So, as Shakespeare says of Mowbray, the banished Duke of Norfolk, who died at Venice (see Richard II), that he, after fighting

  Against black Pagans, Turks, and Saracens,
  And toiled with works of war, retired himself
  To Italy, and there, at Venice, gave
  His body to that pleasant country’s earth,
  And his pure soul unto his captain, Christ,
  Under whose colours he had fought so long.

Before I left Venice, I had returned to you your late, and Mr. Hobhouse’s sheets of Juan.  Don’t wait for further answers from me, but address yours to Venice, as usual.  I know nothing of my own movements; I may return there in a few days, or not for some time.  All this depends on circumstances.  I left Mr. Hoppner very well....  My daughter Allegra was well too, and is growing pretty; her hair is growing darker, and her eyes are blue.  Her temper and her ways, Mr. Hoppner says, are like mine, as well as her features:  she will make, in that case, a manageable young lady.

I have never heard anything of Ada, the little Electra of my Mycenae....  But there will come a day of reckoning, even if I should not live to see it....  What a long letter I have scribbled!

PS.  Here, as in Greece, they strew flowers on the tombs.  I saw a quantity of rose-leaves, and entire roses, scattered over the graves at Ferrara.  It has the most pleasing effect you can imagine.

TO THE SAME

In rebellious mood

Bologna, 24 Aug. 1819.

I wrote to you by last post, enclosing a buffooning letter for publication, addressed to the buffoon Roberts, who has thought proper to tie a canister to his own tail.  It was written off-hand, and in the midst of circumstances not very favourable to facetiousness, so that there may, perhaps, be more bitterness than enough for that sort of small acid punch:—­you will tell me.  Keep the anonymous, in any case:  it helps what fun there may be.  But if the matter grow serious about Don Juan, and you feel yourself in a scrape, or me either, own that I am the author.  I will never shrink, and if you do, I can always answer you in the question of Guatimozin to his minister—­each being on his own coals.

I wish that I had been in better spirits; but I am out of sorts, out of nerves, and now and then (I begin to fear) out of my senses.  All this Italy has done for me, and not England:  I defy all you, and your climate to boot, to make me mad.  But if ever I do really become a Bedlamite, and wear a strait waistcoat, let me be brought back among you:  your people will then be proper company.

I assure you what I here say and feel has nothing to do with England, either in a literary or personal point of view.  All my present pleasures or plagues are as Italian as the opera.  And, after all, they are but trifles; for all this arises from my ‘Dama’s’ being in the country for three days (at Capofiume).  But as I could never live but for one human being at a time (and, I assure you, that one has never been myself, as you may know by the consequences, for the selfish are successful in life), I feel alone and unhappy.