ings, is not safe by a foreign post.

"I told you in my last, that I had been going on with the
'Memoirs,' and have got as far as twelve more sheets. But I suspect
they will be interrupted. In that case I will send them on by post,
though I feel remorse at making a friend pay so much for postage,
for we can't frank here beyond the frontier.

"I shall be glad to hear of the event of the Queen's concern. As
to the ultimate effect, the most inevitable one to you and me (if
they and we live so long) will be that the Miss Moores and Miss
Byrons will present us with a great variety of grandchildren by
different fathers.

"Pray, where did you get hold of Goethe's Florentine
husband-killing story? Upon such matters, in general, I may say,
with Beau Clincher, in reply to Errand's wife--

"'Oh the villain, he hath murdered my poor Timothy!'

"'_Clincher_. Damn your Timothy!--I tell you, woman, your husband
has _murdered me_--he has carried away my fine jubilee clothes.'

"So Bowles has been telling a story, too ('tis in the Quarterly),
about the woods of 'Madeira,' and so forth. I shall be at Bowles
again, if he is not quiet. He mis-states, or mistakes, in a point
or two. The paper is finished, and so is the letter.

"Yours," &c.

* * * * *

LETTER 393. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, 9bre 9 deg., 1820.

"The talent you approve of is an amiable one, and might prove a
'national service,' but unfortunately I must be angry with a man
before I draw his real portrait; and I can't deal in '_generals_,'
so that I trust never to have provocation enough to make a
_Gallery_. If '_the_ parson' had not by many little dirty sneaking
traits provoked it, I should have been silent, though I _had
observed_ him. Here follows an alteration: put--

Devil with _such_ delight in damning,
That if at the resurrection
Unto him the free election
Of his future could be given,
'Twould be rather Hell than Heaven;

that is to say, if these two new lines do not too much lengthen out
and weaken the amiability of the original thought and expression.
You have a discretionary power about showing. I should think that
Croker would not disrelish a sight of these light little humorous
things, and may be indulged now and