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without sense or motion. His first question was, 'What is all this?' The lady could not reply-so I did. I told him the explanation was the easiest thing in the world; but in the mean time it would be as well to recover his wife-at least, her senses. This came about in due time of suspiration and respiration.

"You need not be alarmed-jealousy is not the order of the day in Venice, and daggers are out of fashion, while duels, on love matters, are unknown-at least, with the husbands. But, for all this, it was an awkward affair; and though he must have known that I made love to Marianna, yet I believe he was not, till that evening, aware of the extent to which it had gone. It is very well known that almost all the married women have a lover; but it is usual to keep up the forms, as in other nations. I did not, therefore, know what the devil to say. I could not out with the truth, out of regard to her, and I did not choose to lie for my sake;-besides, the thing told itself. I thought the best way would be to let her explain it as she chose (a woman being never at a loss-the devil always sticks by them)-only determining to protect and carry her off, in case of any ferocity on the part of the Signor. I saw that he was quite calm. She went to bed, and next day--how they settled it, I know not, but settle it they did. Well-then I had to explain to Marianna about this never-to-be-sufficiently-confounded sister-in-law; which I did by swearing innocence, eternal constancy, &c. &c. But the sister-in-law, very much discomposed with being treated in such wise, has (not having her own shame before her eyes) told the affair to half Venice, and the servants (who were summoned by the fight and the fainting) to the other half. But, here, nobody minds such trifles, except to be amused by them. I don't know whether you will be so, but I have scrawled a long letter out of these follies. Believe me ever," &c.

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“I have been requested by the Countess Albrizzi here to present her with the Works;' and wish you therefore to send me a copy, that I may comply with her requisition. You may include the last published, of which I have seen and know nothing, but from your letter of the 13th of December.

"Mrs. Leigh tells me that most of her friends prefer the two first Cantos. I do not know whether this be the general opinion or not (it is not hers); but it is natural it should be so. I, however, think differently, which is natural also; but who is right, or who is wrong, is of very little

consequence.

"Dr. Polidori, as I hear from him by letter from Pisa, is about to return to England, to go to the Brazils on a medical speculation with the Danish consul. As you are in the favour of the powers that be, could you not get him some letters of recommendation from some of your government friends to some of the Portuguese settlers? He understands his profession well, and has no want of general talents; his faults are the

faults of a pardonable vanity and youth. His remaining with me was out of the question; I have enough to do to manage my own scrapes; and as precepts without example are not the most gracious homilies, I thought it better to give him his congé ; but I know no great harm of him, and some good. He is clever and accomplished; knows his profession, by all accounts, well; and is honourable in his dealings, and not at all malevolent. I think, with luck, he will turn out a useful member of society (from which he will lop the diseased members) and the College of Physicians. If you can be of any use to him, or know any one who can, pray be so, as he has his fortune to make. He has kept a medical journal under the eye of Vacca (the first surgeon on the Continent) at Pisa Vacca has corrected it, and it must contain some valuable hints or information on the practice of this country. If you can aid him in publishing this also, by your influence with your brethren, do; I do not ask you to publish it yourself, because that sort of request is too personal and embarrassing. He has also a tragedy, of which, having seen nothing, I say nothing; but the very circumstance of his having made these efforts (if they are only efforts), at one-and-twenty, is in his favour, and proves him to have good dispositions for his own improvement. So if, in the way of commendation or recommendation, you can aid his objects with your government friends, I wish you would. I should think some of your Admiralty Board might be likely to have it in their power."

LETTER 261.

TO MR. MURRAY.

"Venice, February 15, 1817.

"I have received your two letters, but not the parcel you mention. As the Waterloo spoils are arrived, I will make you a present of them, if you choose to accept of them; pray do.

"I do not exactly understand from your letter what has been omitted, or what not, in the publication; but I shall see probably some day or other. I could not attribute any but a good motive to Mr. Gifford or yourself in such omission; but as our politics are so very opposite, we should probably differ as to the passages. However, if it is only a note or notes, or a line or so, it cannot signify. You say a poem,' what poem? You can tell me in your next.

"Of Mr. Hobhouse's quarrel with the Quarterly Review, I know very little except **'s article itself, which was certainly harsh enough; but I quite agree that it would have been better not to answer-particularly after Mr. W. W., who never more will trouble you, trouble you. I have been uneasy, because Mr. H. told me that his letter or preface was to be addressed to me. Now, he and I are friends of many years; I have many obligations to him, and he none to me, which have not been cancelled and more than repaid; but Mr. Gifford and I are friends also, and he has moreover been literally so, through thick and thin, in despite of difference of years, morals, habits, and even politics; and therefore I feel in a very awkward situation between the two, Mr. Gifford and my friend Hobhouse, and can only wish that they had no difference, or that

such as they have were accommodated. The Answer I have not seen. for-it is odd enough for people so intimate-but Mr. Hobhouse and I are very sparing of our literary confidences. For example, the other day he wished to have a MS. of the third Canto to read over to his brother, &c., which was refused;-and I have never seen his journals, nor he mine-(I only kept the short one of the mountains for my sister)— nor do I think that hardly ever he or I saw any of the other's productions previous to their publication.

“The article in the Edinburgh Review on Coleridge I have not seen; but whether I am attacked in it or not, or in any other of the same journal, I shall never think ill of Mr. Jeffrey on that account, nor forget that his conduct towards me has been certainly most handsome during the last four or more years.

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I forgot to mention to you that a kind of Poem in dialogue* (in blank verse) or Drama, from which 'The Incantation' is an extract, begun last summer in Switzerland, is finished; it is in three acts; but of a very wild, metaphysical, and inexplicable kind. Almost all the persons-but two or three-are Spirits of the earth, and air, or the waters; the scene is in the Alps; the hero a kind of magician, who is tormented by a species of remorse, the cause of which is left half unexplained. He wanders about invoking these Spirits, which appear to him, and are of no use; he at last goes to the very abode of the Evil Principle, in propria persona, to evocate a ghost, which appears, and gives him an ambiguous and disagreeable answer; and in the third act he is found by his attendants dying in a tower where he had studied his art. You may perceive by this outline that I have no great opinion of this piece of fantasy; but I have at least rendered it quite impossible for the stage, for which my intercourse with Drury Lane has given me the greatest contempt.

"I have not even copied it off, and feel too lazy at present to attempt the whole; but when I have, I will send it you, and you may either throw it into the fire or not."

LETTER 262.

TO MR. MURRAY.

"Venice, February 25, 1817.

"I wrote to you the other day in answer to your letter; at present I would trouble you with a commission, if you would be kind enough to undertake it.

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'You, perhaps, know Mr. Love, the jeweller, of Old Bond-street? In 1813, when in the intention of returning to Turkey, I purchased of him, and paid (argent comptant) for about a dozen snuff-boxes, of more or less value, as presents for some of my Mussulman acquaintance. These I have now with me. The other day, having occasion to make an alteration in the lid of one (to place a portrait in it), it has turned out to be silver-gilt instead of gold, for which last it was sold and paid for. This was discovered by the workman in trying it, before taking off the hinges

* Manfred.

and working upon the lid. I have of course recalled and preserved the box in statu quo. What I wish you to do is, to see the said Mr. Love, and inform him of this circumstance, adding, from me, that I will take care he shall not have done this with impunity.

"If there is no remedy in law, there is at least the equitable one of making known his guilt—that is, his silver-gilt, and be d-d to him.

"I shall carefully preserve all the purchases I made of him on that occasion for my return, as the plague in Turkey is a barrier to travelling there at present, or rather the endless quarantine which would be the consequence before one could land in coming back. Pray state the matter to him with due ferocity.

"I sent you the other day some extracts from a kind of Drama which I had begun in Switzerland and finished here; you will tell me if they are received. They were only in a letter. I have not yet had energy to copy it out, or I would send you the whole in different covers. "The Carnival closed this day last week.

"Mr. Hobhouse is still at Rome, I believe. I am at present a little unwell;-sitting up too late and some subsidiary dissipations have lowered my blood a good deal; but I have at present the quiet and temperance of Lent before me. Believe me, &c.

"P.S. Remember me to Mr. Gifford.-I have not received your parcel or parcels.-Look into 'Moore's (Dr. Moore's) View of Italy' for me; in one of the volumes you will find an account of the Doge Valiere (it ought to be Falieri) and his conspiracy, or the motives of it. Get it transcribed for me, and send it in a letter to me soon. I want it, and cannot find so good an account of that business here; though the veiled patriot, and the place where he was crowned, and afterwards decapitated, still exist and are shown. I have searched all their histories; but the policy of the old aristocracy made their writers silent on his motives, which were a private grievance against one of the patricians.

"I mean to write a tragedy on the subject, which appears to me very dramatic; an old man, jealous, and conspiring against the state of which he was the actually reigning chief. The last circumstance makes it the most remarkable and only fact of the kind in all history of all nations."

LETTER 263.

TO MR. MOORE.

"Venice, February 28, 1817.

At pre

"You will, perhaps, complain as much of the frequency of my letters now, as you were wont to do of their rarity. I think this is the fourth within as many moons. I feel anxious to hear from you, even more than usual, because your last indicated that you were unwell. sent, I am on the invalid regimen myself. The Carnival-that is, the latter part of it, and sitting up late o'nights, had knocked me up a little. But it is over, and it is now Lent, with all its abstinence and sacred music.

"The mumming closed with a masked ball at the Fenice, where I

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went, as also to most of the ridottos, &c. &c.; and, though I did not dissipate much upon the whole, yet I find the sword wearing out the scabbard,' though I have but just turned the corner of twenty-nine.

"So, we'll go no more a roving

o late into the night,

Though the heart be still as loving
And the moon be still as bright.
For the sword out-wears its sheath,

And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breath
And Love itself have rest,

Though the night was made for loving,

And the day returns too soon,

Yet we'll go no more a roving
By the light of the moon.

I have lately had some news of litteratoor, as I heard the editor of the Monthly pronounce it once upon a time. I hear that W. W. has been publishing and responding to the attacks of the Quarterly, in the learned Perry's Chronicle. I read his poesies last autumn, and, amongst them, found an epitaph on his bull-dog, and another on myself. But I beg leave to assure him (like the astrologer Partridge) that I am not only alive now, but was alive also at the time he wrote it. Hobhouse has (I hear, also) expectorated a letter against the Quarterly, addressed to me. I feel awkwardly situated between him and Gifford, both being my friends.

"And this is your month of going to press by the body of Diana! (a Venetian oath) I feel as anxious—but not fearful for you—as if it were myself coming out in a work of humour, which would, you know, be the antipodes of all my previous publications. I don't think you have any thing to dread but your own reputation. You must keep up to that. As you never showed me a line of your work, I do not even know your measure; but you must send me a copy by Murray forthwith, and then you shall hear what I think. I dare say you are in a pucker. Of all authors, you are the only really modest one I ever met with,—which would sound oddly enough to those who recollect your morals when you were young-that is, when you were extremely young -I don't mean to stigmatize you either with years or morality.

"I believe I told you that the E. R. had attacked me, in an article on Coleridge (I have not seen it)—' Et tu, Jeffrey ?'- there is nothing but roguery in villanous man.' But I absolve him of all attacks, present and future; for I think he had already pushed his clemency in my behoof to the utmost, and I shall always think well of him. I only wonder he did not begin before, as my domestic destruction was a fine opening for all the world, of which all who could did well to avail themselves.

"If I live ten years longer, you will see, however, that it is not over with me—I don't mean in literature, for that is nothing; and it may seem odd enough to say, I do not think it my vocation. But you will

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