TO THOMAS MOORE Venice, December 24, 1816

I have taken a fit of writing to you, which portends postage once from Verona - once from Venice, and again from Venice thrice that is. For this you may thank yourself; for I heard that you complained of my silence - so, here goes for garrulity . . .

My flame (my Donna whom I spoke of in my former epistle, my Marianna) is still my Marianna, and I her - what she pleases. She is by far the prettiest woman I have seen here, and the most loveable I have met with any where - as well as one of the most singular. I believe I told you the rise and progress of our liaison in my former letter. Lest that should not have reached you, I will merely repeat, that she is a Venetian, two-and-twenty years old, married to a merchant well to do in the world, and that she has great black oriental eyes, and all the qualities which her eyes promise. Whether being in love with her has steeled me or not, I do not know; but I have not seen many other women who seem pretty. The nobility, in particular, are a sad-looking race - the gentry rather better. And now, what art thou doing?

What are you doing now,
Oh Thomas Moore? . . .

Are you not near the Luddites? By the Lord! if there's a row, but I'll be among ye! How go on the weavers - the breakers of frames - the Lutherans of politics - the reformers?

As the Liberty lads o'er the sea
Bought their freedom, and cheaply, with blood,
So we, boys, we
Will die fighting, or live free,
And down with all kings but King Ludd! . . .

There's an amiable chanson for you - all impromptu. I have written it principally to shock your neighbour--[Hodgson?] who is all clergy and loyalty - mirth and innocence - milk and water . . .

When does your poem of poems come out? I hear that the Edinburgh Review has cut up Coleridge's Christabel, and declared against me for praising it. I praised it, firstly, because I thought well of it; secondly, because Coleridge was in great distress, and after doing what little I could for him in essentials, I thought that the public avowal of my good opinion might help him further, at least with the booksellers. I am very sorry that Jeffrey has attacked him, because, poor fellow, it will hurt him in mind and pocket. As for me, he's welcome - I shall never think less of Jeffrey for any thing he may say against me or mine in future . . .

I suppose Murray has sent you, or will send (for I do not know whether they are out or no) the poem, or poesies, of mine, of last summer. By the mass! they are sublime - Ganion Coheriza - gainsay who dares! Pray, let me hear from you, and of you, and, at least, let me know that you have received these three letters. Direct right here, poste restante.

Ever and ever,etc. . . .

TO JOHN MURRAY Venice, Dec. 27, 1816

. . . As the news of Venice must be very interesting to you, I will regale you with it.

Yesterday being the feast of St Stephen, every mouth was put in motion. There was nothing but fiddling and playing on the virginals, and all kinds of conceits and divertisements, on every canal of this aquatic city. I dined with the Countess Albrizzi and a Paduan and Venetian party, and afterwards went to the opera, at the Fenice theatre (which opens for the Carnival on that day), - the finest, by the way, I have ever seen; it beats our theatres hollow in beauty and scenery, and those of Milan and Brescia bow before it. The opera and its Syrens were much like all other operas and women, but the subject of the said opera was some thing edifying; it turned - the plot and conduct thereof - upon a fact narrated by Livy of a hundred and fifty married ladies having poisoned a hundred and fifty husbands in the good old times. The bachelors of Rome believed this extraordinary mortality to be merely the common effect of matrimony or a pestilence; but the surviving Benedicts, being all seized with the cholic, examined into the matter, and found that 'their possets had been drugged'; the consequence of which was much scandal and several suits at law. This is really and truly the subject of the Musical piece at the Fenice; and you can't conceive what pretty things are sung and recitativoed about the horrenda strage [horrible carnage]. The conclusion was a lady's head about to be chopped off by a Lictor, but (I am sorry to say) he left it on, and she got up and sung a trio with the two Consuls, the Senate in the background being chorus. The ballet was distinguished by nothing remarkable, except that the principal she-dancer went into convulsions because she was not applauded on her first appearance; and the manager came forward to ask if there was 'ever a physician in the theatre'. There was a Greek one in my box, whom I wished very much to volunteer his services, being sure that in this case these would have been the last convulsions which would have troubled the Ballerina; but he would not. The crowd was enormous; and in coming out, having a lady under my arm, I was obliged, in making way, almost to 'beat a Venetian and traduce the state', being compelled to regale a person with an English punch in the guts, which sent him as far back as the squeeze and the passage would admit. He did not ask for another; but, with great signs of disapprobation and dismay, appealed to his compatriots, who laughed at him . . .

And now, if you don't write, I don't know what I won't say or do, nor what I will: send me some news - good news.

Yours very truly, etc., etc., etc.

TO JOHN MURRAY Venice, Jan. 2, 1817

. . . To-day is the 2d of January. On this day 3 years ago The Corsair's publication is dated, I think, in my letter to Moore. On this day two years I married - 'Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth - blessed be the name of the Lord'. - I sha'n't forget the day in a hurry; and will take care to keep the Anniversary before the Evening is over. It is odd enough that I this day received a letter from you announcing the publication of Cd. Hd., etc., etc., on the day of the date of The Corsair; and that I also received one from my Sister, written on the 10th of Decr., my daughter's birth-day (and relative chiefly to my daughter), and arriving on the day of the date of my marriage, this present 2d of January, the month of my birth, - and various other Astrologous matters, which I have no time to enumerate.

By the way, you might as well write to Hentsch, my Genevese banker, and enquire whether the two packets consigned to his care were or were not delivered to Mr St Aubyn, or if they are still in his keeping. One contains papers, letters, and all the original MS. of your 3d canto, as first conceived; and the other, some bones from the field of Morat. Many thanks for your news, and the good spirits in which your letter is written . . .

The general state of morals here is much the same as in the Doges' time; a woman is virtuous (according to the code) who limits herself to her husband and one lover; those who have two, three, or more, are a little wild; but it is only those who are indiscriminately diffuse, and form a low connection, such as the Princess of Wales with her courier, (who, by the way, is made a knight of Malta,) who are considered as over-stepping the modesty of marriage. In Venice, the Nobility have a trick of marrying with dancers or singers: and, truth to say, the women of their own order are by no means handsome; but the general race - the women of the 2d and other orders, the wives of the Advocates, merchants, and proprietors, and untitled gentry, are mostly bel' sangue, and it is with these that the more amatory connections are usually formed: there are also instances of stupendous constancy. I know a woman of fifty who never had but one lover, who dying early, she became devout, renouncing all but her husband: she piques herself, as may be presumed, upon this miraculous fidelity, talking of it occasionally with a species of misplaced morality, which is rather amusing. There is no convincing a woman here, that she is in the smallest degree deviating from the rule of right or the fitness of things, in having an Amoroso: the great sin seems to lie in concealing it, or in having more than one; that is, unless such an extension of the prerogative is understood and approved of by the prior claimant.

In my case, I do not know that I had any predecessor, and am pretty sure that there is no participator; and am inclined to think, from the youth of the party, and from the frank undisguised way in which every body avows everything in this part of the world, when there is anything to avow, as well as from some other circumstances, such as the marriage being recent, etc., etc., that this is the premier pas: it does not much signify . . .

I have not done a stitch of poetry since I left Switzerland, and have not, at present, the estro upon me: the truth is, that you are afraid of having a 4th canto before September, and of another copyright; but I have at present no thought of resuming that poem nor of beginning any other. If I write, I think of trying prose; but I dread introducing living people, or applications which might be made to living people: perhaps one day or other, I may attempt some work of fancy in prose, descriptive of Italian manners and of human passions; but at present I am preoccupied. As for poesy, mine is the dream of my sleeping passions; when they are awake, I cannot speak their language, only in their Somnambulism, and just now they are not dormant.

Yours, ever and truly,
B.

TO THOMAS MOORE Venice, January 28, 1817

. . . I am truly sorry to hear of your father's misfortune - cruel at any time, but doubly cruel in advanced life. However, you will, at least, have the satisfaction of doing your part by him, and, depend upon it, it will not be in vain. Fortune, to be sure, is a female, but not such a b-- as the rest (always excepting your wife and my sister from such sweeping terms); for she generally has some justice in the long run. I have no spite against her, though between her and Nemesis I have had some sore gauntlets to run - but then I have done my best to deserve no better. But to you, she is a good deal in arrear, and she will come round - mind if she don't: you have the vigour of life, of independence, of talent, spirit, and character all with you. What you can do for yourself, you have done and will do; and surely there are some others in the world who would not be sorry to be of use, if you would allow them to be useful or at least attempt it.

I think of being in England in the spring. If there is a row, by the sceptre of King Ludd, but I'll be there; and if there is none, and only a continuance of 'this meek, piping time of peace', I'll take a cottage a hundred yards to the south of your abode, and become your neighbour; and we will compose such canticles, and hold such dialogues, as shall be the terror of the Times (including the newspaper of that name), and the wonder, and honour, and praise, of the Morning Chronicle and posterity.

I rejoice to hear of your forthcoming in February - though I tremble for the 'magnificence', which you attribute to the new Childe Harold. I am glad you like it; it is a fine indistinct piece of poetical desolation, and my favourite. I was half mad during the time of its composition, between metaphysics, mountains, lakes, love unextinguishable, thoughts unutterable, and the nightmare of my own delinquencies, I should, many a good day, have blown my brains out, but for the recollection that it would have given pleasure to my mother-in-law; and, even then, if I could have been certain to haunt her - but I won't dwell upon these trifling family matters.

Venice is in the estro of her carnival, and I have been up these last two nights at the ridotto and the opera, and all that kind of thing. Now for an adventure. A few days ago a gondolier brought me a billet without a subscription, intimating a wish on the part of the writer to meet me either in gondola or at the island of San Lazaro, or at a third rendezvous, indicated in the note. 'I know the country's disposition well' - in Venice 'they do let Heaven see those tricks they dare not show', etc., etc.; so, for all response, I said that neither of the three places suited me; but that I would either be at home at ten at night alone, or be at the ridotto at midnight, where the writer might meet me masked. At ten o'clock I was at home and alone (Marianna was gone with her husband to a conversazione), when the door of my apartment opened, and in walked a well-looking and (for an Italian) bionda girl of about nineteen, who informed me that she was married to the brother of my amorosa, and wished to have some conversation with me. I made a decent reply, and we had some talk in Italian and Romaic (her mother being a Greek of Corfu), when lo! in a very few minutes, in marches, to my very great astonishment, Marianna Segati, in propria persona, and after making a most polite courtesy to her sister-in-law and to me, without a single word seizes her said sister-in-law by the hair, and bestows upon her some sixteen slaps, which would have made your ear ache only to hear their echo. I need not describe the screaming which ensued. The luckless visitor took flight. I seized Marianna, who, after several vain efforts to get away in pursuit of the enemy, fairly went into fits in my arms; and, in spite of reasoning, eau de Cologne, vinegar, half a pint of water, and God knows what other waters beside, continued so till past midnight.

After damning my servants for letting people in without apprizing me, I found that Marianna in the morning had seen her sister-in-law's gondolier on the stairs, and, suspecting that this apparition boded her no good, had either returned of her own accord, or been followed by her maids or some other spy of her people to the conversazione, from whence she returned to perpetrate this piece of pugilism. I have seen fits before, and also some small scenery of the same genus in and out of our island: but this was not all. After about an hour, in comes - who ? why, Signor Segati, her lord and husband, and finds me with his wife fainting upon the sofa, and all the apparatus of confusion, dishevelled hair, hats, handkerchiefs, salts, smelling-bottles and the lady as pale as ashes, 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, etc., etc . . . 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, etc.

TO THOMAS MOORE Venice, February 28, 1817

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. At present, 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 went, as also to most of the ridottos, etc., etc.; 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
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright. . .

. . . 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 see that I shall do something or other - the times and fortune permitting - that, 'like the cosmogony, or creation of the world, will puzzle the philosophers of all ages'. But I doubt whether my constitution will hold out. I have, at intervals, exorcised it most devilishly . . .

Pray let me hear from you, at your time and leisure, believing me ever and truly and affectionately, etc.

TO LADY BYRON Venice, March 5th 1817.

. . . Throughout the whole of this unhappy business, I have done my best to avoid the bitterness, which, however, is yet among us; and it would be as well if even you at times recollected, that the man who has been sacrificed in fame, in feelings, in every thing, to the convenience of your family, was he whom you once loved, and who - whatever you may imagine to the contrary - loved you. If you conceive that I could be actuated by revenge against you, you are mistaken: I am not humble enough to be vindictive. Irritated I may have been, and may be - is it a wonder? But upon such irritation, beyond its momentary expression, I have not acted, from the hour that you quitted me to that in which I am made aware that our daughter is to be made the entail of our discussion, the inheritor of our bitterness. If you think to reconcile yourself to yourself by accumulating harshness against me, you are again mistaken: you are not happy, nor even tranquil, nor will you ever be so, even to the moderate degree which is permitted to general humanity. For myself I have a confidence in my Fortune, which will yet bear me through. [Here there is a Greek phrase meaning "Fortune is juster than we."] The reverses which have occurred, were what I should have expected; and, in considering you and yours merely as the instruments of my more recent adversity, it would be difficult for me to blame you, did not every thing appear to intimate a deliberate intention of as wilful malice on your part as could be well digested into a system. However, time and Nemesis will do that, which I could not, even were it in my power remote or immediate. You will smile at this piece of prophecy - do so, but recollect it: it is justified by all human experience. No one was ever even the involuntary cause of great evils to others, without a requital: I have paid and am paying for mine - so will you.

TO THOMAS MOORE Venice, March 25, 1817

. . . 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 stayed 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 the 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 . . .

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 damned barley-water before me . . .

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.

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 forbisi i scarpi', - that is, 'to clean shoes withal', - a Venetian proverb of appreciation, which is applicable to reasoning of all kinds.

TO JOHN MURRAY Venice, April 2, 1817

. . . I am aware of what you say of Otway; and am a very great admirer of his, - all except of that maudlin bitch of chaste lewdness and blubbering curiosity, Belvidera, whom I utterly despise, abhor, and detest; but the story of Marino Falieri is different, and, I think, so much finer, that I wish Otway had taken it instead: the head conspiring against the body for refusal of redress for a real injury, - jealousy - treason, with the more fixed and inveterate passions (mixed with policy) of an old or elderly man - the devil himself could not have a finer subject, and he is your only tragic dramatist.

Voltaire has asked why no woman has ever written even a tolerable tragedy? 'Ah (said the Patriarch) the composition of a tragedy requires -----.' If this be true, Lord knows what Joanna Baillie does; I suppose she borrows them.

There is still, in the Doge's Palace, the black veil painted over Falieri's picture, and the staircase whereon he was first crowned Doge, and subsequently decapitated. This was the thing that most struck my imagination in Venice - more than the Rialto, which I visited for the sake of Shylock; and more, too, than Schiller's 'Armenian ', a novel which took a great hold of me when a boy. It is also called the 'Ghost Seer', and I never walked down St Mark's by moonlight without thinking of it, and 'at nine o'clock he died!' - But I hate things all fiction; and therefore the Merchant and Othello have no great associations for me: but Pierre has. There should always be some foundation of fact for the most airy fabric, and pure invention is but the talent of a liar . . .

You talk of 'marriage'; - ever since my own funeral, the word makes me giddy, and throws me into a cold sweat. Pray, don't repeat it.

Tell me that Walter Scott is better; I would not have him ill for the world. I suppose it was by sympathy that I had my fever at the same time. I joy in the success of your Quarterly; but I must still stick by the Edinburgh. Jeffrey has done so by me, I must say, through everything, and this is more than I deserved from him . . .

There have been two articles in the Venice papers, one a Review of C. Lamb's Glenarvon (whom may it please the beneficent Giver of all Good to damn in the next world! as she has damned herself in this) with the account of her scratching attempt at Canicide (at Lady Heathcote's), and the other a Review of Childe Harold, in which it proclaims me the most rebellious, and contumacious admirer of Buonaparte now surviving in Europe. Both these articles are translations from the Literary Gazette of German Jena. I forgot to mention them at the time; they are some weeks old. They actually mentioned Caro Lamb and her mother's name at full length. I have conserved these papers as curiosities . . .

TO THE HON. AUGUSTA LEIGH Rome, May 10th 1817

My Dearest Augusta, - . . . I am very well, quite recovered, and as is always the case after all illness - particularly fever - got large, ruddy, and robustous to a degree which would please you - and shock me. I have been on horseback several hours a day for this last ten days, besides now and then on my journey; proof positive of high health, and curiosity, and exercise. Love me and don't be afraid - I mean of my sickness. I get well, and shall always get so, and have luck enough still to beat most things; and whether I win or not - depend upon it - I will fight to the last.

Will you tell my wife 'mine excellent Wife' that she is brewing a Cataract for herself and me in these foolish equivocations about Ada, - a job for lawyers - and more hatred for every body, for which - (God knows), there is no occasion. She is surrounded by people who detest me - Brougham the lawyer - who never forgave me for saying that Mrs Ge Lamb was a damned fool (by the way I did not then know he was in love with her) in 1814, and for a former savage note in my foolish satire, all which is good reason for him - but not for Lady Bn; besides her mother - etc etc etc - so that what I may say or you may say is of no great use - however - say it. If she supposes that I want to hate or plague her (however wroth circumstances at times may make me in words and in temporary gusts or disgusts of feeling), she is quite out - I have no such wish - and never had, and if she imagines that I now wish to become united to her again she is still more out. I never will. I would to the end of the year succeeding our separation - (expired nearly a month ago, Legal reckoning), according to a resolution I had taken thereupon - but the day and the hour is gone by - and it is irrevocable. But all this is no reason for further misery and quarrel; Give me but a fair share of my daughter - the half - my natural right and authority, and I am content; otherwise I come to England, and 'law and claw before they get it', all which will vex and out live Sir R. and Ly N. besides making Mrs Clermont bilious - and plaguing Bell herself, which I really by the great God! wish to avoid. Now pray see her and say so - it may do good - and if not - she and I are but what we are, and God knows that is wretched enough - at least to me.

Of Rome I say nothing - you can read the Guide-book - which is very accurate.

I found here an old letter of yours dated November 1816 - to which the best answer I can make - is none. You are sadly timid my child, but so you all shewed yourselves when you could have been useful - particularly [George Byron?] but never mind. I shall not forget him, though I do not rejoice in any ill which befalls him. Is the fool's spawn a son or a daughter? you say one - and others another; so Sykes works him - let him - I shall live to see him and W[ilmot?] destroyed, and more than them - and then - but let all that pass for the present.

yrs. ever
B.

P.S. Hobhouse is here. I travelled from V[enice] quite alone so do not fuss about women etc - I am not so rash as I have been.

TO JOHN MURRAY Venice, May 30, 1817

. . . From Florence I sent you a poem on Tasso, and from Rome the new third act of Manfred, and by Dr Polidori two pictures for my sister. I left Rome, and made a rapid journey home. You will continue to direct here as usual. Mr Hobhouse is gone to Naples; I should have run down there too for a week, but for the quantity of English whom I heard of there. I prefer hating them at a distance; unless an earthquake, or a good real eruption of Vesuvius, were insured to reconcile me to their vicinity. I know no other situation except Hell which I should feel inclined to participate with them - as a race, always excepting several individuals. There were few of them in Rome, and I believe none whom you know, except that old Blue-bore Sotheby, who will give a fine account of Italy, in which he will be greatly assisted by his total ignorance of Italian, and yet this is the translator of Tasso.

The day before I left Rome I saw three robbers guillotined. The ceremony - including the masqued priests; the half-naked executioners; the bandaged criminals; the black Christ and his banner; the scaffold; the soldiery; the slow procession, and the quick rattle and heavy fall of the axe; the splash of the blood, and the ghastliness of the exposed heads - is altogether more impressive than the vulgar and ungentlemanly dirty 'new drop', and dog-like agony of infliction upon the sufferers of the English sentence. Two of these men behaved calmly enough, but the first of the three died with great terror and reluctance, which was very horrible. He would not lie down; then his neck was too large for the aperture, and the priest was obliged to drown his exclamations by still louder exhortations. The head was off before the eye could trace the blow; but from an attempt to draw back the head, notwithstanding it was held forward by the hair, the first head was cut off close to the ears: the other two were taken off more cleanly. It is better than the oriental way, and (I should think) than the axe of our ancestors. The pain seems little; and yet the effect to the spectator, and the preparation to the criminal, are very striking and chilling. The first turned me quite hot and thirsty, and made me shake so that I could hardly hold the opera-glass (I was close, but determined to see, as one should, see every thing, once, with attention); the second and third (which shows how dreadfully soon things grow indifferent), I am ashamed to say, had no effect on me as a horror, though I would have saved them if I could . . .

Yours ever truly,
B.

TO THE HON. AUGUSTA LEIGH Venice, June 3d 1817

Dearest Augusta - I returned home a few days ago from Rome but wrote to you on the road; at Florence I believe, or Bologna. The last city you know - or do not know - is celebrated for the production of Popes - Cardinals - painters - and sausages - besides a female professor of anatomy, who has left there many models of the art in waxwork, some of them not the most decent. - I have received all your letters I believe, which are full of woes, as usual, megrims and mysteries; but my sympathies remain in suspense, for, for the life of me I can't make out whether your disorder is a broken heart or the earache - or whether it is you that have been ill or the children - or what your melancholy and mysterious apprehensions tend to, or refer to, whether to Caroline Lamb's novels - Mrs Clermont's evidence - Lady Byron's magnanimity - or any other piece of imposture; I know nothing of what you are in the doldrums about at present. I should think all that could affect you must have been over long ago, and as for me - leave me to take care of myself. I may be ill or well - in high or low spirits - in quick or obtuse state of feelings - like any body else, but I can battle my way through; better than your exquisite piece of helplessness G[eorge] L[eigh], or that other poor creature George Byron, who will be finely helped up in a year or two with his new state of life - I should like to know what they would do in my situation, or in any situation. I wish well to your George, who is the best of the two a devilish deal - but as for the other I shan't forget him in a hurry, and if I ever forgive or allow an opportunity to escape of evincing my sense of his conduct (and of more than his) on a certain occasion - write me down - what you will, but do not suppose me asleep. 'Let them look to their bond' - sooner or later time and Nemesis will give me the ascendant - and then 'let them look to their bond'. I do not of course allude only to that poor wretch, but to all - to the 3d and 4th generation of these accursed Amalekites and the woman who has been the stumbling block of my-

June 4th 1817

I left off yesterday at the stumbling block of my Midianite marriage - but having received your letter of the 20th May I will be in good humour for the rest of this letter. I had hoped you would like the miniatures, at least one of them, which is in pretty good health; the other is thin enough to be sure - and so was I - and in the ebb of a fever when I sate for it. By the 'man of fashion' I suppose you mean that poor piece of affectation and imitation Wilmot - another disgrace to me and mine - that fellow. I regret not having shot him, which the persuasions of others - and circumstances which at that time would have rendered combats presumptions against my cause - prevented. I wish you well of your indispositions which I hope are slight, or I should lose my senses.

Yours ever and very truly,
B.

TO THOMAS MOORE La Mira, Venice, July 10, 1817

. . . Do you remember Thurlow's poem to Sam - 'When Rogers '; and that damned supper at Rancliffe's that ought to have been a dinner?' Ah, Master Shallow, we have heard the chimes at midnight'. But,

My boat is on the shore
And my bark is on the sea;
But, before I go, Tom Moore,
Here's a double health to thee! . . .

This should have been written fifteen moons ago - the first stanza was. I am just come out from an hour's swim in the Adriatic; and I write to you with a black-eyed Venetian girl before me, reading Boccaccio . . .

Last week I had a row on the road (I came up to Venice from my casino, a few miles on the Paduan road, this blessed day, to bathe) with a fellow in a carriage, who was impudent to my horse. I gave him a swingeing box on the ear, which sent him to the police, who dismissed his complaint. Witnesses had seen the transaction. He first shouted, in an unseemly way, to frighten my palfry. I wheeled round, rode up to the window, and asked him what he meant. He grinned, and said some foolery, which produced him an immediate slap in the face, to his utter discomfiture. Much blasphemy ensued, and some menace, which I stopped by dismounting and opening the carriage door, and intimating an intention of mending the road with his immediate remains, if he did not hold his tongue. He held it.

Monk Lewis is here - 'how pleasant!' He is a very good fellow, and very much yours. So is Sam - so is every body - and amongst the number,

Yours ever,
B.

P.S. - What think you of Manfred? . . .

TO JOHN MURRAY September 15, 1817

. . . The other day I wrote to convey my proposition with regard to the 4th and concluding canto. I have gone over and extended it to one hundred and fifty stanzas, which is almost as long as the first two were originally, and longer by itself than any of the smaller poems except The Corsair. Mr Hobhouse has made some very valuable and accurate notes of considerable length, and you may be sure I will do for the text all that I can to finish with decency. I look upon Childe Harold as my best; and as I begun, I think of concluding with it. But I make no resolutions on that head, as I broke my former intention with regard to The Corsair. However, I fear that I shall never do better; and yet, not being thirty years of age, for some moons to come, one ought to be progressive as far as Intellect goes for many a good year. But I have had a devilish deal of wear and tear of mind and body in my time, besides having published too often and much already. God grant me some judgement! to do what may be most fitting in that and every thing else, for I doubt my own exceedingly . . .

With regard to poetry in general, I am convinced, the more I think of it, that he and all of us - Scott, Southey, Wordsworth, Moore, Cambell, I, - are all in the wrong, one as much as another; that we are upon a wrong revolutionary poetical system, or systems, not worth a damn in itself, and from which none but Rogers and Crabbe are free; and that the present and next generations will finally be of this opinion. I am the more confirmed in this by having lately gone over some of our classics, particularly Pope, whom I tried in this way - I took Moore's poems and my own and some others, and went over them side by side with Pope's, and I was really astonished (I ought not to have been so) and mortified at the ineffable distance in point of sense, harmony, effect, and even Imagination, passion, and Invention, between the little Queen Anne's man, and us of the Lower Empire. Depend upon it, it is all Horace then, and Claudian now, among us; and if I had to begin again, I would model myself accordingly. Crabbe's the man, but he has got a coarse and impracticable subject, and Rogers, the Grandfather of living Poetry, is retired upon half-pay, (I don't mean as a Banker),

Since pretty Miss Jaqueline,
With her nose aquiline,

and has done enough, unless he were to do as he did formerly. . .

TO THE HON. DOUGLAS KINNAIRD Venice, November 19, 1817

Dear Douglas, - Inferring that you are by this time in England again, I assail you on the old subject; to tell you that since your departure I have never heard from the Hansons, from which I infer that Newstead is not likely to be sold, and that I am one degree further in the latitude of hell.

Except a fooling and perplexing passage in a letter of Mrs Leigh's, I have not heard one word more upon the subject at all, and as her way of putting the most common things is more like a riddle than anything else, I can only say that I am farther than ever from understanding her - or it - or Hanson - or anything or anybody; and unless you take compassion upon me, and give me a little common sense, I shall remain in the ignorance and anxiety of the last two months upon the same topic.

If you see Augusta give my love to her, and tell her that I do not write because I really and truly do not understand one single word of her letters. To answer them is out of the question, I don't say it out of ill-nature, but whatever be the subject, there is so much paraphrase, parenthesis, initials, dashes, hints - and what Lord Ogleby calls 'Mr Sterling's damned crinkum crankum', that, sunburn me! if I know what the meaning or no meaning is, and am obliged to study Armenian as a relief . . .

Yours ever and truly,
B.

TO JOHN MURRAY Venice, January 27,1818

. . . It is the height of the Carnival, and I am in the estrum and agonies of a new intrigue with I don't exactly know whom or what, except that she is insatiate of love, and won't take money, and has light hair and blue eyes, which are not common here, and that I met her at the Masque, and that when her mask is off, I am as wise as ever. I shall make what I can of the remainder of my youth, and confess, that like Augustus, I would rather die standing.

TO THOMAS MOORE Venice. February 2, 1818

.. . Your domestic calamity is very grievous, and I feel with you as much as I dare feel at all. Throughout life, your loss must be my loss, and your gain my gain; and though my heart may ebb, there will always be a drop for you among the dregs. I know how to feel with you, because (selfishness being always the substratum of our damnable clay) I am quite wrapt up in my own children. Besides my little legitimate, I have made unto myself an il-legitimate since (to say nothing of one before), and I look forward to one of these as the pillar of my old age, supposing that I ever reach - which I hope I never shall - that desolating period. I have a great love for my little Ada, though perhaps she may torture me like ----. . .

TO JOHN MURRAY Venice, Feb. 20, 1818

... What you tell me of Rogers in your last letter is like him; but he had best let us, that is one of us, if not both, alone. He cannot say that I have not been a sincere and a warm friend to him, till the black drop of his liver oozed through, too palpably to be overlooked. Now, if I once catch him at any of his jugglery with me or mine, let him look to it, for, if I spare him then, write me down a good-natured gentleman; and the more that I have been deceived, - the more that I once relied upon him, - I don't mean his petty friendship (what is that to me?), but his good will, which I really tried to obtain, thinking him at first a good fellow, - the more will I pay off the balance; and so, if he values his quiet, let him look to it; in three months I could restore him to the Catacombs . . .

Yours,
B.

TO THOMAS MOORE Venice, March 16, 1818

My Dear Tom, - . . . The other day I was telling a girl, 'You must not come to-morrow, because Margueritta [Cogni] is coming at such a time', - (they are both about five feet ten inches high, with great black eyes and fine figures - fit to breed gladiators from and I had some difficulty to prevent a battle upon a rencontre once before) - 'unless you promise to be friends, and' - the answer was an interruption, by a declaration of war against the other, which she said would be a Guerra di Candia. Is it not odd, that the lower order of Venetians should still allude proverbially to that famous contest, so glorious and so fatal to the Republic ?

. . . Have you ever seen - I forget what or whom - no matter. They tell me Lady Melbourne is very unwell. I shall be so sorry. She was my greatest friend, of the feminine gender: - when I say 'friend', I mean not mistress, for that's the antipode. Tell me all about you and everybody - how Sam is - how you like your neighbours, the Marquis and Marchesa, etc., etc.

TO JOHN MURRAY April 23, 1818

Dear Sir, - The time is past in which I could feel for the dead, or I should feel for the death of Lady Melbourne, the best, and kindest, and ablest female I ever knew - old or young. But 'I have supped full of horrors', and events of this kind leave only a kind of numbness worse than pain, - like a violent blow on the elbow, or on the head. There is one link the less between England and myself . . .

If your literary matters prosper, let me know. If Beppo pleases, you shall have more in a year or two in the same mood. And so 'Good morrow to you, good Master Lieutenant'.

Yours,
B.

TO JOHN CAM HOBHOUSE Venice, June, 1818

Sir, - With great grief I inform you of the death of my late dear Master, my Lord, who died this morning at ten of the Clock of a rapid decline and slow fever, caused by anxiety, sea-bathing, women, and riding in the Sun against my advice.

He is a dreadful loss to every body, mostly to me, who have lost a master and a place, - also, I hope you, Sir, will give me a charakter.

I saved in his service as you know several hundred pounds. God knows how, for I don't, nor my late master neither; and if my wage was not always paid to the day, still it was or is to be paid sometime and somehow. You, Sir, who are his executioner won't see a poor Servant wronged of his little all.

My dear Master had several phisicians and a Priest: he died a Papish, but is to be buried among the Jews in the Jewish burying ground; for my part I don't see why - he could not abide them when living nor any other people, hating whores who asked him for money.

He suffered his illness with great patience, except that when in extremity he twice damned his friends and said they were selfish rascals - you, Sir, particularly and Mr Kinnaird, who had never answered his letters nor complied with his repeated requests. He also said he hoped that your new tragedy would be damned - God forgive him - I hope that my master won't be damned like the tragedy.

His nine whores are already provided for, and the other servants; but what is to become of me? I have got his Cloathes and Carriages, and Cash, and everything; but the Consul quite against law has clapt his seal and taken an inventary and swears that he must account for my Lord's heirs - who they are, I don't know - but they ought to consider poor Servants and above all his Vally de Sham.

My Lord never grudged me perquisites - my wage was the least I got by him; and if I did keep the Countess (she is, or ought to be, a Countess, although she is upon the town) Marietta Monetta Piretta, after passing my word to you and my Lord that l would not never no more - still he was an indulgent master, and only said I was a damned fool, and swore and forgot it again. What could I do ? she said as how she should die, or kill herself if l did not go with her, and so I did - and kept her out of my Lord's washing and ironing - and nobody can deny that, although the charge was high, the linen was well got up.

Hope you are well, Sir - am, with tears in my eyes,

Yours faithfoolly to command,
Wm FLETCHER

P.S. - If you know any Gentleman in want of a Wally - hope for a charakter. I saw your late Swiss Servant in the Galleys at Leghorn for robbing an Inn - he produced your recommendation at his trial.

TO THOMAS MOORE Palazzo Mocenigo, Grande Canal, Venice, June 1, 1818

. . . Hunt's letter is probably the exact piece of vulgar coxcombry you might expect from his situation. He is a good man with some poetical elements in his chaos; but spoilt by the Christ-Church Hospital and a Sunday newspaper, - to say nothing of the Surrey gaol, which conceited him into a martyr. But he is a good man. When I saw Rimini in MS., I told him that I deemed it good poetry at bottom, disfigured only by a strange style. His answer was, that his style was a system, or upon system, or some such cant; and, when a man talks of system, his case is hopeless; so I said no more to him, and very little to any one else.

He believes his trash of vulgar phrases tortured into compound barbarisms to be old English; and we may say of it as Aimwell says of Captain Gibbet's regiment, when the Captain calls it an 'old corps', - 'the oldest in Europe, if I may judge by your uniform'. He sent out his Foliage by Percy Shelley . . ., and, of all the ineffable Centaurs that were ever begotten by Self-love upon a Night-mare, I think 'this monstrous Sagittary' the most prodigious. He (Leigh H.) is an honest charlatan, who has persuaded himself into a belief of his own impostures, and talks Punch in pure simplicity of heart, taking himself (as poor Fitzgerald said of himself in the Morning Post) for Vates in both senses, or nonsenses, of the word. Did you look at the translations of his own which he prefers to Pope and Cowper, and says so? - Did you read his skimble-skamble about Wordsworth being at the head of his own profession, in the eyes of those who followed it? I thought that the poetry was an art, or an attribute, and not a profession; - but be it one, is that--at the head of your profession in your eyes? I'll be curst if he is of mine, or ever shall be. He is the only one of us (but of us he is not) whose coronation I would oppose. Let them take Scott, Campbell, Crabbe, or you, or me, or any of the living, and throne him; - but not this new Jacob Behmen, this -- whose pride might have kept him true, even had his principles turned as perverted as his soi-disant poetry.

But Leigh Hunt is a good man, and a good father - see his Odes to all the Masters Hunt; - a good husband - see his Sonnet to Mrs Hunt; - a good friend - see his Epistles to different people; - and a great coxcomb and a very vulgar person in every thing about him. But that's not his fault, but of circumstances . . .

I do not know any good model for a life of Sheridan but that of Savage. Recollect, however, that the life of such a man may be made far more amusing than if he had been a Wilberforce; and this without offending the living, or insulting the dead. The Whigs abuse him; however, he never left them, and such blunderers deserve neither credit nor compassion. - As for his creditors, - remember, Sheridan never had a shilling, and was thrown, with great powers and passions into the thick of the world, and placed upon the pinnacle of success, with no other external means to support him in his elevation. Did Fox -- pay his debts? - or did Sheridan take a subscription? Was the --'s drunkenness more excusable than his? Were his intrigues more notorious than those of all his contemporaries? and is his memory to be blasted, and theirs respected? Don't let yourself be led away by clamour, but compare him with the coalitioner Fox, and the pensioner Burke, as a man of principle, and with ten hundred thousand in personal views, and with none in talent, for he beat them all out and out. Without means, without connexion, without character, (which might be false at first, and make him mad afterwards from desperation,) he beat them all, in all he ever attempted. But alas, poor human nature! Good night or rather, morning. It is four, and the dawn gleams over the Grand Canal, and unshadows the Rialto. I must to bed; up all night - but as George Philpot says, 'it's life, though, damme it's life!'

Ever yours,
B.

Excuse errors - not time for revision. The post goes out at noon, and I shan't be up then . . .

TO THE HON. DOUGLAS KINNAIRD Venice, July 15th, 1818

Dear Douglas, - . . . Murray's letters and the credits are come, laud we the Gods! If I did not know of old, Wildman to be a Man of honour, and Spooney a damned tortoise in all his proceeds, I should suspect foul play in this delay of the man and papers; now that your politics are a little subsided, for God his sake, row the man of law, spur him, kick him on the Crickle, do something, any thing, you are my power of Attorney, and I thereby empower you to use it and abuse Hanson, till the fellow says or does something as a gentleman should do . . .

I have lately had a long swim (beating an Italian all to bubbles) of more than four miles, from Lido to the other end of the Grand Canal, that is the part which enters from Mestri. I won by a good three quarters of a mile, but as many quarters of an hour, knocking the Chevalier up, and coming in myself quite fresh; the fellow had swum the Beresina in the Bonaparte Campaign, and thought of coping with 'our Youth', but it would not do.

Give my love to Scrope and the rest of us ragmuffins, and believe me yours ever and truly,

BYRON

Pray look very sharp after Spooney; I have my suspicions, my suspicions, Sir, my Suspicions.

TO THOMAS MOORE Venice, September 19, 1818

. . . I suppose you are a violent admirer of England by your staying so long in it. For my own part, I have passed, between the age of one-and-twenty and thirty, half the intervenient years out of it without regretting any thing, except that I ever returned to it at all, and the gloomy prospect before me of business and parentage obliging me, one day, to return to it again, - at least for the transaction of affairs, the signing of papers, and inspecting of children.

I have here my natural daughter, by name Allegra, - a pretty little girl enough, and reckoned like papa. Her mamma is English, - but it is a long story, and - there's an end. She is about twenty months old . . .

I have finished the first canto (a long one, of about 180 octaves) of a poem in the style and manner of Beppo, encouraged by the good success of the same. It is called Don Juan, and is meant to be a little quietly facetious upon everything. But I doubt whether it is not - at least, as far as it has yet gone - too free for these very modest days. However, I shall try the experiment, anonymously; and if it don't take, it will be discontinued. It is dedicated to Southey in good, simple, savage verse, upon the Laureat's politics, and the way he got them. But the bore of copying it out is intolerable; and if I had an amanuensis he would be of use, as my writing is so difficult to decipher . . . I wish you good night, with a Venetian benediction, 'Benedetto te, e la terra che ti fara!' - 'May you be blessed, and the earth which you will make!' - is it not pretty? You would think it still prettier if you had heard it, as I did two hours ago, from the lips of a Venetian girl, with large black eyes, a face like Faustina's, and the figure of a Juno - tall and as energetic as a Pythoness, with eyes flashing, and her dark hair streaming in the moonlight - one of those women who may be made any thing. I am sure if I put a poniard into the hand of this one, she would plunge it where I told her and into me, if I offended her. I like this kind of animal, and I am sure that I should have preferred Medea to any woman that breathed. You may wonder that I don't in that case . . . I could have forgiven the dagger or the bowl, - any thing, but the deliberate desolation piled upon me, when I stood alone upon my hearth, with my household gods shivered around me.--Do you suppose I have forgotten it? It has comparatively swallowed up in me every other feeling, and I am only a spectator upon earth, till a tenfold opportunity offers. It may come yet. There are others more to be blamed than --, and it is on these that my eyes are fixed unceasingly. . .

TO THE HON. AUGUSTA LEIGH Venice, Sept. 2lst 1818

Dearest Augusta,

. . . If the Queen dies you are no more a Maid of Honour - is it not so? Allegra is well, but her mother (whom the Devil confound) came prancing the other day over the Appennines - to see her child; which threw my Venetian loves (who are none of the quietest) into great combustion; and I was in a pucker till I got her to the Euganean hills, where she and the child now are, for the present. I declined seeing her for fear that the consequence might be an addition to the family; she is to have the child a month with her and then to return herself to Lucca, or Naples, where she was with her relatives (she is English you know), and to send Allegra to Venice again. I lent her my house at Este for her maternal holidays. As troubles don't come single, here is another confusion. The chaste wife of a baker - having quarrelled with her tyrannical husband - has run away to me (God knows without being invited), and resists all the tears and penitence and beg-pardons of her disconsolate Lord, and the threats of the police, and the priest of the parish besides; and swears she won't give up her unlawful love (myself), for any body, or any thing. I assure you I have begged her in all possible ways too to go back to her husband, promising her all kinds of eternal fidelity into the bargain, but she only flies into a fury; and as she is a very tall and formidable Girl of three and twenty, with the large black eyes and handsome face of a pretty fiend, a correspondent figure and a carriage as haughty as a Princess - with the violent passions and capacities for mischief of an Italian when they are roused - I am a little embarrassed with my unexpected acquisition. However she keeps my household in rare order, and has already frightened the learned Fletcher out of his remnants of wits more than once; we have turned her into a housekeeper. As the morals of this place are very lax, all the women commend her and say she has done right - especially her own relations. You need not be alarmed - I know how to manage her - and can deal with anything but a cold blooded animal such as Miss Milbanke. The worst is that she won't let a woman come into the house, unless she is old and frightful as possible; and has sent so many to the right about that my former female acquaintances are equally frightened and angry. She is extremely fond of the child, and is very cheerful and good-natured, when not jealous; but Othello himself was a fool to her in that respect. Her soubriquet in her family was la Mora from her colour, as she is very dark (though clear of complexion), which literally means the Moor so that I have 'the Moor of Venice' in propria persona as part of my household. She has been here this month. I had known her (and fifty others) more than a year, but did not anticipate this escapade, which was the fault of her booby husband's treatment - who now runs about repenting and roaring like a bull calf. I told him to take her in the devil's name, but she would not stir; and made him a long speech in the Venetian dialect which was more entertaining to anybody than to him to whom it was addressed. You see Goose - that there is no quiet in this world - so be a good woman - and repent of yr sins.

TO LADY BYRON Venice, Nov. 18th, 1818

Sir Samuel Romilly has cut his throat for the loss of his wife. It is now exactly three years since he became, in the face of his compact (by a retainer - previous, and I believe, general), the advocate of the measures and the Approver of the proceedings, which deprived me of mine. I would not exactly, like Mr Thwackum, when Philosopher Square bit his own tongue 'saddle him with a Judgement'; but

This even-handed Justice
Commends the ingredients of our poisoned Chalice
To our own lips.

This Man little thought, when he was lacerating my heart according to law, while he was poisoning my life at its sources, aiding and abetting in the blighting, branding, and exile that was to be the result of his counsels in their indirect effects, that in less than thirty-six moons - in the pride of his triumph as the highest candidate for the representation of the Sister-City of the mightiest of Capitals - in the fullness of his professional career in the greenness of a healthy old age - in the radiance of fame, and the complacency of self-earned riches - that a domestic affliction would lay him in the earth, with the meanest of malefactors, in a cross-road with the stake in his body if the verdict of insanity did not redeem his ashes from the sentence of the laws he had lived upon by interpreting or misinterpreting, and died in violating.

This man had eight children, lately deprived of their mother: could he not live? Perhaps, previous to his annihilation, he felt a portion of what he contributed his legal mite to make me feel; but I have lived - lived to see him a Sexagenary Suicide.

It was not in vain that I invoked Nemesis in the midnight of Rome from the awfullest of her ruins.

Fare you well.
B.

TO JOHN CAM HOBHOUSE AND THE HON. DOUGLAS KINNAIRD Venice, January 19th, 1819

Dear H. and Dear K., - I approve and sanction all your legal proceedings with regard to my affairs, and can only repeat my thanks and approbation. If you put off the payments of debts 'till after Lady Noel's death', it is well; if till after her damnation, better, for that will last for ever; yet I hope not; for her sake as well as the creditors I am willing to believe in purgatory.

With regard to the Poeshie, I will have no 'cutting and slashing', as Perry calls it; you may omit the stanzas on Castlereagh, indeed it is better, and the two 'Bobs' at the end of the 3rd stanza of the dedication, which will leave 'high' and 'a-dry' good rhymes without any 'double (or single) entendre', but no more. I appeal, not 'to Philip fasting', but to Alexander drunk; I appeal to Murray at his ledger, to the people, in short, Don Juan shall be an entire horse, or none. If the objection be to the indecency, the Age which applauds the 'Bath Guide', and Little's poems, and reads Fielding and Smollett still, may bear with that. If to the poetry, I will take my chance. I will not give away to all the cant of Christendom. I have been cloyed with applause, and sickened with abuse; at present I care for little but the copy-right; I have imbibed a great love for money, let me have it; if Murray loses this time, he won't the next; he will be cautious, and I shall learn the decline of his customers by his epistolary indications. But in no case will I submit to have the poem mutilated. There is another Canto written, but not copied, in two hundred and odd Stanzas, if this succeeds; as to the prudery of the present day, what is it? Are we more moral than when Prior wrote? Is there anything in 'Don Juan' so strong as in Ariosto, or Voltaire, or Chaucer? . . .

So Lauderdale has been telling a story! I suppose this is my reward for presenting him at the Countess Benzoni's and showing him what attention I could. Which 'piece' does he mean? Since last year I have run the gauntlet. Is it the Tarruscelli - the Da Mosto - the Spinola - the Lotti - the Mizzato - the Eleanora - the Carlotta - the Giulietta - the Aloisi - the Gambieri - the Eleanora da Bezzi (who was the King of Naples' Gioachino's mistress - at least one of them) - the Theresina of Mazzurati - the Glettenheim and her sister - the Luigia and her mother - the Fornaretta - the Santa - the Caligara - the Portiera Vedova - the Bolognese figurante - the Tintora and her sister - cum multis aliis: Some of them are countesses and some of them cobbler's wives, some noble, some middling, some low, and all whores. Which does the damned old 'Ladro and porco fottuto' mean? Since he tells a story about me, I will tell one about him. When he landed at the Custom House from Corfu, he called for 'Post horses, directly'. He was told that there were no horses except mine nearer than Lido, unless he wished for the four bronze coursers of St Mark. which were at his service.

I am, yours ever,
B.

. . . P.S. - Whatever brain-money you get on my account from Murray, pray remit me. I will never consent to pay away what I earn. That is mine, and what I get by my brains I will spend on my b--ks, as long as I have a tester or a [testicle] remaining. I shall not live long, and for that reason I must live while I can. So let him disburse, and me receive. 'For the night cometh'. If I had but had twenty thousand a year I should not have been living now. But all men are not born with a silver or gold spoon in their mouths. My balance also - my balance - and a copyright. I have another Canto, too, ready; and then there will be my half year in June. Recollect I care for nothing but 'monies.'

TO THE HON. DOUGLAS KINNAIRD Venice, January 27th, 1819

My Dear Douglas, - I have received a very clever letter from Hobhouse against the publication of 'Don Juan', in which I understand you have acquiesced (you be damned). I acquiesce too, but reluctantly . . .

I say, that as for fame and all that, it is for such persons as Fortune chooses - and so is money. And so on account of this damned prudery, and the reviews, and an outcry, and posterity, a gentleman who has 'a proper regard for his fee' is to be curtailed of his 'darics' (I am reading about Greece and Persia). This comes of consulting friends. I will see all damned before I consult you again. What do you mean now by giving advice when you are asked for it? . . .

Yours ever,
B.

P.S. Give my love to Frere, and tell him he is right, but I will never forgive him, or any of you.

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