15th April 1830.
Dear Mary—If you do me the favour to see Murray, I know not how far you can utter the following things; or if you do, how far they will have any weight with his highness; yet I cannot but wish you should have them in your mind.
The book I offer is a collection of ten new and interesting truths, illustrated in no unpopular style. They are the fruit of thirty years’ meditation (it being so long since I wrote the Enquirer), in the full maturity of my understanding.
The book, therefore, will be very far from being merely one book more added to the number of books already existing in English literature. It must, as I conceive, when published make a deep impression, and cause the thinking part of the public to perceive—There are here laid before us ten interesting truths never before delivered.
Whether it is published during my life or after my death it is a light that cannot be extinguished—“the precious life-blood of a discerning spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.”
In the following amusing letter Clare gives Mary a few commissions. She was to interest her literary acquaintance in Paris in the publication and success of a French poem by a friend of Clare’s at Moscow, the greatest wish of whose heart was to appear in print. She was also to find a means of preventing the French translatress of Moore’s Life of Byron from introducing Clare’s name into her elucidatory footnotes. This was indeed all-important to Clare, as any revival of scandal about her might have robbed her of the means of subsistence, but it was also an extremely difficult and delicate task for Mary. But no one ever hesitated to make her of use. Her friends estimated her power by her goodwill, and her goodwill by their own need of her services; and they were generally right, for the will never failed, and the way was generally found.
Clare to Mrs. Shelley.
Nice, 11th December 1830.
My dear Mary—Your last letter, although so melancholy, gave me much pleasure, merely, therefore, because it came from you.
I intended to have written to all and each of you, but until now have not been able to put my resolution into execution. It must seem to you that I am strangely neglectful of my friends, or perhaps you think since I am so near Trelawny that I have been taking a lesson from him in the art of cultivating one’s friendships; but neither of these is the case, my silence is quite on another principle than this.