I can no more understand Shelley than you can; his poetry is "thin sown with profit or delight. " Yet I must point to your notice a sonnet conceived and expressed with a witty delicacy. It is that addressed to one who hated him, but who could not persuade him to hate _him_ again. His coyness to the other's passion -- for hate demands a return as much as love, and starves without it -- is most arch and pleasant. Pray, like it very much. For his theories and nostrums, they are oracular enough, but I either comprehend 'em not, or there is "miching malice" and mischief in 'em, but, for the most part, ringing with their own emptiness. Hazlitt said well of 'em: "Many are the wiser and better for reading Shakspeare, but nobody was ever wiser or better for reading Shelley. " I wonder you will sow your correspondence on so barren a ground as I am, that make such poor returns. But my head aches at the bare thought of letter-writing.
I wish all the ink in the ocean dried up, and would listen to the quills shivering up in the candle flame, like parching martyrs. The same indisposition to write it is has stopped my "Elias; " but you will see a futile effort in the next number, [1] "wrung from me with slow pain. " The fact is, my head is seldom cool enough. I am dreadfully indolent. To have to do anything -- to order me a new coat, for instance, though my old buttons are shelled like beans -- is an effort. My pen stammers like my tongue. What cool craniums those old inditers of folios must have had, what a mortified pulse! Well, once more I throw myself on your mercy. Wishing peace in thy new dwelling,
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