“I suppose Murray has sent you, or will send (for I do not know whether they are out or no) the poem, or poesies, of mine, of last summer.  By the mass! they are sublime—­’Ganion Coheriza’—­gainsay who dares!  Pray, let me hear from you, and of you, and, at least, let me know that you have received these three letters.  Direct, right here, poste restante.

     “Ever and ever, &c.

“P.S.  I heard the other day of a pretty trick of a bookseller, who has published some d——­d nonsense, swearing the bastards to me, and saying he gave me five hundred guineas for them.  He lies—­never wrote such stuff, never saw the poems, nor the publisher of them, in my life, nor had any communication, directly or indirectly, with the fellow.  Pray say as much for me, if need be.  I have written to Murray, to make him contradict the impostor.”

* * * * *

LETTER 254.  TO MR. MURRAY.

     “Venice, November 25. 1816.

“It is some months since I have heard from or of you—­I think, not since I left Diodati.  From Milan I wrote once or twice; but have been here some little time, and intend to pass the winter without removing.  I was much pleased with the Lago di Garda, and with Verona, particularly the amphitheatre, and a sarcophagus in a convent garden, which they show as Juliet’s:  they insist on the truth of her history.  Since my arrival at Venice, the lady of the Austrian governor told me that between Verona and Vicenza there are still ruins of the castle of the Montecchi, and a chapel once appertaining to the Capulets.  Romeo seems to have been of Vicenza by the tradition; but I was a good deal surprised to find so firm a faith in Bandello’s novel, which seems really to have been founded on a fact.

“Venice pleases me as much as I expected, and I expected much.  It is one of those places which I know before I see them, and has always haunted me the most after the East.  I like the gloomy gaiety of their gondolas, and the silence of their canals.  I do not even dislike the evident decay of the city, though I regret the singularity of its vanished costume; however, there is much left still; the Carnival, too, is coming.

“St. Mark’s, and indeed Venice, is most alive at night.  The theatres are not open till nine, and the society is proportionably late.  All this is to my taste, but most of your countrymen miss and regret the rattle of hackney coaches, without which they can’t sleep.

“I have got remarkably good apartments in a private house; I see something of the inhabitants (having had a good many letters to some of them); I have got my gondola; I read a little, and luckily