was, without any difficulty, acceded to, and the firm agreed, before we separated, that I was to receive three thousand guineas for my Poem.

At the time of this agreement, but little of the work, as it stands at present, had yet been written. But the ready confidence in my success shown by others made up for the deficiency of that requisite feeling within myself; while a strong desire not wholly to disappoint this "auguring hope" became almost a substitute for inspiration. In the year 1815, therefore, having made some progress in my task, I wrote to report the state of the work to the Messrs. Longman, adding, that I was now most willing and ready, should they desire it, to submit the manuscript for their consideration. Their answer to this offer was as follows: "We are certainly impatient for the perusal of the Poem; but solely for our gratification. Your sentiments are always honorable."

66

I continued to pursue my task for another year, being likewise occasionally occupied with the "Irish Melodies," two or three numbers of which made their appearance during the period employed in writing Lalla Rookh." At length, in the year 1816, I found my work sufficiently advanced to be placed in the hands of the publishers. But the state of distress to which England was reduced, in that dismal year, by the exhausting effects of the series of wars she had just then concluded, and the general embarrassment of all classes both agricultural and

commercial, rendered it a juncture the least favorable that could well be conceived for the first launch into print of so light and costly a venture as "Lalla Rookh." Feeling conscious, therefore, that under such circumstances I should act but honestly in putting it in the power of the Messrs. Longman to reconsider the terms of their engagement with me, - leaving them free to postpone, modify, or even, should such be their wish, relinquish it altogether, -I wrote them a letter to that effect, and received the following answer: "We shall be most happy in the pleasure of seeing you in February. We agree with you, indeed, that the times are most inauspicious for poetry and thousands; but we believe that your poetry would do more than that of any other living poet at the present moment."

nings of several stories continued, some of them, to the length of three or four hundred lines, which, after in vain endeavoring to mould them into shape, I threw aside, like the tale of Cambuscan, "left half-told." One of these stories, entitled "The Peri's Daughter," was meant to relate the loves of a nymph of this aërial extraction with a youth of mortal race, the rightful Prince of Ormuz, who had been, from his infancy, brought up in seclusion on the banks of the river Amou, by an aged guardian named Mohassan. The story opens with the first meeting of these destined lovers, then in their childhood; the Peri having wafted her daughter to this holy retreat, in a bright, enchanted boat, whose first appearance is thus described:

:

For, down the silvery tide afar,
There came a boat, as swift and bright,

As shines, in heaven, some pilgrim-star,
That leaves its own high home, at night,
To shoot to distant shrines of light.

'It comes, it comes,' young Orian cries,
And panting to Mohassan flies.
Then, down upon the flowery grass
Reclines to see the vision pass;
With partly joy and partly fear,
To find its wondrous light so near,

commercial, rendered it a juncture the least favorable that could well be conceived for the first launch into print of so light and costly a venture as "Lalla Rookh." Feeling conscious, therefore, that under such circumstances I should act but honestly in putting it in the power of the Messrs. Longman to reconsider the terms of their engagement with me, — leaving them free to postpone, modify, or even, should such be their wish, relinquish it altogether, -I wrote them a letter to that effect, and received the following answer: "We shall be most happy in the pleasure of seeing you in February. We agr with you, indeed, that the times are most inaus cious for poetry and thousands;' but we believe that your poetry would do more than that of an other living poet at the present moment."

The length of time I employed in writing the stories strung together in "Lalla Rookh appear, to some persons, much more than cessary for the production of such easy and love "fictions. But, beside I have

times, a far more slow

than would ever be gu

I felt that in this inst

a more than ordin take riske