“How could you suppose that I ever would allow any thing that could be said on your account to weigh with me? I only regret that Bowles had not said that you were the writer of that note until afterwards, when out he comes with it, in a private letter to Murray, which Murray sends to me. D—n the controversy!
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“D—n Twizzle,
D—n the bell,
And d—n the fool who rung it—Well!
From all such plagues I’ll quickly be deliver’d.
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“I have had a friend of your Mr. Irving’s—a very pretty lad—a Mr. Coolidge, of Boston—only somewhat too full of poesy and ‘entusymusy.’ I was very civil to him during his few hours’ stay, and talked with him much of Irving, whose writings are my delight. But I suspect that he did not take quite so much to me, from his having expected to meet a misanthropical gentleman, in wolf-skin breeches, and answering in fierce monosyllables, instead of a man of this world. I can never get people to understand that poetry is the expression of excited passion, and that there is no such thing as a life of passion any more than a continuous earthquake, or an eternal fever. Besides, who would ever shave themselves in such a state?
“I have had a curious letter to-day from a girl in England
(I never saw her), who says she is given over of a decline, but could not go out of the
world without thanking me for the delight which my poesy for
| 496 | NOTICES OF THE | A. D. 1821. |
“I am now in the fifth act of ‘Foscari,’ being the third tragedy in twelve months, besides proses; so you perceive that I am not at all idle. And are you, too, busy? I doubt that your life at Paris draws too much upon your time, which is a pity. Can’t you divide your day, so as to combine both? I have had plenty of all sorts of worldly business on my hands last year,—and yet it is not so difficult to give a few hours to the Muses. This sentence is so like * * * * that— “Ever, &c.
“If we were together, I should publish both my plays (periodically) in our joint journal. It should be our plan to publish all our best things in that way.”
