From an enquiry about the expected baby in America,--'will the little bairn have made his entrance before you have this? Kiss it for me, and when it can first know a cheese from a Caterpillar show it my picture twice a week,'--from this he passes to the re-assuring statement that the attack upon him in the Quarterly has in some quarters done him actual service. He tells how constrained and out of his element he feels in ordinary society; a common experience of genius, and part of the price it pays for living at a different level and temperature of thought and feeling from the herd. 'I am passing a Quiet day--which I have not done for a long while--and if I do continue so, I feel I must again begin with my poetry--for if I am not in action of mind or Body I am in pain--and from that I suffer greatly by going into parties where from the rules of society and a natural pride I am obliged to smother my Spirit and look like an Idiot--because I feel my impulses given way to would too much amaze them--I live under an everlasting restraint--never relieved except when I am composing--so I will write away.' And resuming apparently on Christmas Day:--'I think you knew before you left England, that my next subject would be "the fall of Hyperion." I went on a little with it last night, but it will take some time to get into the vein again. I will not give you any extracts, because I wish the whole to make an impression. I have however a few Poems which you will like, and I will copy out on the next sheet.' Nearly a week later he adds, 'I will insert any little pieces I may write--though I will not give any extracts from my large poem which is scarce began.' The phrase about _Hyperion_ must be taken as indicating on how great a scale he had conceived the poem rather than how little he had yet written of it. In point of fact all we have of this mighty fragment must have been written either by his brother's bedside in September-October 1818 (but then certainly only a little) or else in these Christmas weeks from mid-December to mid-January 1818-19. The short poems he sends are the spirited sets of heptasyllabics, _Fancy_, and _Lines on the Mermaid Tavern_, the former one of the best things in the second and lighter class of his work: and with them the fragment written for music, 'I had a dove.' In relation to these he says 'It is my intention to wait a few years before I publish any minor poems--and then I hope to have a volume of some worth--and which those people will relish who cannot bear the burthen of a long poem.'