“Since I wrote the enclosed a week ago, and for some weeks before, I have not had a line from you:  now, I should be glad to know upon what principle of common or uncommon feeling, you leave me without any information but what I derive from garbled gazettes in English, and abusive ones in Italian (the Germans hating me as a coal-heaver), while all this kick-up has been going on about the play?  You SHABBY fellow!!!  Were it not for two letters from Douglas Kinnaird, I should have been as ignorant as you are negligent.

     “So, I hear Bowles has been abusing Hobhouse?  If that’s the case,
     he has broken the truce, like Morillo’s successor, and I will cut
     him out, as Cochrane did the Esmeralda.

“Since I wrote the enclosed packet, I have completed (but not copied out) four acts of a new tragedy.  When I have finished the fifth, I will copy it out.  It is on the subject of ‘Sardanapalus,’ the last king of the Assyrians.  The words Queen and Pavilion occur, but it is not an allusion to his Britannic Majesty, as you may tremulously imagine.  This you will one day see (if I finish it), as I have made Sardanapalus brave, (though voluptuous, as history represents him,) and also as amiable as my poor powers could render him:—­so that it could neither be truth nor satire on any living monarch.  I have strictly preserved all the unities hitherto, and mean to continue them in the fifth, if possible; but not for the stage.  Yours, in haste and hatred, you shabby correspondent!  N.”

* * * * *

LETTER 431.  TO MR. MURRAY.

     “Ravenna, May 28. 1821.

“Since my last of the 26th or 25th, I have dashed off my fifth act of the tragedy called ‘Sardanapalus.’  But now comes the copying over, which may prove heavy work—­heavy to the writer as to the reader.  I have written to you at least six times sans answer, which proves you to be a—­bookseller.  I pray you to send me a copy of Mr. Wrangham’s reformation of ‘Langhorne’s Plutarch.’  I have the Greek, which is somewhat small of print, and the Italian, which is too heavy in style, and as false as a Neapolitan patriot proclamation.  I pray you also to send me a Life, published some years ago, of the Magician Apollonius of Tyana.  It is in English, and I think edited or written by what Martin Marprelate calls ’a bouncing priest.’  I shall trouble you no farther with this sheet than with the postage.  Yours, &c.  N.

     “P.S.  Since I wrote this, I determined to enclose it (as a half
     sheet) to Mr. Kinnaird, who will have the goodness to forward it. 
     Besides, it saves sealing-wax.”

* * * * *

LETTER 432.  TO MR. MURRAY.