family;
for which reason I gave it to my daughter."

[Footnote 82: The paragraph is left thus imperfect in the original.]

* * * * *

LETTER 391. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, 8bre 12 deg., 1820.

"By land and sea carriage a considerable quantity of books have
arrived; and I am obliged and grateful: but 'medio de fonte
leporum, surgit amari aliquid,' &c. &c.; which, being interpreted,
means,

"I'm thankful for your books, dear Murray;
But why not send Scott's Monast_ery_?

the only book in four _living_ volumes I would give a baioccolo to
see--'bating the rest of the same author, and an occasional
Edinburgh and Quarterly, as brief chroniclers of the times. Instead
of this, here are Johnny Keats's * * poetry, and three novels by
God knows whom, except that there is Peg * * *'s name to one of
them--a spinster whom I thought we had sent back to her spinning.
Crayon is very good; Hogg's Tales rough, but RACY, and welcome.

"Books of travels are expensive, and I don't want them, having
travelled already; besides, they lie. Thank the author of 'The
Profligate' for his (or her) present. Pray send me _no more_ poetry
but what is rare and decidedly good. There is such a trash of Keats
and the like upon my tables that I am ashamed to look at them. I
say nothing against your parsons, your S * *s and your C * *s--it
is all very fine--but pray dispense me from the pleasure. Instead
of poetry, if you will favour me with a few soda-powders, I shall
be delighted: but all prose ('bating _travels_ and novels NOT by
Scott) is welcome, especially Scott's Tales of my Landlord, and so
on.

"In the notes to Marino Faliero, it may be as well to say that
'_Benintende_' was not really of _the Ten_, but merely _Grand
Chancellor_, a separate office (although important): it was an
arbitrary alteration of mine. The Doges too were all _buried_ in
St. _Mark's before_ Faliero. It is singular that when his
predecessor, Andrea Dandolo, died, _the Ten_ made a law that _all_
the _future Doges_ should be _buried with their families, in their
own churches,--one would think by a kind of presentiment_. So that
all that is said of his _ancestral Doges_, as buried at St. John's
and Paul's, is altered from the fact, _they being in St. Mark's.