“I opened my letter to say, that on reading more of the four volumes on Italy, where the author says ‘declined an introduction,’ I perceive (horresco referens) it is written by a WOMAN!!!  In that case you must suppress my note and answer, and all I have said about the book and the writer.  I never dreamed of it until now, in my extreme wrath at that precious note.  I can only say that I am sorry that a lady should say any thing of the kind.  What I would have said to one of the other sex you know already.  Her book too (as a she book) is not a bad one; but she evidently don’t know the Italians, or rather don’t like them, and forgets the causes of their misery and profligacy (Matthews and Forsyth are your men for truth and tact), and has gone over Italy in company—­always a bad plan:  you must be alone with people to know them well.  Ask her, who was the ’descendant of Lady M.W.  Montague,’ and by whom? by Algarotti?

“I suspect that, in Marino Faliero, you and yours won’t like the politics, which are perilous to you in these times; but recollect that it is not a political play, and that I was obliged to put into the mouths of the characters the sentiments upon which they acted.  I hate all things written like Pizarro, to represent France, England, and so forth.  All I have done is meant to be purely Venetian, even to the very prophecy of its present state.

“Your Angles in general know little of the Italians, who detest them for their numbers and their GENOA treachery.  Besides, the English travellers have not been composed of the best company.  How could they?—­out of 100,000, how many gentlemen were there, or honest men?

     “Mitchell’s Aristophanes is excellent.  Send me the rest of it.

“These fools will force me to write a book about Italy myself, to give them ‘the loud lie.’  They prate about assassination; what is it but the origin of duelling—­and ‘a wild justice,’ as Lord Bacon calls it?  It is the fount of the modern point of honour in what the laws can’t or won’t reach.  Every man is liable to it more or less, according to circumstances or place.  For instance, I am living here exposed to it daily, for I have happened to make a powerful and unprincipled man my enemy;—­and I never sleep the worse for it, or ride in less solitary places, because precaution is useless, and one thinks of it as of a disease which may or may not strike.  It is true that there are those here, who, if he did, would ‘live to think on’t;’ but that would not awake my bones:  I should be sorry if it would, were they once at rest.”

* * * * *

LETTER 389.  TO MR. MURRAY.

     “Ravenna, 8bre 6 deg., 1820.