If you direct--Post Office, Oxford--your Letter will be brought to me. XV.--TO JANE REYNOLDS. Oxford, Sunday Evg. [September 14, 1817]. My dear Jane--You are such a literal translator, that I shall some day amuse myself with looking over some foreign sentences, and imagining how you would render them into English. This is an age for typical Curiosities; and I would advise you, as a good speculation, to study Hebrew, and astonish the world with a figurative version in our native tongue. The Mountains skipping like rams, and the little hills like lambs, you will leave as far behind as the hare did the tortoise. It must be so or you would never have thought that I really meant you would like to pro and con about those Honeycombs--no, I had no such idea, or, if I had, 'twould be only to tease you a little for love. So now let me put down in black and white briefly my sentiments thereon.--Imprimis--I sincerely believe that Imogen is the finest creature, and that I should have been disappointed at hearing you prefer Juliet--Item--Yet I feel such a yearning towards Juliet that I would rather follow her into Pandemonium than Imogen into Paradise--heartily wishing myself a Romeo to be worthy of her, and to hear the Devils quote the old proverb, "Birds of a feather flock together"--Amen.-- Now let us turn to the Seashore. Believe me, my dear Jane, it is a great happiness to see that you are in this finest part of the year winning a little enjoyment from the hard world. In truth, the great Elements we know of, are no mean comforters: the open sky sits upon our senses like a sapphire crown--the Air is our robe of state--the Earth is our throne, and the Sea a mighty minstrel playing before it--able, like David's harp, to make such a one as you forget almost the tempest cares of life. I have found in the ocean's music,--varying (tho self-same) more than the passion of Timotheus, an enjoyment not to be put into words; and, "though inland far I be," I now hear the voice most audibly while pleasing myself in the idea of your sensations. ---- is getting well apace, and if you have a few trees, and a little harvesting about you, I'll snap my fingers in Lucifer's eye. I hope you bathe too--if you do not, I earnestly recommend it. Bathe thrice a week, and let us have no more sitting up next winter. Which is the best of Shakspeare's plays? I mean in what mood and with what accompaniment do you like the sea best? It is very fine in the morning, when the sun, "Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams, Turns into yellow gold his salt sea streams," and superb when "The sun from meridian height Illumines the depth of the sea, And the fishes, beginning to sweat, Cry d---- it! how hot we shall be," and gorgeous, when the fair planet hastens "To his home Within the Western foam."