very thing.--Pretty cant for people who read Tom
Jones, and Roderick Random, and the Bath Guide, and Ariosto, and
Dryden, and Pope--to say nothing of Little's Poems! Of course I
refer to the _morality_ of these works, and not to any pretension
of mine to compete with them in any thing but decency. I hope yours
is the Paris edition, and that you did not pay the London price. I
have seen neither except in the newspapers.

"Pray make my respects to Mrs. H., and take care of your little
boy. All my household have the fever and ague, except Fletcher,
Allegra, and my_sen_ (as we used to say in Nottinghamshire), and
the horses, and Mutz, and Moretto. In the beginning of November,
perhaps sooner, I expect to have the pleasure of seeing you. To-day
I got drenched by a thunder-storm, and my horse and groom too, and
his horse all bemired up to the middle in a cross-road. It was
summer at noon, and at five we were bewintered; but the lightning
was sent perhaps to let us know that the summer was not yet over.
It is queer weather for the 27th October.

"Yours," &c.

* * * * *

LETTER 344. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Venice, October 29. 1819.

"Yours of the 15th came yesterday. I am sorry that you do not
mention a large letter addressed to _your care_ for Lady Byron,
from me, at Bologna, two months ago. Pray tell me, was this letter
received and forwarded?

"You say nothing of the vice-consulate for the Ravenna patrician,
from which it is to be inferred that the thing will not be done.

"I had written about a hundred stanzas of a _third_ Canto to Don
Juan, but the reception of the two first is no encouragement to you
nor me to proceed.

"I had also written about 600 lines of a poem, the Vision (or
Prophecy) of Dante, the subject a view of Italy in the ages down to
the present--supposing Dante to speak in his own person, previous
to his death, and embracing all topics in the way of prophecy, like
Lycophron's Cassandra; but this and the other are both at a
stand-still for the present.

"I gave Moore, who is gone to Rome, my Life in MS., in
seventy-eight folio sheets, brought down to 1816. But this I put
into his hands for _his_ care, as he has some other MSS. of mine--a
Journal kept in 1814, &c. Neither are for publication