more blood than a water-melon!  And I see there hath been asterisks, and what Perry used to called ’d_o_mned cutting and slashing’—­but, never mind.

“I write in haste.  To-morrow I set off for Bologna.  I write to you with thunder, lightning, &c. and all the winds of heaven whistling through my hair, and the racket of preparation to boot.  ’My mistress dear, who hath fed my heart upon smiles and wine’ for the last two months, set off with her husband for Bologna this morning, and it seems that I follow him at three to-morrow morning.  I cannot tell how our romance will end, but it hath gone on hitherto most erotically.  Such perils and escapes!  Juan’s are as child’s play in comparison.  The fools think that all my poeshie is always allusive to my own adventures:  I have had at one time or another better and more extraordinary and perilous and pleasant than these, every day of the week, if I might tell them; but that must never be.

     “I hope Mrs. M. has accouched.

     “Yours ever.”

* * * * *

LETTER 337.  TO MR. MURRAY.

     “Bologna, August 12. 1819.

“I do not know how far I may be able to reply to your letter, for I am not very well to-day.  Last night I went to the representation of Alfieri’s Mirra, the two last acts of which threw me into convulsions.  I do not mean by that word a lady’s hysterics, but the agony of reluctant tears, and the choking shudder, which I do not often undergo for fiction.  This is but the second time for any thing under reality:  the first was on seeing Kean’s Sir Giles Overreach.  The worst was, that the ‘Dama’ in whose box I was, went off in the same way, I really believe more from fright than any other sympathy—­at least with the players:  but she has been ill, and I have been ill, and we are all languid and pathetic this morning, with great expenditure of sal volatile.[42] But, to return to your letter of the 23d of July.

“You are right, Gifford is right, Crabbe is right, Hobhouse is right—­you are all right, and I am all wrong; but do, pray, let me have that pleasure.  Cut me up root and branch; quarter me in the Quarterly; send round my ‘disjecti membra poetae,’ like those of the Levite’s concubine; make me, if you will, a spectacle to men and angels; but don’t ask me to alter, for I won’t:—­I am obstinate and lazy—­and there’s the truth.

“But, nevertheless, I will answer your friend P * *, who objects to the quick succession of fun and gravity, as if in that case the gravity did not (in intention, at least) heighten the fun.  His metaphor is, that ’we are never scorched and drenched at the same time.’  Blessings on his experience!  Ask him these questions about ‘scorching and drenching.’  Did he never play at cricket, or walk a mile in hot weather?  Did he never spill a dish of tea over