“The two passages cannot be altered without making Lucifer talk like the Bishop of Lincoln, which would not be in the character of the former. The notion is from Cuvier (that of the old worlds), as I have explained in an additional note to the preface. The other passage is also in character: if nonsense, so much the better, because then it can do no harm, and the sillier Satan is made, the safer for every body. As to ‘alarms,’ &c. do you really think such things ever led any body astray? Are these people more impious than Milton’s Satan? or the Prometheus of Æschylus? or even than the Sadducees of * *, the ‘Fall of Jerusalem’ * *? Are not Adam, Eve, Adah, and Abel, as pious as the catechism?
“Gifford is too wise
a man to think that such things can have any serious effect: who was ever altered by a poem? I beg leave to observe, that there
is no creed nor personal hypothesis of mine in all this; but I was obliged to make
Cain and Lucifer talk consistently, and surely this has always been permitted to
poesy. Cain is a proud man: if Lucifer promised him kingdom, &c. it would elate him: the object of the Demon is to depress him still further in his own estimation than he was before, by
| 556 | NOTICES OF THE | A. D. 1821. |
“His subsequent remorse is the natural effect of looking on his sudden deed. Had the deed been premeditated, his repentance would have been tardier.
“Either dedicate it to Walter Scott, or if you think he would like the dedication of ‘the Foscaris’ better, put the dedication to ‘the Foscaris.’ Ask him which.
“Your first note was queer enough; but your two other
letters, with Moore’s and Gifford’s opinions, set all right again. I told
you before that I can never recast any thing. I am like the
tiger: if I miss the first spring I go grumbling back to my jungle again; but if I do hit, it is crushing.
* * * You disparaged the last three cantos to me, and kept them back above a year; but I have
heard from England that (notwithstanding the errors of the press) they are well thought
of; for instance, by American Irving, which last
is a feather in my (fool’s) cap.
“You have received my letter (open) through Mr. Kinnaird, and so, pray, send me no more reviews of any kind. I will read no more of evil or good in that line. Walter Scott has not read a review of himself for thirteen years.
“The bust is not my property, but Hobhouse’s. I addressed it to you as an Admiralty man, great at the custom-house. Pray deduct the expenses of the same, and all others.
