"What are you doing, and where are you? in England? Nail Murray--nail him to his own counter, till he shells out the thirteens. Since I wrote to you, I have sent him another tragedy--'Cain' by name--making three in MS. now in his hands, or in the printer's. It is in the Manfred, metaphysical style, and full of some Titanic declamation;--Lucifer being one of the dram. pers. who takes Cain a voyage among the stars, and afterwards to 'Hades,' where he shows him the phantoms of a former world, and its inhabitants. I have gone upon the notion of Cuvier, that the world has been destroyed three or four times, and was inhabited by mammoths, behemoths, and what not; but _not_ by man till the Mosaic period, as, indeed, is proved by the strata of bones found;--those of all unknown animals, and known, being dug out, but none of mankind. I have, therefore, supposed Cain to be shown, in the _rational_ Preadamites, beings endowed with a higher intelligence than man, but totally unlike him in form, and with much greater strength of mind and person. You may suppose the small talk which takes place between him and Lucifer upon these matters is not quite canonical. "The consequence is, that Cain comes back and kills Abel in a fit of dissatisfaction, partly with the politics of Paradise, which had driven them all out of it, and partly because (as it is written in Genesis) Abel's sacrifice was the more acceptable to the Deity. I trust that the Rhapsody has arrived--it is in three acts, and entitled 'A Mystery,' according to the former Christian custom, and in honour of what it probably will remain to the reader. "Yours," &c. * * * * * LETTER 454. TO MR. MOORE. "September 20. 1821. "After the stanza on Grattan, concluding with 'His soul o'er the freedom implored and denied,' will it please you to cause insert the following 'Addenda,' which I dreamed of during to-day's Siesta: "Ever glorious Grattan! &c. &c. &c. I will tell you what to do. Get me twenty copies of the whole carefully and privately printed off, as _your_ lines were on the Naples affair. Send me _six_, and distribute the rest according to your own pleasure. "I am in a fine vein, 'so full of pastime and prodigality!'--So here's to your health in a glass of grog. Pray write, that I may know by return of post--address to me at Pisa. The gods give you joy! "Where are you? in Paris? Let us hear. You will take care that there be no printer's name, nor author's, as in the Naples stanza, at least for the present." * * * * * LETTER 455 TO MR. MURRAY. "Ravenna, September 20. 1821. "You need not send 'The Blues,' which is a mere buffoonery, never meant for publication.[53]