for that, or even to the
immaculate De Stael. They will encourage her, and not the Don, who
laughs at that, and--and--most other things. But never mind--_ca
ira!_

"Now, do you see what you and your friends do by your injudicious
rudeness?--actually cement a sort of connection which you strove to
prevent, and which, had the Hunts _prospered_, would not in all
probability have continued. As it is, I will not quit them in their
adversity, though it should cost me character, fame, money, and the
usual _et cetera_.

"My original motives I already explained (in the letter which you
thought proper to show): they are the _true_ ones, and I abide by
them, as I tell you, and I told Leigh Hunt when he questioned me on
the subject of that letter. He was violently hurt, and never will
forgive me at bottom; but I can't help that. I never meant to make
a parade of it; but if he chose to question me, I could only answer
the plain truth: and I confess I did not see any thing in the
letter to hurt him, unless I said he was 'a bore,' which I don't
remember. Had their Journal gone on well, and I could have aided to
make it better for them, I should then have left them, after my
safe pilotage off a lee shore, to make a prosperous voyage by
themselves. As it is, I can't, and would not, if I could, leave
them among the breakers.

"As to any community of feeling, thought, or opinion, between
Leigh Hunt and me, there is little or none. We meet rarely, hardly
ever; but I think him a good-principled and able man, and must do
as I would be done by. I do not know what world he has lived in,
but I have lived in three or four; but none of them like his Keats
and kangaroo terra incognita. Alas! poor Shelley! how we would have
laughed had he lived, and how we used to laugh now and then, at
various things which are grave in the suburbs!

"You are all mistaken about Shelley. You do not know how mild, how
tolerant, how good he was in society; and as perfect a gentleman as
ever crossed a drawing-room, when he liked, and where liked.

"I have some thoughts of taking a run down to Naples (_solus_, or,
at most, _cum sola_) this spring, and writing, when I have studied
the country, a Fifth and Sixth Canto of Childe Harold: but this is
merely an idea for the present, and I