"September--no--October 1. 1821.
"I have written to you lately, both in prose and verse, at great
length, to Paris and London. I presume that Mrs. Moore, or whoever
is your Paris deputy, will forward my packets to you in London.
"I am setting off for Pisa, if a slight incipient intermittent
fever do not prevent me. I fear it is not strong enough to give
Murray much chance of realising his thirteens again. I hardly
should regret it, I think, provided you raised your price upon
him--as what Lady Holderness (my sister's grandmother, a
Dutchwoman) used to call Augusta, her _Residee Legatoo_--so as to
provide for us all: _my_ bones with a splendid and larmoyante
edition, and you with double what is extractable during my
lifetime.
"I have a strong presentiment that (bating some out of the way
accident) you will survive me. The difference of eight years, or
whatever it is, between our ages, is nothing. I do not feel (nor
am, indeed, anxious to feel) the principle of life in me tend to
longevity. My father and mother died, the one at thirty-five or
six, and the other at forty-five; and Dr. Rush, or somebody else,
says that nobody lives long, without having _one parent_, at least,
an old stager.
"I _should_, to be sure, like to see out my eternal mother-in-law,
not so much for her heritage, but from my natural antipathy. But
the indulgence of this natural desire is too much to expect from
the Providence who presides over old women. I bore you with all
this about lives, because it has been put in my way by a
calculation of insurances which Murray has sent me. I _really
think_ you should have more, if I evaporate within a reasonable
time.
"I wonder if my 'Cain' has got safe to England. I have written
since about sixty stanzas of a poem, in octave stanzas, (in the
Pulci style, which the fools in England think was invented by
Whistlecraft--it is as old as the hills in Italy,) called 'The
Vision of of Judgment, by Quevedo Redivivus,' with this motto--
"'A Daniel come to _judgment_, yea, a Daniel:
I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word.'
"In this it is my intent to put the said George's Apotheosis in a
Whig point of view, not forgetting the Poet Laureate for his
preface and his other demerits.
"I am just got to the pass where Saint Peter, hearing that the
royal defunct had opposed Catholic Emancipation, rises up, and,
interrupting Satan's oration, declares _he_ will change places with
Cerberus sooner than let him into heaven, while _he_ has the keys
thereof.
"I must go and ride, though rather feverish and chilly. It is the
ague season; but the agues do me rather good than harm. The feel
after the _fit_ is as if one had got rid of one's body for good and
all.
"The gods go with you!--Address to Pisa.
"Ever yours.
"P.S. Since I came back I feel better, though I stayed out too late
for this malaria season, under the thin crescent of a very young
moon, and got off my horse to walk in an avenue with a Signora for
an hour. I thought of you and
'When at eve thou rovest
By the star thou lovest.'
But it was not in a romantic mood, as I should have been once; and
yet it was a _new_ woman, (that is, new to me,) and, of course,
expected to be made love to. But I merely made a few common-place
speeches. I feel, as your poor friend Curran said, before his
death, 'a mountain of lead upon my heart,' which I believe to be
constitutional, and that nothing will remove it but the same
remedy."
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