* * * * *

LETTER 400.  TO MR. MURRAY.

     “Ravenna, 9bre 23 deg., 1820.

“The ‘Hints,’ Hobhouse says, will require a good deal of slashing to suit the times, which will be a work of time, for I don’t feel at all laborious just now.  Whatever effect they are to have would perhaps be greater in a separate form, and they also must have my name to them.  Now, if you publish them in the same volume with Don Juan, they identify Don Juan as mine, which I don’t think worth a Chancery suit about my daughter’s guardianship, as in your present code a facetious poem is sufficient to take away a man’s rights over his family.

“Of the state of things here it would be difficult and not very prudent to speak at large, the Huns opening all letters.  I wonder if they can read them when they have opened them; if so, they may see, in my MOST LEGIBLE HAND, THAT I THINK THEM DAMNED SCOUNDRELS AND BARBARIANS, and THEIR EMPEROR a FOOL, and themselves more fools than he; all which they may send to Vienna for any thing I care.  They have got themselves masters of the Papal police, and are bullying away; but some day or other they will pay for all:  it may not be very soon, because these unhappy Italians have no consistency among themselves; but I suppose that Providence will get tired of them at last, * *

     “Yours,” &c.

* * * * *

LETTER 401.  TO MR. MOORE.

     “Ravenna, Dec. 9. 1820.

“Besides this letter, you will receive three packets, containing, in all, 18 more sheets of Memoranda, which, I fear, will cost you more in postage than they will ever produce by being printed in the next century.  Instead of waiting so long, if you could make any thing of them now in the way of reversion, (that is, after my death,) I should be very glad,—­as, with all due regard to your progeny, I prefer you to your grandchildren.  Would not Longman or Murray advance you a certain sum now, pledging themselves not to have them published till after my decease, think you?—­and what say you?

“Over these latter sheets I would leave you a discretionary power[13]; because they contain, perhaps, a thing or two which is too sincere for the public.  If I consent to your disposing of their reversion now, where would be the harm?  Tastes may change.  I would, in your case, make my essay to dispose of them, not publish, now; and if you (as is most likely) survive me, add what you please from your own knowledge; and, above all, contradict any thing, if I have mis-stated; for my first object is the truth, even at my own expense.

“I have some knowledge of your countryman Muley Moloch, the lecturer.  He