MY DEAR COWELL, Owing partly to my own Stupidity, and partly to a change in the India Post days, my last two letters (to you and wife) which were quite ready by the Marseilles Post of April 25th will not get off till the Southampton Mail of this May 10. Your letter of March 21 reached me three days ago. Write only when you have Leisure and Inclination, and only as much as those two good things are good for: I will do the same. I will at once say (in reply to a kind offer you make to have Hatifi's 'Haft Paikar' copied for me) that it will [be] best to wait till you have read it; you know me well enough to know whether it will hit my taste. However, if it be but a very short poem, no harm would be done by a Copy: but do let me be at the Charges of such things. I will ask for Hatifi's Laili: but I didn't (as you know) take much to what little I saw. As to any copies Allen might have had, I believe there is no good asking for them: for, only yesterday going to put into Madden's hands Mr. Newton's MS. of the Mantic, I saw Allen's house _kharab_. There had been a Fire there, Madden told me, which had destroyed stock, etc., but I could not make much out of the matter, Madden putting on a Face of foolish mystery. You can imagine it? We talked of you, as you may imagine also: and I believe in that he is not foolish. Well, and to-day I have a note from the great De Tassy which announces, 'My dear Sir, Definitively I have written a little Paper upon Omar with some Quotations taken here and there at random, avoiding only the too badly sounding _rubayat_. I have read that paper before the Persian Ambassador and suite, at a meeting of the Oriental Society of which I am Vice President, the Duc de Dondeauville being president. The Ambassador has been much pleased of my quotations.' So you see I have done the part of an ill Subject in helping France to ingratiate herself with Persia when England might have had the start! I suppose it probable _Ferukh Khan_ himself had never read or perhaps heard of Omar. I think I told you in my last that I had desired De Tassy to say nothing about you in any Paper he should write; since I cannot have you answerable for any blunders I may have made in my Copy, nor may you care to be named with Omar at all. I hope the Frenchman will attend to my desire; and I dare say he will, as he will then have all credit to himself. He says he can't make out the metre of the _rubayat_ at all--never could--though 'I am enough skilful in scanning the Persian verses as you have seen' (Qy?) 'in my Prosody of the languages of Musulman Countries, etc.' So much for De Tassy. No; but something more yet: and better, for he tells me his Print of the Mantic is finisht, 'in proofs,' and will be out in about a Month: and he will send me one. Now, my dear Cowell, can't I send one to you? Yes, we must manage that somehow.