LETTER 114. TO MR. MURRAY.
"Oct. 19. 1812.
"Many thanks, but I must pay the damage, and will thank you to tell me the amount for the engraving. I think the 'Rejected Addresses' by far the best thing of the kind since the Rolliad, and wish you had published them. Tell the author 'I forgive him, were he twenty times over a satirist;' and think his imitations not at all inferior to the famous ones of Hawkins Browne. He must be a man of very lively wit, and less scurrilous than wits often are: altogether, I very much admire the performance, and wish it all success. The Satirist has taken a new tone, as you will see: we have now, I think, finished with Childe Harold's critics. I have in hand a Satire on Waltzing, which you must publish anonymously: it is not long, not quite two hundred lines, but will make a very small boarded pamphlet. In a few days you shall have it.
"P.S.—The editor of the Satirist ought to be thanked for his revocation; it is done handsomely, after five years' warfare."
LETTER 115. TO MR. MURRAY.
"Oct. 23. 1812.
"Thanks, as usual. You go on boldly; but have a care of glutting the public, who have by this time had enough of Childe Harold. 'Waltzing' shall be prepared. It is rather above two hundred lines, with an introductory Letter to the Publisher. I think of publishing, with Childe Harold, the opening lines of the 'Curse of Minerva,' as far as the first speech of Pallas,—because some of the readers like that part better than any I have ever written, and as it contains nothing to affect the subject of the subsequent portion, it will find a place as a Descriptive Fragment.
"The plate is broken? between ourselves, it was unlike the picture; and besides, upon the whole, the frontispiece of an author's visage is but a paltry exhibition. At all events, this would have been no recommendation to the book. I am sure Sanders would not have survived the engraving. By the by, the picture may remain with you or him (which you please), till my return. The one of two remaining copies is at your service till I can give you a better; the other must be burned peremptorily. Again, do not forget that I have an account with you, and that this is included. I give you too much trouble to allow you to incur expense also.