"Lugano Gazette did not come. Letters from Venice. It appears that the Austrian brutes have seized my three or four pounds of English powder. The scoundrels!--I hope to pay them in _ball_ for that powder. Rode out till twilight. "Pondered the subjects of four tragedies to be written (life and circumstances permitting), to wit, Sardanapalus, already begun; Cain, a metaphysical subject, something in the style of Manfred, but in five _acts_, perhaps, with the chorus; Francesca of Rimini, in five acts; and I am not sure that I would not try Tiberius. I think that I could extract a something, of _my_ tragic, at least, out of the gloomy sequestration and old age of the tyrant--and even out of his sojourn at Caprea--by softening the _details_, and exhibiting the despair which must have led to those very vicious pleasures. For none but a powerful and gloomy mind overthrown would have had recourse to such solitary horrors,--being also, at the same time, _old_, and the master of the world. "_Memoranda._ "What is Poetry?--The feeling of a Former world and Future. "_Thought Second._ "Why, at the very height of desire and human pleasure,--worldly, social, amorous, ambitious, or even avaricious,--does there mingle a certain sense of doubt and sorrow--a fear of what is to come--a doubt of what _is_--a retrospect to the past, leading to a prognostication of the future? (The best of Prophets of the future is the Past.) Why is this? or these?--I know not, except that on a pinnacle we are most susceptible of giddiness, and that we never fear falling except from a precipice--the higher, the more awful, and the more sublime; and, therefore, I am not sure that Fear is not a pleasurable sensation; at least, _Hope_ is; and _what Hope_ is there without a deep leaven of Fear? and what sensation is so delightful as Hope? and, if it were not for Hope, where would the Future be?--in hell. It is useless to say _where_ the Present is, for most of us know; and as for the Past, _what_ predominates in memory?--_Hope baffled_. Ergo, in all human affairs, it is Hope--Hope--Hope. I allow sixteen minutes, though I never counted them, to any given or supposed possession. From whatever place we commence, we know where it all must end. And yet, what good is there in knowing it? It does not make men better or wiser. During the greatest horrors of the greatest plagues, (Athens and Florence, for example--see Thucydides and Machiavelli,) men were more cruel and profligate than ever. It is all a mystery. I feel most things, but I know nothing, except ------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------[21] "_Thought for a speech of Lucifer, in the tragedy of Cain:_-- "Were _Death_ an _evil_, would _I_ let thee _live_? Fool! live as I live--as thy father lives, And thy son's sons shall live for evermore.