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 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 me of Perry petrifies me; it is a rank imposition. In or about February or March, 1816, I was given to understand that Mr. Croker was not only a coadjutor in the attacks of the Courier in 1814, but the author of some lines tolerably ferocious, then recently published in a morning paper. Upon this I wrote a reprisal. The whole of the lines I have forgotten, and even the purport of them I scarcely 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 hold myself personally responsible for satisfaction, though I reserve to myself the right of disavowing all or any fabrications. 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 sanction could alone justify him in such a proceeding, even were the lines mine; and if false, there are no words for him. I repeat to you that the original was burnt before you on your assurance, and there never was a copy, nor even a verbal_repetition,—very much to the discomfort of some zealous Whigs, who bored me for them (having heard it bruited by Mr. Davies that there were such matters) to no purpose; for, having written them solely with the notion that Mr. Croker was 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 I recollected them) give a copy after that, unless I was well assured that Mr. Croker was really the author of that which you assured me he was not. "I intend for England this spring, where I have some 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

tale 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 impracticable, knowing the zeal of my friends that I should try that for which I have an invincible repugnance, viz. a representation.

"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 CCLXVI.

TO MR. MOORE.

"Venice, March 10, 1817.

"I wrote again to you lately, but I hope you won't be sorry to have another epistle. I have been unwell this last month, with a kind of slow and low fever, which fixes upon me at night, and goes off in the morning; but, however, I am now better. In spring it is probable we may meet; at least I intend for England, where I have business, and hope to meet you in your restored health and additional laurels.

"Murray has sent me the Quarterly and the Edinburgh. When I tell you that Walter Scott is the author of the 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, the misanthropical and gloomy gentleman he takes me for, but a facetious companion, well to do with those with 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, which always rises with the rebound.

"At Venice we are in Lent, and I have not lately moved out of doors, my feverishness requiring quiet, and-by way of being more quiet-here is the Signora Marianna just come in and seated at my elbow.

"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 them instead of you.

"Ever, &c."

LETTER CCLXVII.

TO MR. MOORE.

"Venice, March 25th, 1817. "I have at last learned, in default of your own writing (or not writing-which should it be? for I am not very clear as to the application of the word default), from Murray, two particulars of (are belonging to) you; one, that you are removing to Hornsey, which is, I presume, to be nearer London; and the other, that your Poem is announced by the name of Lalla Rookh. I am glad of it,-first, that we are to have it at last, and next, I like a tough title myself-witness the Giaour and Childe Harold, which choked half the Blues at starting. Besides, it is the tail of Alcibiades's dog,-not that I suppose you want either dog or tail. Talking of tail, I wish you had not called it a' Persian Tale.** Say a 'Poem' or 'Romance,' but not 'Tale.' I am very sorry that I called some of my own things Tales,' because I think that they are something better. Besides, we have had Arabian, and Hindoo, and Turkish, and Assyrian Tales. But after all, this is frivolous in me; you won't, however, mind my nonsense.

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"Really and truly, I want you to make a great hit, if only out of self-love, because we happen to be old cronies; and I have no doubt you will-I am sure you can. But you are, I'll be sworn, in a devil of a pucker; and I am not at your elbow, and Rogers is. I envy him; which is not fair, because he does not envy any body. Mind you send to me-that is, make Murray send-the moment you are forth.

"I have been very ill with a slow fever, which at last took to flying, and became as quick as need be.† But, at length, after a week of half-delirium, burning skin, thirst, hot headache, horrible pulsation, and no sleep, by the blessing of barley water, and refusing to see any physician, I recovered. It is an epidemic of the place, which is annual, and visits strangers. Here follow some versicles, which I made one sleepless night.

He had been misinformed on this point,-the work in question having been, from the first, entitled an "Oriental Romance." A much worse mistake (because wilful, and with no very charitable design) was that of certain persons, who would have it that the Poem was meant to be Epic!-Even Mr. D'Israeli has, for the sake of a theory, given in to this very gratuitous assumption :-"The Anacreontic poet," he says, "remains only Anacreontic in his Epic."

In a note to Mr. Murray, subjoined to some corrections for Manfred, he says, "Since I wrote to you last, the slow fever I wot of thought proper to mend its pace, and became similar to one which I caught some years ago in the marshes of Elis, in the Morea."

Pooh! pooh!

I looked at Wordsworth's milk-white 'Rylstone Doe;'

66 "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 magnificent. A man is a fool who travels now in France or 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 staid at Venice chiefly because it is not one of their dens of thieves; and here they but pause and pass. In Switzerland it was really noxious. Luckily, I was early, and had got the prettiest place on all the Lake before they were quickened into motion with the rest of reptiles. But 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.

"By-the-way, I think the Jungfrau, and all that region 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 view-much finer than Mont Blane and Chamouni, or the Simplon. 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 introducing the Alpine scenery in description; and this I sent lately to Murray. Almost all the dram. pers. are spirits, ghosts, or magicians, and the scene is in the Alps and the other world; so you may suppose what a bedlam tragedy it must be: make him show it you. I sent him all three acts piecemeal, by the post, and suppose they have arrived.

"I have now written to you at least six letters, or letterets, and all I have received in return is a note about the length you used to write from Bury-street to St. James's-street, when we used to dine with Rogers, and talk laxly, and go to parties, and hear poor Sheridan now and then. Do you remember one night he was so tipsy that I was forced to put his cocked hat on for him,-for he could not,-and I let him down at Brookes's, much as he must since have been let down into his grave. Heigh ho! I wish I was drunk-but I have nothing but this d-d barley water before me.

"I am still in love,-which is a dreadful drawback in quitting a place, and I can't stay at Venice much longer. What I shall do on this point I don't know. The girl means to go with me, but I do not like this for her own sake. I have had so many conflicts in my own mind on this subject, that I am not at all sure they did not help me to the fever I mentioned above. I am certainly very much attached to her, and I have cause to be so, if you knew all. But she has a child; and though, like all the children of the sun,' she consults nothing but

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passion, it is necessary I should think for both; and it is only the virtuous, like who can afford to give up husband and child, and

live happy ever after. "The Italian ethics are the most singular ever met with. The perversion, not only of action, but of reasoning, is singular in the women. It is not that they do not consider the thing itself as wrong, and very wrong, but love (the sentiment of love) is not merely an excuse for it, but makes 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 CCLXVIII.

TO MR. MURRAY.

"Venice, March 25th, 1817. "Your letter and enclosure are safe; but English gentlemen' 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 deed properly signed: but must he necessarily be genteel? Venice is not a place where the English are gregarious; their pigeon-houses are Florence, Naples, Rome, &c.; and to tell you the truth, this was one reason why I staid here till the season of the purgation of Rome from these people, which is infected with them at this time, should arrive. Besides, I abhor the nation and the nation me; it is impossible for me to describe my own sensation on that point, but it may suffice to say, that, if I met with any of the race in the beautiful parts of Switzerland, the most distant glimpse or aspect of them poisoned the whole scene, and I do not choose to have the Pantheon, and St. 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