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 still, in the Doge's palace, the black veil painted over Faliero's picture, and the staircase whereon he was first crowned Doge, and subsequently decapitated. This was the thing that most struck my imagination in Venice-more than the Rialto, which I visited for the sake of Shylock; and more, too, than Schiller's Armenian,' a 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; and therefore 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.

"Maturin's tragedy.-By your account of him last year to me, he seemed a bit of a coxcomb, personally. Poor fellow! to be sure, he had had a long seasoning of adversity, which is not so hard to bear as t'other thing. I hope that this won't throw him back into the slough of Despond.'

“You talk of marriage;' ever since my own funeral, the word makes me giddy, and throws me into a cold sweat. Pray, don't repeat it. "You should close with Madame de Staël. This will be her best work, and permanently historical; it is on her father, the Revolution, and Buonaparte, &c. Bonstetten told me in Switzerland it was very great. I have not seen it myself, but the author often. She was very kind to me at Copet.

"There have been two articles in the Venice papers, one a Review of Glenarvon * * * *, and the other a Review of Childe Harold, in which it proclaims me the most rebellious and contumacious admirer of Buonaparte now surviving in Europe. Both these articles are translations from the Literary Gazette of German Jena.

"Tell me that Walter Scott is better. I would not have him ill för 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 still 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.

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

"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 something 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 Jamen to Montbovon, and through Simmenthal to Thoun, and so on to Lauterbrounn; except that from thence to the Grindelwald, 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 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 civilised and rascally. I do 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 your sojourn there, and brought away with me some fragments of Juliet's tomb, and a lively recollection of the amphitheatre. The Countess Goetz (the governor's wife here) told me that there is still a ruined castle of the Montecchi between Verona and ViI have been at Venice since November, but shall proceed to Rome shortly. For letters my deeds here, are they not written in my to the unreplying Thomas Moore? to him I refer you: : he has received them all, and not answered one.

cenza.

"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 2d edition of Lope de Vega. I have heard of Moore's forthcoming poem: he cannot wish him

self 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 salt' 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 indebted 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 272.

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 thereof.

"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:

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 membra' of my writing-desk, the sixteen beginnings of poems never to be finished! Do you think I would not have shot myself last year, had I not luckily recollected that Mrs. C** and Lady N**, and all the old 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 mission. Besides, when I turn thirty, I will turn devout; I feel a great vocation that way in Catholic churches, and when I hear the organ.

เ

"So** is writing again! Is there no Bedlam in Scotland? nor thumb-screw? nor gag? nor hand-cuff? I went 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 beneficial 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 innocent 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 perfectly correct. But this is not all: I recollected something of the name, and find the following passage in The Confessions,' vol. iii. page 247. liv. viii. :—

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

"This nonagenarian, De Luc, must be one of the deux fils.' He is in England-infirm, but still in faculty. It is odd that he should have lived so long, and not wanting in oddness that he should have made this voyage with Jean Jacques, and afterwards, 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, you will ; any thing but a green-room synonyme; and this is your

if

motto

66

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

My love and thanks to Mr. Gifford."

"Yours ever, &c.

LETTER 273.

TO MR. MOORE.

"Venice, April 11, 1817.

"I shall continue to write to you while the fit is on me, by way of penance upon you for your former complaints of long silence. I dare say you would blush, if you could, for not answering. Next week I set out for Rome. Having seen Constantinople, I should like to look at t'other fellow. Besides, I want to see the Pope, and shall take care to tell him that I vote for the Catholics and no Veto.

"I sha'n't go to Naples. It is but the second best sea-view, and I have seen the first and third, viz. Constantinople and Lisbon (by the way, the last is but a river-view; however, they reckon it after Stamboul and Naples, and before Genoa), and Vesuvius is silent, and I have passed by Ætna. So I shall e'en return to Venice in July; and if you write, I pray you to address to Venice, which is my head, or rather my heart, quarters.

"My late physician, Dr. Polidori, is here on his way to England, with the present Lord G ** and the widow of the late earl. Dr. Polidori has, just now, no more patients, because his patients are no more. He had lately three, who are now all dead—one embalmed. Horner and a child of Thomas Hope's are interred at Pisa and Rome. Lord G** died of an inflammation of the bowels; so they took them out, and sent them (on account of their discrepancies), separately from the carcass, to England. Conceive a man going one way, and his intestines another, and his immortal soul a third!-was there ever such a distribution? One certainly has a soul; but how it came to allow itself to be enclosed in a body is more than I can imagine. I only know if once mine gets out, I'll have a bit of a tussle before I let it get in again to that or any other. "And so poor dear Mr. Maturin's second tragedy has been neglected by the discerning public? ** will be d-d glad of this, and d-d without being glad, if ever his own plays come upon any stage.'

"I wrote to Rogers the other day, with a message for you. I hope that he flourishes. He is the Tithonus of poetry--immortal already. You and I must wait for it.

"I hear nothing-know nothing. You may easily suppose that the English don't seek me, and I avoid them. To be sure, there are but few or none here, save passengers. Florence and Naples are their Margate and Ramsgate, and much the same sort of company too, by all accounts, which hurts us among the Italians.

"I want to hear of Lalla Rookh-are you out? Death and fiends! why don't you tell me where you are, what you are, and how you are? I shall go to Bologna by Ferrara, instead of Mantua; because I would rather see the cell where they caged Tasso and where he became mad and **, than his own MSS. at Modena, or the Mantuan birthplace of that harmonious plagiary and miserable flatterer, whose cursed hexameters were drilled into me at Harrow. I saw Verona and Vicenza on my way here-Padua too.