I don’t understand German, and there was, I believe, no translation—­at least, it was the first time that I ever heard of, or saw, either translation or original.

“I remember having some talk with S * about Alfieri, whose merit he denies.  He was also wroth about the Edinburgh Review of Goethe, which was sharp enough, to be sure.  He went about saying, too, of the French—­’I meditate a terrible vengeance against the French—­I will prove that Moliere is no poet[45].’

“I don’t see why you should talk of ‘declining.’  When I saw you, you looked thinner, and yet younger, than you did when we parted several years before.  You may rely upon this as fact.  If it were not, I should say nothing, for I would rather not say unpleasant personal things to anyone—­but, as it was the pleasant truth, I tell it you.  If you had led my life, indeed, changing climates and connections—­thinning yourself with fasting and purgatives—­besides the wear and tear of the vulture passions, and a very bad temper besides, you might talk in this way—­but you!  I know no man who looks so well for his years, or who deserves to look better and to be better, in all respects.  You are a * * *, and, what is perhaps better for your friends, a good fellow.  So, don’t talk of decay, but put in for eighty, as you well may.

“I am, at present, occupied principally about these unhappy proscriptions and exiles, which have taken place here on account of politics.  It has been a miserable sight to see the general desolation in families.  I am doing what I can for them, high and low, by such interest and means as I possess or can bring to bear.  There have been thousands of these proscriptions within the last month in the Exarchate, or (to speak modernly) the Legations.  Yesterday, too, a man got his back broken, in extricating a dog of mine from under a mill-wheel.  The dog was killed, and the man is in the greatest danger.  I was not present—­it happened before I was up, owing to a stupid boy taking the dog to bathe in a dangerous spot.  I must, of course, provide for the poor fellow while he lives, and his family, if he dies.  I would gladly have given a much greater sum than that will come to that he had never been hurt.  Pray, let me hear from you, and excuse haste and hot weather.

     “Yours, &c.

“You may have probably seen all sorts of attacks upon me in some gazettes in England some months ago.  I only saw them, by Murray’s bounty, the other day.  They call me ‘Plagiary,’ and what not.  I think I now, in my time, have been accused of every thing.

“I have not given you details of little events here; but they have been trying to make me out to be the chief of a conspiracy, and nothing but their want of proofs for an English investigation has stopped them.  Had it been a poor native, the suspicion were enough, as