"It will be best _not_ to put my name to our _Ode_; but you may _say_ as openly as you like that it is mine, and I can inscribe it to Mr. Hobhouse, from the _author_, which will mark it sufficiently. After the resolution of not publishing, though it is a thing of little length and less consequence, it will be better altogether that it is anonymous; but we will incorporate it in the first _tome_ of ours that you find time or the wish to publish. Yours alway, B. "P.S. I hope you got a note of alterations, sent this matin? "P.S. Oh my books! my books! will you never find my books? "Alter '_potent_ spell' to '_quickening_ spell:' the first (as Polonius says) 'is a vile phrase,' and means nothing, besides being common-place and _Rosa-Matilda-ish_." * * * * * TO MR. MURRAY. "April 12. 1814. "I send you a few notes and trifling alterations, and an additional motto from Gibbon, which you will find _singularly appropriate_. A 'Good-natured Friend' tells me there is a most scurrilous attack on _us_ in the Anti-jacobin Review, which you have _not_ sent. Send it, as I am in that state of languor which will derive benefit from getting into a passion. Ever," &c. * * * * * LETTER 175. TO MR. MOORE. "Albany, April 20. 1814. "I _am_ very glad to hear that you are to be transient from Mayfield so very soon, and was taken in by the first part of your letter.[24] Indeed, for aught I know, you may be treating me, as Slipslop says, with 'ironing' even now. I shall say nothing of the _shock_, which had nothing of _humeur_ in it; as I am apt to take even a critic, and still more a friend, at his word, and never to doubt that I have been writing cursed nonsense, if they say so. There was a mental reservation in my pact with the public[25], in behalf of _anonymes_; and, even had there not, the provocation was such as to make it physically impossible to pass over this damnable epoch of triumphant tameness. 'Tis a cursed business; and, after all, I shall think higher of rhyme and reason, and very humbly of your heroic people, till--Elba becomes a volcano, and sends him out again. I can't think it all over yet. "My departure for the Continent depends, in some measure, on the _in_continent. I have two country invitations at home, and don't know what to say or do. In the mean time, I have bought a macaw and a parrot, and have got up my books; and I box and fence daily, and go out very little.