human
as the proverb goes, were trying to trample upon me, was something still higher to my self-esteem--I allude to the _Quarterly Review_ of the Third Canto of
gpt
Childe Harold, which Murray told me was written by you--and, indeed, I should have known it without his information, as there could not be two who could and would have done this at the time. Had it been a common criticism, however eloquent or panegyrical, I should have felt pleased, undoubtedly, and grateful, but not to the extent which the extraordinary good-heartedness of the whole proceeding must induce in any mind capable of such sensations. The very tardiness of this acknowledgment will, at least, show that I have not forgotten the obligation; and I can assure you that my sense of it has been out at compound interest during the delay. I shall only add one word upon the subject, which is, that I think that you, and Jeffrey, and Leigh Hunt, were the only literary men, of numbers whom I know (and some of whom I had served), who dared venture even an anonymous word in my favor just then: and that, of those three, I had never seen one at all--of the second much less than I desired--and that the third was under no kind of obligation to me whatever; while the other two had been actually attacked by me on a former occasion; one, indeed, with some provocation, but the other wantonly enough. So you see you have been heaping
human
The Foscarini to you instead; but, first, I heard that
gpt
Cain was thought the least bad of the two as a composition; and, secondly, I have abused Southey like a pickpocket, in a note to
human
The Foscarini, and I recollected that he is a friend of yours (tho not of mine), and that it would not be the handsome thing to dedicate to one friend anything containing such matters about another. However, I'll work the Laureate before I have done therefor. I like a row, and always did from a boy, in the course of which propensity, I must needs say, that I have found it the most easy of all to be gratified, personally and poetically. You disclaim
gpt
; but I would ask, as Boswell did of Johnson,
human
--of none of the living certainly, and (taking all and all into consideration) of which of the dead? I don't like to bore you about the Scotch novels (as they call them, tho two of them are wholly English, and the rest half so), but nothing can or could ever persuade me, since I was the first ten minutes in your company, that you are not the man. To me those novels have so much of
gpt
Auld lang syne