“Since my former letter, I have been working up my impressions into a fourth Canto of Childe Harold, of which I have roughened off about rather better than thirty stanzas, and mean to go on; and probably to make this ‘Fytte’ the concluding one of the poem, so that you may propose against the autumn to draw out the conscription for 1818.  You must provide moneys, as this new resumption bodes you certain disbursements.  Somewhere about the end of September or October, I propose to be under way (i.e. in the press); but I have no idea yet of the probable length or calibre of the Canto, or what it will be good for; but I mean to be as mercenary as possible, an example (I do not mean of any individual in particular, and least of all, any person or persons of our mutual acquaintance) which I should have followed in my youth, and I might still have been a prosperous gentleman.

     “No tooth-powder, no letters, no recent tidings of you.

     “Mr. Lewis is at Venice, and I am going up to stay a week with him
     there—­as it is one of his enthusiasms also to like the city.

        “I stood in Venice on the ‘Bridge of Sighs,’ &c. &c.

“The ‘Bridge of Sighs’ (i.e. Ponte de’i Sospiri) is that which divides, or rather joins, the palace of the Doge to the prison of the state.  It has two passages:  the criminal went by the one to judgment, and returned by the other to death, being strangled in a chamber adjoining, where there was a mechanical process for the purpose.

     “This is the first stanza of our new Canto; and now for a line of
     the second:—­

        “In Venice, Tasso’s echoes are no more,
        And silent rows the songless gondolier,
        Her palaces, &c. &c.

     “You know that formerly the gondoliers sung always, and Tasso’s
     Gierusalemme was their ballad.  Venice is built on seventy-two
     islands.

     “There! there’s a brick of your new Babel! and now, sirrah! what
     say you to the sample?

     “Yours, &c.

     “P.S.  I shall write again by and by.”

* * * * *

LETTER 287.  TO MR. MURRAY.

     “La Mira, near Venice, July 8. 1817

“If you can convey the enclosed letter to its address, or discover the person to whom it is directed, you will confer a favour upon the Venetian creditor of a deceased Englishman.  This epistle is a dun to his executor, for house-rent.  The name of the insolvent defunct is, or was, Porter Valter, according to the account of the plaintiff, which I rather suspect ought to be Walter Porter, according to our mode of collocation.  If you are acquainted with any dead man of the like name a good deal in debt, pray dig him up, and tell him that ‘a pound of his fair flesh’ or the ducats are required,