an introduction,'
I perceive (_horresco referens_) it is written by a WOMAN!!! In
that case you must suppress my note and answer, and all I have said
about the book and the writer. I never dreamed of it until now, in
my extreme wrath at that precious note. I can only say that I am
sorry that a lady should say any thing of the kind. What I would
have said to one of the other sex you know already. Her book too
(as a _she_ book) is not a bad one; but she evidently don't know
the Italians, or rather don't like them, and forgets the _causes_
of their misery and profligacy (_Matthews_ and _Forsyth_ are your
men for truth and tact), and has gone over Italy in
_company_--_always_ a _bad_ plan: you must be _alone_ with people
to know them well. Ask her, who was the '_descendant of Lady M.W.
Montague_,' and by whom? by Algarotti?

"I suspect that, in Marino Faliero, you and yours won't like the
_politics_, which are perilous to you in these times; but recollect
that it is _not a political_ play, and that I was obliged to put
into the mouths of the characters the sentiments upon which they
acted. I hate all things written like Pizarro, to represent France,
England, and so forth. All I have done is meant to be purely
Venetian, even to the very prophecy of its present state.

"Your Angles in general know little of the _Italians_, who detest
them for their numbers and their GENOA treachery. Besides, the
English travellers have not been composed of the best company. How
could they?--out of 100,000, how many gentlemen were there, or
honest men?

"Mitchell's Aristophanes is excellent. Send me the rest of it.

"These fools will force me to write a book about Italy myself, to
give them 'the loud lie.' They prate about assassination; what is
it but the origin of duelling--and '_a wild justice_,' as Lord
Bacon calls it? It is the fount of the modern point of honour in
what the laws can't or _won't_ reach. Every man is liable to it
more or less, according to circumstances or place. For instance, I
am living here exposed to it daily, for I have happened to make a
powerful and unprincipled man my enemy;--and I never sleep the
worse for it, or ride in less solitary places, because precaution
is useless, and one thinks of it as of a disease which may or may
n