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 ancestered 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 !—and 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 my. self. 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 buť (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.»

LETTER CCCXCII.

TO MR MURRAY.

"

Ravenna, 8bre 16°, 1820.

"The Abbot has just arrived; many thanks; as also for the Monastery-when you send it!!!

« The Abbot will have a more than ordinary interest for me, for an ancestor of mine by the mother's side, Sir J. Gordon of Gight, the handsomest of his day, died on a scaffold at Aberdeen for his loyalty to Mary, of whom he was an imputed paramour as well as her rela

tion. His fate was much commented on in the Chro-· nicles of the times. If I mistake not, he had something to do with her escape from Loch Leven, or with her captivity there. But this you will know better than I. «I recollect Loch Leven as it were but yesterday. I saw it in my way to England in 1798, being then ten years of age. My mother, who was as haughty as Lucifer with her descent from the Stuarts, and her right line from the old Gordons, not the Seyton Gordons, as she disdainfully termed the ducal branch, told me the story, always reminding me how superior her Gordons were to the southern Byrons,-notwithstanding our Norman, and always masculine descent, which has never lapsed into a female, as my mother's Gordons had done in her own person.

<< I have written to you so often lately that the brevity of this will be welcome.

Yours, etc.">

LETTER CCCXCIII.

TO MR MURRAY.

« Ravenna, 8bre 17o, 1820.

« Enclosed is the Dedication of Marino Faliero to Goëthe. Query,-is his title Baron or not? I think Let me know your opinion, and so forth.

yes.

« P.S.--Let me know what Mr Hobhouse and you have decided about the two prose letters and their publication.

<< I enclose you an Italian abstract of the German translator of Manfred's Appendix, in which you will perceive quoted what Goëthe says of the whole body of English poetry (and not of me in particular). On this

the Dedication is founded, as you will perceive, though I had thought of it before, for I look upon him as a great man.".

The very singular Dedication transmitted with this letter has never before been published, nor, as far as I can learn, ever reached the hands of the illustrious German. It is written in the poet's most whimsical and mocking mood; and the unmeasured severity poured out in it upon the two favourite objects of his wrath and ridicule compels me to deprive the reader of some of its most amusing passages.

« DEDICATION TO BARON GOETHE, ETC. ETC. Etc.

« SIR,

« In the Appendix to an English work lately translated into German and published at Leipsic, a judgment of yours upon English poetry is quoted as follows: That in English poetry, great genius, universal power, a feeling of profundity, with sufficient tenderness and force, are to be found, but that altogether these do not constitute poets,' etc. etc.

<< I regret to see a great man falling into a great mistake. This opinion of yours only proves that the 'Dictionary of ten thousand living English authors' has not been translated into German. You will have read, in your friend Schlegel's version, the dialogue in Macbeth

There are ten thousand!

Macbeth. Geese, villain?

Answer.

6

Authors, sir.

Now, of these ten thousand authors,' there are actually nineteen hundred and eighty-seven poets, all alive at this moment, whatever their works may be, as their book

sellers well know; and amongst these there are several who possess a far greater reputation than mine, although considerably less than yours. It is owing to this neglect on the part of your German translators that you are not aware of the works of

*

*

*

*

*

I mention these poets by way of sample to enlighten you. They form but two bricks of our Babel (WINDSOR bricks, by the way), but may serve for a specimen of the building.

« It is, moreover, asserted that the 'predominant character of the whole body of the present English poetry is a disgust and contempt for life.' But I rather suspect that, by one single work of prose, you yourself have excited a greater contempt for life than all the English volumes of poesy that ever were written. Madame de Staël says, that 'Werther has occasioned more suicides than the most beautiful woman;' and I really believe that he has put more individuals out of this world than Napoleon himself,-except in the way of his profession. Perhaps, Illustrious Sir, the acrimonious judgment passed by a celebrated northern journal upon you in particular, and the Germans in general, has rather indisposed you towards English poetry as well as criticism. But you must not regard our critics, who are at bottom good-natured fellows, considering their two professions,-taking up the law in court, and laying it down out of it. No one can more lament their hasty and unfair judgment, in your particular, than I do; and I so expressed myself to your friend Schlegel, in 1816, at Coppet.