“So, Longman don’t bite.—­It was my wish to have made that work
     of use.  Could you not raise a sum upon it (however small),
     reserving the power of redeeming it, on repayment?

“Are you in Paris, or a villaging?  If you are in the city, you will never resist the Anglo-invasion you speak of.  I do not see an Englishman in half a year, and, when I do, I turn my horse’s head the other way.  The fact, which you will find in the last note to the Doge, has given me a good excuse for quite dropping the least connection with travellers.

“I do not recollect the speech you speak of, but suspect it is not the Doge’s, but one of Israel Bertuccio to Calendaro.  I hope you think that Elliston behaved shamefully—­it is my only consolation.  I made the Milanese fellows contradict their lie, which they did with the grace of people used to it.

     “Yours, &c.

     “B.”

* * * * *

LETTER 436.  TO MR. MOORE.

“Ravenna, July 5. 1821.

“How could you suppose that I ever would allow any thing that could be said on your account to weigh with me?  I only regret that Bowles had not said that you were the writer of that note, until afterwards, when out he comes with it, in a private letter to Murray, which Murray sends to me.  D——­n the controversy!

“D——­n Twizzle,
D——­n the bell,
And d——­n the fool who rung it—­Well! 
From all such plagues I’ll quickly be deliver’d.

“I have had a friend of your Mr. Irving’s—­a very pretty lad—­a Mr. Coolidge, of Boston—­only somewhat too full of poesy and ‘entusymusy.’  I was very civil to him during his few hours’ stay, and talked with him much of Irving, whose writings are my delight.  But I suspect that he did not take quite so much to me, from his having expected to meet a misanthropical gentleman, in wolf-skin breeches, and answering in fierce monosyllables, instead of a man of this world.  I can never get people to understand that poetry is the expression of excited passion, and that there is no such thing as a life of passion any more than a continuous earthquake, or an eternal fever.  Besides, who would ever shave themselves in such a state?

“I have had a curious letter to-day from a girl in England (I never saw her), who says she is given over of a decline, but could not go out of the world without thanking me for the delight which my poesy for several years, &c. &c. &c.  It is signed simply N.N.A. and has not a word of ‘cant’ or preachment in it upon any opinions.  She merely says that she is dying, and that as I had contributed so highly to her existing pleasure, she thought