n his _Memorie scritte da esso_,
1829; from Pittoni, Bono, and others mentioned in different parts of the
_Memoirs_, and from some dozen others who are not mentioned in them. The
only letters in the whole collection that have been published are those
from the Prince de Ligne and from Count Koenig.

IV

Casanova tells us in his _Memoirs_ that, during his later years at Dux,
he had only been able to 'hinder black melancholy from devouring his
poor existence, or sending him out of his mind,' by writing ten or
twelve hours a day. The copious manuscripts at Dux show us how
persistently he was at work on a singular variety of subjects, in
addition to the _Memoirs_, and to the various books which he published
during those years. We see him jotting down everything that comes into
his head, for his own amusement, and certainly without any thought of
publication; engaging in learned controversies, writing treatises on
abstruse mathematical problems, composing comedies to be acted before
Count Waldstein's neighbours, practising verse-writing in two languages,
indeed with more patience than success, writing philosophical dialogues
in which God and himself are the speakers, and keeping up an extensive
correspondence, both with distinguished men and with delightful women.
His mental activity, up to the age of seventy-three, is as prodigious as
the activity which he had expended in living a multiform and
incalculable life. As in life everything living had interested him, so
in his retirement from life every idea makes its separate appeal to him;
and he welcomes ideas with the same impartiality with which he had
welcomed adventures. Passion has intellectualised itself, and remains
not less passionate. He wishes to do everything, to compete with every
one; and it is only after having spent seven years in heaping up
miscellaneous learning, and exercising his faculties in many directions,
that he turns to look back over his own past life, and to live it over
again in memory, as he writes down the narrative of what had interested
him most in it. 'I write in the hope that my history will never see the
broad daylight of publication,' he tells us, scarcely meaning it, we may
be sure, even in the moment of hesitancy which may naturally come to
him. But if ever a book was written for the pleasure of writing it, it
was this one; and an autobiography written for oneself is not likely to
be anything but frank.

'Truth is the only God I have e