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.

* * * * *