DEAR SIR,-Thus far on my way to Italy. We have just passed the "Pisse-Vache" (one of the finest torrents in Switzerland) in time to view the Iris which the Sun flings along it before Noon.

I have written to you twice lately. Mr. Davies, I hear, is arrived. He brings the original MS. which you wished to see. Recollect that the printing is to be from that which Mr. Shelley brought; and recollect, also, that the concluding stanzas of Childe Harold (those to my daughter) which I had not made up my mind whether to publish or not when they were first written (as you will see marked on the margin of the first copy), I had (and have) fully determined to publish with the rest of the Canto, as in the copy which you received by Mr. Shelley, before I sent it to England.

Our weather is very fine, which is more than the Summer has been.-At Milan I shall expect to hear from you. Address either to Milan, poste restante, or by way of Geneva, to the care of Monsr. Hentsch, Banquier.

I write these few lines in case my other letter should not reach you; I trust one of them will.

Yours ever truly,

B.

P.S.-My best respects and regards to Mr. Gifford. Will you tell him it may perhaps be as well to put a short note to that part relating to Clarens, merely to say, that of course the description does not refer to that particular spot so much as to the command of scenery round it? I do not know that this is necessary, and leave it to Mr. G.'s choice-as my Editor,—if he will allow me to call him so at this distance.

610.-To John Murray.

Milan,' October 15, 1816.

DEAR SIR,-I hear that Mr. Davies has arrived in England, but that of some letters, etc., committed to his care by Mr. H., only half have been delivered. This intelligence naturally makes me feel a little anxious for mine, and amongst them for the MS., which I wished to have compared with the one sent by me through the hands of Mr. Shelley. I trust that it has arrived safely, -and indeed not less so, that some little chrystals, etc., from Mont Blanc, for my daughter and my nieces, have reached their address. Pray have the goodness to ascertain from Mr. Davies that no accident (by customhouse or loss) has befallen them, and satisfy me on this point at your earliest convenience.

If I recollect rightly, you told me that Mr. Gifford

1. For an account of Byron's life at Milan, see Appendix VII., where the recollections of H. M. Beyle (Stendhal) are quoted from the translation given in Galt's Life of Lord Byron (pp. 345-356).

1816.]

MILAN.

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had kindly undertaken to correct the press (at my request) during my absence-at least I hope so. It will add to my many obligations to that gentleman.

I wrote to you, on my way here, a short note, dated Martinach [sic]. Mr. Hobhouse and myself arrived here a few days ago, by the Simplon and Lago Maggiore route. Of course we visited the Borromean Islands, which are fine, but too artificial. The Simplon is magnificent in its nature and its art,-both God and man have done wonders,-to say nothing of the Devil, who must certainly have had a hand (or a hoof) in some of the rocks and ravines through and over which the works are carried.

1

Milan is striking-the cathedral superb. The city altogether reminds me of Seville, but a little inferior. We had heard divers bruits, and took precautions on the road, near the frontier, against some "many worthy "fellows (i. e. felons) that were out," 1 and had ransacked some preceding travellers, a few weeks ago, near Sesto.or Cesto, I forget which,-of cash and raiment, besides putting them in bodily fear, and lodging about twenty slugs in the retreating part of a courier belonging to Mr. Hope. But we were not molested, and I do not think in any danger,-except of making mistakes in the way of cocking and priming whenever we saw an old house, or an ill-looking thicket, and now and then suspecting the "true men," who have very much the appearance of the thieves of other countries. What the thieves may look like, I know not, nor desire to know; for it seems-they come upon you in bodies of

I.

"When I came hither to transport the tidings,
Which I have heavily borne, there ran a rumour
Of many worthy fellows that were out."

Macbeth, act iv. sc. 3.

thirty ("in buckram and Kendal green") at a time, so that voyagers have no great chance. It is something like poor dear Turkey in that respect, but not so good, for there you can have as great a body of rogues to match the regular banditti; but here the gens d'armes are said to be no great things; and as for one's own people, one can't carry them about like Robinson Crusoe with a gun on each shoulder.

I have been to the Ambrosian library 2-it is a fine collection-full of MSS. edited and unedited. I enclose you a little list of the former recently published. These are matters for your literati. For me, in my simple way, I have been most delighted with a correspondence of letters, all original and amatory, between Lucretia Borgia and Cardinal Bembo,3 (preserved there). I have pored over them and a lock of her hair, the prettiest and fairest imaginable-I never saw fairer—and shall go repeatedly to read the epistles over and over; and if I can obtain some of the hair by fair means, I shall try. I have already persuaded the librarian to promise me copies of the letters, and I hope he will not disappoint me. They are short, but very simple, sweet, and to the purpose; there are some copies of verses in Spanish also by her;

1. Henry IV., Part I. act ii. sc. 4.

2. The Biblioteca Ambrosiana at Milan was founded in 1609, by Cardinal Federigo Borromeo.

3. Lucrezia Borgia (1480-1519), daughter of Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI., married as her third husband, Alfonso d'Este, son of the Duke of Ferrara. On the death of his father (January, 1505), Alfonso became duke. Lucrezia was already intimate with Pietro Bembo (1470-1547), who had dedicated to her, in 1505, his Asolani, or Dialogue on Love. Byron refers to the letters first published by Baldassare Oltrocchi at Milan in 1859 (Lettere di Lucrezia Borgia a Messer Pietro Bembo, dagli autografi conservati in un codice della Bibl. Ambrosiana). The letters are nine in number-seven in Italian and two in Spanish. Bembo was at Ferrara from 1503 to 1506, when he went to Urbino.-Gregorovius, Lucrèce Bergia, tom. ii. p. 138.

THE BRERA GALLERY.

377 the tress of her hair is long, and, as I said before, beautiful. The Brera1 gallery of paintings has some fine pictures, but nothing of a collection. Of painting I know nothing; but I like a Guercino 2-a picture of Abraham putting away Hagar and Ishmael-which seems to me natural and goodly. The Flemish school, such as I saw it in Flanders, I utterly detested, despised, and abhorred; it might be painting, but it was not nature; the Italian is pleasing, and their Ideal very noble.

The Italians I have encountered here are very intelligent and agreeable. In a few days I am to meet Monti.3 By the way, I have just heard an anecdote of

1. The buildings of the Brera Gallery, so called because it was built on the brera or "meadow" belonging to the Umiliati, were erected in 1651. 2. No. 331, "Abraham and Hagar," is by Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, nicknamed from his squint, il Guercino (1590-1666). "Il y a une Agar du Guerchin," writes Stendhal (Rome, Naples, et Florence, ed. 1854, p. 45), "faite pour attendrir les cœurs les plus "durs et les plus dévoués à l'argent ou aux cordons."

3. Vincenzo Monti (1754-1828) was remarkable for the splendour of his poetical diction and the versatility of his politics. In 1793 he wrote La Basvigliana to applaud the assassination of Basseville, a French diplomatist, at Rome. When the French became masters of Italy, he flattered Napoleon in his Mascheroniana, and was rewarded with a professorship and the appointment of historiographer. After the fall of the Empire he celebrated the return of the Austrians in such mythological poems as L'Invito a Pallade and Il ritorno d'Astrea. Stendhal says of him (Rome, Naples, et Florence, p. 97), "Monti est "un enfant impressionnable qui a changé de parti cinq ou six fois "dans sa vie; ultra fanatique dans la Basvigliana, il est patriote aujourd'-hui; mais ce qui le sauve des mépris, jamais il ne changea pour de l'argent, comme M. Southey." (For his rivalry to Alfieri and his three tragedies, see Letters, vol. ii. p. 388, note 2.) The following passage from Madame Guiccioli's Recollections of Lord Byron (pp. 203, 204) refers to Byron's meeting with Monti at Milan :

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"I was at dinner,' says Stendhal, 'at the Marquis of Breme's at Milan, in 1816, with Byron and the celebrated poet Monti, the "author of Basvigliana. The conversation fell upon poetry, "and the question was asked which were the twelve most beautiful "lines written in a century, either in English, in Italian, or in "French. The Italians present agreed in declaring that Monti's