As the marvellous is the most enticing and the surest guarantee of harmonious numbers I have been endeavouring to persuade myself to untether Fancy and to let her manage for herself. I and myself cannot agree about this at all. Wonders are no wonders to me. I am more at home amongst Men and women. I would rather read Chaucer than Ariosto. The little dramatic skill I may as yet have however badly it might show in a Drama would I think be sufficient for a Poem. I wish to diffuse the colouring of St Agnes eve throughout a poem in which Character and Sentiment would be the figures to such drapery. Two or three such Poems, if God should spare me, written in the course of the next six years, would be a famous gradus ad Parnassum altissimum. I mean they would nerve me up to the writing of a few fine Plays--my greatest ambition--when I do feel ambitious. I am sorry to say that is very seldom. The subject we have once or twice talked of appears a promising one, The Earl of Leicester's history. I am this morning reading Holingshed's _Elizabeth_. It does not seem clear whether his idea about Leicester was to use the subject for a narrative poem or for a play. Scott's _Kenilworth_, be it remembered, had not yet been written. In December he writes to his sister Fanny of the trouble his throat keeps giving him or threatening him with on exertion or cold, and says that he has been ordering a thick great coat and thick shoes on the advice of his doctor. He also mentions that he has begun to prepare a volume of poems to come out in the spring, and that he is touching up his and Brown's tragedy in order to brighten its interest. It had been accepted, he tells her, by Drury Lane, but only with the promise of coming out next season, and as that is not soon enough they intend either to insist on its being brought out this season or else to transfer it to Covent Gardens. He has been anxiously expecting, and has just now received, news of George; and has promised to dine with Mrs Dilke in London on Christmas day. Whether he was able to keep this engagement we do not learn; but Brown at any rate was there, and between him and Dilke there arose a challenge on which Keats among others was called to adjudicate. The conversation, writes Mrs Dilke, 'turned on fairy tales--Brown's forte--Dilke not liking them. Brown said he was sure he could beat Dilke, and to let him try they betted a beefsteak supper, and an allotted time was given. They had been read by the persons fixed on--Keats, Reynolds, Rice, and Taylor--and the wager was decided the night before last in favour of Dilke. Next Saturday night the supper is to be given,--Beefsteaks and punch--the food of the "Cockney School."'