during my
life; but when I am cold you may do what you please. In the mean
time, if you like to read them you may, and show them to anybody
you like--I care not.

"The Life is _Memoranda_, and not _Confessions_ I have left out all
my _loves_ (except in a general way), and many other of the most
important things (because I must not compromise other people), so
that it is like the play of Hamlet--'the part of Hamlet omitted by
particular desire.' But you will find many opinions, and some fun,
with a detailed account of my marriage, and its consequences, as
true as a party concerned can make such account, for I suppose we
are all prejudiced.

"I have never read over this Life since it was written, so that I
know not exactly what it may repeat or contain. Moore and I passed
some merry days together.

"I probably must return for business, or in my way to America.
Pray, did you get a letter for Hobhouse, who will have told you the
contents? I understand that the Venezuelan commissioners had orders
to treat with emigrants; now I want to go there. I should not make
a bad South-American planter, and I should take my natural
daughter, Allegra, with me, and settle. I wrote, at length, to
Hobhouse, to get information from Perry, who, I suppose, is the
best topographer and trumpeter of the new republicans. Pray write.

"Yours ever.

"P.S. Moore and I did nothing but laugh. He will tell you of 'my
whereabouts,' and all my proceedings at this present; they are as
usual. You should not let those fellows publish false 'Don Juans;'
but do not put _my name_, because I mean to cut R----ts up like a
gourd, in the preface, if I continue the poem."

* * * * *

LETTER 345. TO MR. HOPPNER.

"October 29. 1819.

"The Ferrara story is of a piece with all the rest of the Venetian
manufacture,--you may judge. I only changed horses there since I
wrote to you, after my visit in June last. '_Convent_' and '_carry
off_', quotha! and '_girl_.' I should like to know _who_ has been
carried off, except poor dear _me_. I have been more ravished
myself than anybody since the Trojan war; but as to the arrest and
its causes, one is as true as the other, and I can account for the
invention of neither. I suppose it is some confusion of the