"Venice, April 11. 1817.
"I shall continue to write to you while the fit is on me, by way of
penance upon you for your former complaints of long silence. I dare
say you would blush, if you could, for not answering. Next week I
set out for Rome. Having seen Constantinople, I should like to look
at t'other fellow. Besides, I want to see the Pope, and shall take
care to tell him that I vote for the Catholics and no Veto.
"I sha'n't go to Naples. It is but the second best sea-view, and I
have seen the first and third, viz. Constantinople and Lisbon, (by
the way, the last is but a river-view; however, they reckon it
after Stamboul and Naples, and before Genoa,) and Vesuvius is
silent, and I have passed by Ætna. So I shall e'en return to Venice
in July; and if you write, I pray you to address to Venice, which
is my head, or rather my _heart_, quarters.
"My late physician, Dr. Polidori, is here on his way to England,
with the present Lord G * * and the widow of the late earl. Dr.
Polidori has, just now, no more patients, because his patients are
no more. He had lately three, who are now all dead--one embalmed.
Horner and a child of Thomas Hope's are interred at Pisa and Rome.
Lord G * * died of an inflammation of the bowels: so they took them
out, and sent them (on account of their discrepancies), separately
from the carcass, to England. Conceive a man going one way, and his
intestines another, and his immortal soul a third!--was there ever
such a distribution? One certainly has a soul; but how it came to
allow itself to be enclosed in a body is more than I can imagine. I
only know if once mine gets out, I'll have a bit of a tussle before
I let it get in again to that or any other.
"And so poor dear Mr. Maturin's second tragedy has been neglected
by the discerning public! * * will be d----d glad of this, and
d----d without being glad, if ever his own plays come upon 'any
stage.'
"I wrote to Rogers the other day, with a message for you. I hope
that he flourishes. He is the Tithonus of poetry--immortal
already. You and I must wait for it.
"I hear nothing--know nothing. You may easily suppose that the
English don't seek me, and I avoid them. To be sure, there are but
few or none here, save passengers. Florence and Naples are their
Margate and Ramsgate, and much the same sort of company too, by all
accounts, which hurts us among the Italians.
"I want to hear of Lalla Rookh--are you out? Death and fiends! why
don't you tell me where you are, what you are, and how you are? I
shall go to Bologna by Ferrara, instead of Mantua: because I would
rather see the cell where they caged Tasso, and where he became mad
and * *, than his own MSS. at Modena, or the Mantuan birthplace of
that harmonious plagiary and miserable flatterer, whose cursed
hexameters were drilled into me at Harrow. I saw Verona and Vicenza
on my way here--Padua too.
"I go alone,--but alone, because I mean to return here. I only want
to see Rome. I have not the least curiosity about Florence, though
I must see it for the sake of the Venus, &c. &c.; and I wish also
to see the Fall of Terni. I think to return to Venice by Ravenna
and Rimini, of both of which I mean to take notes for Leigh Hunt,
who will be glad to hear of the scenery of his Poem. There was a
devil of a review of him in the Quarterly, a year ago, which he
answered. All answers are imprudent: but, to be sure, poetical
flesh and blood must have the last word--that's certain. I
thought, and think, very highly of his Poem; but I warned him of
the row his favourite antique phraseology would bring him into.
"You have taken a house at Hornsey: I had much rather you had taken
one in the Apennines. If you think of coming out for a summer, or
so, tell me, that I may be upon the hover for you.
"Ever," &c.
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