or lawsuit, or MSS. or any
lawful means whatever.

"I will pay (though with the sincerest reluctance) my remaining
creditors, and every man of law, by instalments from the award of
the arbitrators.

"I recommend to you the notice in Mr. Hanson's letter, on the
demands of moneys for the Rochdale tolls.

"Above all, I recommend my interests to your honourable worship.

"Recollect, too, that I expect some moneys for the various MSS. (no
matter what); and, in short, 'Rem _quocunque modo_, Rem!'--the
noble feeling of cupidity grows upon us with our years.

"Yours ever," &c.

[Footnote 73: This letter has been already published, with a few others,
in a periodical work, and is known to have been addressed to the late
Mr. Douglas Kinnaird.]

* * * * *

LETTER 477. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Pisa, February 8. 1822.

"Attacks upon me were to be expected, but I perceive one upon _you_
in the papers, which I confess that I did not expect. How, or in
what manner, _you_ can be considered responsible for what _I_
publish, I am at a loss to conceive.

"If 'Cain' be 'blasphemous,' Paradise Lost is blasphemous; and the
very words of the Oxford gentleman, 'Evil, be thou my good,' are
from that very poem, from the mouth of Satan, and is there any
thing more in that of Lucifer in the Mystery? Cain is nothing more
than a drama, not a piece of argument. If Lucifer and Cain speak as
the first murderer and the first rebel may be supposed to speak,
surely all the rest of the personages talk also according to their
characters--and the stronger passions have ever been permitted to
the drama.

"I have even avoided introducing the Deity as in Scripture, (though
Milton does, and not very wisely either,) but have adopted his
angel as sent to Cain instead, on purpose to avoid shocking any
feelings on the subject by falling short of what all uninspired men
must fall short in, viz. giving an adequate notion of the effect of
the presence of Jehovah. The old Mysteries introduced him liberally
enough, and all this is avoided in the new one.

"The attempt to _bully you_, because they think it won't succeed
with me, seems to me as atrocious an attempt as ever disgraced the
times. What! when Gibbon's, Hume's, Priestley's, and Drummond's
publisher