ll events. But _I_ more than love you, and cannot
cease to love you.

"Think of me, sometimes, when the Alps and the ocean divide
us,--but they never will, unless you _wish_ it. BYRON.

"Bologna, August 25. 1819."

[Footnote 44: One of these notes, written at the end of the 5th chapter,
18th book of Corinne ("Fragmens des Pensees de Corinne") is as
follows:--

"I knew Madame de Stael well,--better than she knew Italy,--but I
little thought that, one day, I should _think with her thoughts_,
in the country where she has laid the scene of her most attractive
productions. She is sometimes right, and often wrong, about Italy
and England; but almost always true in delineating the heart, which
is of but one nation, and of no country,--or, rather, of all.

"BYRON.

"Bologna, August 23. 1819."
]

[Footnote 45:

"Oh Love! what is it, in this world of ours,
Which makes it fatal to be loved? ah! why
With cypress branches hast thou wreath'd thy bowers,
And made thy best interpreter a sigh?
As those who dote on odours pluck the flowers,
And place them on their breasts--but place to die.--
Thus the frail beings we would fondly cherish
Are laid within our bosoms but to perish."
]

* * * * *

LETTER 339. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Bologna, August 24. 1819.

"I wrote to you by last post, enclosing a buffooning letter for
publication, addressed to the buffoon R----ts, who has thought
proper to tie a canister to his own tail. It was written off-hand,
and in the midst of circumstances not very favourable to
facetiousness, so that there may, perhaps, be more bitterness than
enough for that sort of small acid punch:--you will tell me.

"Keep the anonymous, in any case: it helps what fun there may be.
But if the matter grow serious about _Don Juan_, and you feel
_yourself_ in a scrape, or _me_ either, _own that I am the author._
_I_ will never _shrink_; and if _you_ do, I can always answer you
in the question of Guatimozin to his minister--each being on his
own coals.[46]

"I wish that I had been in better spirits; but I am out of sorts,
out of nerves, and now and then (I begin to fear) out of my senses.
All this Italy has done for me, and not England: I defy all you,
and your climate to boot, to make me mad. But if eve