"We are all looking at one another, like wolves on their prey in pursuit, only waiting for the first falling on to do unutterable things. They are a great world in chaos, or angels in hell, which you please; but out of chaos came Paradise, and out of hell—I don't know what; but the devil went in there, and he was a fine fellow once, you know.
"You need never favour me with any periodical publication, except the Edinburgh Quarterly, and an occasional Blackwood; or now and then a Monthly Review; for the rest I do not feel curiosity enough to look beyond their covers.
"To be sure I took in the British finely. He fell precisely into the glaring trap laid for him. It was inconceivable how he could be so absurd as to imagine us serious with him.
"Recollect, that if you put my name to 'Don Juan' in these canting days, any lawyer might oppose my guardian right of my daughter in Chancery, on the plea of its containing the parody;—such are the perils of a foolish jest. I was not aware of this at the time, but you will find it correct, I believe; and you may be sure that the Noels would not let it slip. Now I prefer my child to a poem at any time, and so should you, as having half a dozen.
"Let me know your notions.
"If you turn over the earlier pages of the Huntingdon peerage story, you will see how common a name Ada was in the early Plantagenet days. I found it in my own pedigree in the reign of John and Henry, and gave it to my daughter. It was also the name of Charlemagne's sister. It is in an early chapter of Genesis, as the name of the wife of Lamech; and I suppose Ada is the feminine of Adam. It is short, ancient, vocalic, and had been in my family; for which reason I gave it to my daughter."
LETTER 391. TO MR. MURRAY.
"Ravenna, 8bre 12°, 1820.