The giant’s vomit was perfectly nauseous, and I am glad you pointed it out. I have removed the objection. To the other passages I can find no objection but what you may bring to numberless passages besides, such as of Scylla snatching up the six men, etc.,--that is to say, they are lively images of _shocking_ things. If you want a book which is not occasionally to _shock_, you should not have thought of a tale which is so full of anthropophagi and wonders. I cannot alter these things without enervating the Book, and I will not alter them if the penalty should be that you and all the London booksellers should refuse it. But speaking as author to author, I must say that I think _the terrible_ in those two passages seems to me so much to preponderate over the nauseous as to make them rather fine than disgusting. [Remember, this is spoken by one who in youth was sensitive and whose feelings are graphically set forth in “Witches, and Other Night Fears.”]... I only say that I will not consent to alter such passages, which I know to be some of the best in the book. As an author, I say to you, an author, Touch not my work. As to a bookseller I say, Take the work, such as it is, or refuse it. You are free to refuse it as when we first talked of it. As to a friend I say, Don’t plague yourself and me with nonsensical objections. I assure you I will not alter one more word. Lamb’s critical genius often showed remarkable subtlety in the fine distinctions drawn between shades of effect which are produced by art. He established, through his careful analyses, an almost new critical attitude toward Shakespeare; and, in days when psychology as a study was unknown, when people witnessed the different phases of emotional life and judged them before formulæ were invented by which to test them scientifically, he saw, with rare discrimination, the part that the spiritual value of literature was to play in the development of culture. He here weighs in the balance a fine terror with a nauseous scene; such a difference presupposes a clear insight into the story and a power to arrive at the full meaning at once; it infers an instinctive knowledge of the whole gamut of possible effects. Lamb’s plea to Godwin is the plea of the man who would rather keep a child in the green fields than have him spend his time on wishy-washy matter.