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"Your letter has arrived. Pray, in publishing the third Canto, have you omitted any passages? I hope not; and indeed wrote to you on my way over the Alps to prevent such an incident. Say in your next whether or not the whole of the Canto (as sent to you) has been published. I wrote to you again the other day (twice, I think), and shall be glad to hear of the reception of those letters.

"To-day is the 2d of January. On this day three years ago The Corsair's publication is dated, I think, in my letter to Moore. On this day two years I married ( Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth,'—I sha'nt forget the day in a hurry), and it is odd enough that I this day received a letter from you announcing the publication of Childe Harold, &c. &c. on the day of the date of 'The Corsair;' and I also received one from my sister, written on the 10th of December, my daughter's birth-day (and relative chiefly to my daughter), and arriving on the day of the date of my marriage, this present 2d of January, the month of my birth, and various other astrologous matters, which I have no time

to enumerate.

"By the way, you might as well write to Hentsch, my Geneva banker, and enquire whether the two packets consigned to his care were or were not delivered to Mr. St. Aubyn, or if they are still in his keeping. One contains papers, letters, and all the original MS. of your third Canto, as first conceived; and the other, some bones from the field of Morat. Many thanks for your news, and the good spirits in which your letter is written.

“Venice and I agree very well; but I do not know that I have any thing new to say, except of the last new opera, which I sent in my late letter.

The Carnival is commencing, and there is a good deal of fun here and there-besides business; for all the world are making up their intrigues for the season, changing, or going on upon a renewed lease. I am very well off with Marianna, who is not at all a person to tire me; firstly, because I do not tire of a woman personally, but because they are generally bores in their disposition; and, secondly, because she is amiable, and has a tact which is not always the portion of the fair creation; and, thirdly, she is very pretty; and, fourthly—but there is no occasion for further specification. So far we have gone on very well; as to the future, I never anticipate-carpe diem-the past at least is one's own, which is one reason for making sure of the present. So much for my proper liaison.

.race,

"The general state of morals here is much the same as in the Doges' time ; a woman is virtuous (according to the code), who limits herself to her husband and one lover; those who have two, three, or more, are a little wild; but it is only those who are indiscriminately diffuse, and form a low connexion, such as the Princess of Wales with her courier (who, by the way, is made a knight of Malta), who are considered as overstepping the modesty of marriage. In Venice the nobility have a trick of marrying with dancers and singers; and, truth to say, the women of their own order are by no means handsome; but the general the women of the second and other orders, the wives of the merchants, and proprietors, and untitled gentry, are mostly bel' sangue, and it is with these that the more amatory connexions are usually formed. There are also instances of stupendous constancy. I know a woman of fifty who never had but one lover, who dying early, she became devout, renouncing all but her husband. She piques herself, as may be presumed, upon this miraculous fidelity, talking of it occasionally with a species of misplaced morality, which is rather amusing. There is no convincing a woman here that she is in the smallest degree deviating from the rule of right or the fitness of things in having an amoroso. The great sin seems to lie in concealing it, or having more than one, that is, unless such an extension of the prerogative is understood and approved of by the prior claimant.

"In another sheet, I send you some sheets of a grammar, English and Armenian, for the use of the Armenians, of which 1 promoted, and indeed induced, the publication. (It cost me but a thousand francsFrench livres.) I still pursue my lessons in the language without any rapid progress, but advancing a little daily. Padre Paschal, with some little help from me as a translator of his Italian into English, is also proceeding in a MS. Grammar for the English acquisition of Armenian, which will be printed also, when finished.

"We want to know if there are any Armenian types and letter-press in England, at Oxford, Cambridge, or elsewhere? You know, I suppose, that, many years ago, the two Whistons published in England an original text of a history of Armenia, with their own Latin translation ? Do those types still exist? and where? Pray enquire among your learned acquaintance.

"When this Graumar (I mean the one now printing) is done, will you have any objection to take forty or fifty copies, which will not cost in all above five or ten guineas, and try the curiosity of the learned with a sale of them? Say yes or no, as you like. I can assure you that they have some very curious books and MSS., chiefly translations from Greek originals now lost. They are, besides, a much respected and learned community, and the study of their language was taken up with great ardour by some literary Frenchmen in Buonaparte's time.

"I have not done a stitch of poetry since I left Switzerland, and have not, at present, the estro upon me. The truth is, that you are afraid of having a fourth Canto before September, and of another copyright, but I have, at present, no thoughts of resuming that poem, nor of beginning any other. If I write, I think of trying prose, but I dread introducing living people, or applications which might be made to living people. Perhaps one day or other I may attempt some work of fancy in prose, descriptive of Italian manners and of human passions; but, at present, I am pre-occupied. As for poesy, mine is the dream of the sleeping passions; when they are awake, I cannot speak their language, only in their somnambulism, and just now they are not dormant.

"If Mr. Gifford wants carte blanche as to 'The Siege of Corinth,' he has it, and may do as he likes with it.

"I sent you a letter contradictory of the Cheapside man (who invented the story you speak of) the other day. My best respects to Mr. Gifford, and such of my friends as you may see at your house. I wish you all the prosperity and new year's gratulation, and am,

"Yours," &c.

To the Armenian Grammar, mentioned in the foregoing letter, the following interesting fragment, found among his papers, seems to have been intended as a preface :

"The English reader will probably be surprised to find my name associated with a work of the present description, and inclined to give me more credit for my attainments as a linguist than they deserve.

"As I would not willingly be guilty of a deception, I will state, as shortly as I can, my own share in the compilation, with the motives which led to it. On my arrival at Venice, in the year 1816, I found my mind in a state which required study, and study of a nature which should leave little scope for the imagination, and furnish some difficulty in the pursuit.

"At this period I was much struck-in common, I believe, with every other traveller-with the society of the Convent of St. Lazarus, which appears to unite all the advantages of the monastic institution, without any of its vices.

"The neatness, the comfort, the gentleness, the unaffected devotion, the accomplishments, and the virtues of the order, are well fitted to strike the man of the world with the conviction that 'there is another and a better' even in this life.

"These men are the priesthood of an oppressed and a noble nation, which has partaken of the proscription and bondage of the Jews and of the Greeks, without the sullenness of the former or the servility of the latter. This people has attained riches without usury, and all the honours that can be awarded to

slavery without intrigue. But they have long occupied, nevertheless, a part of 'the House of Bondage,' who has lately multiplied her many mansions. It would be difficult, perhaps, to find the annals of a nation less stained with crimes than those of the Armenians, whose virtues have been those of peace, and their vices those of compulsion. But whatever may have been their destiny-and it has been bitter-whatever it may be in future, their country must ever be one of the most interesting on the globe; and perhaps their language only requires to be more studied to become more attractive. If the Scriptures are rightly understood, it was in Armenia that Paradise was placed-Armenia, which has paid as dearly as the descendants of Adam for that fleeting participation of its soil in the happiness of him who was created from its dust. It was in Armenia that the flood first abated, and the dove alighted. But with the disappearance of Paradise itself may be dated almost the unhappiness of the country; for though long a powerful kingdom, it was scarcely ever an independent one, and the satraps of Persia and the pachas of Turkey have alike desolated the region where God created man in his own image."

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"Venice, January 28, 1817. "Your letter of the 8th is before me. The remedy for your plethora is simple-abstinence. I was obliged to have recourse to the like some years ago, I mean in point of diet, and, with the exception of some convivial weeks and days (it might be months, now and then), have kept to Pythagoras ever since. For all this, let me hear that you are better. You must not indulge in ' filthy beer,' nor in porter, nor eat suppers— the last are the devil to those who swallow dinner.

"I am truly sorry to hear of your father's misfortune-cruel at any time, but doubly cruel in advanced life. However, you will, at least, have the satisfaction of doing your part by him, and depend upon it, it will not be in vain. Fortune, to be sure, is a female, but not such a b** as the rest (always excepting your wife and my sister from such sweeping terms); for she generally has some justice in the long run. I have no spite against her, though between her and Nemesis I have had some sore gauntlets to run-but then I have done my best to deserve no better. But to you, she is a good deal in arrear, and she will come round-mind if she don't you have the vigour of life, of independence, of talent, spirit, and character all with you. What you can do for self, you have done and will do; and surely there are some others in the world who would not be sorry to be of use, if you would allow them to be useful, or at least attempt it.

6

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"I think of being in England in the spring. If there is a row, by the sceptre of King Ludd, but I'll be one; and if there is none, and only a continuance of this meek, piping time of peace,' I will take a cottage a hundred yards to the south of your abode, and become your neighbour; and we will compose such canticles, and hold such dialogues, as shall be the terror of the Times (including the newspaper of that name), and the wonder, and honour, and praise of the Morning Chronicle and posterity.

"I rejoice to hear of your forthcoming in February-though I tremble for the magnificence' which you attribute to the new Childe Harold. I am glad you like it; it is a fine indistinct piece of poetical desolation, and my favourite. I was half mad during the time of its composition, between metaphysics, mountains, lakes, love unextinguishable, thoughts unutterable, and the night-mare of my own delinquencies. I should, many a good day, have blown my brains out, but for the recollection that it would have given pleasure to my mother-in-law; and, even then, if I could have been certain to haunt her but I won't dwell upon these trifling family matters.

Venice is in the estro of her carnival, and I have been up these last two nights at the ridotto and the opera, and all that kind of thing. Now for an adventure. A few days ago a gondolier brought me a billet without a subscription, intimating a wish on the part of the writer to meet me either in gondola, or at the island of San Lazaro, or at a third rendezvous, indicated in the note. I know the country's disposition well'in Venice they do let Heaven see those tricks they dare not show,' &c. &c.; so, for all response, I said that neither of the three places suited me; but that I would either be at home at ten at night alone, or be at the ridotto at midnight, where the writer might meet me masked. At ten o'clock I was at home and alone (Marianna was gone with her husband to a conversazione), when the door of my apartment opened, and in walked a well-looking and (for an Italian) bionda girl of about nineteen, who informed me that she was married to the brother of my amorosa, and wished to have some conversation with me. I made a decent reply, and we had some talk in Italian and Romaic (her mother being a Greek of Corfu), when lo! in a very few minutes in marches, to my very great astonishment, Marianna S**, in propria persona, and after making a most polite courtesy to her sister-in-law and to me, without a single word seizes her said sister-in-law by the hair, and bestows upon her some sixteen slaps, which would have made your ear ache only to hear their echo. I need not describe the screaming which ensued. The luckless visiter took flight. I seized Marianna, who, after several vain efforts to get away in pursuit of the enemy, fairly went into fits in my arms; and, in spite of reasoning, eau de Cologne, vinegar, half a pint of water, and God knows what other waters beside, continued so till past midnight.

"After damning my servants for letting people in without apprizing me, I found that Marianna in the morning had seen her sister-in-law's gondolier on the stairs, and, suspecting that his apparition boded her no good, had either returned of her own accord, or been followed by her maids or some other spy of her people to the conversazione, from whence she returned to perpetrate this piece of pugilism. I had seen fits before, and also some small scenery of the same genus in and out of our island but this was not all. After about an hour, in comes: s-who? why, Signor S**, her lord and husband, and finds me with his wife fainting upon a sofa, and all the apparatus of confusion, dishevelled hair, hats, handkerchiefs, salts, smelling bottles-and the lady as pale as ashes,

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