SOURCE: Lord Byron. “To Thomas Moore.” In The Works of Lord Byron. Letters and Journals, Vol. III, edited by Rowland E. Prothero, pp. 380-87. London: John Murray, 1899.

In the following excerpt from a letter to his friend Thomas Moore, Byron praises the correspondence between Bembo and Lucrezia Borgia as “the prettiest love-letters in the world.”

Verona, November 6, 1816

My dear Moore,—Your letter, written before my departure from England, and addressed to me in London, only reached me recently. Since that period, I have been over a portion of that part of Europe which I had not already seen. About a month since, I crossed the Alps from Switzerland to Milan, which I left a few days ago, and am thus far on my way to Venice, where I shall probably winter. …

Among many things at Milan, one pleased me particularly, viz. the correspondence (in the prettiest love-letters in...