faculty. It is odd that he should have lived so long, and not wanting in oddness that he should have made this voyage with Jean Jacques, and afterwards, at such an interval, read a poem by an Englishman (who had made precisely the same circumnavigation) upon the same scenery.

6

"As for Manfred,' it is of no use sending proofs; nothing of that kind comes. I sent the whole at different times. The two first Acts are the best; the third so so; but I was blown with the first and second heats. You must call it a Poem,' for it is no Drama, and I do not choose to have it called by so ** a name—a ‘Poem in dialogue,' or—Pantomime, if you will; any thing but a green-room synonyme; and this is your motto

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.'

"Yours ever, &c.

"My love and thanks to Mr. Gifford."

LETTER 273. TO MR. MOORE.

"Venice, April 11. 1817.

"I shall continue to write to you while the fit is on me, by way of penance upon you for your former complaints of long silence. I dare say you would blush, if you could, for not answering. Next week I set out for Rome. Having seen Constantinople, I should like to look at t’other fellow. Besides, I want to see the Pope, and shall take care to tell him that I vote for the Catholics and no Veto.

"I sha'n't go to Naples. It is but the second best sea-view, and I have seen the first and third, viz. Constantinople and Lisbon, (by the way, the last is but a river-view; however, they reckon it after Stamboul and Naples, and before Genoa,) and Vesuvius is silent, and I have passed by Etna. So I shall e'en return to Venice in July; and if you write, I pray you to address to Venice, which is my head, or rather my heart, quarters.

more.

"My late physician, Dr. Polidori, is here on his way to England, with the present Lord G ** and the widow of the late earl. Dr. Polidori has, just now, no more patients, because his patients are no He had lately three, who are now all dead one embalmed. Horner and a child of Thomas Hope's are interred at Pisa and Rome. Lord G ** died of an inflammation of the bowels; so they took them out, and sent them (on account of their discrepancies), separately from the carcass, to England. Conceive a man going one way, and his intestines another, and his immortal soul a third! was there ever such a distribution? One certainly has a soul; but how it came to allow itself to be enclosed in a body is more than I can imagine. I only know if once mine gets out, I'll have a bit of a tussle before I let it get in again to that or any other.

"And so poor dear Mr. Maturin's second tragedy has been neglected by the discerning public! ** will be d-d glad of this, and d-d without being glad, if ever his own plays come upon any stage.' "I wrote to Rogers the other day, with a message for you. I hope that he flourishes. He is the

Tithonus of poetry — immortal already. You and

I must wait for it.

You may

"I hear nothing - know nothing. easily suppose that the English don't seek me, and I avoid them. To be sure, there are but few or none here, save passengers. Florence and Naples are their Margate and Ramsgate, and much the same sort of company too, by all accounts, which hurts us among the Italians.

"I want to hear of Lalla Rookhare you out? Death and fiends! why don't you tell me where you are, what you are, and how you are? I shall go to Bologna by Ferrara, instead of Mantua: because I would rather see the cell where they caged Tasso, and where he became mad and **, than his own MSS. at Modena, or the Mantuan birthplace of that harmonious plagiary and miserable flatterer, whose cursed hexameters were drilled into me at Harrow. I saw Verona and Vicenza on my way here - Padua too.

"I I go alone, but alone, because I mean to return here. I only want to see Rome. I have not the least curiosity about Florence, though I must see it for the sake of the Venus, &c. &c.; and I wish also to see the Fall of Terni. I think to return to Venice by Ravenna and Rimini, of both of which I mean to take notes for Leigh Hunt, who will be glad to hear of the scenery of his Poem. There was a devil of a review of him in the Quarterly, a year ago, which he answered. All answers are imprudent: but, to be sure, poetical flesh and blood must have the last word that's certain. I thought,

and think, very highly of his Poem; but I warned him of the row his favourite antique phraseology would bring him into.

"You have taken a house at Hornsey I had much rather you had taken one in the Apennines. If you think of coming out for a summer, or so, tell me, that I may be the hover for you.

upon

1

66 Ever," &c.

LETTER 274. TO MR. MURRAY.

66

"Venice, April 14. 1817.

By the favour of Dr. Polidori, who is here on his way to England with the present Lord G * *, (the late earl having gone to England by another road, accompanied by his bowels in a separate coffer,) I remit to you, to deliver to Mrs. Leigh, two miniatures; but previously you will have the goodness to desire Mr. Love (as a peace-offering between him and me) to set them in plain gold, with my arms complete, and Painted by Prepiani-Venice, 1817,' on the back. I wish also that you would desire Holmes to make a copy of each—that is, both —for myself, and that you will retain the said copies till my return, One was done while I was very unwell; the other in my health, which may account for their dissimilitude. I trust that they will reach their destination in safety.

"I recommend the Doctor to your good offices with your government friends; and if you can be of any use to him in a literary point of view, pray be so.

«To-day, or rather yesterday, for it is past midnight, I have been up to the battlements of the highest tower in Venice, and seen it and its view, in all the glory of a clear Italian sky. I also went over the Manfrini Palace, famous for its pictures. Amongst them, there is a portrait of Ariosto by Titian, surpassing all my anticipation of the power of painting or human expression: it is the poetry of portrait, and the portrait of poetry. There was also one of some learned lady, centuries old, whose name I forget, but whose features must always be remembered. I never saw greater beauty, or sweetness, or wisdom: - it is the kind of face to go mad for, because it cannot walk out of its frame. There is also a famous dead Christ and live Apostles, for which Buonaparte offered in vain five thousand louis; and of which, though it is a capo d'opera of Titian, as I am no connoisseur, I say little, and thought less, except of one figure in it. There are ten thousand others, and some very fine Giorgiones amongst them, &c. &c. There is an original Laura and Petrarch, very hideous both. Petrarch has not only the dress, but the features and air of an old woman, and Laura looks by no means like a young one, or a pretty one. What struck me most in the general collection was the extreme resemblance of the style of the female faces in the mass of pictures, so many centuries or generations old, to those you see and meet every day among the existing Italians. The queen of Cyprus and Giorgione's wife, particularly the latter, are Venetians as it were of yesterday;