you receive this letter, I will thank you to desire Edgecombe to prepare for my return.  I shall go back to Venice before I village on the Brenta.  I shall stay but a few days in Bologna.  I am just going out to see sights, but shall not present my introductory letters for a day or two, till I have run over again the place and pictures; nor perhaps at all, if I find that I have books and sights enough to do without the inhabitants.  After that, I shall return to Venice, where you may expect me about the eleventh, or perhaps sooner.  Pray make my thanks acceptable to Mengaldo:  my respects to the Consuless, and to Mr. Scott.  I hope my daughter is well.

     “Ever yours, and truly.

     “P.S.  I went over the Ariosto MS. &c. &c. again at Ferrara, with
     the castle, and cell, and house, &c. &c.

“One of the Ferrarese asked me if I knew ‘Lord Byron,’ an acquaintance of his, now at Naples.  I told him ‘No!’ which was true both ways; for I knew not the impostor, and in the other, no one knows himself.  He stared when told that I was ’the real Simon Pure.’  Another asked me if I had not translated ‘Tasso.’  You see what fame is! how accurate! how boundless! I don’t know how others feel, but I am always the lighter and the better looked on when I have got rid of mine; it sits on me like armour on the Lord Mayor’s champion; and I got rid of all the husk of literature, and the attendant babble, by answering, that I had not translated Tasso, but a namesake had; and by the blessing of Heaven, I looked so little like a poet, that every body believed me.”

* * * * *

LETTER 331.  TO MR. MURRAY.

     “Bologna, June 7. 1819.

“Tell Mr. Hobhouse that I wrote to him a few days ago from Ferrara.  It will therefore be idle in him or you to wait for any further answers or returns of proofs from Venice, as I have directed that no English letters be sent after me.  The publication can be proceeded in without, and I am already sick of your remarks, to which I think not the least attention ought to be paid.

“Tell Mr. Hobhouse that, since I wrote to him, I had availed myself of my Ferrara letters, and found the society much younger and better there than at Venice.  I am very much pleased with the little the shortness of my stay permitted me to see of the Gonfaloniere Count Mosti, and his family and friends in general.

“I have been picture-gazing this morning at the famous Domenichino and Guido, both of which are superlative.  I afterwards went to the beautiful cemetery of Bologna, beyond the walls, and found, besides the superb burial-ground, an original of a Custode, who reminded one of the grave-digger in Hamlet.  He has a collection of capuchins’ skulls, labelled on the forehead, and taking down one of them, said, ’This