"You know very well that I did not approve of Keats's poetry, or principles of poetry, or of his abuse of Pope; but, as he is dead, omit _all_ that is said _about him_ in any MSS. of mine, or publication. His Hyperion is a fine monument, and will keep his name. I do not envy the man who wrote the article;--you Review people have no more right to kill than any other footpads. However, he who would die of an article in a Review would probably have died of something else equally trivial. The same thing nearly happened to Kirke White, who died afterwards of a consumption." * * * * * LETTER 442. TO MR. MOORE. "Ravenna, August 2. 1821. "I had certainly answered your last letter, though but briefly, to the part to which you refer, merely saying, 'damn the controversy;' and quoting some verses of George Colman's, not as allusive to you, but to the disputants. Did you receive this letter? It imports me to know that our letters are not intercepted or mislaid. "Your Berlin drama [44] is an honour, unknown since the days of Elkanah Settle, whose 'Emperor of Morocco' was represented by the Court ladies, which was, as Johnson says, 'the last blast of inflammation' to poor Dryden, who could not bear it, and fell foul of Settle without mercy or moderation, on account of that and a frontispiece, which he dared to put before his play. "Was not your showing the Memoranda to * * somewhat perilous? Is there not a facetious allusion or two which might as well be reserved for posterity? "I know S * * well--that is to say, I have met him occasionally at Copet. Is he not also touched lightly in the Memoranda? In a review of Childe Harold, Canto 4th, three years ago, in Blackwood's Magazine, they quote some stanzas of an elegy of S * *'s on Rome, from which they say that I _might_ have taken some ideas. I give you my honour that I never saw it except in that criticism, which gives, I think, three or four stanzas, sent them (they say) for the nonce by a correspondent--perhaps himself. The fact is easily proved; for I don't understand German, and there was, I believe, no translation--at least, it was the first time that I ever heard of, or saw, either translation or original. "I remember having some talk with S * * about Alfieri, whose merit he denies. He was also wroth about the Edinburgh Review of Goethe, which was sharp enough, to be sure. He went about saying, too, of the French--'I meditate a terrible vengeance against the French--I will prove that Molière is no poet[45].'