, and Leigh Hunt were the
only literary men, of numbers whom I know (and some of whom I had
served), who dared venture even an anonymous word in my favour just
then: and that, of those three, I had never seen _one_ at all--of
the second much less than I desired--and that the third was under
no kind of obligation to me, whatever; while the other _two_ had
been actually attacked by me on a former occasion; _one_, indeed,
with some provocation, but the other wantonly enough. So you see
you have been heaping 'coals of fire, &c.' in the true gospel
manner, and I can assure you that they have burnt down to my very
heart.

"I am glad that you accepted the Inscription. I meant to have
inscribed 'The Foscarini' to you instead; but first, I heard that
'Cain' was thought the least bad of the two as a composition; and,
2dly, I have abused S * * like a pickpocket, in a note to the
Foscarini, and I recollected that he is a friend of yours (though
not of mine), and that it would not be the handsome thing to
dedicate to one friend any thing containing such matters about
another. However, I'll work the Laureate before I have done with
him, as soon as I can muster Billingsgate therefor. I like a row,
and always did from a boy, in the course of which propensity, I
must needs say, that I have found it the most easy of all to be
gratified, personally and poetically. You disclaim 'jealousies;'
but I would ask, as Boswell did of Johnson, 'of _whom could_ you be
_jealous_?'--of none of the living certainly, and (taking all and
all into consideration) of which of the dead? I don't like to bore
you about the Scotch novels, (as they call them, though two of them
are wholly English, and the rest half so,) but nothing can or could
ever persuade me, since I was the first ten minutes in your
company, that you are _not_ the man. To me those novels have so
much of 'Auld lang syne' (I was bred a canny Scot till ten years
old) that I never move without them; and when I removed from
Ravenna to Pisa the other day, and sent on my library before, they
were the only books that I kept by me, although I already have them
by heart.

"January 27. 1822.

"I delayed till now concluding, in the hope that I should have got
'The Pirate,' who is under way for me, but has not yet hove