“‘BYRON.’

“His Lordship soon followed this note, and I heard his voice in the next room; but although he waited more than an hour, I could not see him, being under the inexorable hands of the doctor.  In the course of the same evening he again called, but I was asleep.  When I awoke I found his Lordship’s valet sitting by my bedside.  ‘He had his master’s orders,’ he said, ’to remain with me while I was unwell, and was instructed to say, that whatever his Lordship had, or could procure, was at my service, and that he would come to me and sit with me, or do whatever I liked, if I would only let him know in what way he could be useful.’

“Accordingly, on the next day, I sent for some book, which was brought, with a list of his library.  I forget what it was which prevented my seeing Lord Byron on this day, though he called more than once; and on the next, I was too ill with fever to talk to any one.

“The moment I could get out, I took a gondola and went to pay my respects, and to thank his Lordship for his attentions.  It was then nearly three o’clock, but he was not yet up; and when I went again on the following day at five, I had the mortification to learn that he had gone, at the same hour, to call upon me, so that we had crossed each other on the canal; and, to my deep and lasting regret, I was obliged to leave Venice without seeing him.”

* * * * *

LETTER 322.  TO MR. MOORE.

     “Venice, September 19. 1818.

“An English newspaper here would be a prodigy, and an opposition one a monster; and except some ex tracts from extracts in the vile, garbled Paris gazettes, nothing of the kind reaches the Veneto-Lombard public, who are, perhaps, the most oppressed in Europe.  My correspondences with England are mostly on business, and chiefly with my * * *, who has no very exalted notion, or extensive conception, of an author’s attributes; for he once took up an Edinburgh Review, and, looking at it a minute, said to me, ’So, I see you have got into the magazine,’—­which is the only sentence I ever heard him utter upon literary matters, or the men thereof.

“My first news of your Irish Apotheosis has, consequently, been from yourself.  But, as it will not be forgotten in a hurry, either by your friends or your enemies, I hope to have it more in detail from some of the former, and, in the mean time, I wish you joy with all my heart.  Such a moment must have been a good deal better than Westminster-abbey,—­besides being an assurance of that one day (many years hence, I trust,) into the bargain.

“I am sorry to perceive, however, by the close of your letter, that even you have not escaped the ‘surgit amari,’ &c. and that your damned deputy has been gathering such ’dew from the still vext Bermoothes’—­or rather vexatious.  Pray, give me some items