"I see somebody represents the Hunts and Mrs. Shelley as living in my house: it is a falsehood. They reside at some distance, and I do not see them twice in a month. I have not met Mr. Hunt a dozen times since I came to Genoa, or near it.
"I had sent you back the Quarterly, without perusal, having resolved to read no more reviews, good, bad, or indifferent; but 'who can control his fate?' Galignani, to whom my English studies are confined, has forwarded a copy of at least one half of it in his indefatigable catch-penny weekly compilation; and as, 'like honour, it came unlooked for,' I have looked through it. I must say that, upon the _whole_, that is, the whole of the _half_ which I have read (for the other half is to be the segment of Galignani's next week's circular), it is extremely handsome, and any thing but unkind or unfair. As I take the good in good part, I must not, nor will not, quarrel with the bad. What the writer says of Don Juan is harsh, but it is inevitable. He must follow, or at least not directly oppose, the opinion of a prevailing, and yet not very firmly seated, party. A Review may and will direct and 'turn awry' the currents of opinion, but it must not directly oppose them. Don Juan will be known by and by, for what it is intended,--a _Satire_ on _abuses_ of the present states of society, and not an eulogy of vice. It may be now and then voluptuous: I can't help that. Ariosto is worse; Smollett (see Lord Strutwell in vol. 2d of Roderick Random) ten times worse; and Fielding no better. No girl will ever be seduced by reading Don Juan:--no, no; she will go to Little's poems and Rousseau's _romans_ for that, or even to the immaculate De Staël. They will encourage her, and not the Don, who laughs at that, and--and--most other things. But never mind--_ça irà!_
"Now, do you see what you and your friends do by your injudicious rudeness?--actually cement a sort of connection which you strove to prevent, and which, had the Hunts _prospered_, would not in all probability have continued. As it is, I will not quit them in their adversity, though it should cost me character, fame, money, and the usual _et cetera_.
"My original motives I already explained (in the letter which you thought proper to show): they are the _true_ ones, and I abide by them, as I tell you, and I told Leigh Hunt when he questioned me on the subject of that letter. He was violently hurt, and never will forgive me at bottom; but I can't help that. I never meant to make a parade of it; but if he chose to question me, I could only answer the plain truth: and I confess I did not see any thing in the letter to hurt him, unless I said he was 'a bore,' which I don't remember. Had their Journal gone on well, and I could have aided to make it better for them, I should then have left them, after my safe pilotage off a lee shore, to make a prosperous voyage by themselves. As it is, I can't, and would not, if I could, leave them among the breakers.