gh my hair, and the racket of preparation to boot. 'My
mistress dear, who hath fed my heart upon smiles and wine' for the
last two months, set off with her husband for Bologna this morning,
and it seems that I follow him at three to-morrow morning. I
cannot tell how our romance will end, but it hath gone on hitherto
most erotically. Such perils and escapes! Juan's are as child's
play in comparison. The fools think that all my _poeshie_ is always
allusive to my _own_ adventures: I have had at one time or another
better and more extraordinary and perilous and pleasant than these,
every day of the week, if I might tell them; but that must never
be.

"I hope Mrs. M. has accouched.

"Yours ever."

* * * * *

LETTER 337. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Bologna, August 12. 1819.

"I do not know how far I may be able to reply to your letter, for I
am not very well to-day. Last night I went to the representation of
Alfieri's Mirra, the two last acts of which threw me into
convulsions. I do not mean by that word a lady's hysterics, but the
agony of reluctant tears, and the choking shudder, which I do not
often undergo for fiction. This is but the second time for any
thing under reality: the first was on seeing Kean's Sir Giles
Overreach. The worst was, that the 'Dama' in whose box I was, went
off in the same way, I really believe more from fright than any
other sympathy--at least with the players: but she has been ill,
and I have been ill, and we are all languid and pathetic this
morning, with great expenditure of sal volatile.[42] But, to return
to your letter of the 23d of July.

"You are right, Gifford is right, Crabbe is right, Hobhouse is
right--you are all right, and I am all wrong; but do, pray, let me
have that pleasure. Cut me up root and branch; quarter me in the
Quarterly; send round my 'disjecti membra poetae,' like those of
the Levite's concubine; make me, if you will, a spectacle to men
and angels; but don't ask me to alter, for I won't:--I am obstinate
and lazy--and there's the truth.

"But, nevertheless, I will answer your friend P * *, who objects to
the quick succession of fun and gravity, as if in that case the
gravity did not (in intention, at least) heighten the fun. His
metaphor is, that 'we are never