lished some years ago, of the Magician Apollonius of Tyana. It is in English, and I think edited or written by what Martin Marprelate calls 'a bouncing priest.' I shall trouble you no farther with this sheet than with the postage. Yours, etc.

« N.

P.S.-Since I wrote this, I determined to enclose it (as a half sheet) to Mr Kinnaird, who will have the goodness to forward it. Besides, it saves sealing-wax."

"You say you have written often: I have only received yours of the eleventh, which is very short. By this post, in five packets, I send you the tragedy of Sardanapalus, which is written in a rough hand: perhaps Mrs Leigh can help you to decipher it. You will please to acknowledge it by return of post. You will remark that the unities are all strictly observed. The scene passes in the same hall always: the time, a summer's night, about nine hours, or less, though it begins before sunset and ends after sunrise. In the third act, when Sardanapalus calls for a mirror to look at himself in his armour, recollect to quote the Latin passage from Juvenal upon Otho (a similar character, who did the same thing): Gifford will help you to it. The trait is perhaps too familiar, but it is historical (of Otho, at least), and natural in an effeminate character.>>

<< I enclose you another letter, which will only confirm what I have said to you.

« About Allegra-I will take some decisive step in the course of the year; at present, she is so happy where she is, that perhaps she had better have her alphabet imparted in her convent.

« What you say of the Dante is the first I have heard of it-all seeming to be merged in the row about the tragedy. Continue it!—Alas! what could Dante himself now prophesy about Italy?. I am glad you like it, however, but doubt that you will be singular in your opinion. My new tragedy is completed.

«The B* * is right,—I ought to have mentioned her humour and amiability, but I thought at her sixty, beauty would be most agreeable or least likely. However, it shall be rectified in a new edition; and if any of the parties have either looks or qualities which they wish to be noticed, let me have a minute of them. I have no private nor personal dislike to Venice, rather the contrary, but I merely speak of what is the subject of all remarks and all writers upon her present state. Let me hear from you before you start. Believe me,

« Ever, etc.

« P.S.-Did you receive two letters of Douglas Kinnaird's in an endorse from me? Remember me to Mengaldo, Soranzo, and all who care that I should remember them. The letter alluded to in the enclosed, 'to the Cardinal,' was in answer to some queries of the government, about a poor devil of a Neapolitan, arrested at

Sinigaglia on suspicion, who came to beg of me here; being without breeches, and consequently without pockets for halfpence, I relieved and forwarded him to his country, and they arrested him at Pesaro on suspicion, and have since interrogated me (civilly and politely, however), about him. I sent them the poor man's petition, and such information as I had about him, which, I trust, will get him out again, that is to say, if they give him a fair hearing.

"I am content with the article. Pray, did you receive, some posts ago, Moore's lines, which I enclosed to you, written at Paris?»

LETTER CCCCXXXIV.

TO MR MOORE.

« Ravenna, June 4th, 1821.

<< You have not written lately, as is the usual custom with literary gentlemen, to console their friends with their observations in cases of magnitude. I do not know whether I sent you my 'Elegy on the Lady

* *

recovery of

« The papers (and perhaps your letters) will have put you in possession of Muster Elliston's dramatic behaviour. It is to be presumed that the play was fitted for the stage by Mr Dibdin, who is the tailor upon such occasions, and will have taken measure with his usual I hear that it is still continued to be peraccuracy. formed-a piece of obstinacy for which it is some consolation to think that the discourteous histrio will be out of pocket.

«You will be surprised to hear that I have finished another tragedy in five acts, observing all the unities strictly. It is called 'Sardanapalus,' and was sent by last post to England. It is not for the stage, any more than the other was intended for it,—and I shall take better care this time that they don't get hold on 't,

<< I have also sent, two months ago, a further letter on Bowles, etc.; but he seems to be so taken up with my 'respect' (as he calls it) towards him in the former case, that I am not sure that it will be published, being somewhat too full of pastime and prodigality.' I learn from some private letters of Bowles's, that you were 'the gentleman in asterisks.' Who would have dreamed it? you see what mischief that clergyman has done by printing notes without names. How the deuce was I to suppose that the first four asterisks meant Campbell' and not 'Pope,' and that the blank signature meant Thomas Moore? You see what comes of being familiar with

'In their eagerness, like true controversialists, to avail themselves of every passing advantage, and convert even straws into weapons on an emergency, my two friends, during their short warfare, contrived to place me in that sort of embarrassing position, the most provoking feature of which is, that it excites more amusement than sympathy. On the one side, Mr Bowles chose to cite, as a support to his argument, a short fragment of a note, addressed to him, as he stated, by « a gentleman of the highest literary, etc. etc.,» and saying, in reference to Mr Bowles's former pamphlet, « You have hit the right nail on the head, and **** too." This short scrap was signed with four asterisks; and when, on the appearance of Mr Bowles's Letter, I met with it in his pages, not the slightest suspicion ever crossed my mind that I had been myself the writer of it;-my communications with my reverend friend and neighbour having been (for years, I am proud to say) sufficiently frequent to allow of such a hasty compliment to his disputative powers passing from my memory. When Lord Byron took the field against Mr Bowles's Letter, this unlucky scrap, so authoritatively brought forward, was, of course, too tempting a mark for his facetiousness to be resisted; more especially as the person mentioned in it, as having suffered from the re

parsons. His answers have not yet reached me, but I understand from Hobhouse, that he (H.) is attacked in them. If that be the case, Bowles has broken the truce (which he himself proclaimed, by the way), and I must have at him again.

Did you receive my letters with the two or three concluding sheets of Memoranda?

<< There are no news here to interest much. A German spy (boasting himself such) was stabbed last week, but not mortally. The moment I heard that he went about bullying and boasting, it was easy for me, or any one else, to foretel what would occur to him, which I did, and it came to pass in two days after. He has got off, however, for a slight incision.

« A row the other night, about a lady of the place, between her various lovers, occasioned a midnight dis

verend critic's vigour, appeared, from the number of asterisks employed in designating him, to have been Pope himself, though, in reality, the name was that of Mr Bowles's former antagonist, Mr Campbell. The noble assailant, it is needless to say, made the most of this vulnerable point; and few readers could have been more diverted than I was with his happy ridicule of « the gentleman in asterisks,» little thinking that I was myself all the while, this veiled victim,-nor was it till about the time of the receipt of the above letter, that, by some communication on the subject from a friend in England, I was startled into the recollection of my own share in the transaction.

While by one friend I was thus unconsciously, if not innocently, drawn into the scrape, the other was not slow in rendering me the same friendly service;-for, on the appearance of Lord Byron's answer to Mr Bowles, I had the mortification of finding that, with a far less pardonable want of reserve, he had all but named me as his authority for an anecdote of his reverend opponent's early days, which I had, in the course of an after-dinner conversation, told him at Venice, and which,-pleasant in itself, and, whether true or false, harmless,-derived its sole sting from the manner in which the noble disputant triumphantly applied it. Such are the consequences of one's near and dear friends taking to controversy.