ave served you a
pretty trick if I had sent you, for example, cantos of 50 stanzas
each.

"I am translating the first Canto of Pulci's Morgante Maggiore, and
have half done it; but these last days of the Carnival confuse and
interrupt every thing.

"I have not yet sent off the Cantos, and have some doubt whether
they ought to be published, for they have not the spirit of the
first. The outcry has not frightened but it has _hurt_ me, and I
have not written _con amore_ this time. It is very decent, however,
and as dull as 'the last new comedy.'

"I think my translations of Pulci will make you stare. It must be
put by the original, stanza for stanza, and verse for verse; and
you will see what was permitted in a Catholic country and a bigoted
age to a churchman, on the score of religion;--and so tell those
buffoons who accuse me of attacking the Liturgy.

"I write in the greatest haste, it being the hour of the Corso, and
I must go and buffoon with the rest. My daughter Allegra is just
gone with the Countess G. in Count G.'s coach and six to join the
cavalcade, and I must follow with all the rest of the Ravenna
world. Our old Cardinal is dead, and the new one not appointed yet;
but the masquing goes on the same, the vice-legate being a good
governor. We have had hideous frost and snow, but all is mild
again.

"Yours," &c.

* * * * *

LETTER 356. TO MR. BANKES.

"Ravenna, February 19. 1820.

"I have room for you in the house here, as I had in Venice, if you
think fit to make use of it; but do not expect to find the same
gorgeous suite of tapestried halls. Neither dangers nor tropical
heats have ever prevented your penetrating wherever you had a mind
to it, and why should the snow now?--Italian snow--fie on it!--so
pray come. Tita's heart yearns for you, and mayhap for your silver
broad pieces; and your playfellow, the monkey, is alone and
inconsolable.

"I forget whether you admire or tolerate red hair, so that I rather
dread showing you all that I have about me and around me in this
city. Come, nevertheless,--you can pay Dante a morning visit, and I
will undertake that Theodore and Honoria will be most happy to see
you in the forest hard by. We Goths, also, of Ravenna, hope you
will not d