“I have ‘put my soul’ into the tragedy (as you if it); but you know that there are d——­d souls as well as tragedies.  Recollect that it is not a political play, though it may look like it:  it is strictly historical.  Read the history and judge.

“Ada’s picture is her mother’s.  I am glad of it—­the mother made a good daughter.  Send me Gifford’s opinion, and never mind the Archbishop.  I can neither send you away, nor give you a hundred pistoles, nor a better taste:  I send you a tragedy, and you ask for ‘facetious epistles;’ a little like your predecessor, who advised Dr. Prideaux to ‘put some more humour into his Life of Mahomet.’

“Bankes is a wonderful fellow.  There is hardly one of my school or college contemporaries that has not turned out more or less celebrated.  Peel, Palmerstone, Bankes, Hobhouse, Tavistock, Bob Mills, Douglas Kinnaird, &c. &c. have all talked and been talked about.

“We are here going to fight a little next month, if the Huns don’t cross the Po, and probably if they do.  I can’t say more now.  If any thing happens, you have matter for a posthumous work, in MS.; so pray be civil.  Depend upon it, there will be savage work, if once they begin here.  The French courage proceeds from vanity, the German from phlegm, the Turkish from fanaticism and opium, the Spanish from pride, the English from coolness, the Dutch from obstinacy, the Russian from insensibility, but the Italian from anger; so you’ll see that they will spare nothing.”

* * * * *

LETTER 382.  TO MR. MOORE.

     “Ravenna, August 31, 1820.

“D——­n your ’mezzo cammin[79]’—­you should say ’the prime of life,’ a much more consolatory phrase.  Besides, it is not correct.  I was born in 1788, and consequently am but thirty-two.  You are mistaken on another point.  The ‘Sequin Box’ never came into requisition, nor is it likely to do so.  It were better that it had, for then a man is not bound, you know.  As to reform, I did reform—­what would you have?  ’Rebellion lay in his way, and he found it.’  I verily believe that nor you, nor any man of poetical temperament, can avoid a strong passion of some kind.  It is the poetry of life.  What should I have known or written, had I been a quiet, mercantile politician, or a lord in waiting?  A man must travel, and turmoil, or there is no existence.  Besides, I only meant to be a Cavalier Servente, and had no idea it would turn out a romance, in the Anglo fashion.

“However, I suspect I know a thing or two of Italy—­more than Lady Morgan has picked up in her posting.  What do Englishmen know of Italians beyond their museums and saloons—­and some hack * *, en passant?  Now, I have lived in the heart of their houses, in parts of Italy freshest and least influenced by strangers,—­have