I don't hear from you: I rather think you are deterred by those _Birds_ which I asked you to print (in my last Letter) with some Correction, etc., of your own: and which you have not found Time or Inclination to get done. But don't let anything of this sort prevent your writing to me now and then: no one can be more utterly indifferent than I am whether these Birds are printed or not: and I suppose I distinctly told you _not_ to put yourself to any Trouble. Indeed I dare say I should only be bored with the Copies when they were printed: for I don't know a Soul here who would care for the Thing if it were ten times as well done as I have done it: nor do I care for Translation or Original, myself. Oh dear, when I do look into Homer, Dante, and Virgil, AEschylus, Shakespeare, etc., those Orientals look--silly! Don't resent my saying so. _Don't_ they? I am now a good [deal] about in a new Boat I have built, and thought (as Johnson took Cocker's Arithmetic with him on travel, because he shouldn't exhaust it) so I would take Dante and Homer with me, instead of Mudie's Books, which I read through directly. I took Dante by way of slow Digestion: not having looked at him for some years: but I am glad to find I relish him as much as ever: he atones with the Sea; as you know does the Odyssey--these are the Men! I am just returned in my Ship from Holland--where I stayed--two days!--and was so glad to rush away home after being imprisoned in a sluggish un- sweet Canal in Rotterdam: and after tearing about to Amsterdam, the Hague, etc., to see things which were neither new nor remarkable to me though I had never seen them before--except in Pictures, which represent to you the Places as well as if you went there, without the trouble of going. I am sure wiser men, with keener _out_sight and _in_sight would see what no Pictures could give: but this I know is always the case with me: this is my last Voyage abroad, I believe: unless I go to see Raffaelle's Madonna at Dresden, which no other Picture can represent than itself: unless Dante's Beatrice.