“Excuse errors—­no time for revision.  The post goes out at noon,
     and I sha’n’t be up then.  I will write again soon about your _plan_
     for a publication.”

[Footnote 21:  I had said, I think, in my letter to him, that this practice of carrying one stanza into another was “something like taking on horses another stage without baiting.”]

[Footnote 22:  I had, in first transcribing the above letter for the press, omitted the whole of this caustic, and, perhaps, over-severe character of Mr. Hunt; but the tone of that gentleman’s book having, as far as himself is concerned, released me from all those scruples which prompted the suppression, I have considered myself at liberty to restore the passage.]

* * * * *

During the greater part of the period which this last series of letters comprises, he had continued to occupy the same lodgings in an extremely narrow street called the Spezieria, at the house of the linen-draper, to whose lady he devoted so much of his thoughts.  That he was, for the time, attached to this person,—­as far as a passion so transient can deserve the name of attachment,—­is evident from his whole conduct.  The language of his letters shows sufficiently how much the novelty of this foreign tie had caught his fancy; and to the Venetians, among whom such arrangements are mere matters of course, the assiduity with which he attended his Signora to the theatre, and the ridottos, was a subject of much amusement.  It was with difficulty, indeed, that he could be prevailed upon to absent himself from her so long as to admit of that hasty visit to the Immortal City, out of which one of his own noblest titles to immortality sprung; and having, in the space of a few weeks, drunk in more inspiration from all he saw than, in a less excited state, possibly, he might have imbibed in years, he again hurried back, without extending his journey to Naples,—­having written to the fair Marianna to meet him at some distance from Venice.