,

"P.B. SHELLEY."

* * * * *

LETTER 475. TO SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART.

"Pisa, January 12. 1822.

"My dear Sir Walter,

"I need not say how grateful I am for your letter, but I must own
my ingratitude in not having written to you again long ago. Since I
left England (and it is not for all the usual term of
transportation) I have scribbled to five hundred blockheads on
business, &c. without difficulty, though with no great pleasure;
and yet, with the notion of addressing you a hundred times in my
head, and always in my heart, I have not done what I ought to have
done. I can only account for it on the same principle of tremulous
anxiety with which one sometimes makes love to a beautiful woman of
our own degree, with whom one is enamoured in good earnest;
whereas, we attack a fresh-coloured housemaid without (I speak, of
course, of earlier times) any sentimental remorse or mitigation of
our virtuous purpose.

"I owe to you far more than the usual obligation for the courtesies
of literature and common friendship; for you went out of your way
in 1817 to do me a service, when it required not merely kindness,
but courage to do so: to have been recorded by you in such a
manner, would have been a proud memorial at any time, but at such a
time when 'all the world and his wife,' as the proverb goes, were
trying to trample upon me, was something still higher to my
self-esteem,--I allude to the Quarterly Review of the Third Canto
of Childe Harold, which Murray told me was written by you,--and,
indeed, I should have known it without his information, as there
could not be two who _could_ and _would_ have done this at the
time. Had it been a common criticism, however eloquent or
panegyrical, I should have felt pleased, undoubtedly, and grateful,
but not to the extent which the extraordinary good-heartedness of
the whole proceeding must induce in any mind capable of such
sensations. The very _tardiness_ of this acknowledgment will, at
least, show that I have not forgotten the obligation; and I can
assure you that my sense of it has been out at compound interest
during the delay. I shall only add one word upon the subject, which
is, that I think that you, and Jeffrey