following annunciation: 'Sir, my name is Ugo
Foscolo; I am a native of Greece, and I have resided thirty years in
Italy; I therefore think I ought to know something of the matter. This
card contains my address, and if you have anything further to say, you
know where I am to be found.' Whether Foscolo's name or manner daunted
the young Hanoverian, or whether he was only a bird of passage, I don't
know, but we saw nothing more of him after that day. Foscolo, after the
ladies had retired, made an apology, directed a good deal to me, who, by
the forms of the place, happened to be at the head of the table; a
considerable degree of intimacy took place between us, and an excellent
man I believe him to be, in spite of these little ebullitions."

Ugo Foscolo, who was eccentric to an excess, and very extravagant, had
many attached friends, though he tried them sorely. To Mr. Murray he
became one of the troubles of private as well as publishing life. He had
a mania for building, and a mania for ornamentation, but he was very
short of money for carrying out his freaks. He thought himself at the
same time to be perfectly moderate, simple, and sweet-tempered. He took
a house in South Bank, Regent's Park, which he named Digamma
Cottage--from his having contributed to the _Quarterly Review_ an
article on the Digamma--and fitted it up in extravagant style.

Foscolo could scarcely live at peace with anybody, and, as the result of
one of his numerous altercations, he had to fight a duel. "We are," Lady
Dacre wrote to Murray (December 1823), "to have the whole of Foscolo's
duel to-morrow. He tells me that it is not about a 'Fair lady': thank
heaven!"

Foscolo was one of Mr. Murray's inveterate correspondents--about
lectures, about translations, about buildings, about debts, about loans,
and about borrowings. On one occasion Mr. Murray received from him a
letter of thirteen pages quarto. A few sentences of this may be worth
quoting:

_Mr. Foscolo to John Murray_.

SOUTH BANK, _August_ 20, 1822.

"During six years (for I landed in England the 10th September, 1816) I
have constantly laboured under difficulties the most distressing; no one
knows them so well as yourself, because no one came to my assistance
with so warm a friendship or with cares so constant and delicate. My
difficulties have become more perplexing since the Government both of
the Ionian Islands and Italy have precluded even the possibility of my
returning to the cou