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By Root 16881 0

to know what he had written of certain >>persons<< <(indecipherable, one word of 2 characters) principal characters> lest he should be betrayed with a display of friendliness that would have been very ill received.

Was it a part of my evil-fortune that prevented me from turning over the nos. of the Journal at the publishers & thus led me into the irretrievable error of calling, as an alleged friend in letters (though an unknown one), as a man who if not my literary foe was at least in league with them who were such? Yet I am not afraid to say to you, that I feel not so much mortification from this innocent error, as melancholy in finding still another of my pleasant delusions vanish, What object (if any) has Heaven in separting (separating) >>f<< me from all the world, when I have the heart to love all the world? (This, remember, is not the rhapsody of a romantic boy, but the utterance of a serious & often-recurring thought, without the least passion, by a man who in five days will enter his 36th year:) not one man in the world who will suffer me to love him, or who will have the heart to give me the smallest portion of affection & sympathy, and not, saving my mother (who cannot sympathize with me, & who has, as a mother, kindred affections,) not one woman, young or old! Absolutely and terribly alone — with a head full of muttered thoughts, and a heart fuller still >> — <<; for — you may smile to hear it (& well you may, since what concern is it of yours?) — should I die to-morrow & anybody there is worth while to notice, at some future day, my obscure career, I should be seen only as a coldblooded satirist! Yet God, and the Angel-spirits of my dead sisters know that my heart is ten times >>fuller than<< better than my head — for while I find other men as gifted in talent as myself, I find none so prone to love, & none (it is a big word; but it shall out) none so honest — But a truce to an egotism which nothing could excuse but the singularity of my visit to you, — a visit so entirely misplaced and so oddly delusion; for, while >>were<< we were exchanging the most sugared compliments, and I had opined that I, a gentleman-poet I had ever believed myself & an honorable writer, and conversing with an admired brother-bard, I held in my hand the printed certificate under the latter’s sanctions, circulated among thousands, was but a hog in letters & the mere pilferer & sophisticator (waterer) of swill that was stronger in an older trough (the image is not nice; but that is no fault of mine; I cannot help people & partialities.) The companions of Ulysses could not have been more astonished when they woke to their new condition than I was at this sudden literary — metamorphosis; & very sure am I that not the best of them could have grunted (the bestiality again is not mine) to a (portion cut out by the removal of the signature on the back of the page) of the hand that has brought the (missing portion, losing the end of the final sentence of this paragraph.)

Our former positions towards each other must now be restored: as I sought yr. acquaintance under the impressn (impression) that you were one of my truest defenders, I cannot of course profit by what was so mere a mistake. With what sadness this is said you may conceive, when I assure you, without the least reluctance, that had I had the choice, of all the literary men of my country there is none, with the exception of the author of Ferdinand & Isaba (Isabella), whose friendship I should have preferred to yours. The want of >>of<< it will make no difference in my estimation of the author, & I am still reading your “Tales” with unalloyed satisfaction. Not was it without gratification that, in the very >>page<< no. of yr. mag. (magazine) where I met with such an outrage to my feelings as a gentleman & an honest man (as a writer a thousand such squibs and now (illegible) , for they prove & attempt to prove, nothing), I can assure you (illegible) to (illegible), which I shall be at, & have (illegible) , >>with the Raven<< & recognized by new acquaintance Lionizing,