think it looks like it.  I remember meeting him at Earl Grey’s at dinner.  Has not he lately married a young woman; and was not he Madame Talleyrand’s cavaliere servente in India years ago?

“I read my death in the papers, which was not true.  I see they are marrying the remaining singleness of the royal family.  They have brought out Fazio with great and deserved success at Covent Garden:  that’s a good sign.  I tried, during the directory, to have it done at Drury Lane, but was overruled.  If you think of coming into this country, you will let me know perhaps beforehand.  I suppose Moore won’t move.  Rose is here.  I saw him the other night at Madame Albrizzi’s; he talks of returning in May.  My love to the Hollands.

     “Ever, &c.

“P.S.  They have been crucifying Othello into an opera (Otello, by Rossini):  the music good, but lugubrious; but as for the words, all the real scenes with Iago cut out, and the greatest nonsense instead; the handkerchief turned into a billet-doux, and the first singer would not black his face, for some exquisite reasons assigned in the preface.  Singing, dresses, and music, very good.”

[Footnote 17:  A continuation of Vathek, by the author of that very striking and powerful production.  The “Tales” of which this unpublished sequel consists are, I understand, those supposed to have been related by the Princes in the Hall of Eblis.]

* * * * *

LETTER 311.  TO MR. MOORE.

     “Venice, March 16. 1818.

     “My dear Tom,

“Since my last, which I hope that you have received, I have had a letter from our friend Samuel.  He talks of Italy this summer—­won’t you come with him?  I don’t know whether you would like our Italian way of life or not.

“They are an odd people.  The other day I was telling a girl, ’You must not come to-morrow, because Margueritta is coming at such a time,’—­(they are both about five feet ten inches high, with great black eyes and fine figures—­fit to breed gladiators from—­and I had some difficulty to prevent a battle upon a rencontre once before,)—­’unless you promise to be friends, and’—­the answer was an interruption, by a declaration of war against the other, which she said would be a ‘Guerra di Candia.’  Is it not odd, that the lower order of Venetians should still allude proverbially to that famous contest, so glorious and so fatal to the Republic?

“They have singular expressions, like all the Italians.  For example, ’Viscere’—­as we would say, ‘My love,’ or ‘My heart,’ as an expression of tenderness.  Also, ’I would go for you into the midst of a hundred knives.’—­’Mazza ben,’ excessive attachment,—­literally, ‘I wish you well even to killing.’  Then they say (instead of our way, ’Do you think I would