rived; many thanks; as also for the
_Monastery--when you send it!!!_

"The Abbot will have a more than ordinary interest for me, for an
ancestor of mine by the mother's side, Sir J. Gordon of Gight, the
handsomest of his day, died on a scaffold at Aberdeen for his
loyalty to Mary, of whom he was an imputed paramour as well as her
relation. His fate was much commented on in the Chronicles of the
times. If I mistake not, he had something to do with her escape
from Loch Leven, or with her captivity there. But this you will
know better than I.

"I recollect Loch Leven as it were but yesterday. I saw it in my
way to England in 1798, being then ten years of age. My mother, who
was as haughty as Lucifer with her descent from the Stuarts, and
her right line from the _old Gordons, not the Seyton Gordons_, as
she disdainfully termed the ducal branch, told me the story, always
reminding me how superior _her_ Gordons were to the southern
Byrons, notwithstanding our Norman, and always masculine descent,
which has never lapsed into a female, as my mother's Gordons had
done in her own person.

"I have written to you so often lately, that the brevity of this
will be welcome. Yours," &c.

* * * * *

LETTER 393. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, 8bre 17 deg., 1820.

"Enclosed is the Dedication of Marino Faliero to _Goethe_.
Query,--is his title _Baron_ or not? I think yes. Let me know your
opinion, and so forth.

"P.S. Let me know what Mr. Hobhouse and you have decided about the
two prose letters and their publication.

"I enclose you an Italian abstract of the German translator of
Manfred's Appendix, in which you will perceive quoted what Goethe
says of the _whole body_ of English poetry (and _not_ of me in
particular). On this the Dedication is founded, as you will
perceive, though I had thought of it before, for I look upon him as
a great man."

* * * * *

The very singular Dedication transmitted with this letter has never
before been published, nor, as far as I can learn, ever reached the
hands of the illustrious German. It is written in the poet's most
whimsical and mocking mood; and the unmeasured severity poured out in it
upon the two favourite objects of his wrath and ridicule compels me to
deprive the re