SIR HUMPHRY DAVY.

“Ravenna, May 8, 1820.

“Sir Humphry Davy was here last fortnight, and I was in his company in the house of a very pretty Italian lady of rank, who, by way of displaying her learning in presence of the great chemist, then describing his fourteenth ascension of Mount Vesuvius, asked ’if there was not a similar volcano in Ireland?’ My only notion of an Irish volcano consisted of the lake of Killarney, which I naturally conceived her to mean; but on second thoughts I divined that she alluded to Iceland and to Hecla—­and so it proved, though she sustained her volcanic topography for some time with all the amiable pertinacity of ‘the feminie.’  She soon after turned to me, and asked me various questions about Sir Humphry’s philosophy, and I explained as well as an oracle his skill in gasen safety lamps, and ungluing the Pompeian MSS.  ‘But what do you call him?’ said she.  ‘A great chemist,’ quoth I.  ‘What can he do?’ repeated the lady ‘Almost any thing,’ said I.  ’Oh, then, mio caro, do pray beg him to give me something to dye my eyebrows black.  I have tried a thousand things, and the colours all come off; and besides, they don’t grow.  Can’t he invent something to make them grow?’ All this with the greatest earnestness; and what you will be surprised at, she is neither ignorant nor a fool, but really well educated and clever.  But they speak like children, when first out of their convents; and, after all, this is better than an English bluestocking.”

POPE—­AND OTHER MATTERS.

To Mr. Moore.

“Ravenna, July 5th, 1821.

“How could you suppose that I ever would allow any thing that could be said on your account to weigh with me?  I only regret that Bowles had not said that you were the writer of that note until afterwards, when out he comes with it, in a private letter to Murray, which Murray sends to me.  D—­n the controversy!

“D—­m Twizzle,
D—­n the bell,
And d—­n the fool who rung it—­Well! 
From all such plagues I’ll quickly be deliver’d.

“I have had a curious letter to-day from a girl in England (I never saw her) who says she is given over of a decline, but could not go out of the world without thanking me for the delight which my poesy for several years, &c. &c. &c.  It is signed simply N.N.A., and has not a word of ‘cant’ or preachment in it upon any opinions.  She merely says that she is dying, and that as I had contributed so highly to her existing pleasure, she thought that she might say so, begging me to burn her letter—­which, by the way, I can not do, as I look upon such a letter, in such circumstances, as better than a diploma from Gottingen.  I once had a letter from Drontheim, in Norway (but not from a dying woman) in verse, on the same score of gratulation.  These are the things which make one at times believe oneself a poet.  But if I must believe that ——­, and such fellows, are poets, also, it is better to be out of the corps.