sovereigns
of Grub Street, the other day, Mawman the Great, by whom I sent due
homage to your imperial self. To-morrow's post may perhaps bring a
letter from you, but you are the most ungrateful and ungracious of
correspondents. But there is some excuse for you, with your
perpetual levee of politicians, parsons, scribblers, and loungers.
Some day I will give you a poetical catalogue of them."

* * * * *

LETTER 452. TO MR. MOORE.

"Ravenna, September 17. 1821.

"The enclosed lines[52], as you will directly perceive, are written
by the Rev. W.L.B * *. Of course it is for _him_ to deny them if
they are not.

"Believe me yours ever and most affectionately,

"B.

"P.S. Can you forgive this? It is only a reply to your lines
against my Italians. Of course I will _stand_ by my lines against
all men; but it is heart-breaking to see such things in a people as
the reception of that unredeemed * * * * * * in an oppressed
country. _Your_ apotheosis is now reduced to a level with his
welcome, and their gratitude to Grattan is cancelled by their
atrocious adulation of this, &c. &c. &c."

[Footnote 52: "The Irish Avatar." In this copy the following sentence
(taken from a letter of Curran, in the able Life of that true Irishman,
by his son) is prefixed as a motto to the Poem,--"And Ireland, like a
bastinadoed elephant, kneeling to receive the paltry rider."--_Letter of
Curran, Life_, vol. ii. p. 336. At the end of the verses are these
words:--"(Signed) W.L. B * *, M.A., and written with a view to a
Bishoprick."]

* * * * *

LETTER 453. TO MR. MOORE.

"Ravenna, September 19, 1821.

"I am in all the sweat, dust, and blasphemy of an universal packing
of all my things, furniture, &c. for Pisa, whither I go for the
winter. The cause has been the exile of all my fellow Carbonics,
and, amongst them, of the whole family of Madame G.; who, you know,
was divorced from her husband last week, 'on account of P.P. clerk
of this parish,' and who is obliged to join her father and
relatives, now in exile there, to avoid being shut up in a
monastery, because the Pope's decree of separation required her to
reside in _casa paterna_, or else, for decorum's sake, in a
convent. As I could not say with Hamlet, 'Get thee to a nunnery,'