'I am fully repaid for the painful emotions from which some verses of my poem sprung by your sympathy and approbation; which is all the reward I expect, and as much as I desire. It is not for me to judge whether, in the high praise your feelings assign me, you are right or wrong. The poet and the man are two different natures: though they exist together, they may be unconscious of each other, and incapable of deciding on each other's powers and efforts by any reflex act. The decision of the cause whether or not I am a poet is removed from the present time to the hour when our posterity shall assemble: but the court is a very severe one, and I fear that the verdict will be "Guilty--death."' A letter to Mr. Ollier was probably a little later. It says: 'I send you a sketch for a frontispiece to the poem _Adonais_. Pray let it be put into the engraver's hands immediately, as the poem is already on its way to you, and I should wish it to be ready for its arrival. The poem is beautifully printed, and--what is of more consequence--correctly: indeed, it was to obtain this last point that I sent it to the press at Pisa. In a few days you will receive the bill of lading.' Nothing is known as to the sketch which Shelley thus sent. It cannot, I presume, have been his own production, nor yet Severn's: possibly it was supplied by Lieutenant Williams, who had some aptitude as an amateur artist. I add some of the poet's other expressions regarding _Adonais_, which he evidently regarded with more complacency than any of his previous works--at any rate, as a piece of execution. Hitherto his favourite had been _Prometheus Unbound_: I am fain to suppose that that great effort did not now hold a second place in his affections, though he may have considered that the _Adonais_, as being a less arduous feat, came nearer to reaching its goal. (To Peacock, August, 1821.) 'I have sent you by the Gisbornes a copy of the Elegy on Keats. The subject, I know, will not please you; but the composition of the poetry, and the taste in which it is written, I do not think bad.' (To Hunt, 26 August.) 'Before this you will have seen _Adonais_. Lord Byron--I suppose from modesty on account of his being mentioned in it--did not say a word of _Adonais_[13], though he was loud in his praise of _Prometheus_, and (what you will not agree with him in) censure of _The Cenci_.' (To Horace Smith, 14 September,) 'I am glad you like _Adonais_, and particularly that you do not think it metaphysical, which I was afraid it was. I was resolved to pay some tribute of sympathy to the unhonoured dead; but I wrote, as usual, with a total ignorance of the effect that I should produce.' (To Ollier, 25 September.) 'The _Adonais_, in spite of its mysticism, is the least imperfect of my compositions; and, as the image of my regret and honour for poor Keats, I wish it to be so. I shall write to you probably by next post on the subject of that poem;