will make!’—­is it not pretty?  You would think it still prettier if you had heard it, as I did two hours ago, from the lips of a Venetian girl, with large black eyes, a face like Faustina’s, and the figure of a Juno—­tall and energetic as a Pythoness, with eyes flashing, and her dark hair streaming in the moonlight—­one of those women who may be made any thing.  I am sure if I put a poniard into the hand of this one, she would plunge it where I told her,—­and into me, if I offended her.  I like this kind of animal, and am sure that I should have preferred Medea to any woman that ever breathed.  You may, perhaps, wonder that I don’t in that case.  I could have forgiven the dagger or the bowl, any thing, but the deliberate desolation piled upon me, when I stood alone upon my hearth, with my household gods shivered around me[27] * * Do you suppose I have forgotten or forgiven it?  It has comparatively swallowed up in me every other feeling, and I am only a spectator upon earth, till a tenfold opportunity offers.  It may come yet.  There are others more to be blamed than * * * *, and it is on these that my eyes are fixed unceasingly.”

[Footnote 26:  This little child had been sent to him by its mother about four or five months before, under the care of a Swiss nurse, a young girl not above nineteen or twenty years of age, and in every respect unfit to have the charge of such an infant, without the superintendence of some more experienced person.  “The child, accordingly,” says my informant, “was but ill taken care of;—­not that any blame could attach to Lord Byron, for he always expressed himself most anxious for her welfare, but because the nurse wanted the necessary experience.  The poor girl was equally to be pitied; for, as Lord Byron’s household consisted of English and Italian men servants, with whom she could hold no converse, and as there was no other female to consult with and assist her in her charge, nothing could be more forlorn than her situation proved to be.”

Soon after the date of the above letter, Mrs. Hoppner, the lady of the Consul General, who had, from the first, in compassion both to father and child, invited the little Allegra occasionally to her house, very kindly proposed to Lord Byron to take charge of her altogether, and an arrangement was accordingly concluded upon for that purpose.]

[Footnote 27: 

    “I had one only fount of quiet left,
    And that they poison’d! My pure household gods
    Were shivered on my hearth.” MARINO FALIERO.
]

* * * * *

LETTER 323.  TO MR. MURRAY.

     “Venice, September 24. 1818.

     “In the one hundredth and thirty-second stanza of Canto fourth, the
     stanza runs in the manuscript—­

        “And thou, who never yet of human wrong
        Left the unbalanced scale, great Nemesis!