“I have lately written to you frequently, with extracts, &c., which I hope you have received, or will receive, with or before this letter.—­Ever since the conclusion of the Carnival I have been unwell, (do not mention this, on any account, to Mrs. Leigh; for if I grow worse, she will know it too soon, and if I get better, there is no occasion that she should know it at all,) and have hardly stirred out of the house.  However, I don’t want a physician, and if I did, very luckily those of Italy are the worst in the world, so that I should still have a chance.  They have, I believe, one famous surgeon, Vacca, who lives at Pisa, who might be useful in case of dissection:—­but he is some hundred miles off.  My malady is a sort of lowish fever, originating from what my ’pastor and master,’ Jackson, would call ‘taking too much out of one’s self.’  However, I am better within this day or two.

“I missed seeing the new Patriarch’s procession to St. Mark’s the other day (owing to my indisposition), with six hundred and fifty priests in his rear—­a ‘goodly army.’  The admirable government of Vienna, in its edict from thence, authorising his installation, prescribed, as part of the pageant, ‘a coach and four horses.’  To show how very, very ‘German to the matter’ this was, you have only to suppose our parliament commanding the Archbishop of Canterbury to proceed from Hyde Park Corner to St. Paul’s Cathedral in the Lord Mayor’s barge, or the Margate hoy.  There is but St. Mark’s Place in all Venice broad enough for a carriage to move, and it is paved with large smooth flag-stones, so that the chariot and horses of Elijah himself would be puzzled to manoeuvre upon it.  Those of Pharaoh might do better; for the canals—­and particularly the Grand Canal—­are sufficiently capacious and extensive for his whole host.  Of course, no coach could be attempted; but the Venetians, who are very naive as well as arch, were much amused with the ordinance.

“The Armenian Grammar is published; but my Armenian studies are suspended for the present till my head aches a little less.  I sent you the other day, in two covers, the first Act of ‘Manfred,’ a drama as mad as Nat.  Lee’s Bedlam tragedy, which was in 25 acts and some odd scenes:—­mine is but in Three Acts.

     “I find I have begun this letter at the wrong end:  never mind; I
     must end it, then, at the right.

     “Yours ever very truly and obligedly,” &c.

[Footnote 129:  An article in No. 31. of this Review, written, as Lord Byron afterwards discovered, by Sir Walter Scott, and well meriting, by the kind and generous spirit that breathes through it, the warm and lasting gratitude it awakened in the noble poet.]

* * * * *

LETTER 265.  TO MR. MURRAY.

     “Venice, March 9. 1817.