“Here is another historical note for you.  I want to be as near
     truth as the drama can be.

“Last post I sent you a note fierce as Faliero himself[81], in answer to a trashy tourist, who pretends that he could have been introduced to me.  Let me have a proof of it, that I may cut its lava into some shape.

“What Gifford says is very consolatory (of the first act).  English, sterling genuine English, is a desideratum amongst you, and I am glad that I have got so much left; though Heaven knows how I retain it:  I hear none but from my valet, and his is Nottinghamshire:  and I see none but in your new publications, and theirs is no language at all, but jargon.  Even your * * * * is terribly stilted and affected, with ‘very, very’ so soft and pamby.

“Oh! if ever I do come amongst you again, I will give you such a ‘Baviad and Maeviad!’ not as good as the old, but even better merited.  There never was such a set as your ragamuffins (I mean not yours only, but every body’s).  What with the Cockneys, and the Lakers, and the followers of Scott, and Moore, and Byron, you are in the very uttermost decline and degradation of literature.  I can’t think of it without all the remorse of a murderer.  I wish that Johnson were alive again to crush them!”

[Footnote 81:  The angry note against English travellers appended to this tragedy, in consequence of an assertion made by some recent tourist, that he (or as it afterwards turned out, she) “had repeatedly declined an introduction to Lord Byron while in Italy.”]

* * * * *

LETTER 385.  TO MR. MURRAY.

     “Ravenna, Sept. 14. 1820.

     “What! not a line?  Well, have it your own way.

“I wish you would inform Perry, that his stupid paragraph is the cause of all my newspapers being stopped in Paris.  The fools believe me in your infernal country, and have not sent on their gazettes, so that I know nothing of your beastly trial of the Queen.

     “I cannot avail myself of Mr. Gifford’s remarks, because I have
     received none, except on the first act.  Yours, &c.

“P.S.  Do, pray, beg the editors of papers to say any thing blackguard they please; but not to put me amongst their arrivals.  They do me more mischief by such nonsense than all their abuse can do.”

* * * * *

LETTER 386.  TO MR. MURRAY.

     “Ravenna, Sept. 21. 1820.

“So you are at your old tricks again.  This is the second packet I have received unaccompanied by a single line of good, bad, or indifferent.  It is strange that you have never forwarded any further observations of Gifford’s.  How am I to alter or amend, if I hear no further? or does this silence mean that it is well enough as it is, or too bad to be repaired?  If the last, why do you not say so at once, instead of playing pretty, while you know that soon or late you must out with the truth.

     “Yours, &c.