him at Pesaro on suspicion, and have since interrogated me (civilly and politely, however,) about him.  I sent them the poor man’s petition, and such information as I had about him, which I trust will get him out again, that is to say, if they give him a fair hearing.

     “I am content with the article.  Pray, did you receive, some posts
     ago, Moore’s lines which I enclosed to you, written at Paris?”

* * * * *

LETTER 434.  TO MR. MOORE.

     “Ravenna, June 4. 1821.

“You have not written lately, as is the usual custom with literary gentlemen, to console their friends with their observations in cases of magnitude.  I do not know whether I sent you my ’Elegy on the recovery of Lady * *:’—­

        “Behold the blessings of a lucky lot—­
        My play is damn’d, and Lady * * not.

“The papers (and perhaps your letters) will have put you in possession of Muster Elliston’s dramatic behaviour.  It is to be presumed that the play was fitted for the stage by Mr. Dibdin, who is the tailor upon such occasions, and will have taken measure with his usual accuracy.  I hear that it is still continued to be performed—­a piece of obstinacy for which it is some consolation to think that the discourteous histrio will be out of pocket.

“You will be surprised to hear that I have finished another tragedy in five acts, observing all the unities strictly.  It is called ‘Sardanapalus,’ and was sent by last post to England.  It is not for the stage, any more than the other was intended for it—­and I shall take better care this time that they don’t get hold on’t.

“I have also sent, two months ago, a further letter on Bowles, &c.; but he seems to be so taken up with my ‘respect’ (as he calls it) towards him in the former case, that I am not sure that it will be published, being somewhat too full of’ pastime and prodigality.’  I learn from some private letters of Bowles’s, that you were ’the gentleman in asterisks.’  Who would have dreamed it? you see what mischief that clergyman has done by printing notes without names.  How the deuce was I to suppose that the first four asterisks meant ‘Campbell’ and not ‘Pope,’ and that the blank signature meant Thomas Moore[39]?  You see what comes of being familiar with parsons.  His answers have not yet reached me, but I understand from Hobhouse, that he (H.) is attacked in them.  If that be the case, Bowles has broken the truce, (which he himself proclaimed, by the way,) and I must have at him again.

     “Did you receive my letters with the two or three concluding sheets
     of Memoranda?