Livorno, September 3rd, 1819.
My dear Friend,—At length has arrived Ollier's parcel, and with it the portrait. What a delightful present! It is almost yourself, and we sate talking with it, and of it, all the evening. . . . It is a great pleasure to us to possess it, a pleasure in a time of need; coming to us when there are few others. How we wish it were you, and not your picture! How I wish we were with you!
This parcel, you know, and all its letters, are now a year old; some older. There are all kinds of dates,from March to August, 1818, and "your date," to use Shakespeare's expression, "is better in a pie or a pudding, than in your letter." "Virginity," Parolles says,—but letters are the same thing in another shape.
With it came, too, Lamb's Works. I have looked at none of the other books yet. What a lovely thing is his "Rosamond Gray!" how much knowledge of the sweetest and deepest part of our nature in it! When I think of such a mind as Lamb's,—when I see how unnoticed remain things of such exquisite and complete perfection, what should I hope for myself, if I had not higher objects in view than fame?
I have seen too little of Italy and of pictures. Perhaps Peacock has shown you some of my letters to him. But at Rome I was very ill, seldom able to go out without a carriage; and though I kept horses for two months there, yet there is so much to see! Perhaps I attended more to sculpture than painting,—its forms being more easily intelligible than those of the latter. Yet I saw the famous works of Raphael, whom I agree with the whole world in thinking the finest painter. Why, I can tell you another time. With respect to Michael Angelo, I dissent, and think with astonishment and indignation on the common notion that he equals, and in some respects exceeds
