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LETTERS TO LEIGH HUNT.[1]

Letter I.

Lyons, March 22, 1818.

My dear Friend,—Why did you not wake me that night before we left England, you and Marianne? I take this as rather an unkind piece of kindness in you; but which, in consideration of the six hundred miles between us, I forgive.

We have journeyed towards the spring that has been hastening to meet us from the south; and though our weather was at first abominable, we have now warm sunny days, and soft winds, and a sky of deep azure, the most serene I ever saw. The heat in this city to-day, is like that of London in the midst of summer. My spirits and health sympathize in the change. Indeed, before I left London, my spirits were as feeble as my health, and I had demands upon them which I found difficult to supply. I have read Foliage:—with most of the poems I was already familiar. What a delightful poem the "Nymphs" is! especially the second part. It is truly poetical in the intense and emphatic sense of the word. If six hundred miles were not between us, I should say what pity that glib was not omitted, and that the poem is not as faultless as it is beautiful. But for fear I should spoil your next poem, I will not let slip a word on the subject. Give my love to Marianne and her sister, and

  1. Originally printed by Leigh Hunt in his work on Lord Byron and some of his Contemporaries, 1828; afterwards included by Mrs. Shelley in her collection of Shelley's Letters from Abroad.—Ed.