«Save me a copy of 'Buck's Richard III,' republished by Longman; but do not send out more books, I have too many.

<< The 'Monody' is in too many paragraphs, which makes it unintelligible to me; if any one else understands it in the present form, they are wiser; however, as it cannot be rectified till my return, and has been already published, even publish it on in the collectionit will fill up the place of the omitted epistle.

« Strike out by request of a friend,' which is sad trash, and must have been done to make it ridiculous. « Be careful in the printing the stanzas beginning,

Though the day of my destiny's, etc.

which I think well of as a composition.

«The Antiquary' is not the best of the three, but much above all the last twenty years, saving its elder brothers. Holcroft's Memoirs are valuable as showing strength of endurance in the man, which is worth more than all the talent in the world.

«And so you have been publishing Margaret of Anjou' and an Assyrian tale, and refusing W. W.'s Waterloo, and the 'Hue and Cry.' I know not which most to admire, your rejections or acceptances. I believe that prose is, after all, the most reputable, for certes, if one could foresee—but I won't go on—that is, with this sentence; but poetry is, I fear, incurable. God help me! if I proceed in this scribbling, I shall have

frittered away my mind before I am thirty, but it is at times a real relief to me. For the present - good evening.>>

LETTER CCXLVIII.

TO MR MURRAY.

"

Martigny, October 9th, 1816.

« Thus far on my way to Italy. We have just passed the 'Pisse-Vache' (one of the first 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.

« 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."

«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 crystals, 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 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 Martigny. Mr Hobhouse and myself arrived here a few days ago, by the Simplon and Lago Maggiore route. Of course we visited the Boromean 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.

<< 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,' 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 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-it is a fine collection-full of MSS. edited and unedited. I enclose you a 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, 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; the tress of her hair is long, and, as I said before, beautiful. The Brera gallery of paintings has some fine pictures, but nothing of a collection. Of painting I know nothing; but I like a Guercino-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. By the way, I have just heard an anecdote of Beccaria, who published such admirable things against the punishment of death. As soon as his book was out, his servant (having read it, I presume,) stole his watch; and his master, while correcting the press of a second edition, did all he could to have him hanged by way of advertisement.

<< I forgot to mention the triumphal arch begun by Napoleon, as a gate to this city. It is unfinished, but the part completed worthy of another age and the same country. The society here is very oddly carried on,— at the theatre, and the theatre only,-which answers to our opera. People meet there as at a rout, but in very small circles. From Milan I shall go to Venice. If you