I have just received a letter from Bowles, in which he says – “you mention my namesake Caroline. If you write, do make my warmest congratulations known to her. – Have I read Ellen Fitzarthur?

– There was only one copy in Bath, – no one read a word of it, no one thought of buying it, no one spoke of it. I was the first in this neighbourhood to bring it into notice. I spoke to every one with the utmost warmth of it, as deeply affecting in story, & beautiful in genuine language of poetry. I trumpeted it to Lord & Lady Lansdowne,

Miss Fox,

& all the literati of Bowood, & without knowing the name, I flatter myself I contributed in some degree to its more general notice among some distinguished ornaments of taste & literature. I should be happy to know Caroline, & more to think her a relation. I think a poem so remote from the golden – silvery – diamond –alabaster – Pontypool-style

of the present Cockney race of Dandy Poetasters

cannot be too much noticed; & I am rejoiced the real touches of nature & passion have awakened attention.”

If authorship in its notoriety brings with it some evils, they are overpaid, where there is desert, by a large portion of good. I owe to it not merely many pleasant acquaintance, but some valuable friends & you will reap the same fruits. My question to Bowles was concerning your last volume,

as well as Ellen Fitzarthur: – if he has not seen it, he will look for it now, & he will find there all that he found in the former publication & more. I have shown it to many persons & in no one instance have I been disappointed of seeing it produce the effect which I expected. I have a friend with me now whom I had not seen since we parted at College, eight & twenty years ago – xxx <tho> our occasional communication by letter had never been interrupted. We parted xxx just as mere commencing men, in youth & xxx with the world before us, – & we meet just at that time of life when age & decay are beginning to make themselves felt. You can better feel what the feelings of such a meeting are, than I could express them. I should not have recognized him so much is he changed: he says he should have known me any where. We have been comparing notes, & find our hearts & views just as much in unison as they were when we, literally, lived together at college, – for we breakfasted together every morning, read together, & past every evening together. In this respect I have been peculiarly fortunate, that most of my friendships have been formed for eternity, & grown stronger as they have grown older.

There is a very bad translation of Herman & Dorothea by Holcroft,

but it would show you the plan of the poem. The original I am told is a piece of finished versification: the translation is meant for blank verse by a man who was no poet & did not even understand the common rules of metre.

You mention Shelley. – I should like to show you some letters which past between that wretched man & me about two years ago.

He came to this place with his wife immediately after his marriage.

I saw a great deal of him then, & hoped that he would outgrow the insane opinions which had held <their root>, as I then thought, in mere ignorance not in a corrupted heart & will. And I know a great deal of his accursed history since.

How are you? & what are you doing? – I have been very much out of order. A cold which comes regularly every year with the summer & continues ten or twelve weeks, has this year attacked my chest; & tho materially better I cannot yet say that it is fairly dislodged. I shall soon have a volume of the Peninsular War

abroad; a noble story, which will set foul tongues railing, while it makes sound hearts throb with generous emotions. My Book of the Church

will speedily follow it.