mean time, if you like to read them you may, and 'show them to anybody you like-I care not.

The Life is Memoranda, and not Confessions. I have left out all my loves (except in a general way), and many other of the most important things (because I must not compromise other people), so that 'it is like the play of Hamlet-" the part of Hamlet ' omitted by particular desire." But you will find many opinions, and some fun, with a detailed account of my marriage and its consequences, as true as a party concerned can make such account, for I suppose we are all prejudiced.

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'I have never read over this Life since it was written, so that I know not exactly what it may repeat or contain. Moore and I passed some merry days 'together.

I probably must return for business, or in my way to America. Pray, did you get a letter for Hobhouse, 'who will have told you the contents? I understand that the Venezuelan commissioners had orders to 'treat with emigrants; now I want to go there. I 'should not make a bad South-American planter, and 'I should take my natural daughter, Allegra, with me, and settle. I wrote, at length, to Hobhouse, to get 'information from Perry, who, I suppose, is the best 'topographer and trumpeter of the new republicans. Pray write. Yours ever.

'P. S. Moore and I did nothing but laugh. He ' will tell you of " "my whereabouts," and all my pro'ceedings at this present; they are as usual. You 'should not let those fellows publish false "Don 'Juans;" but do not put my name, because I mean to 'cut R―ts up like a gourd in the preface, if I con'tinue the poem.'

66

"October 29th, 1819.

'The Ferrara story is of a piece with all the rest of the Venetian manufacture, you may judge. I only changed horses there since I wrote to you, after my 'visit in June last. Convent," and " carry off," quotha! and "girl." I should like to know who has 'been carried off, except poor dear me. I have been more ravished myself than anybody since the Trojan war; but as to the arrest and its causes, one is as 'true as the other, and I can account for the invention ' of neither. I suppose it is some confusion of the 'tale of the F** and of M. Guiccioli, and half a 'dozen more; but it is useless to unravel the web, 'when one has only to brush it away. I shall settle ' with Master E., who looks very blue at your in-decision, and swears that he is the best arithmetician in Europe; and so I think also, for he makes out two ' and two to be five.

You may see me next week. I have a horse or 'two more (five in all), and I shall repossess myself of Lido, and I will rise earlier, and we will go and shake our livers over the beach, as heretofore, if you like' and we will make the Adriatic roar again with our 'hatred of that now empty oyster-shell, without its 'pearl, the city of Venice.

Murray sent me a letter yesterday: the impostors have published two new Third Cantos of Don Juan: '-the devil take the impudence of some blackguard 'bookseller or other therefor! Perhaps I did not 'make myself understood; he told me the sale had 'been great, 1200 out of 1500 quarto, I believe (which ' is nothing after selling 13,000 of the Corsair in one day); but that the "best judges, &c." had said it was

very fine, and clever, and particularly good English, ' and poetry, and all those consolatory things, which

are not, however, worth a single copy to a book'seller: and as to the author, of course I am in a 'd-ned passion at the bad taste of the times, and 'swear there is nothing like posterity, who, of course, 'must know more of the matter than their grand'fathers. There has been an eleventh commandment 'to the women not to read it, and, what is still more 'extraordinary, they seem not to have broken it. But that can be of little import to them, poor things, for 'the reading or non-reading a book will never

6

'Count G. comes to Venice next week, and I am requested to consign his wife to him, which shall be 'done. What you say of the long evenings at the Mira, or Venice, reminds me of what Curran said to "Moore:-" So I hear you have married a pretty woman, and a very good creature, too-an excellent 'creature. Pray-um!-how do you pass your evenings?" It is a devil of a question that, and perhaps as easy to answer with a wife as with a mistress. 'If you go to Milan, pray leave at least a ViceConsul-the only vice that will ever be wanting in 'Venice. D'Orville is a good fellow. But you shall

6

go to England in the spring with me, and plant Mrs. Hoppner at Berne with her relations for a few months. 'I wish you had been here (at Venice, I mean, not the Mira) when Moore was here-we were very merry ' and tipsy. He hated Venice by the way, and swore it was a sad place*.

So Madame Albrizzi's death is in danger-poor 'woman! Moore told me that at Geneva they had

I beg to say that this report of my opinion of Venice is coloured somewhat too deeply by the feelings of the reporter.

'made a devil of a story of the Fornaretta :-" Young lady seduced!-subsequent abandonment!-leap into the Grand Canal!"—and her being in the "hospital ' of fous in consequence!" I should like to know who was nearest being made "fou," and be d-d to them! 'Don't you think me in the interesting character of a very ill-used gentleman? I hope your little boy is 'well. Allegrina is flourishing like a pomegranate ' blossom. Yours, &c.'

'Venice, November 8th, 1819.

Mr. Hoppner has lent me a copy of " Don 'Juan," Paris edition, which he tells me is read in 'Switzerland by clergymen and ladies with consider'able approbation. In the Second Canto, you must "alter the 49th stanza to

'Twas twilight, and the sunless day went down
'Over the waste of waters, like a veil
Which if withdrawn would but disclose the frown
'Of one whose hate is mask'd but to assail;
Thus to their hopeless eyes the night was shown,
And grimly darkled o'er their faces pale

' And the dim desolate deep; twelve days had Fear

Been their familiar, and now Death was here.

I have been ill these eight days with a tertian 'fever, caught in the country on horseback in a thun'der-storm. Yesterday I had the fourth attack: the 'two last were very smart, the first day as well as the 'last being preceded by vomiting. It is the fever of 'the place and the season. I feel weakened, but not 'unwell, in the intervals, except headache and lassi'tude.

Count Guiccioli has arrived in Venice, and has 'presented his spouse (who had preceded him two

'months for her health and the prescriptions of Dr. Aglietti) with a paper of conditions, regulations of ' hours and conduct, and morals, &c. &c. &c., which he 'insists on her accepting, and she persists in refusing. I am expressly, it should seem, excluded by this treaty, as an indispensable preliminary; so that they are in high dissension, and what the result may be I 'know not, particularly as they are consulting friends.

To-night, as Countess Guiccioli observed me poring over "Don Juan," she stumbled by mere 'chance on the 137th stanza of the First Canto, and ' asked me what it meant. I told her, " Nothing-but your husband is coming.'" As I said this in Italian, ' with some emphasis, she started up in a fright, and Isaid, "Oh, my God, is he coming?" thinking it was her own, who either was or ought to have been at 'the theatre. You may suppose we laughed when she 'found out the mistake. You will be amused, as I was; it happened not three hours ago.

'I wrote to you last week, but have added nothing 'to the third Canto since my fever, nor to " The Pro'phecy of Dante." Of the former there are about 100 octaves done; of the latter about 500 lines-perhaps more. Moore saw the third Juan, as far as it then ' went. I do not know if my fever will let me go on 'with either, and the tertian lasts, they say, a good ' while. I had it in Malta on my way home, and the 'malaria fever in Greece the year before that. The 'Venetian is not very fierce, but I was delirious one of the nights with it, for an hour or two, and, on my senses coming back, found Fletcher sobbing on one 'side of the bed, and La Contessa Guiccioli * weeping

The following curious particulars of his delirium are given by Madame Guiccioli:- At the beginning of winter Count Guiccioli came