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thence, authorizing his installation, prescribed, as part of and if false, there are no words for him. repeat to you the pageant, a coach and four horses.' To show how very that the original was burnt before you on your assurance, 'German to the matter' this was, you have only to suppose and there never was a copy, nor even a verbal repetition,our parliament commanding the Archbishop of Canterbury very much to the discomfort of some zealous Whigs, who to proceed from Hyde Park Corner to St. Paul's Cathe-bored me for them (having heard it bruited by Mr. Davies dral in the Lord Mayor's barge, or the Margate hoy. that there were such matters) to no purpose; for, having There is but St. Mark's Place in all Venice broad enough written them solely with the notion that Mr. Croker was for a carriage to move, and it is paved with large smooth fing stones, so that the chariot and horses of Elijah himself would be puzzled to manœuvre upon it. Those of Pharaoh might do better; for the canals, and particularly the Grand Canal, are sufficiently capacious and extensive for his whole host. Of course, no coach could be attempted; but the Venetians who are very naïve as well as arch, were much amused with the ordinance.

the aggressor, and for my own and not party reprisals, I would not lend me to the zeal of any sect when I was made aware that he was not the writer of the offensive passages. You know, if there was such a thing, I would not deny it. I mentioned it openly at the time to you, and you will remember why and where I destroyed it; and no power nor wheedling on earth should have made, or could make me, (if 1 recollected them,) give a copy after that, unless I "The Armenian Grammar is published; but my Arme-was well assured that Mr. Croker was really the author of man studies are suspended for the present till my head that which you assured me he was not. aches a little less. I sent you the other day, in two covers, the First Act of 'Manfred, a drama as mad as Nat. Lee's Bedlam tragedy, which was in 25 acts and some odd scenes: mine is but in Three Acts.

"I find I have begun this letter at the wrong end: never mind; I must end it, then, at the right.

"Yours ever very truly
"and obligedly, &c."

LETTER CCCXXII.

TO MR. MURRAY.

"Venice, March 9, 1817.

In remitting the Third Act* of the sort of dramatic poem of which you will by this time have received the first two, (at least I hope so,) which were sent within the last three weeks, I have little to observe, except that you must not publish it (if it ever is published) without giving me previous notice. I have really and truly no notion whether it is good or bad; and as this was not the case with the principal of my former publications, I am, therefore, inclined to rank it very humbly. You will submit it to Mr. Gifford, and to whomsoever you please besides. With regard to the question of copyright, (if it ever comes to publication,) I do not know whether you would think three hundred guineas an over-estimate; if you do, you may diminish it: I do not think it worth more; so you may see I make some difference between it and the others.

"I intend for England this spring, where I have so:ne affairs to adjust; but the post hurries me. For this month past I have been unwell, but am getting better, and thinking of moving homewards towards May, without going to Rome, as the unhealthy season comes on soon, and I can return when I have settled the business I go upon, which need not be long. **** I should have thought the Assyrian tales very succeedable.

"I saw, in Mr. W. W.'s poetry, that he had written my epitaph; I would rather have written his.

"The thing I have sent you, you will see at a glimpse, could never be attempted or thought of for the stage; I much doubt it for publication even. It is too much in my old style; but I composed it actually with a horror of the stage, and with a view to render the thought of it imprac ticable, knowing the zeal of my friends that I should try that for which I have an invincible repugnance, viz. a re presentation.

"I certainly am a devil of a mannerist, and must leave off; but what could I do? Without exertion of some kind, I should have sunk under my imagination and reality. My best respects to Mr. Gifford, to Walter Scott, and to all friends. "Yours ever"

LETTER CCCXXIII.

TO MR. MOORE.

"Venice, March 10, 1817. "I wrote again to you lately, but I hope you won't he

"I have received your two Reviews, (but not the 'Tales of My Landlord;') the Quarterly I acknowledged particularly to you, on its arrival, ten days ago. What you tell sorry to have another epistle. I have been unwell this last month, with a kind of slow and low fever, which fixes upon me of Perry petrifies me; it is a rank imposition. In or about February or March, 1816, I was given to understand me at night, and goes off in the morning; but, however, I we may meet; at that Mr. Croker was not only a coadjutor in the attacks am now better. In spring it is probable least I intend for England, where I have business and of the Courier in 1814, but the author of some lines tolerably ferocious, then recently published in a morning paper.laurels. hope to meet you in your restored health and additional Upon this I wrote a reprisal. The whole of the lines I have forgotten, and even the purport of them I scarcely When I tell you that Walter Scott is the author of the "Murray has sent me the Quarterly and the Edinburgh. remember; for on your assuring me that he was not, &c. &c. I put them into the fire before your face, and there never was but that one rough copy. Mr. Davies, the only person who ever heard them read, wanted a copy, which I refused. If, however, by some impossibility, which I cannot divine, the ghost of these rhymes should walk into the world, I never will deny what I have really written, but held myself personally responsible for satisfaction, though I reserve to myself the right of disavowing all or any fabri cations. To the previous facts you are a witness, and best know how far my recapitulation is correct; and I request that you will inform Mr. Perry from me, that I wonder he should permit such an abuse of my name in his paper; I say an abuse, because my absence, at least, demands some respect, and my presence and positive sauction could alone justify him in such a proceeding, even were the lines mine;

• Sou Poems, p. 470.

article in the former, you will agree with me that such an article is still more honourable to him than to myself. I am perfectly pleased with Jeffrey's also, which I wish you to tell him, with my remembrances-not that I suppose it is of any consequence to him, or ever could have been, whether I am pleased or not, but simply in my private relation to him, as his well-wisher, and it may be one day as his acquaintance. I wish you would also add,-what you know, that I was not, and, indeed, am not even now, but a facetious companion, well to do with those with the misanthropical and gloomy gentleman he takes me for, whom I am intimate, and as loquacious and laughing as if I were a much cleverer fellow.

"I suppose now I shall never be able to shake off my sables in public imagination, more particularly since my moral clove down my fame. However, nor that, nor more than that, has yet extinguished my spirit, luch always rises with the rebound.

"At Venice we are in Lent, and I have not lately moved 'dens of thieves; and here they but pause and pass. In out of doors, my feverishness requiring quiet,-and-by Switzerland it was really noxious. Luckily, I was eariv way of being more quiet-here is the Signora Marianua and had got the prettiest place on all the Lake before thev just come in and seated at iny elbow. were quickened into motion with the rest of reptiles. Bur they crossed me every where. I met a family of children and old women half way up the Wengen Alp (by the Jungfrau) upon mules, some of them too old and others too young to be the least aware of what they saw.

Have you seen' ***'s book of poesy? and, if you have seen it, are you not delighted with it? And have you-I really cannot go on. There is a pair of great black eyes looking over my shoulder, like the angel leaning over St. Matthew's, in the old frontispieces to the Evangelists,-so that I must turn and answer then instead of you.

LETTER CCCXXIV.

TO MR. MOORE.

"Ever, &c."

"By-the-way, I think the Jungfrau, and all that rega of Alps, which I traversed in September-going to the very top of the Wengen, which is not the highest, (the Jungfrau itself is inaccessible,) but the best point of viewmuch finer than Mont Blanc and Chamouni, or the Sim

plon. I kept a journal of the whole for my sister Augusta part of which she copied and let Murray see.

"I wrote a sort of mad Drama, for the sake of intro ducing the Alpine scenery in description; and this I sent "Venice, March 25, 1817. lately to Murray. Almost all the dram. pers, are spirits, "I have at last learned, in default of your own writing, ghosts, or magicians, and the scene is in the Alps and the (or not writing-which should it be 1 for I am not very other world; so you may suppose what a bedlam tragedy clear as to the application of the word default,) from Mur- it must be: make him show it you. I sent him all three ray, two particulars of (are belonging to) you; one, that acts piecemeal, by the post, and suppose they have arrived. you are removing to Hornsey, which is, I presume, to be "I have now written to you at least six letters, or letternearer London; and the other, that your Poem is an ets, and all I have received in return is a note about the nounced by the name of Lalla Rookh. I am glad of it,-length you used to write from Bury-street to St. James'sfirst, that we are to have it at last, and next, I like a tough street, when we used to dine with Rogers, and talk laxly title myself-witness the Giaour and Childe Harold, which and go to parties, and hear poor Sheridan now and then. choked half the Blues at starting. Besides, it is the tail of Do you remember one night he was so tipsy that I was Alcibiades's dog,-not that I suppose you want either dog forced to put his cocked hat on for him,—for he could not, or tail. Talking of tail, I wish you had not called it a-and I let him down at Brookes's, much as he must since 'Persian Tale. Say a 'Poem' or 'Romance,' but not have been let down into his grave. Heigh ho! I wish I 'Tale.' I am very sorry that I called some of my own was drunk-but I have nothing but this d-d barley water things Tales, because I think that they are something before me. better. Besides, we have had Arabian, and Hindoo, and "I am still in love,-which is a dreadful drawback in Turkish, and Assyrian Tales. But after all, this is quitting a place, and I can't stay at Venice much longer. frivolous in me; you won't, however, mind my nonsense. What I shall do on this point I don't know. The girl "Really and truly, I want you to make a great hit, if means to go with me, but I do not like this for her own only out of self-love, because we happen to be old cronies; sake. I have had so many conflicts in my own nind on and I have no doubt you will-I am sure you can But this subject, that I am not at all sure they did not help me you are, I'll be sworn, in a devil of a pucker; and I am not to the fever I mentioned above. I am certainly very much at your elbow, and Rogers is. I envy him; which is not attached to her, and I have cause to be so, if you knew all. fair, because he does not envy any body. Mind you send But she has a child; and though, like all the 'children of to me—that is, make Murray send-the moment you are the sun,' she consults nothing but passion, it is necessary | forth. should think for both; and it is only the virtuous, like 'I have been very ill with a slow fever, which at last✶✶✶✶, who can afford to give up husband and child, and took to flying, and became as quick as need be. But, at live happy ever after.

length, after a week of half-delirium, burning skin, thirst, "The Italian ethics are the most singular ever met with. hot headach, horrible puisation, and no sleep, by the blessing The perversion, not only of action, but of reasoning, is sinof barley water, and refusing to see any physician, I reco-gular in the women. It is not that they do not consider vered. It is an epidemic of the place, which is annual, and the thing itself as wrong, and very wrong, but love (the visits strangers. Here follow some versicles, which I made sentiment of love) is not merely an excuse for it, but makes ne sleepless night.

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"I have not the least idea where I am going, nor what I am to do. I wished to have gone to Rome; but at present it is pestilent with English,-a parcel of staring boobies, who go about gaping and wishing to be at once cheap and inagnificent. A man is a fool who travels now in France o Italy, till this tribe of wretches is swept home again. In two or three years the first rush will be over, and the Continent will be roomy and agreeable.

"I stayed at Venice chiefly because it is not one of their

it an actual virtue, provided it is disinterested, and not a
caprice, and is confined to one object. They have awful
notions of constancy; for I have seen some ancient figures
of eighty pointed out as amorosi of forty, fifty, and sixty
years' standing. I can't say I have ever seen a husband
and wife so coupled.
"Ever, &c.

"P. S. Marianna, to whom I have just translated what I have written on our subject to you, says-'If you loved me thoroughly, you would not make so many fine reflections, which are only good forbirsi i scarpi,'-that is, 'to clean shoes withal,-a Venetian proverb of appreciation, which is applicable to reasoning of all kinds."

LETTER CCCXXV.

TO MR. MURRAY.

"Venice, March 25, 1817. "Your letter and enclosure are safe; but 'English gen tlemen' are very rare at least in Venice. I doubt whether there are at present any save the consul and vice-consul, with neither of whom I have the slightest acquaintance The moment I can pounce upon a witness, I will send the

leed properly signed: but must he necessarily be genteel? formal circle, in short, a worst sort of rout, I did not go again Venice is not a place where the English are gregarious; I went to Academie and to Madame Albrizzi's, where I their pigeon-houses are Florence, Naples, Rome, &c.; saw pretty much the same thing, with the addition of some and to tell you the truth, this was one reason why I stayed literati, who are the same blue,* by ——, all the world over. here till the season of the purgation of Rome from these I fell in love the first week with Madame **, and I have people, which is infected with them at this time, should ar- continued so ever since, because she is very pretty and tive. Besides, I abhor the nation and the nation me; it is pleasing, and talks Venetian, which ainuses me, and is impossible for me to describe my own sensation on that naïve. I have seen all their spectacles and sights; but I point, but it may suffice to say, that, if I met with any of do not know any thing very worthy of observation, except the race in the beautiful parts of Switzerland, the most that the women kiss better than those of any other nation, distant glimpse or aspect of them poisoned the whole which is notorious, and attributed to the worship of images scene, and I do not choose to have the Pantheon, and St. and the early habit of osculation induced thereby. Peter's, and the Capitol, spoiled for me too. This feeling may be probably owing to recent events; but it does not exist the less, and while it exists, I shall conceal it as little as any other.

"I have been seriously ill with a fever, but it is gone. I believe or suppose it was the indigenous fever of the place, which comes every year at this time, and of which the physicians change the name annually, to despatch the people sooner. It is a kind of typhus, and kills occasionally. It was pretty smart, but nothing particular, and has left me some debility and a great appetite. There are a good| many ill at present, I suppose of the same.

-I feel sorry for Horner, if there was any thing in the world to make him like it and still more sorry for his friends, as there was much to make them regret him. I had not heard of his death till by your letter.

Some weeks ago I wrote to you my acknowledgments of Walter Scott's article. Now I know it to be his, it cannot add to my good opinion of him, but it adds to that of myself. He, and Gifford, and Moore are the only regulars I ever knew who had nothing of the garrison about their manner: no nonsense, nor affectations, look you! As for! the rest whom I have known, there was always more or ess of the author about them-the pen peeping from bebind the ear, and the thumbs a little inky or so.

"Very truly, &c. "P. S. Pray send the red tooth-powder by a safe hans and speedily. *+

"To hook the reader, you, John Murray,

Have published Anjou's Margaret,'
Which won't be sold off in a hurry,

(At least, it has not been as yet ;)
And then, still farther to bewilder 'em,
Without remorse you set up Ilderim ;'

So mind you don't get into debt,
Because as how, if you should fail,
These books would be but baddish bail.
"And mind you do not let escape

These rhymes to Morning Post or Perry,
Which would be very treacherous-very,
And get me into such a scrape!

For, firstly, I should have to sally,
All in my little boat, against a Galley;
And, should I chance to slay the Assyrian wight,
Have next to combat with the female knight,
And, prick'd to death, expire upon her needle→→
A sort of end which I should take indeed ill!

"You may show these matters to Moore and the select
do n't write to one now and then."
but not to the profane; and tell Moore, that I wonder he

LETTER CCCXXVI.

TO MR. MOORE.

"Lalla Rookh'-you must recollect that in the way of title, the Giaour has never been pronounced to this day; and both it and Childe Harold sounded very facetious to the bine-bottles of wit and humour about town, till they were taught and startled into a proper deportment; and "Venice, March 31, 1817. therefore Lalla Rookh, which is very orthodox and oriental, "You will begin to think my epistolary offerings (to is as good a title as need be, if not better. I could wish whatever altar you please to devote them) rather prodigal. rather that he had not called it 'a Persian Tale;' firstly, But until you answer I shall not abate, because you deserve because we have had Turkish Tales, and Hindoo Tales, no better. I know you are well, because I hear of your and Assyrian Tales already; and tale is a word of which voyaging to London and the environs, which I rejoice to it repents me to have nicknamed poesy. 'Fable' would learn, because your note alarmed me by the purgation and be better; and, secondly, 'Persian Tale' reminds one of phlebotomy therein prognosticated. I also hear of your the lines of Pope ca Ambrose Phillips; though no one can being in the press; all which, methinks, might have furnished say, to be sure, that this tale has been 'turned for half-a-you with subject matter for a middle-sized letter, considercrown; still it is as well to avoid such clashings. 'Persian ing that I am in foreign parts, and that the last month's Story-why not?-or Romance? I feel as anxious for advertisements and obituary would be absolute news to me Moore as I could do for myself, for the soul of me, and I from your Tramontane country. would not have him succeed otherwise than splendidly, ich I trust he will do.

"I told you, in my last, I have had a smart fever. There is an epidemic in the place; but I suspect, from the sympWith regard to the 'Witch Drama,' I sent all the three toms, that mine was a fever of my own, and had nothing acts by post, week after week, within this last month. I in common with the low, vulgar typhus, which is at this repeat that I have not an idea if it is good or bad. If bad, moment decimating Venice, and which has half-unpeopled it must, on no account, be risked in publication; if good, it | Milan, if the accounts be true. This malady has sorely is at your service. I value it at three hundred guineas, or discomfited my serving men, who want sadly to be gone less, if you like it. Perhaps, if published, the best way will be to add it to your winter volume, and not publish separately. The price will show you I don't pique myself upon t; so speak out. You may put it in the fire, if you like, and Gifford don't like.

The Armenian Grammar is published--that is, one; the other is still in MS. My illness has prevented me from moving this month past, and I have done nothing more with the Armenian.

away, and get me to remove. But, besides my natural perversity, I was seasoned in Turkey, by the contma' whispers of the plague, against apprehensions of contagion Besides which, apprehension would not prevent it: and then I am still in love, and forty thousand fevers should not make me stir before my minute, while under the influence of that paramount delirium. Seriously speaking.

• Whenever a word or passage occurs, (as in this instauce,, which .cre Byron would have pronounced emphatically in speaking, it appears, in handwriting, as if written with something of the same veherence

Moore.

•Of Italian or rather Lombard manners, I could tell you little or nothing: I went two or three times to the governor's conversazione, (and if you go once, you are free to gove already teen given in one of his letters to misel.-Moore. always,) at which, as I only saw very plain women, a

Here follow the same rhymes (“I read the Christabel," &c.)

1 Mr. Galey Kight, the author of Ilderim.

there is a malady wife in the city-a dangerous one, they say. However, mine did not appear so, though it was not pleasant.

"This is passion-week-and twilight-and all the world are at vespers. They have an eternal churching, as in all Catholic countries, but are not so bigoted as they seemed to be in Spain.

he was first crowned Doge, and subsequently decapitated.' This was the thing that most struck my imagination 13 Venice-more than the Rialto, which I visited for the sake of Shylock; and more, too, than Schiller's 'Armenian,' ■ novel which took a great hold of me when a boy. It is also called the 'Ghost Seer, and I never walked down St. Mark's by moonlight without thinking of it, and 'at nine o'clock he died!'-But I hate things all fiction; end there. fore the Merchant and Othello have no great associations to me: but Pierre has. There should always be some foundation of fact for the most airy fabric, and pure invention is but the talent of a liar.

"I don't know whether to be glad or sorry that you are leaving Mayfield. Had I ever been at Newstead during your stay there, (except during the winter of 1813-14, when the roads were impracticable,) we should have been within hail, and I should like to have made a giro of the Peak with you. I know that country well, having been all over it *Maturin's tragedy.-By your account of him last year when a boy. Was you ever ir Dovedale? I can assure to me, he seemed a bit of a coxcomb, personally. Poor you there are things in Derbyshire as noble as Greece or fellow! to be sure, he had had a long seasoning of adversity Switzerland. But you had always a lingering after Lon-which is not so hard to bear as t'other thing. I hope that don, and I don't wonder at it. I liked it as well as any this won't throw him back into the 'slough of Despond.' body myself, now and then. "You talk of 'marriage;'-ever since my own funeral the word makes me giddy, and throws me into a cold sweat. Pray, do n't repeat it.

Will you remember me to Rogers? whom I presume to be flourishing, and whom I regard as our poetical papa. You are his lawful son, and I the illegitimate. Has he begun yet upon Sheridan? If you see our republican friend, Leigh Hunt, pray present my remembrances. I saw about nine months ago that he was in a row (like my friend Hobhouse,) with the Quarterly Reviewers. For my part I never could understand these quarrels of authors with critics and with one another. 'For God's sake, gentlemen, what do they mean?"

"What think you of your countryman, Maturin? I take some credit to myself for having done my best to bring out Bertram; but I must say my colleagues were quite as ready and willing. Walter Scott, however, was the first who mentioned him, which he did to me, with great commendation, in 1815; and it is to this casualty, and two or three other accidents, that this very clever fellow owed his first and well-merited public success. What a chance is fame!

*Did I tell you that I have translated two Epistles?-a correspondence between St. Paul and the Corinthians, not to be found in our version, but the Armenian-but which seems to me very orthodox, and I have done it into scriptural prose English.* "Ever, &c."

LETTER CCCXXVII.

TO MB. MURRAY.

"Venice, April 2, 1817. "I sent you the whole of the Drama at three several times, act by act, in separate covers. I hope that you have, or will receive, some or the whole of it.

"So Love has a conscience.† By Diana! I shall make him take back the box, though it were Pandora's. The discovery of its intrinsic silver occurred on sending it to have the lid adapted to admit Marianna's portrait. Of course I had the box remitted in statu quo, and had the picture set in another, which suits it (the picture) very well. The defaulting box is not touched, hardly, and was not in the man's hands above an hour.

"I am aware of what you say of Otway; and am a very great admirer of his,-all except of that maudlin b-h of chaste lewdness and blubbering curiosity, Belvidera, whom I utterly despise, abhor, and detest. But the story of Marino Faliero is different, and, I think, so much finer, that I wish Otway had taken it instead: the head conspiring against the body for refusal of redress for a real injury, jealousy, treason,-with the more fixed and inveterate passions (mixed with policy,) of an old or elderly man the Devil himself could not have a finer subject, and he is your only tragic dramatist.

*

*

*

"There is sull, in the Doge's palace, the black veil painted over Faliero's picture, and the staircase whereon

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"Tell me that Walter Scott is better. I would not have him ill for the world. I suppose it was by sympathy that I had my fever at the same time.

"I joy in the success of your Quarterly, but I must stil stick by the Edinburgh; Jeffrey has done so by me, I must say, through every thing, and this is more than I deserved from him.-I have more than once acknowledged to you by letter the 'Article' (and articles;) say that you have received the said letters, as I do not otherwise know what letters arrive.-Both Reviews came, but nothing more M.'s play and the extract not yet come.

*

*

*

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"Write to say whether my Magician has arrived, with all his scenes, spells, &c. "Yours ever, &c. "It is useless to send to the Foreign-office: nothing clerk thinks it a tory duty to prevent it." arrives to me by that conveyance. I suppose some zealous

LETTER CCCXXVIII.

TO MR. ROGERS.

"Venice, April 4, 1817. "It is a considerable time since I wrote to you last, and I hardly know why I should trouble you now, except that I think you will not be sorry to hear from me now and then You and I were never correspondents, but always some thing better, which is, very good friends.

"I saw your friend Sharp in Switzerland, or rather in the German territory, (which is and is not Switzerland,) and he gave Hobhouse and me a very good route for the Bernese Alps; however, we took another from a German and went by Clarens, the Dent de Jaman to Montbovon and through Simmenthal to Thoun, and so on to Lauterbrounn; except that from thence to the Grindelwal instead of round about, we went right over the Wengen Alps' very summit, and being close under the Jungfrau saw it, its glaciers, and heard the avalanches in all their glory, having famous weather therefor. We of course went

See Childe Harold, Canto 4, Stanza 18.

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have shot myself last year, had I not luckily recollected
that Mrs. Charlmont, and Lady Noel, and all the oid
women in England would have been delighted :-besides
the agreeable 'Lunacy' of the 'Crowner's Quest,' and the
regrets of two or three or half a dozen? *
Be assured that I would live for two reasons, or more;-
there are one or two people whom I have to put out of the
world, and as many into it, before I can 'depart in peace;
if I do so before, I have not fulfilled my mie..on. Besides,
when I turn thirty, I will turn devout; I feel a great voca-
tion that way in Catholic churches, and when I hear the
organ.

from the Grindelwald over the Sheidech to Brientz and its lake; past the Reichenbach and all that mountain road, which reminded me of Albania, and Ætolia, and Greece, except that the people here were more civilized and rascally. I did not think so very much of Chamouni (except the source of the Arveron, to which we went up to the teeth of the ice, so as to look into and touch the cavity, against the warning of the guides, only one of whom would go with us so close,) as of the Jungfrau, and the Pissevache, and Simplon, which are quite out of all mortal competition. "I was at Milan about a moon, and saw Monti and some other living curiosities, and thence on to Verona, where I did not forget your story of the assassination during "So** is writing again! Is there no bedlam in Scotyour sojourn there, and brought away with me some frag-land? nor thumb-screw? nor gag? nor handcuff? I went ments of Juliet's tomb, and a lively recollection of the amplatheatre. The Countess Goetz (the governor's wife here.) told me that there is still a ruined castle of the Montecchi between Verona and Vicenza. I have been at Venice since November, but shall proceed to Rome shortly. For my deeds here, are they not written in my letters to the unreplying Thomas Moore? to him I refer you; he has received them all, and not answered one.

"Will you remember me to Lord and Lady Holland? I have to thank the former for a book which I have not yet received, but expect to reperuse with great pleasure on my return, viz. the 2nd edition of Lope de Vega. I have heard of Moore's forthcoming poem: he cannot wish himself more success than I wish and augur for him. I have also heard great things of 'Tales of my Landlord, but I have not yet received them; by all accounts they beat even Waverley, &c. and are by the same author. Maturin's second tragedy has, it seems, failed, for which I should think any body would be sorry. My health was very victorious till within the last month, when I had a fever. There is a typhus in these parts, but I don't think it was that. However, I got well without a physician or drugs.

*I forgot to tell you that, last autumn, I furnished Lewis with 'bread and sait' for some days at Diodati, in reward for which (besides his conversation,) he translated 'Goethe's Faust' to me by word of mouth, and I set him by the ears with Madame de Staël about the slave trade. I am andebted for many and kind courtesies to our Lady of Copet, and I now love her as much as I always did her works, of which I was and am a great admirer. When are you to begin with Sheridan? what are you doing, and how do you do? "Ever very truly, &c."

LETTER CCCXXIX.

TO MR. MURRAY

"Venice, April 9, 1817. Your letters of the 18th and 20th are arrived. In my own I have given you the rise, progress, decline, and fall of my recent malady. It is gone to the devil: I won't pay him so bad a compliment as to say it came from him:-he is too much of a gentleman. It was nothing but a slow fever, which quickened its pace towards the end of its journey. I had been bored with it some weeks-with nocturnal burnings and morning perspirations; but I am quite well again, which I attribute to having had neither medicine nor doctor therefor.

"In a few days I set off for Rome: such is my purpose. I shall change it very often before Monday next, but do you continue to direct and address to Venice, as heretofore. If I go, letters will be forwarded: I say 'If, because I never know what I shall do till it is done; and as I mean most firmly to set out for Rome, it is not unlikely I may find myself at St. Petersburg.

"You tell me to 'take care of myself;-faith, and I will. I won't be posthumous yet, if I can help it. Notwithstanding, only think what a 'Life and Adventures,' while I am in full scandal, would be worth, together with the rmembra' of my writing-desk, the sixteen beginnings of

upon my knees to him almost some years ago, to prevent him from publishing a political pamphlet, which would have given him a livelier idea of 'Habeas Corpus' than the world will derive from his present production upon that suspended subject, which will doubtless be followed by the suspension of other of his majesty's subjects.

"I condole with Drury-lane and rejoice with * *,-that is, in a modest way, on the tragical end of the new tragedy.

*

"You and Leigh Hunt have quarrelled then, it seems? * I introduce him and his poem to you, in the hope that (malgré politics,) the union would be beneficiai to both, and the end is eternal enmity; and yet I did this with the best intentions: I introduce ***, and * * * runs away with your money: my friend Hobhouse quarrels, too, with the Quarterly: and (except the last,) I am the inno cent Istmhus (damn the word! I can't spell it, though I have crossed that of Corinth a dozen times,) of these enmities.

"I will tell you something about Chillon.-A Mr. De Luc, ninety years old, a Swiss, had it read to him, and is pleased with it, so my sister writes. He said that he was with Rousseau at Chillon, and that the description is per fectly correct. But this is not all: I recollected something of the name and find the following passage in "The Confessions,' vol. 3, page 247, liv. 8.

"De tous ces amusemens celui qui me plût davantage fut une promenade autour du Lac, que je fis en bateau avec De Luc père, sa bru, ses deux fils, et ma Therése. Nous mimes sept jours a cette tournée par le plus beau temps du monde. J'en gardai le vif souvenir des sites qui m'avoient frappé a l'autre extremité du Lac, et dont je fis la description, quelques années après, dans la Nouvelle

Heloise.'

"This nonagenarian, De Luc, must be one of the 'deux fils.' He is in England-infirm, but still in faculty. Itis odd that he should have lived so long, and not wanting in oddness, that he should have made this voyage with Jean Jacques, and afterward, at such an interval, read a poem by an Englishman (who had made precisely the same circumnavigation,) upon the same scenery.

"As for 'Manfred,' it is of no use sending proofs; nothing of that kind comes. I sent the whole at different times. The two first Acts are the best; the third so so; but I was blown with the first and second heats. You must call it a Poem, for it is no Drama, and I do not choose to have it called by so** a name-a 'Poem in Dialogue,' or Pantomime, if you will; any thing but a green-room synonymo, and this is your motto

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.'

"Yours ever, &c.

"My love and thanks to Mr. Gifford."

-

LETTER CCCXXX.

TO MR. MOORE.

"Venice, April 11, 1817.

"I shall continue to write to you while the fit is on me,

poems never to be finished! Do you think I would not by way of penance upon you for vour former complaints

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