"Ravenna, June 7. 1820. "Enclosed is something which will interest you, to wit, the opinion of _the_ greatest man of Germany--perhaps of Europe--upon one of the great men of your advertisements, (all 'famous hands,' as Jacob Tonson used to say of his ragamuffins,)--in short, a critique of _Goethe's_ upon _Manfred_. There is the original, an English translation, and an Italian one; keep them all in your archives,--for the opinions of such a man as Goethe, whether favourable or not, are always interesting--and this is more so, as favourable. His _Faust_ I never read, for I don't know German; but Matthew Monk Lewis, in 1816, at Coligny, translated most of it to me _viva voce_, and I was naturally much struck with it; but it was the _Steinbach_ and the _Jungfrau_, and something else, much more than Faustus, that made me write Manfred. The first scene, however, and that of Faustus are very similar. Acknowledge this letter. "Yours ever. "P.S. I have received _Ivanhoe_;--_good_. Pray send me some tooth-powder and tincture of myrrh, by _Waite_, &c. Ricciardetto should have been _translated literally, or not at all_. As to puffing _Whistlecraft_, it _won't_ do. I'll tell you why some day or other. Cornwall's a poet, but spoilt by the detestable schools of the day. Mrs. Hemans is a poet also, but too stiltified and apostrophic,--and quite wrong. Men died calmly before the Christian era, and since, without Christianity: witness the Romans, and, lately, Thistlewood, Sandt, and Lovel--_men who ought to have been weighed down with their crimes, even had they believed_. A deathbed is a matter of nerves and constitution, and not of religion. Voltaire was frightened, Frederick of Prussia not: Christians the same, according to their strength rather than their creed. What does H * * H * * mean by his stanza? which is octave got drunk or gone mad. He ought to have his ears boxed with Thor's hammer for rhyming so fantastically." * * * * *