liked L * *; he was a jewel of a man, had he been better set;—­I don’t mean personally, but less tiresome, for he was tedious, as well as contradictory to every thing and every body.  Being short-sighted, when we used to ride out together near the Brenta in the twilight in summer, he made me go before, to pilot him; I am absent at times, especially towards evening; and the consequence of this pilotage was some narrow escapes to the M * * on horseback.  Once I led him into a ditch over which I had passed as usual, forgetting to warn my convoy; once I led him nearly into the river, instead of on the moveable bridge which incommodes passengers; and twice did we both run against the Diligence, which, being heavy and slow, did communicate less damage than it received in its leaders, who were terrafied by the charge; thrice did I lose him in the grey of the gloaming, and was obliged to bring-to to his distant signals of distance and distress;—­all the time he went on talking without intermission, for he was a man of many words.  Poor fellow! he died a martyr to his new riches—­of a second visit to Jamaica.

    “’I’d give the lands of Deloraine
    Dark Musgrave were alive again!’

that is,—­

    “I would give many a sugar cane
    M * * L * * were alive again!”]

[Footnote 27:  The following passage from the letter of mine, to which the above was an answer, will best explain what follows:—­With respect to the newspaper, it is odd enough that Lord * * * * and myself had been (about a week or two before I received your letter) speculating upon your assistance in a plan somewhat similar, but more literary and less regularly-periodical in its appearance.  Lord * *, as you will see by his volume of Essays, if it reaches you, has a very sly, dry, and pithy way of putting sound truths, upon politics and manners, and whatever scheme we adopt, he will be a very useful and active ally in it, as he has a pleasure in writing quite inconceivable to a poor hack scribe like me, who always feel, about my art, as the French husband did when he found a man making love to his (the Frenchman’s) wife:—­’ Comment, Monsieur,—­sans y etre oblige!’ When I say this, however, I mean it only of the executive part of writing; for the imagining, the shadowing out of the future work is, I own, a delicious fool’s paradise.”]

* * * * *

LETTER 405.  TO MR. MURRAY.

     “Ravenna, January 4. 1821.

“I just see, by the papers of Galignani, that there is a new tragedy of great expectation, by Barry Cornwall.  Of what I have read of his works Hiked the Dramatic Sketches, but thought his Sicilian Story and Marcian Colonna, in rhyme, quite spoilt, by I know not what affectation of Wordsworth, and Moore, and myself, all mixed up into a kind of chaos.  I think him very likely