“Then you’ve General Gordon,
        Who girded his sword on,
          To serve with a Muscovite master,
        And help him to polish
        A nation so owlish,
          They thought shaving their beards a disaster.

        “For the man, ‘poor and shrewd[11],’
        With whom you’d conclude
          A compact without more delay,
        Perhaps some such pen is
        Still extant in Venice;
          But please, sir, to mention your pay.”

[Footnote 11:  “Vide your letter.”]

* * * * *

LETTER 305.  TO MR. MURRAY.

     “Venice, January 19. 1818.

“I send you the Story[12] in three other separate covers.  It won’t do for your Journal, being full of political allusions. Print alone, without name; alter nothing; get a scholar to see that the Italian phrases are correctly published, (your printing, by the way, always makes me ill with its eternal blunders, which are incessant,) and God speed you.  Hobhouse left Venice a fortnight ago, saving two days.  I have heard nothing of or from him.

     “Yours, &c.

     “He has the whole of the MSS.; so put up prayers in your back shop,
     or in the printer’s ‘Chapel.’”

[Footnote 12:  Beppo.]

* * * * *

LETTER 306.  TO MR. MURRAY.

     “Venice, January 27. 1818.

     “My father—­that is, my Armenian father, Padre Pasquali—­in the
     name of all the other fathers of our Convent, sends you the
     enclosed, greeting.

“Inasmuch as it has pleased the translators of the long-lost and lately-found portions of the text of Eusebius to put forth the enclosed prospectus, of which I send six copies, you are hereby implored to obtain subscribers in the two Universities, and among the learned, and the unlearned who would unlearn their ignorance—­This they (the Convent) request, I request, and do you request.

     “I sent you Beppo some weeks agone.  You must publish it alone; it
     has politics and ferocity, and won’t do for your isthmus of a
     Journal.

“Mr. Hobhouse, if the Alps have not broken his neck, is, or ought to be, swimming with my commentaries and his own coat of mail in his teeth and right hand, in a cork jacket, between Calais and Dover.

“It is the height of the Carnival, and I am in the extreme and agonies of a new intrigue with I don’t exactly know whom or what, except that she is insatiate of love, and won’t take money, and has light hair and blue eyes, which are not common here, and that I met her at the Masque, and that when her mask is off, I am as wise as ever.  I shall make what I can of the remainder of my youth.”

* * * * *