“The Doge repeats;—­true, but it is from engrossing passion, and because he sees different persons, and is always obliged to recur to the cause uppermost in his mind.  His speeches are long:—­true, but I wrote for the closet, and on the French and Italian model rather than yours, which I think not very highly of, for all your old dramatists, who are long enough too, God knows:—­look into any of them.

“I return you Foscolo’s letter, because it alludes also to his private affairs.  I am sorry to see such a man in straits, because I know what they are, or what they were.  I never met but three men who would have held out a finger to me:  one was yourself, the other William Bankes, and the other a nobleman long ago dead:  but of these the first was the only one who offered it while I really wanted it; the second from good will—­but I was not in need of Bankes’s aid, and would not have accepted it if I had (though I love and esteem him); and the third --------.[82]

“So you see that I have seen some strange things in my time.  As for your own offer, it was in 1815, when I was in actual uncertainty of five pounds.  I rejected it; but I have not forgotten it, although you probably have.

“P.S.  Foscolo’s Ricciardo was lent, with the leaves uncut, to some Italians, now in villeggiatura, so that I have had no opportunity of hearing their decision, or of reading it.  They seized on it as Foscolo’s, and on account of the beauty of the paper and printing, directly.  If I find it takes, I will reprint it here.  The Italians think as highly of Foscolo as they can of any man, divided and miserable as they are, and with neither leisure at present to read, nor head nor heart to judge of any thing but extracts from French newspapers and the Lugano Gazette.

“We are all looking at one another, like wolves on their prey in pursuit, only waiting for the first falling on to do unutterable things.  They are a great world in chaos, or angels in hell, which you please; but out of chaos came Paradise, and out of hell—­I don’t know what; but the devil went in there, and he was a fine fellow once, you know.

“You need never favour me with any periodical publication, except the Edinburgh Quarterly, and an occasional Blackwood; or now and then a Monthly Review; for the rest I do not feel curiosity enough to look beyond their covers.

     “To be sure I took in the British finely.  He fell precisely into
     the glaring trap laid for him.  It was inconceivable how he could be
     so absurd as to imagine us serious with him.