I'll try
no such thing; I hate tasks. And then 'seven or eight years'! God send
us all well this day three months, let alone years. If one's years
can't be better employed than in sweating poesy, a man had better be a
ditcher. And works, too!--is _Childe Harold_ nothing? You have so many
'_divine_' poems, is it nothing to have written a _human_ one? without
any of your worn-out machinery. Why, man, I could have spun the
thoughts of the four cantos of that poem into twenty, had I wanted to
book-make, and its passion into as many modern tragedies. Since you
want _length_, you shall have enough of _Juan_, for I'll make fifty
cantos....
Besides, I mean to write my best work in _Italian_, and it will take
me nine years more thoroughly to master the language; and then if my
fancy exist, and I exist too, I will try what I _can_ do _really_. As
to the estimation of the English which you talk of, let them
calculate what it is worth, before they insult me with their insolent
condescension.
I have not written for their pleasure. If they are pleased, it is that
they chose to be so; I have never flattered their opinions, nor their
pride; nor will I. Neither will I make 'Ladies' books' '_al dilettar
le femine e la plebe_'. I have written from the fullness of my mind,
from passion, from impulse, from many motives, but not for their
'sweet voices'.
I know the precise worth of popular applause, for few scribblers have
had more of it; and if I chose to swerve into their paths, I could
retain it, or resume it.
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