Alphonse de LAMARTINE (1790–1869). Autograph letter, February 27, [1825, to Urbain Canel]; 2 pages, small in-4. Regarding the Last Cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (Paris: Dondey-Dupré, Ponthieu, 1825). He is making “other arrangements concerning Childe Harold.” It would be impossible for me to give it to anyone else, and indeed, had it been for anyone other than you, I would have done so all the more willingly. If you publish a new edition of the *Meditations* and would like three hundred lines to add to it—including the epistle to Mr. Delavigne and some corrections—I will provide them to you for one thousand francs, as we had agreed. […] rest assured that this interruption in our business dealings will in no way alter the feelings I hold for you.” He expresses his gratitude for the “beautiful odes” by Édouard d’Anglemont, a beautiful Gospel, and *La Fiancée de Bénarès* by Philarète Chasles: “The verses exceeded my expectations, but the author could have spared me the offensive remark he directs at me in his preface. It is not for us poets to judge one another; that is for the public and the passage of time.” Enclosed is a letter (incomplete at the end), Saint-Point, May 19 [1825, to the Marquise de Montcalm?] (2 pp., 8vo) on “the fate of that poor Childe Harold,” with Lamartine expressing concern over the silence of the newspapers and his friends: “May God grant that it be better received than its predecessor [The Death of Socrates] and better than that wretched piece of circumstance and half-hearted conscience, *Le Sacre*, which deserves nothing but oblivion.” He is in the countryside, “in financial straits of which I had long since forgotten the taste since the follies of my youth”…