lf be led away by clamour, but compare
him with the coalitioner Fox, and the pensioner Burke, as a man of
principle, and with ten hundred thousand in personal views, and
with none in talent, for he beat them all _out_ and _out_. Without
means, without connection, without character, (which might be false
at first, and make him mad afterwards from desperation,) he beat
them all, in all he ever attempted. But alas, poor human nature!
Good night--or rather, morning. It is four, and the dawn gleams
over the Grand Canal, and unshadows the Rialto. I must to bed; up
all night--but, as George Philpot says, 'it's life, though, damme,
it's life!' Ever yours, B.

"Excuse errors--no time for revision. The post goes out at noon,
and I sha'n't be up then. I will write again soon about your _plan_
for a publication."

[Footnote 21: I had said, I think, in my letter to him, that this
practice of carrying one stanza into another was "something like taking
on horses another stage without baiting."]

[Footnote 22: I had, in first transcribing the above letter for the
press, omitted the whole of this caustic, and, perhaps, over-severe
character of Mr. Hunt; but the tone of that gentleman's book having, as
far as himself is concerned, released me from all those scruples which
prompted the suppression, I have considered myself at liberty to restore
the passage.]

* * * * *

During the greater part of the period which this last series of letters
comprises, he had continued to occupy the same lodgings in an extremely
narrow street called the Spezieria, at the house of the linen-draper, to
whose lady he devoted so much of his thoughts. That he was, for the
time, attached to this person,--as far as a passion so transient can
deserve the name of attachment,--is evident from his whole conduct. The
language of his letters shows sufficiently how much the novelty of this
foreign tie had caught his fancy; and to the Venetians, among whom such
arrangements are mere matters of course, the assiduity with which he
attended his Signora to the theatre, and the ridottos, was a subject of
much amusement. It was with difficulty, indeed, that he could be
prevailed upon to absent himself from her so long as to admit of that
hasty visit to the Immortal City, out of which one of his own noblest
titles to immortality sprung; and having, in the space of a few weeks,