Chapter 121

"Ravenna, 8bre 12°, 1820.

"By land and sea carriage a considerable quantity of books have arrived; and I am obliged and grateful: but 'medio de fonte leporum, surgit amari aliquid,' &c. &c.; which, being interpreted, means,

"I'm thankful for your books, dear Murray; But why not send Scott's Monast_ery_?

the only book in four _living_ volumes I would give a baioccolo to see--'bating the rest of the same author, and an occasional Edinburgh and Quarterly, as brief chroniclers of the times. Instead of this, here are Johnny Keats's * * poetry, and three novels by God knows whom, except that there is Peg * * *'s name to one of them--a spinster whom I thought we had sent back to her spinning. Crayon is very good; Hogg's Tales rough, but RACY, and welcome.

"Books of travels are expensive, and I don't want them, having travelled already; besides, they lie. Thank the author of 'The Profligate' for his (or her) present. Pray send me _no more_ poetry but what is rare and decidedly good. There is such a trash of Keats and the like upon my tables that I am ashamed to look at them. I say nothing against your parsons, your S * *s and your C * *s--it is all very fine--but pray dispense me from the pleasure. Instead of poetry, if you will favour me with a few soda-powders, I shall be delighted: but all prose ('bating _travels_ and novels NOT by Scott) is welcome, especially Scott's Tales of my Landlord, and so on.

"In the notes to Marino Faliero, it may be as well to say that '_Benintende_' was not really of _the Ten_, but merely _Grand Chancellor_, a separate office (although important): it was an arbitrary alteration of mine. The Doges too were all _buried_ in St. _Mark's before_ Faliero. It is singular that when his predecessor, Andrea Dandolo, died, _the Ten_ made a law that _all_ the _future Doges_ should be _buried with their families, in their own churches,--one would think by a kind of presentiment_. So that all that is said of his _ancestral Doges_, as buried at St. John's and Paul's, is altered from the fact, _they being in St. Mark's. Make a note_ of this, and put _Editor_ as the subscription to it.

"As I make such pretensions to accuracy, I should not like to be _twitted_ even with such trifles on that score. Of the play they may say what they please, but not so of my costume and _dram. pers._ they having been real existences.

"I omitted Foscolo in my list of living _Venetian worthies, in the notes_, considering him as an _Italian_ in general, and not a mere provincial like the rest; and as an Italian I have spoken of him in the preface to Canto 4th of Childe Harold.

"The French translation of us!!! _oimè! oimè!_--the German; but I don't understand the latter and his long dissertation at the end about the Fausts. Excuse haste. Of politics it is not safe to speak, but nothing is decided as yet.

"I am in a very fierce humour at not having Scott's Monastery. You are _too liberal_ in quantity, and somewhat careless of the quality, of your missives. All the _Quarterlies_ (four in number) I had had before from you, and _two_ of the Edinburgh; but no matter; we shall have new ones by and by. No more Keats, I entreat:--flay him alive; if some of you don't, I must skin him myself. There is no bearing the drivelling idiotism of the manikin.

"I don't feel inclined to care further about 'Don Juan.' What do you think a very pretty Italian lady said to me the other day? She had read it in the French, and paid me some compliments, with due DRAWBACKS, upon it. I answered that what she said was true, but that I suspected it would live longer than Childe Harold. '_Ah but_' (said she). '_I would rather have the fame of Childe Harold for three years than an_ IMMORTALITY _of Don Juan!_' The truth is that _it is_ TOO TRUE, and the women hate many things which strip off the tinsel of _sentiment_; and they are right, as it would rob them of their weapons. I never knew a woman who did not hate _De Grammont's Memoirs_ for the same reason: even Lady * * used to abuse them.

"Rose's work I never received. It was seized at Venice. Such is the liberality of the Huns, with their two hundred thousand men, that they dare not let such a volume as his circulate."

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