bruises,
narrow escape, and all that; but no harm done, though coachman,
foot-man, horses, and vehicle, were all mixed together like
macaroni. It was owing to bad driving, as I say; but the coachman
swears to a start on the part of the horses. We went against a post
on the verge of a steep bank, and capsized. I usually go out of
the town in a carriage, and meet the saddle horses at the bridge;
it was in going there that we boggled; but I got my ride, as usual,
after the accident. They say here it was all owing to St. Antonio
of Padua, (serious, I assure you,)--who does thirteen miracles a
day,--that worse did not come of it. I have no objection to this
being his fourteenth in the four-and-twenty-hours. He presides over
overturns and all escapes therefrom, it seems: and they dedicate
pictures, &c. to him, as the sailors once did to Neptune, after
'the high Roman fashion.'

"Yours, in haste."

[Footnote 69: There were in this Poem, originally, three lines of
remarkable strength and severity, which, as the Italian poet against
whom they were directed was then living, were omitted in the
publication. I shall here give them from memory.

"The prostitution of his Muse and wife,
Both beautiful, and both by him debased,
Shall salt his bread and give him means of life."
]

* * * * *

LETTER 362. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, March 20. 1820.

"Last post I sent you 'The Vision of Dante,'--four first Cantos.
Enclosed you will find, _line for line_, in _third rhyme_ (_terza
rima_), of which your British blackguard reader as yet understands
nothing, Fanny of Rimini. You know that she was born here, and
married, and slain, from Gary, Boyd, and such people. I have done
it into _cramp_ English, line for line, and rhyme for rhyme, to try
the possibility. You had best append it to the poems already sent
by last three posts. I shall not allow you to play the tricks you
did last year, with the prose you _post_-scribed to Mazeppa, which
I sent to you _not_ to be published, if not in a periodical
paper,--and there you tacked it, without a word of explanation. If
this is published, publish it _with the original_, and _together_
with the _Pulci_ translation, _or_ the _Dante imitation_. I suppose
you have both by now, and the _Juan_ long before.