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