27 



All my searches to-day for the separate impression 

 of the Essay were fruitless. I have not even, I find, 

 the special volume of the Academy for 1822, as I 

 was then living in Paris. But this I will bring you 

 in a few days. I will also show you the list of all 

 my brother's posthumous works, which I have been 

 at some pains to prepare, and which you, perhaps, 

 will enlarge. Cotta will print them all, as well as the 

 eight hundred sonnets and the religious poems from 

 Spain, which are also as yet unprinted. I work with 

 pious devotion at the arrangements for this Edition, so 

 that I may die in peace before its completion. 



How could I ever have suspected you, dear friend, 

 of wanting to exhibit me at the excellent Princess's, 

 to make a Sontag of me, in fact (after the precedent 

 adopted in the drawing-room of the Princess Belgio- 

 joso) ! I shall be happy to lecture to a small circle of 

 from twelve to fifteen persons, certainly not otherwise, 

 because Berlin is a little, illiterate, and over- spiteful 

 town, and would call it absurd if I were to have a 

 third performance, after already having had two, unfor- 

 tunately so public ; and, besides that, I am happily no 

 Sontag in Berlin, and the lecture can, therefore, be 

 very properly kept a secret de comedie. "You will be 

 charitable enough to treat the matter in my view of 

 it, and not to blame me. 



With all respect, yours, 



A. v. H. 



