Page:Shelley, a poem, with other writings (Thomson, Debell).djvu/97



8th Feby. 1872.



R. BRADLAUGH has forwarded me your letter of the 4th inst., and I know not how to thank you for your very generous expression of approval of the Weddah and Om-el-Bonain. In sending you this piece I had indeed some slight hope of obtaining the verdict of so distinguished and competent a judge; but I chiefly intended it as a sort of apology for my very inadequate notice in the National Reformer last March of your popular edition of Shelley, written at the request of my friend Mr. Bradlaugh when I had no leisure for anything like a fair attempt to examine and discuss that work properly. Feeling not at all contented with such treatment of Shelley and yourself, I was anxious to show that your too off-hand critic was nevertheless a genuine lover of the poet to whom you have devoted so much worthy labour, and a serious student of poetry. To clear up your doubt permit me to state that no living writer can have much less reputation than myself, who am simply known to some readers of the National