* *

LETTER 322. TO MR. MOORE.

"Venice, September 19. 1818.

"An English newspaper here would be a prodigy, and an opposition
one a monster; and except some ex tracts _from_ extracts in the
vile, garbled Paris gazettes, nothing of the kind reaches the
Veneto-Lombard public, who are, perhaps, the most oppressed in
Europe. My correspondences with England are mostly on business, and
chiefly with my * * *, who has no very exalted notion, or extensive
conception, of an author's attributes; for he once took up an
Edinburgh Review, and, looking at it a minute, said to me, 'So, I
see you have got into the magazine,'--which is the only sentence I
ever heard him utter upon literary matters, or the men thereof.

"My first news of your Irish Apotheosis has, consequently, been
from yourself. But, as it will not be forgotten in a hurry, either
by your friends or your enemies, I hope to have it more in detail
from some of the former, and, in the mean time, I wish you joy with
all my heart. Such a moment must have been a good deal better than
Westminster-abbey,--besides being an assurance of _that_ one day
(many years hence, I trust,) into the bargain.

"I am sorry to perceive, however, by the close of your letter, that
even _you_ have not escaped the 'surgit amari,' &c. and that your
damned deputy has been gathering such 'dew from the still _vext_
Bermoothes'--or rather _vexatious_. Pray, give me some items of the
affair, as you say it is a serious one; and, if it grows more so,
you should make a trip over here for a few months, to see how
things turn out. I suppose you are a violent admirer of England by
your staying so long in it. For my own part, I have passed, between
the age of one-and-twenty and thirty, half the intervenient years
out of it without regretting any thing, except that I ever returned
to it at all, and the gloomy prospect before me of business and
parentage obliging me, one day, to return to it again,--at least,
for the transaction of affairs, the signing of papers, and
inspecting of children.

"I have here my natural daughter, by name Allegra,--a pretty little
girl enough, and reckoned like papa.[26] Her mamma is English,--but
it is a long story, and--there's an end. She is about twenty
months old.

"I have finished th