LEITER CCCCXLIX. TO MR. MURRAY. "Ravenna, Sept. 11, 1820. "Here is another historical note for you. I want to be as near truth as the drama can be. "Last post I sent you a note fierce as Faliero himself, in answer to a trashy tourist, who pretends that he could have been introduced to me. Let me have a proof of it, that I may cut its lava into some shape. TO MR. MURRAY. "What Gifford says is very consolatory, (of the first act.) English, sterling genuine English, is a desideratum among you, and I am glad that I have got so much left; though Heaven knows how I "Ravenna, Sept, 23, 1830. retain it; I hear none bad from my valet, and his is "Get from Mr. Hobhouse, and send me a proof Nottinghamshire; and I see none but in your new (with the Latin) of my Hints from Horace: it has publications, and their's is no language at all, but now the nonum premuture in annum complete for jargon. Even your is terribly stilted and its production, being written at Athens in 1811. I affected, with very, very' so soft and pamby. have a notion that, with some omissions of names "Oh! if ever I do come among you again, I will and passages, it will do; and I could put my late give you such a 'Baviad and Mæviad!' not as good observations for Pope among the notes, with the as the old, but even better merited. There never date of 1820, and so on. As far as versification was such a set as your ragamuffins, (I meant not goes, it is good; and on looking back to what I yours only, but every body's.) What with the wrote about that period, I am astonished to see how Cockney's, and the Lakers, and the followers of little I have trained on. I wrote better then than Scott, and Moore, and Byron, you are in the very now; but that comes of my having fallen into the uttermost decline and degradation of literature. I atrocious bad taste of the times. If I car trim it can't think of it without all the remorse of a mur- for present publication, what with the other things derer. I wish that Johnson were alive again to you have of mine, you will have a volume or two of crush them!" LETTER CCCCL. TO MR. MURRAY. "Ravenna, Sept. 14, 1820. "What! not a line? Well, have it in your own way. variety at least, for there will be all measures, styles, and topics, whether good or no. I am anxious to hear what Gifford thinks of the tragedy; pray let me know. I really do not know what to think myself. "If the Germans pass the Po, they will be treated to a mass out of the Cardinal de Retz's Breviary. **'s a fool, and could not understand this: Frere will. It is as pretty a conceit as you would wish to see on a summer's day. "Nobody here believes a word of the evidence I wish you would inform Perry that his stupid their countrymen, and say that for half the money against the queen. The very mob ery shame against paragraph is the cause of all my newspapers being spent upon the trial, any testimony whatever may stopped in Paris. The fools believe me in your be brought out of Italy. This you may rely upon infernal country, and have not sent on their gaas fact. I told you as much before. As to what zettes, so that I know nothing of your beastly trial of the Queen. "I cannot avail myself of Mr. Gifford's remarks, because I have received none, except on the first "Yours, &c. act. travellers report, what are travellers? Now I have and galleried, and conversationed it for a few months, lived among the Italians-not Florenced, and Romed, and then home again; but been of their families, and friendships, and feuds, and loves, and councils, "P. S. So, pray, beg the editors of papers to and correspondence, in a part of Italy least known say any thing blackguard they please; but not to to foreigners, and have been among them of all put me among their arrivals. They do me more classes, from the Conte to the Contadine; and you mischief by such nonsense than all their abuse can may be sure of what I say to you. do." "Yours, & " "So you are at your old tricks again. This is "I thought that I had told you long ago, that it the second packet I have received unaccompanied never was intended nor written with any view to the by a single line of good, bad, or indifferent. It is stage. I have said so in the preface too. It is too strange that you have never forwarded any farther long and too regular for your stage, the persons too observations of Gifford's. How am I alter or few, and the unity too much observed. It is more amend, if I hear no farther? or does this silence like a play of Alfieri's than of your stage, (I say mean that it is well enough as it is, or too bad to this humbly in, speaking of that great man;) but be repaired? if the last, why do you not say so at there is poetry, and it is equal to Manfred, though I once, instead of playing pretty, while you know know not what esteem is held of Manfred. that soon or late you must out with the truth. "Yours, &c. "P. S. My sister tells me, that you sent to her • See notes to Marino Faliero. It had been reported that he had arrived in London to attend the Queen's trial. "I have now been nearly as long out of England as I was there during the time I saw you frequently. I came home July 14th, 1811, and left again Apr 25th, 1816: so that Sept. 28th, 1820, brings me within a very few months of the same duration of • Marino Faliero, hme of my stay ard ny absence. In course, I can know nothing of the public taste and feelings, but from what I glean frm letters, &c. Both seem to be as bad as possible. prate about assassination; what is it but the origir of duelling-and a wild justice,' as Lord Bacon calls it? It is the fount of the modern point of honor in what the laws can't or won't reach. Every "I thought Anastasius excellent: did I not say man is liable to it more or less, according to cir so? Matthews's Diary most excellent; it, and For- cumstances or place. For instance, I am living syth, and parts of Hobhouse, are all we have of here exposed to it daily, for I have happened tc truth or sense upon Italy. The letter to Julia very make a powerful and unprincipled man my enemy; good indeed. I do not despise *** but if and I never sleep the worse for it, or ride in less she knit blue stockings instead of wearing them, it solitary places, because precaution is useless, and would be better. You are taken in by that false, one thinks of it as of a disease which may or may stilted, trashy style, which is a mixture of all the not strike. It is true, that there are those here, styles of the day, which are all bombastic, (I don't who, if he did, would live to think on't;' but that except my own-no one has done more through would not awake my bones: I should be sorry if it negligence to corrupt the language;) but it is neither would, were they once at rest." English nor poetry. Time will show. "I am sorry Gifford has made no farther remarks beyond the first act: does he think all the English equally sterling as he thought the first? You did right to send the proofs; I was a fool; but I do really detest the sight of proofs: it is an absurdity; but comes from laziness. LETTER CCCCLIV TO MR. MURRAY. "Ravenna, 8tre. 60, 1820. "You can steal the two Juans into the world. quietly tagged to the others. The play as you will -the Dante too; but the Pulci I am proud of: it is "You will have now received all the acts, corsuperb; you have no such translation. It is the rected, of the Marino Faliero. What you say of best thing I ever did in my life. I wrote the play the bet of one hundred guineas,' made by some from beginning to end, and not a single scene with- one who says that he saw me last week, reminds out interruption, and being obliged to break off in me of what happened in 1810; you can easily ascerthe middle; for I had my hands full, and my head, tain the fact, and it is an odd one. too, just then; so it can be no great shakes-I mean "In the latter end of 1811, I met one evening at the play; and the head too, if you like. the Alfred my old school and form-fellow, (for we "Sept. 29. ་ "P. S. Politics here still savage and uncertain. were within two of each other, he the higher, though However, we are all in our bandaliers' to join the both very near the top of our remove) Peel, the Highlanders if they cross the Forth,' i. e., to crush Irish Secretary. He told me that, in 1810, he met the Austrians if they pass the Po. The rascals!-me, as he thought, in St. James' street, but we and that dog Liverpool, to say their subjects are passed without speaking. He mentioned this, and happy! If ever I come back, I'll work some of it was denied as impossible; I being then in Tur these ministers. key. A day or two afterwards, he pointed out to his brother a person on the opposite side of the way: "I open my letter to say that on reading more of There,' said he, is the man whom I took for the four volumes on Italy, where the author says Byron.' His brother instantly answered, Why it 'declined an introduction,' I perceive (horresco re- is Byron, and no one else.' But this is not all:-I ferens) it is written by a WOMAN!!! In that was seen by some body to write down my name case you must suppress my note and answer, and among the inquirers after the king's health, then all I have said about the book and the writer. I attacked by insanity. Now, at this very period, as never dreamed of it until now, in my extreme wrath nearly as I could make out, I was ill of a strong at that precious note. I can only say that I am fever at Patras, caught in the marshes near Olymsorry that a lady should say any thing of the kind. pia, from the malaria. If I had died there, this What I would have said to one of the other sex you would have been a new ghost story for you. You know already. Her book too (as a she book) is not can easily make out the accuracy of this from Peel a bad one; but she evidently don't know the Ital- himself, who told it in detail. I suppose you will ians, or rather don't like them, and forgets the be of the opinion of Lucretius, who (denies the imcauses of their misery and profligacy, (Matthews mortality of the soul, but) asserts that from the and Forsyth are your men for the truth and tact,) flying off of the surfaces of bodies, these surfaces and has gone over Italy in company always a or cases, like the coats of an onion, are sometimes bad plan: you must be alone with people to know seen entire when they are separated from it, so that them well. Ask her, who was the descendant of the shapes and shadows of both the dead and living Lady M. W. Montague,' and by whom? by Alga- are frequently beheld.' "But if they are, are their coats and waistcoats "I suspect that in Marino Faliero, you and yours also seen? I do not disbelieve that we may be two won't like the politics which are perilous to you in by some unconscious process, to a certain sign, but these times; but recollect that it is not a political which of these two I happen at present to be, I play, and that I was obliged to put into the mouths leave you to decide. I only hope that t'other me beof the characters the sentiments upon which they haves like a gemman. acted. I hate all things written like Pizarro, to "I wish you would get Peel asked how far I am represent France, England, and so forth. All I accurate in my recollection of what he told me; have done is meant to be purely Venetian, even to for I don't like to say such things without authorthe very prophecy of its present state. rotti ? ity. "Yours, &c. "Your Angles in general know little of the Ital- "I am not sure that I was not spoken with, ians, who detest them for their numbers and their but this also you can ascertain. I have written GENOA treachery. Besides, the English travellers to you such letters that I stop. have not been composed of the best company. How could they?-out of one hundred thousand, how "P. S. Last year (in June, 1819) I met at Count 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 Italy myself, to give them 'the loud lie.' • See Letter ccccxlv. ་ Mosti's, at Ferrara, an Italian, who asked me if 1 knew Lord Byron?' I told him no, (no one knows himself, you know.) Then,' says he, 'I do; I met about him at Naples the other day.' I pulled out my They card and asked him if that was the way he spelled his name: he answered, yes. I suspect that it was la blackguard navy surgeon, who attended a young travelling madman about, and passed himself for a would have held out a finger to me: one was yourlord at the post-houses. He was a vulgar dog-self, the other William Bankes, and the other a quite of the cockpit order-and a precious repre- nobleman long ago dead: but of these the first was sentative I must have had of him, if it was even so; the only one who offered it while I really wanted it; but I don't know, He passed himself off as a gen-the second from good-will-but I was not in need of tleman, and squired about a Countess (of this Bankes's aid, and would not have accepted it if I place) then at Venice, an ugly battered woman, of had, (though I love and esteem him;)—and the third bad morals even for Italy." "So you see that I have seen some strange things in my time. As for your own offer, it was in 1815, when I was in actual uncertainty of five pounds. I rejected it; but I have not forgotten it, althought you probably have. "P. S. Foscolo's Ricciardo was lent, with the leaves uncut, to some Italians, now in villeggiatura, so that I have had no opportunity of hearing their decision, or of reading it. They seized on it as Foscolo's, on account of the beauty of the paper and printing, directly. If I find it takes, I will reprint it here. The Italians think as highly of Foscolo as they can of any man, divided and miserable as they are, and with neither leisure at present to read, nor head nor heart to judge of any thing but extracts from French newspapers and the that is, he is more of the ancient Greek than of Lugano Gazette. *Here are in all two worthy voices gain'd: ' "We are all looking at one another, like wolves on their prey in pursuit, only waiting for the first falling on to do unutterable things. They are a great world in chaos or angels in hell, which you please; but out of chaos came paradise, and out of hell-I don't know what; but the devil went in there, and he was a fine fellow once, you know. "You need never favor me with any periodical publication, except the Edinburgh, Quarterly, and an occasional Blackwood; or now and then a Monthly Review: for the rest I do not feel curiosity enough to look beyond their covers. Gifford says it is good sterling, genuine English,' and Foscolo says that the characters are right Venetian. Shakspeare and Otway had a million of advantages over me besides the incalculable one of being dead from one to two centuries, and having "To be sure I took in the editor of the British been both born blackguards, (which ARE such finely. He fell precisely into the glaring trap laid attractions to the gentle living reader;) let me then for him. It was inconceivable how he could be so preserve the only one which I could possibly have absurd as to imagine us serious with him. that of having been at Venice, and entered more into the local spirit of it. I claim no more. "Recollect, that if you put my name to 'Don Juan' in these canting days, any lawyer might op"I know what Foscolo means about Calendaro's pose my guardian right of my daughter in chancery, spitting at Bertram; that's national-the objection, on the plea of its containing the parody-such are I mean. The Italians and French, with those 'flags the perils of a foolish jest. I was not aware of this of abomination,' their pocket-handkerchiefs, spit at the time, but you will find it correct, I believe; there, and here, and every where else in your face and you may be sure that the Noels would not let it almost, and therefore object to it on the stage as too slip. Now I prefer my child to a poem at any time, familiar. But we who spit nowhere-but in a man's and so should you, as having half a dozen. face when we grow savage-are not likely to feel this. Remember Massinger, and Kean's Sir Giles Overreach "Let me know your notions. "If you turn over the earlier pages of the Huntingdon peerage story, you will see how common a Lord! thus 1 spit at thee and at thy counsel !' name Ada was in the early Plantagenet days. I found it in my own pedigree in the reign of John Besides, Calendaro does not spit in Bertram's face; and Henry, and gave it to my daughter. It was he spits at him, as I have seen the Mussulmans do also the name of Charlemagne's sister. It is in an upon the ground when they are in a rage. Again, early chapter of Genesis, as the name of the wife he does not in fact despise Bertram, though he affects of Lamech; and I suppose Ada is the feminine it, as we all do, when angry with one we think our of Adam. It is short, ancient, vocalic, and had inferior. He is angry at not being allowed to die been in my family, for which reason I gave it to my in his own way, (although not afraid of death;) daughter." and recollect that he suspected and hated Bertram from the first. Israel Bertuccio, on the other hand, a cooler and more concentrated fellow: he acts upon principle and impulse; Calendaro upon impulse| and example. "So there's argument for you. LETTER CCCCLVI. TO MR. MURRAY. "Ravenna, Stre 120, 1929. "By land and sea carriage a considerable quants "The Doge repeats,-true, but it is from engrossing passion, and because he sees different persons, and is always obliged to recur to the cause uppermost in his mind. His speeches are long;-true, but I wrote for the closet, and on the French and ty of books have arrived; and I am obliged and grateful: but medio de fonte leporum, surgit amari Italian model rather than yours, which I think not aliquid,' &c., &c. ; which, being interpreted, means, very highly of, for all your old dramatists who are long enough, too, God knows :-look into any of them. "I'm thankful for your books, dear Murray; "I return you Foscolo's letter, because it alludes the only book in four living volumes that I would also to his private affairs. I am sorry to see such a man in straits, because I know what they are, or what they were. I never met but three men who • The paragraph is left thus imperfect in the original. + See Letter cclxxxix. give a baiocolo to see-'bating the rest of the same] LETTER CCCCLVII. TO MR. MURRAY. "Ravenna, Sbre 160, 1820. "The Abbot has just arrived; many thanks; a 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 mo"Books of travel are expensive, and I don't want ther's side, Sir J. Gordon of Gight, the handsomest them, having travelled already; besides, they lie.-of his day, died on a scaffold at Aberdeen for his Thank the author of The Profligate' for his (or loyalty to Mary, of whom he was an imputed paraher) present. Pray send me no more poetry but mour as well as her relation. His fate was much what is rare and decidedly good. There is such a commented on in the Chronicles of the times. If I trash of Keats and the like upon my tables that I mistake not, he had something to do with her esam ashamed to look at them. I say nothing against cape from Loch Leven, or with her captivity there your parsons, your Smith's, and your Croly's-it is But this you will know better than I. all very fine but pray dispense me from the plea- "I recollect Loch Leven as it were but yesterday. sure. Instead of poetry if you will favor me with a I saw it in my way to England, in 1798, being then few soda powders, I shall be delighted; but all prose ten years of age. My mother who was as Laughty as ('bating travels and novels NOT by Scott) is wel-Lucifer with her descent from the Stuarts, and her come, especially Scott's Tales of My Landlord, and right line from the old Gordons, not the Seyton Gordons, as she disdainfully termed the ducal branch, so on. "In the notes to Marino Faliero, it may be as well told me the story, always reminding me how supeto say that Benintende' was not really of the Ten, rior her Gordons were to the southern Byrons,but merely Grand Chancellor, a separate office, (al- notwithstanding our Norman, and always masculine though important:) it was an arbitrary alteration of descent, which has never lapsed into a female, mine. The Doges too were all buried in St. Mark's as my mother's Gordons had done in her own per before Faliero. It is singular that when his pre- son. decessor, Andrea Dandolo died, the Ten made a law "I have written to you so often lately that the that all the future Doges should be buried with their brevity of this will be welcome. 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. Make a note of this, and put Editor as the subscription to it. "As I make such pretensions to accuracy, I should not like to be twitted even with such trifles on that score. Of the play they may say what they please, but not so of my costume and dram. pers. they having been real existences. "Yours, &c." LETTER CCCCLVIII. TO MR. MURRAY. "Ravenna, 8bre 170, 1820. "Enclosed is the Dedication of Marino Faliero Query,-is his title Baron or not? I Let me know your opinion, and so to Goethe. "I omitted Foscolo in my list of living Venetian think yes. worthies in the notes, considering him as an Italian forth. in general, and not a mere provincial like the rest; "P. S. Let me know what Mr. Hobhouse and and as an Italian I have spoken of him in the pre- you have decided about the two prose letters and face to canto fourth of Childe Harold. their publication. "The French translation of us!!! oime?! omië!and the German; but I don't understand the latter, and his long dissertation at the end about the Fausts. Excuse haste. Of politics it is not safe to speak, but nothing is decided as yet. "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." "Dedication to Baron Goethe, &c., &c., &c. "I am in a very fierce humor at not having Scott's Monastery.-You are too liberal in quantity, and somewhat careless of the quality, of your missives. All the Quarterlies (four in number) I had had before from you, and two of the Edinbugh; but no matter, we shall have new ones by-and-by. No "In the Appendix to an English work lately more Keats, I entreat:-flay him alive; if some of translated into German and published at Leipsic, a you don't, I must skin him myself. There is no judgment of yours upon English poetry is quoted as bearing the drivelling idiotism of the manikin. follows: "That in English poetry, great genius, "SIR, "I don't feel inclined to care farther about Don universal power, a feeling of profundity, with suffi Juan.' What do you think a very pretty Italian cient tenderness and force, are to be found; but lady said to me the other day? She had read it in that altogether these do not constitute poets," &c., the French, and paid me some compliments, with due &c. DRAWBACKS, upon it. I answered that what she "I regret to see a great man falling into a great said was true, but that I suspected it would live mistake. This opinion of yours only proves that longer than Childe Harold.-Ah, but,' (said she,) the "Dictionary of ten thousand living English auI would rather have the fame of Childe Harold for thors" has not been translated into German. You three years than an IMMORTALITY of Don Juan!' will have read, in your friend Schlegel's version, the The truth is that it is TOO TRUE, and the women dialogue in Macbethhate many things which strip off the tinsel of sentiment, and they are right, as it would rob them of their weapons. I never knew a woman who did not hate De Grammont's Memoirs for the same reason: even Lady used to abuse them. ten thousand authors," there are "Rose's work I never received. It was seized at actually nineteen hundred and eighty-seven poets, Venice. Such is the liberality of the Huns, with all alive at this moment, whatever their works may their two hundred thousand men, that they dare be, as their booksellers well know; and among these not let such a volume as his circulate" there are several who possess a far greater reputa "There are ten thousand! Now, of these "te Author's sir." tion than mine, although considerably less than them worth making a sect of. Perhaps there may yours. It is owing to this neglect on the part of be something of the kind sprung up lately, but 1 your German translators that you are not aware of have not heard much about it, and it would be such the works of bad taste that I shall be very sorry to believe it." "There is also another, named "I mention these poets by way of sample to enlighten you. They form but two bricks of our Babel, (WINDSOR bricks, by-the-way,) but may serve for a specimen of the building. LETTER CCCCLIX. TO MR. MOORE. "Ravenna, October 17, 180. "It is, moreover, asserted that "the predominant character of the whole body of the present English poetry is a disgust and contempt for life." "You owe me two letters-pay them. I want to But I rather suspect that, by one single work of know what you are about. The summer is over, prose, you yourself have excited a greater contempt and you will be back to Paris. Apropos of Paris, for life than all the English volumes of poesy that it was not Sophia Gail, but Sophia Gay-the Engever were written. Madame de Stal says, that lish word Gay-who was my correspondent. Can "Werther has occasioned more suicides than the you tell who she is, as you did of the defunct **? most beautiful woman;" and I really believe that "Have you gone on with your poem? I have he has put more individuals out of this world than received the French of mine. Only think of being Napoleon himself,-except in the way of his profes-traduced into a foreign language in such an abomision. Perhaps, illustrious sir, the acrimonious nable travesty! It is useless to rail, but one can't judgment passed by a celebrated northern journal help it. 64 upon you in particular, and the Germans in general, Have you got my memoir copied? I have begun has rather indisposed you towards English poetry as a continuation. Shall I send it you as far as it is well as criticism. But you must not regard our crit- gone? ics, who are at bottom good-natured fellows, con- "I can't say any thing to you about Italy, for the sidering their two professions-taking up the law government here look upon me with a suspicious in court, and laying it down out of it. No one can eye, as I am well informed. Pretty fellows!—as if more lament their hasty and unfair judgment, in I, a solitary stranger, could do any mischief. It is your particular, than I do; and I so expressed my-because I am fond of rifle and pistol shooting, I self to your friend Schlegel, in 1816, at Copet. believe; for they took the alarm at the quantity of cartridges I consumed,-the wiseacres ! "In behalf of my "ten thousand" living brethren, and of myself, I have thus far taken notice of an opinion expressed with regard to "English poetry" in general, and which merited notice, because it was YOURS. "My principal object in addressing you was to testify my sincere respect and admiration of a man, who, for half a century, has led the literature of a great nation, and will go down to posterity as the first literary character of his age. "You have been fortunate, sir, not only in the writings which have illustrated your name, but in the name itself, as being sufficiently musical for the articulation of posterity. In this you have the advantage of some of your countrymen, whose names would perhaps be immortal also-if any body could pronounce them. You don't deserve a long letter-nor a letter at all-for your silence. You have got a new Bourbon, it seems, whom they have christened 'Dieu-donne;" perhaps the honor of the present may be disputed. Did you write the good lines on Laker? the "The queen_ has made a pretty theme for the journals. Was there ever such evidence published? Why it is worse than 'Little's Poems' or 'Don Juan.' If you don't write soon, I will make you a speech.' "Yours. &c." LETTER CCCCLX. TO MR. MURRAY "Ravenna, Sore S, 180. "Pray forward the enclosed to Lady Byron. It "It may, perhaps, be supposed, by this apparent tone of levity, that I am wanting in intentional respect towards you; but this will be a mistake: I am always flippant in prose. Considering you, as I really and warmly do, in common with all your own, and with most other nations, to be by far the is on business. first literary character which has existed in Europe. "In thanking you for the Abbot, I made four since the death of Voltaire, I felt, and feel, desirous grand mistakes. Sir John Gordon was not of Gight, to inscribe to you the following work,-not as being but of Bogagicht, and a son of Huntley's. He sufeither a tragedy or a poem, (for I cannot pronounce fered not for his loyalty, but in an insurrection. He upon its pretensions to be either one or the other, had nothing to do with Loch Leven, having been or both, or neither,) but as a mark of esteem and dead some time at the period of the Queen's conadmiration from a foreigner to the man who has finement: and, fourthly, I am not sure that he was been hailed in Germany "THE great goethe." "I have the honor to be, "Ravenna, 8bre 140, 1820. "P. S. I perceive that in Germany, as well as in Italy, there is a great struggle about what they call Classical, and Romantic,-terms which were not subjects of classification in England, at least when I left it four or five years ago. Some of the English scribblers, it is true, abused Pope and Swift, but the reason was that they themselves did not know how to write either prose or verse; but nobody thought the Queen's paramour or no, for Robertson does not allude to this, though Walter Scott does, in the list he gives of her admirers (as unfortunate) at the close of 'the Abbot.' "I must have made all these mistakes in recollecting my mother's account of the matter, although she was more accurate than I am, being precise upon points of genealogy, like all the aristocratical Scotch. She had a long list of ancestors, like Sir Lucius O'Trigger's, most of whom are to be found in the old Scotch Chronicles, Spalding, &c., in arms and doing mischief. I remember well passing Locb Leven, as well as the Queen's Ferry: we were co our way to England in 1798. "Yours. "You had better not publish Blackwood and the Robert's prose, except what regards Pope;-yor have let the time slip by." |