himself at Venice.  His state of debility was such that he was unable to digest any food:  he was consumed by hectic fever, and would speedily have perished but for this attachment, which reclaimed him from the excesses into which he threw himself, from carelessness and pride, rather than taste.  Poor fellow I he is now quite well, and immersed in politics and literature.  He has given me a number of the most interesting details on the former subject; but we will not speak of them in a letter.  Fletcher is here, and—­as if, like a shadow, he waxed and waned with the substance of his master—­has also revived his good looks, and from amidst the unseasonable grey hairs, a fresh harvest of flaxen locks has put forth.

“We talked a great deal of poetry and such matters last night; and, as usual, differed—­and I think more than ever.  He affects to patronise a system of criticism fit only for the production of mediocrity; and, although all his finer poems and passages have been produced in defiance of this system, yet I recognise the pernicious effects of it in the Doge of Venice; and it will cramp and limit his future efforts, however great they may be, unless he gets rid of it.  I have read only parts of it, or rather he himself read them to me, and gave me the plan of the whole.

     “Ravenna, August 15. 1821.

“We ride out in the evening through the pine forests which divide the city from the sea.  Our way of life is this, and I have accommodated myself to it without much difficulty:—­Lord Byron gets up at two—­breakfasts—­we talk, read, &c. until six—­then we ride at eight, and after dinner sit talking until four or five in the morning.  I get up at twelve, and am now devoting the interval between my rising and his to you.

“Lord Byron is greatly improved in every respect—­in genius, in temper, in moral views, in health and happiness.  His connection with La Guiccioli has been an inestimable benefit to him.  He lives in considerable splendour, but within his income, which is now about four thousand a year, one thousand of which he devotes to purposes of charity.  He has had mischievous passions, but these he seems to have subdued; and he is becoming, what he should be, a virtuous man.  The interest which he took in the politics of Italy, and the actions he performed in consequence of it, are subjects not fit to be written, but are such as will delight and surprise you.

“He is not yet decided to go to Switzerland, a place, indeed, little fitted for him:  the gossip and the cabals of those Anglicised coteries would torment him as they did before, and might exasperate him into a relapse of libertinism, which, he says, he plunged into not from taste, but from despair.  La Guiccioli and her brother (who is Lord Byron’s friend and confidant, and acquiesces perfectly in her connection with him) wish to go to Switzerland, as Lord Byron says, merely from the novelty and pleasure of travelling.