“Ravenna, May 30. 1821.

     “Dear Moray,

“You say you have written often:  I have only received yours of the eleventh, which is very short.  By this post, five packets, I send you the tragedy of Sardanapalus, which is written in a rough hand:  perhaps Mrs. Leigh can help you to decipher it.  You will please to acknowledge it by return of post.  You will remark that the unities are all strictly observed.  The scene passes in the same hall always:  the time, a summer’s night, about nine hours, or less, though it begins before sunset and ends after sun-rise.  In the third act, when Sardanapalus calls for a mirror to look at himself in his armour, recollect to quote the Latin passage from Juvenal upon Otho (a similar character, who did the same thing):  Gifford will help you to it.  The trait is perhaps too familiar, but it is historical, (of Otho, at least,) and natural in an effeminate character.”

* * * * *

LETTER 433.  TO MR. HOPPNER.

     “Ravenna, May 31. 1821.

     “I enclose you another letter, which will only confirm what I have
     said to you.

     “About Allegra’—­I will take some decisive step in the course of
     the year; at present, she is so happy where she is, that perhaps
     she had better have her alphabet imparted in her convent.

“What you say of the Dante is the first I have heard of it—­all seeming to be merged in the row about the tragedy.  Continue it!—­Alas! what could Dante himself now prophesy about Italy?  I am glad you like it, however, but doubt that you will be singular in your opinion.  My new tragedy is completed.

“The B * * is right,—­I ought to have mentioned her humour and amiability, but I thought at her sixty, beauty would be most agreeable or least likely.  However, it shall be rectified in a new edition; and if any of the parties have either looks or qualities which they wish to be noticed, let me have a minute of them.  I have no private nor personal dislike to Venice, rather the contrary, but I merely speak of what is the subject of all remarks and all writers upon her present state.  Let me hear from you before you start.

     “Believe me, ever, &c.

“P.S.  Did you receive two letters of Douglas Kinnaird’s in an endorse from me?  Remember me to Mengaldo, Soranzo, and all who care that I should remember them.  The letter alluded to in the enclosed, ‘to the Cardinal,’ was in answer to some queries of the government, about a poor devil of a Neapolitan, arrested at Sinigaglia on suspicion, who came to beg of me here; being without breeches, and consequently without pockets for halfpence, I relieved and forwarded him to his country, and they arrested