he thought I was leaving Venice, and determined to make the most of it.  At present he keeps bringing in account after account, though he had always money in hand—­as I believe you know my system was never to allow longer than a week’s bills to run.  Pray read him this letter—­I desire nothing to be concealed against which he may defend himself.

     “Pray how is your little boy? and how are you?—­I shall be up in
     Venice very soon, and we will be bilious together.  I hate the place
     and all that it inherits.

     “Yours,” &c.

[Footnote 58:  “This language” (says Mr. Hoppner, in some remarks upon the above letter) “is strong, but it was the language of prejudice; and he was rather apt thus to express the feelings of the moment, without troubling himself to consider how soon he might be induced to change them.  He was at this time so sensitive on the subject of Madame * *, that, merely because some persons had disapproved of her conduct, he declaimed in the above manner against the whole nation.  I never” (continues Mr. Hoppner) “was partial to Venice; but disliked it almost from the first month of my residence there.  Yet I experienced more kindness in that place than I ever met with in any country, and witnessed acts of generosity and disinterestedness such as rarely are met with elsewhere.”]

* * * * *

LETTER 343.  TO MR. HOPPNER.

     “October 28. 1819.

“I have to thank you for your letter, and your compliment to Don Juan.  I said nothing to you about it, understanding that it is a sore subject with the moral reader, and has been the cause of a great row; but I am glad you like it.  I will say nothing about the shipwreck, except that I hope you think it is as nautical and technical as verse could admit in the octave measure.

“The poem has not sold well, so Murray says—­’but the best judges, &c. say, &c.’ so says that worthy man.  I have never seen it in print.  The third Canto is in advance about one hundred stanzas; but the failure of the two first has weakened my estro, and it will neither be so good as the two former, nor completed, unless I get a little more riscaldato in its behalf.  I understand the outcry was beyond every thing.—­Pretty cant for people who read Tom Jones, and Roderick Random, and the Bath Guide, and Ariosto, and Dryden, and Pope—­to say nothing of Little’s Poems!  Of course I refer to the morality of these works, and not to any pretension of mine to compete with them in any thing but decency.  I hope yours is the Paris edition, and that you did not pay the London price.  I have seen neither except in the newspapers.

“Pray make my respects to Mrs. H., and take care of your little boy.  All my household have the fever and ague, except Fletcher, Allegra, and my_sen_ (as we used to say in Nottinghamshire),