“With regard to what you say about your ‘want of memory,’ I can only remark, that you inserted the note to Marino Faliero against my positive revocation, and that you omitted the Dedication of Sardanapalus to Goethe (place it before the volume now in the press), both of which were things not very agreeable to me, and which I could wish to be avoided in future, as they might be with a very little care, or a simple memorandum in your pocket-book.

“It is not impossible that I may have three or four cantos of Don Juan ready by autumn, or a little later, as I obtained a permission from my dictatress to continue it,—­provided always it was to be more guarded and decorous and sentimental in the continuation than in the commencement.  How far these conditions have been fulfilled may be seen, perhaps, by-and-by; but the embargo was only taken off upon these stipulations.  You can answer at your leisure.  Yours,” &c.

* * * * *

LETTER 501.  TO MR. MOORE.

     “Pisa, July 12. 1822.

“I have written to you lately, but not in answer to your last letter of about a fortnight ago.  I wish to know (and request an answer to that point) what became of the stanzas to Wellington (intended to open a canto of Don Juan with), which I sent you several months ago.  If they have fallen into Murray’s hands, he and the Tories will suppress them, as those lines rate that hero at his real value.  Pray be explicit on this, as I have no other copy, having sent you the original; and if you have them, let me have that again, or a copy correct.

“I subscribed at Leghorn two hundred Tuscan crowns to your Irishism committee; it is about a thousand francs, more or less.  As Sir C.S., who receives thirteen thousand a year of the public money, could not afford more than a thousand livres out of his enormous salary, it would have appeared ostentatious in a private individual to pretend to surpass him; and therefore I have sent but the above sum, as you will see by the enclosed receipt.[82]

“Leigh Hunt is here, after a voyage of eight months, during which he has, I presume, made the Periplus of Hanno the Carthaginian, and with much the same speed.  He is setting up a Journal, to which I have promised to contribute; and in the first number the ’Vision of Judgment, by Quevedo Redivivus,’ will probably appear, with other articles.

“Can you give us any thing?  He seems sanguine about the matter, but (entre nous) I am not.  I do not, however, like to put him out of spirits by saying so; for he is bilious and unwell.  Do, pray, answer this letter immediately.

     “Do send Hunt any thing in prose or verse, of yours, to start him
     handsomely—­any lyrical, irical, or what you please.