casino, a few miles on the Paduan road, this blessed day, to bathe)
with a fellow in a carriage, who was impudent to my horse. I gave
him a swingeing box on the ear, which sent him to the police, who
dismissed his complaint. Witnesses had seen the transaction. He
first shouted, in an unseemly way, to frighten my palfry. I wheeled
round, rode up to the window, and asked him what he meant. He
grinned, and said some foolery, which produced him an immediate
slap in the face, to his utter discomfiture. Much blasphemy ensued,
and some menace, which I stopped by dismounting and opening the
carriage door, and intimating an intention of mending the road with
his immediate remains, if he did not hold his tongue. He held it.

"Monk Lewis is here--'how pleasant!'[5] He is a very good fellow,
and very much yours. So is Sam--so is every body--and amongst the
number,

"Yours ever,

"B.

"P.S. What think you of Manfred?"

[Footnote 5: An allusion (such as often occurs in these letters) to an
anecdote with which he had been amused.]

* * * * *

LETTER 290. TO MR. MURRAY.

"La Mira, near Venice, July 15. 1817.