Item 31 - Notebook without cover

Notebook with cover missing. 78 ff; central bifolium loose.

List of writers, and their works on classical themes, over seven pages. Part draft of "Epimetheus" [published in "Beelzebub and other poems"; draft verse 'When I was young, I searched out happiness'; draft verse on Orpheus. Draft version of "Meleager". Draft version of "Helen" [published in "Poems and Fables"].

Notebook also used from other end in: list headed 'Dialogues' on front page; this is very faint but seems to include 'Parnapishtim' and so may be a scheme for "The Sumerian Deluge". Quote on Aristotle from Diogenes Laertius, in Ancient Greek. Draft of "Moses and the Shepherd" [published in "The Deluge and other poems"].

Draft letter to unknown recipient apologising for a previous letter, for 'disregarding... feelings' and putting his 'own desires first'. Wants 'first of all to do what is right and just, both towards you and myself and others'; hopes this will also lead to a 'better and happier relation' between the two of them, but this should be secondary. Will not try to 'take advantage of your friendliness' when they see each other, nor try to do so more often than his correspondent wants, which he will find hardest. Realises he 'must act differently', but his 'affection for you cannot change, though it may take a more reasonable form'. Hopes that he will therefore come in time 'to be no longer an obsession to you, as I now am'. Hopes that 'what passed on Saturday' will not lead his correspondent to think that he did not mean what he said in his letters of a few days before; thinks it was misunderstanding and 'unfortunate circumstances' which caused his correspondent's anger.

Essay on poetry and poetics. Essay on Theocritus, with a translation of "Idyll" 17 and transcription of Macaulay's notes on "Idyll" 3.