order—­and a precious representative I must have had of him, if it was even so; but I don’t know.  He passed himself off as a gentleman, and squired about a Countess * * (of this place), then at Venice, an ugly battered woman, of bad morals even for Italy.”

* * * * *

LETTER 390.  TO MR. MURRAY.

     “Ravenna, 8bre 8 deg., 1820.

     “Foscolo’s letter is exactly the thing wanted; firstly, because he
     is a man of genius; and, next, because he is an Italian, and
     therefore the best judge of Italics.  Besides,

        “He’s more an antique Roman than a Dane;

that is, he is more of the ancient Greek than of the modern Italian.  Though ‘somewhat,’ as Dugald Dalgetty says, ’too wild and sa_l_vage’ (like ’Ronald of the Mist’), ’tis a wonderful man, and my friends Hobhouse and Rose both swear by him; and they are good judges of men and of Italian humanity.

        “Here are in all two worthy voices gain’d: 

Gifford says it is good ‘sterling genuine English,’ and Foscolo says that the characters are right Venetian.  Shakspeare and Otway had a million of advantages over me, besides the incalculable one of being dead from one to two centuries, and having been both born blackguards (which ARE such attractions to the gentle living reader); let me then preserve the only one which I could possibly have—­that of having been at Venice, and entered more into the local spirit of it.  I claim no more.

“I know what Foscolo means about Calendaro’s spitting at Bertram; that’s national—­the objection, I mean.  The Italians and French, with those ‘flags of abomination,’ their pocket handkerchiefs, spit there, and here, and every where else—­in your face almost, and therefore object to it on the stage as too familiar.  But we who spit nowhere—­but in a man’s face when we grow savage—­are not likely to feel this.  Remember Massinger, and Kean’s Sir Giles Overreach—­

        “Lord! thus I spit at thee and at thy counsel!

Besides, Calendaro does not spit in Bertram’s face; he spits at him, as I have seen the Mussulmans do upon the ground when they are in a rage.  Again, he does not in fact despise Bertram, though he affects it—­as we all do, when angry with one we think our inferior.  He is angry at not being allowed to die in his own way (although not afraid of death); and recollect that he suspected and hated Bertram from the first.  Israel Bertuccio, on the other hand, is a cooler and more concentrated fellow:  he acts upon principle and impulse; Calendaro upon impulse and example.

     “So there’s argument for you.