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Pray, if I am shovelled into the Lido churchyard in your time, let me have the implora pace,' and nothing else, for my epitaph. I never met with any, ancient or modern, that pleased me a tenth part so much 66 In about a day or two after you receive this letter, I will thank you to desire Edgecombe to prepare for my return. I shall go back to Venice before I village on the Brenta. I shall stay but a few days in Bologna. I am just going out to see sights, but shall not present my introductory letters for a day or two, till I have run over again the place and pictures; nor perhaps at all, if I find that I have books and sights enough to do without the inhabitants. After that, I shall return to Venice, where you may expect me about the eleventh, or perhaps sooner. Pray make my thanks acceptable to Mengaldo; my respects to the Consuless, and to Mr Scott.

"I hope my daughter is well.

"Ever yours, and truly. "P.S. I went over the Ariosto MS. &c. &c. again at Ferrara, with the castle, and cell, and house, &c. &c. "One of the Ferrarese asked me if I knew 'Lord Byron,' an acquaintance of his, now at Naples. I told him "No!' which was true both ways; for I know not the impostor, and in the other, no one knows himself. He stared when told that I was the real Simon Pure.'-Another asked me if I had not translated "Tasso.' You see what Fame is! how accurate! how boundless! I don't know how others feel, but I am always the lighter and the better looked on when I have got rid of mine; it sits on me like armour on the Lord Mayor's champion; and I got rid of all the husk of literature, and the attendant babble, by answering, that 1 had not translated Tasso, but a namesake had; and by the blessing of Heaven, I looked so little like a poet, that every body believed me.

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LETTER CCCXXXI.

TO MR MURRAY.

"Bologna, June 7th, 1819. "Tell Mr. Hobhouse that I wrote to him a few days ago from Ferrara. It will therefore be idle in him or you to wait for any further answers or returns of proofs from Venice, as I have directed that no English letters be sent after me. The publication can be proceeded in without, and I am already sick of your remarks, to which I think not the least attention ought to be paid.

"Tell Mr. Hobhouse that, since I wrote to him, I had availed myself of my Ferrara letters, and found the society much younger and better there than at Venice. I am very much pleased with the little the shortness of my stay permitted me to see of the Gonfaloniere Count Mosti, and his family and friends general.

"I have been picture-gazing this morning at the famous Domenichino and Guido, both of which are superlative. I afterwards went to the beautiful cemetery of Bologna, beyond the walls, and found, besides the superb burial-ground, an original of a Custode, who reminded one of the grave-digger in Hamlet. He has a collection of capuchins' skulls, labelled on the forehead, and taking down one of

them, said, "This was Brother Desiderio Berro, who died at forty-one of my best friends. I begged his head of his brethren after his decease, and they gave it me. I put it in lime, and then boiled it. Here it is, teeth and all, in excellent perservation. He was the merriest, cleverest fellow I ever knew. Wherever he went, he brought joy; and whenever any one was melancholy, the sight of him was enough to make him cheerful again. He walked so actively, you might have taken him for a dancer-he joked—he laughed -oh! he was such a Frate as I never saw before, nor ever shall again!'

"He told me that he had himself planted all the cypresses in the cemetery; that he had the greatest attachment to them and to his dead people; that since 1801 they had buried fifty-three, thousand persons. In showing some older monuments, there was that of a Roman girl of twenty, with a bust by Bernini. She was a princess Barlorini, dead two centuries ago: he said that, on opening her grave, they had found her hair complete, and as yellow as gold.' Some of the epitaphs at Ferrara pleased me more than the more splendid monuments at Bologna; for instanceMartini Luigi Implora pace;' 'Lucrezia Picini

Implora eterna quiete.'

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Can any thing be more full of pathos? Those few words say all that can be said or sought: the dead had had enough of life; all they wanted was rest, and this they implore! There is all the helplessness, and humble hope, and deathlike prayer, that can arise from the grave-' implora pace. I hope whoever may survive me, and shall see me put in the foreigners' burying ground at the Lido, within the fortress by the Adriatic, will see those two words, and no more, put over me. I trust they won't think of pickling, and bringing me home to Clod or Blunderbuss Hall.' I am sure my bones would not rest in an English grave, or my clay mix with the earth of that country. I believe the thought would drive me mad on my deathbed, could I suppose that any of my friends would be base enough to convey my carcass back to your soil.-I would not even feed your worms, if I could help it.

"So, as Shakspeare says of Mowbray, the banished Duke of Norfolk, who died at Venice (see Richard 2d), that he, after fighting

'Against black Pagans, Turks and Saracens, And toil'd with works of war, retired himself To Italy, and there, at Venice, gave His body to that pleasant country's earth, And his pure soul unto his captain, Christ, Under whose colours he had fought so long.' "Before I left Venice, I had returned to you your late, and Mr Hobhouse's sheets of Juan. Don't wait for further answers from me, but address yours to

* Though Lord Byron, like most other persons, in writing to different friends, was sometimes led to repeat the

same circumstances and thoughts, there is, from the ever ready fertility of his mind, much less of such repetition in his correspondence than in that, perhaps, of any other multifarious letter writer; and, in the instance before us,

where the same facts and reflections are, for the second time, introduced, it is with such new touches both of thought and ing;-what is wanting in the novelty of the matter being expression, as render them, even a second time, interestmade up by the new aspect given to it.

Venice, as usual. I know nothing of my own movements; I may return there in a few days, or not for some time. All this depends on circumstances. I left Mr Hoppner very well. My daughter Allegra was well too, and is growing pretty; her hair is growing darker, and her eyes are blue. Her temper and her ways, M. Hoppner says, are like mine, as well as her features: she will make, in that case, a manageable young lady.

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mised to come and see me at Ravenna. Dante's tomb, the classical pine wood,* the relics of antiquity which are to be found in that place, afforded a sufficient pretext for me to invite him to come, and for him to accept my invitation. He came, in fact, in the month of June, arriving at Ravenna on the day of the festival of the Corpus Domini; while I, attacked by a consumptive complaint, which had its origin from the moment of my quitting Venice, appeared on the "I have never heard any thing of Ada, the little point of death. The arrival of a distinguished foElectra of my Mycena. But reigner at Ravenna, a town so remote from the there will come a day of reckoning, even if I should not routes ordinarily followed by travellers, was an event live to see it. I have at least seen *** shivered, which gave rise to a good deal of conversation. His who was one of my assassins. When that man was motives for such a visit became the subject of disdoing his worst to uproot my whole family, tree, cussion, and these he himself afterwards involuntarily branch, and blossoms when, after taking my retain- divulged; for having made some inquiries with a er, he went over to them-when he was bringing view to paying me a visit, and being told that it was desolation on my earth and destruction on my unlikely that he would ever see me again, as I was household gods-did he think that, in less than at the point of death, he replied, if such were the three years, a natural event-a severe, do- case, he hoped that he should die also; which circummestic, but an expected and common calamity-stance, being repeated, revealed the object of his would lay his carcass in a cross-road, or stamp his journey. Count Guiccioli, having been acquainted name in a Verdict of Lunacy! Did he (who in his with Lord Byron at Venice, went to visit him now, sexagenary * *) reflect or consider what my feel- and in the hope that his presence might amuse, and ings must have been, when wife, and child, and sister, be of some use to me in the state in which I then and name, and fame, and country, were to be my found myself, invited him to call upon me. He came sacrifice on his legal altar-and this at a moment the day following. It is impossible to describe the when my health was declining, my fortune embarrass- anxiety he showed,-—the delicate attentions that he ed, and my mind had been shaken by many kinds of paid me. For a long time he had perpetually medical disappointment-while I was yet young, and might books in his hands; and not trusting my physicians, have reformed what might be wrong in my conduct, he obtained permission from Count Guiccioli to send and retrieved what was perplexing in my affairs! But for a very clever physician, a friend of his, in whom he is in his grave, and * * *. What a he placed great confidence. The attentions of the long letter I have scribbled! Professor Aglietti (for so this celebrated Italian was called), together with tranquillity, and the inexpressible happiness which I experienced in Lord Byron's society, had so good an effect on my health, that only two months afterwards I was able to accompany my husband in a tour he was obliged to make to visit his various estates." +

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Yours, &c. "P. S. Here, as in Greece, they strew flowers on the tombs. I saw a quantity of rose-leaves, and entire roses, scattered over the graves at Ferrara. It has the most pleasing effect you can imagine."

While he was thus lingering irresolute at Bologna, the countess Guiccioli had been attacked with an intermittent fever, the violence of which, combining with the absence of a confidential person to whom she had been in the habit of intrusting her letters, prevented her from communicating with him. At length, anxious to spare him the disappointment of finding her so ill on his arrival, she had begun a letter, requesting that he would remain at Bologna till the visit to which she looked forward should bring her there also ; and was in the act of writing, when a friend came in to announce the arrival of an English lord in Ravenna. She could not doubt for an instant that it was her noble lover; and he had in fact, notwithstanding his declaration to Mr Hoppner that it was his intention to return to Venice immediately, wholly altered this resolution before the letter announcing it was despatched,the following words being written on the outside cover:-" I am just setting off for Ravenna, June 8, 1819.-I changed my mind this morning, and decided to go on."

The reader, however, shall have Madame Guiccioli's own account of these events, which, fortunately for the interest of my narration, I am enabled to communicate.

"On my departure from Venice, he had pro

"Tal qual di ramo in ramo si raccoglie
Per la pineta in sul lito di Chiassi,
Quando Eolo Scirocco fuor discioglie."

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DANTE, PURG. CANTO XXVIII. Dante himself (says Mr Carey, in one of the notes on his admirable translation of this poet) perhaps wandered in this wood during his abode with Guido Novello da Polenta."

+ Partendo io da Venezia egli promise di venir a vedermi a Ravenna. La Tomba di Dante, il classico bosco di

pini, gli avvanzi di antichità che a Ravenna si trovano davano a me ragioni plausibili per invitarlo a venire, ed a lui per accettare l'invito. Egli venne difatti nel mese di Gingno, e giunse a Ravenna nel giorno della Solennità del Corpus Domini, mentre io attaccata da una malattia de consunzione ch' ebbe principio dalla mia partenza da Venezia ero vicina a morire. L'arrivo in Ravenna d'un forestiero distinto, in un paese così lontano dalle strade che ordinariamente tengono i viaggiatori era un avvenimento del quale molto si parlava, indagandosene i motivi, che involontariamente poi egli fece conoscere. Perchè avendo egli domandato di me per venire a vedermi ed essendogli risposto che non potrebbe vedermi più perchè ero vicina a morire'-egli rispose che in quel caso voleva morire egl pure; la qual cosa essendosi poi ripetuta si conobbe cosi l'oggetto del suo viaggio.

«Il Conte Guiccioli visitò Lord Byron, avendolo conosciuto in Venezia, e nella speranza che la di lui compagnia potesse distrarmi ed essermi di qualche giovamento nello stato in cui mi trovavo egli lo invitò di venire a visitarmi. Il giorno appresso egli venne. Non si potrebbero deserivere le cure, i pensieri delicati, quanto egli fece per

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"I wrote to you from Padua, and from Bologna, and since from Ravenna. I find my situation very agreeable, but want my horses very much, there being good riding in the environs. I can fix no time for my return to Venice-it may be soon or late-or not at all-it all depends on the Donna, whom I found seriously ill in bed with a cough and spitting of blood, &c. all of which has subsided. * * *. I found all the people here firmly persuaded that she would never recover;-they were mistaken, however.

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LETTER CCCXXXIII.

TO MR MURRAY.

"Ravenna, June 29th, 1819. "The letters have been forwarded from Venice, but I trust that you will not have waited for further alterations-I will make none. You ask me to spare * * * *—ask the worms. His dust can suffer nothing from the truth being spoken—and if it could, how did he behave to me? You may talk to the wind, which will carry the sound-and to the caves, which will echo you-but not to me, on the subject of a*** who wronged me-whether dead or alive.

"I have no time to return you the proofs-publish without them. I am glad you think the poesy good; and as to thinking of the effect,' think you of the sale, and leave me to pluck the porcupines who may point their quills at you.

"I have been here (at Ravenna) these four weeks, having left Venice a month ago;-I came to see my 'Amica,' the Countess Guiccioli, who has been, and still continues, very unwell. *

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* but if I come away with a stiletto in my gizzard some fine afternoon, I shall not be astonished. I can't make him out at all-he visits me frequently, and takes me out (like Whittington, the Lord Mayor) in a coach and six horses. The fact appears to be, that he is completely governed by her -for that matter, so am I. * The people here don't know what to make of us, as he had the character of jealousy with all his wives-this is the third. He is the richest of the Ravennese, by their own account, but is not popular among them.

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me. Per molto tempo egli non ebbe per le mani che de' Libri di Medicina; e poco confidandosi ne' miei medici ottenne dal Conte Guiccioli il permesso di far venire un valente medico di lui amico nel quale egli aveva molta confidenza. Le cure del Professore Aglietti (cosi si chiama questo distinto Italiano), la tranquillità, anzi la felicità inesprimibile che mi cagionava la presenza di Lord Byron migliorarono così rapidamente la mia salute che entro lo spazio di due mesi potei seguire mio marito in un giro che egli doveva fare per le sue terre."-MS.

That this task of governing" him was one of more ease than, from the ordinary view of his character, might be concluded, I have more than once, in these pages, expressed my opinion, and shall here quote, in corroboration of it, the remark of his own servant (founded on an observation of more than twenty years) in speaking of his master's matrimonial fate :-"It is very odd, but I never yet knew a lady that could not manage my Lord, except my Lady."

"More knowledge," says Johnson, "may be gained of a man's real character by a short conversation with one of his servants than from the most formal and studied nar¡rative."

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She is only twenty years old, but not of a strong constitution. * She has a perpetual cough and an intermittent fever, but bears up most gallantly in every sense of the word. Her husband (this is his third wife) is the richest noble of Ravenna, and almost of Romagna; he is also not the youngest, being upwards of threescore, but in good preservation. All this will appear strange to you, who do not understand the meridian morality, nor our way of life in such respects, and I cannot at present expound the difference;-but you would find it much the same in these parts. At Faenza there is Lord **** with an opera girl; and at the inn in the same town is a Neapolitan Prince, who serves the wife of the Gonfaloniere of that city. I am on duty here—so you see 'Così fan tutti e tutte.'

"I have my horses here, saddle as well as carriage, and ride or drive every day in the forest, the Pineta, the scene of Boccaccio's novel, and Dryden's fable of Honoria, &c. &c.; and I see my Dama every day * * * * * *; but I feel seriously uneasy about her health, which seems very precarious. In losing her, I should lose a being who has run great risks on my account, and whom I have every reason to lovebut I must not think this possible. I do not know what I should do if she died, but I ought to blow my brains out-and I hope that I should. Her husband is a very polite personage, but I wish he would not carry me out in his coach and six, like Whittington and his cat.

"You ask me if I mean to continue D. J., &c. How should I know? What encouragement do you give me, all of you, with your nonsensical prudery? -publish the two Cantos, and then you will see. I desired Mr. Kinnaird to speak to you on a little matter of business; either he has not spoken, or you have not answered. You are a pretty pair, but I will be even with you both. I perceive that Mr Hobhouse has been challenged by Major Cartwright-Is the Major so cunning of fence?'-why did not they fight?-they ought.

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LETTER CCCXXXIV,

TO MR HOPPNER,

reformation. If any thing happens to my present Amica, I have done with the passion for ever-it is my last love. As to libertinism, I have sickened myself of that, as was natural in the way I went on, and I have at least derived that advantage from vice, to love in the better sense of the word. This will be my last adventure-I can hope no more to inspire attachment, and I trust never again to feel it."

The impression which, I think, cannot but be en

real fervour and sincerity of his attachment to Madame Guiccioli,* would be still further confirmed by the perusal of his letters to that lady herself, both from Venice and during his present stay at Ravenna

"Ravenna, July 24, 1819. "Thanks for your letter and for Madame's. I will answer it directly. Will you recollect whether I did not consign to you one or two receipts of Madame Mocenigo's for house rent-(I am not sure of this, but think I did-if not, they will be in my drawers) --and will you desire Mr Dorville* to have the good-tertained, from some passages of these letters, of the ness to see if Edgecombe has receipts to all payments hitherto made by him on my account, and that there are no debts at Venice? On your answer, I shall send order of further remittance to carry on my household expenses, as my present return to Ve--all bearing, throughout, the true marks both of nice is very problematica!; and it may happen-but I can say nothing positive-every thing with me being indecisive and undecided, except the disgust which Venice excites when fairly compared with any other city in this part of Italy. When I say Venice, I mean the Venetians-the city itself is superb as its history-but the people are what I never thought them till they taught me to think so.

"The best way will be to leave Allegra with Antonio's spouse till I can decide something about her and myself-but I thought that you would have had an answer from Mrs V--r.t. You have had bore enough with me and mine already.

"I greatly fear that the Guiccioli is going into a consumption, to which her constitution tends. Thus it is with every thing and every body for whom I feel any thing like a real attachment ;— War, death, or discord, doth lay siege to them.' I never even could keep alive a dog that I liked or that liked me. Her symptoms are obstinate cough of the lungs, and occasional fever, &c. &c., and there are latent causes of an eruption in the skin, which she foolishly repelled into the system two years ago; but I have made them send her case to Aglietti; and have begged him to comee-if only for a day or two to consult upon her

state.

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affection and passion. Such effusions, however, are but little suited to the general eye. It is the tendency of all strong feeling, from dwelling constantly on the same idea, to be monotonous; and those often repeated vows and verbal endearments, which make the charm of true love-letters to the parties concerned in them, must for ever render even the best of them cloying to others. Those of Lord Byron to Madame Guiccioli, which are for the most part in Italian, and written with a degree of ease and correctness attained rarely by foreigners, refer chiefly to the difficulties thrown in the way of their meetings,-not so much by the husband himself, who appears to have liked and courted Lord Byron's society, as by the watchfulness of other relatives, and the apprehension felt by the lovers themselves lest their imprudence should give uneasiness to the father of the lady, Count Gamba, a gentleman to whose good-nature and amiableness of character all who know him bear testimony.

In the near approaching departure of the young Countess for Bologna, Lord Byron foresaw a risk of their being again separated; and under the impatience of this prospect, though through the whole of his preceding letters the fear of committing her by any imprudence seems to have been his ruling thought, he now, with that wilfulness of the moment which has so often sealed the destiny of years, proposed that she should, at onee, abandon her husband and fly with him: “ c'è uno solo rimedio efficace," he says,-"eioè d' andar via insieme." To an Italian wife, almost every thing but this is permissible. The same system which so indulgently "The horses came, &c. &c., and I have been gal- allows her a lover, as one of the regular appendages lopping through the pine forest daily. of her matrimonial establishment, takes care also to

If it would not bore Mr Dorville, I wish he would keep an eye on E- and on my other ragamuffins. I might have more to say, but I am absorbed about La Gui. and her illness. I cannot tell you the effect it has upon me.

"Believe me, &c. "P.S. My benediction on Mrs Hoppner, a pleasant journey among the Bernese tyrants, and safe return. You ought to bring back a Platonic Bernese for my

*The Vice-Consul of Mr Hoppner.

† An English widow lady, of considerable property in the north of England, who, having seen the little Allegra at Mr Hoppner's, took an interest in the poor child's fate, and having no family of her own, offered to adopt and provide for this little girl, if Lord Byron would consent to renounce all claim to her. At first he seemed not disinclined to enter into her views-so far, at least, as giving permission that she should take the child with her to EngJand and educate it; but the entire surrender of his paternal authority he would by no means consent to. The proposed arrangement accordingly was never carried into effect.

During my illness," says Madame Guiccioli, in her recollections of this period, he was for ever near me, paying me the most amiable attentions, and when I became convalescent he was constantly at my side. In society, at the theatre, riding, walking, he never was absent from me. Being deprived at that time of his books, his horses, and all that occupied him at Venice, I begged him to gratify me by writing something on the subject of Dante, and, with his usual facility and rapidity, he composed his 'Prophecy.'" -"Durante la mia malattia L. B. era sempre presso di me, prestandomi le più sensibili cure, e quando passai allo stato di convalescenza egli era sempre al mio fianco;-e in società, e al teatro, e cavalcando, e passeggiando egli non si allontanava mai da me. In quel' epoca essendo egli privo de' suoi libri, e de' suoi cavalli e di tuttociò che lo occupava in Venezia io lo pregai di volersi occupare per me scrivendo qualche cosa sul Dante; ed egli colla usata sua facilità e rapidità scrisse la sua Profezia."

guard against all unseemly consequences of this privilege; and, in return for such convenient facilities of wrong, exacts rigidly an observance of all the appearances of right. Accordingly, the open step of deserting the husband for the lover, instead of being considered, as in England, but a sign and sequel of transgression, takes rank, in Italian morality, as the main transgression itself; and being an offence, too rendered wholly unnecessary by the latitude otherwise enjoyed, becomes, from its rare occurrence no less monstrous than odious.

The proposition, therefore, of her noble lover seemed to the young Contessa little less than sacrilege, and the agitation of her mind, between the horrors of such a step, and her eager readiness to give up all and every thing for him she loved, was depicted most strongly in her answer to the proposal. In a subsequent letter, too, the romantic girl even proposed, as a means of escaping the ignominy of an elopement, that she should, like another Juliet, "pass for dead," -assuring him that there were many easy ways of effecting such a deception.

LETTER CCCXXXV.

TO MR MURRAY.

"Ravenna, August 1st, 1819. [Address your answer to Venice, however.] "Don't be alarmed. You will see me defend my self gaily—that is, if I happen to be in spirits; and by spirits, I don't mean your meaning of the word, but the spirit of a bull-dog when pinched, or a bull when pinned; it is then that they make best sport; and as my sensations under an attack are probably a happy compound of the united energies of these amiable animals, you may perhaps see what Marrall calls 'rare sport,' and some good tossing and göring, in the course of the controversy. But I must be in the right cue first, and I doubt I am almost too far off to be in a sufficient fury for the purpose. And then I have effeminated and enervated myself with

love and the summer in these last two months.

"I wrote to Mr Hobhouse the other day, and foretold that Juan would either fall entirely or succeed completely; there will be no medium. Appearances are not favourable; but as you write the day after publication, it can hardly be decided what opinion will predominate. You seem in a fright, and doubtless Come what may, I never will flatter the million's canting in any shape. Circumstances may or may not have placed me at times in a situation to lead the public opinion, but the public opinion never led, nor ever shall lead, me. I will not sit on a degraded throne; so pray put Messrs ** or **, or Tom Moore, or *** upon it; they will all of them be

with cause.

transported with their coronation.

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to see it, I took occasion, in my very next communication to Lord Byron, to twit him a little with the passage in it relating to myself,-the only one, as far as I can learn, that ever fell from my noble friend's pen during our intimacy, in which he has spoken of me otherwise than in terms of kindness and the most undeserved praise. Transcribing his own words, as well as I could recollect them, at the top of my letter, I added, underneath, "Is this the way you speak of your friends?" Not long after, too, when visiting him at Venice, I remember making the same harmless little sneer a subject of raillery with him; but he declared boldly that he had no recollection of having ever written such words, and that, if they existed, "he must have been half asleep when he wrote them." I have mentioned this circumstance merely for the purpose of remarking, that with a sensibility vulnerable at so many points as his was, and acted upon by an imagination so long practised in self-tormenting, it is only wonderful that, thinking constantly, as his letters prove him to have been, of distant friends, and receiving from few or none equal proofs of thoughtfulness in return, he should not more frequently have broken out into such sallies against the absent and "unreplying." For myself, I can only say that, from the moment I began to unravel his character, the most slighting and even acrimonious expressions that I could have heard he had, in a fit of spleen, uttered against me, would have no more altered my opinion of his disposition, nor disturbed my affection for him, than the momentary clouding over of a bright sky could leave an impression on the mind of gloom, after its shadow had passed away.

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"Talking of blunders reminds me of IrelandIreland of Moore. What is this I see in Galignani about 'Bermuda-agent-deputy-appeal-attachment,' &c.? What is the matter? Is it any thing in which his friends can be of use to him? Pray inform me.

"Of Don Juan I hear nothing further from you; ***, but the papers don't seem so fierce as the letter you sent me seemed to anticipate, by their extracts at least in Galignani's Messenger. I never saw such a set of fellows as you are! And then the pains taken to exculpate the modest publisher-he remonstrated, forsooth! I will write a preface that shall exculpate you and ***, &c., completely, on that point; but, at the same time, I will cut you up, like gourds. You have no more soul than the Count de Caylus (who assured his friends, on his death-bed, that he had none, and that he must know better than they whether he had one or no), and no more blood than a water-melon! And I see there hath been asterisks, and what Perry used to call ' domned cutting and slashing'-but, never mind.

"I write in haste. To-morrow I set off for Bolo. gna. I write to you with thunder, lightning, &c. and all the winds of heaven whistling through my hair, and the racket of preparation to boot.

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