“I forgot to tell you that the scene of the collision in the longer O’D. is all invented--there was nothing of it in ‘The Times’ or anywhere else. How right you are about the melodramatic tone in the scene between Maitland and his Mother! It is worse. It is bow-wow! It is Minerva Press and the rest of it, but all that comes of a d------d public. I mean it all comes of novel-writing for a d------d public that like novels,--and novels are--novels. “I am very gouty to-day, and I have a cross-grained man coming to dinner, and my women (affecting to keep the mother company) won’t dine with me, and I am sore put out. “Another despatch! I am wanted at Spezzia,--a frigate or a gunboat has just put in there and no consul Captain Short, of the _Sneezer_ perhaps, after destroying Chiavari and the organ-men, put in for instructions. By the way, Yule was dining with Perry, the Consul-General at Venice, the other day, when there came an Austrian official to ask for the Magazine with _Flynn’s Life_ as a _pièce de conviction!_ This would be grand, but it is beaten hollow by another fact. In a French ‘Life of Wellington,’ by a staff officer of distinction, he corrects some misstatements thus, ‘Au contraire, M. Charles O’Malley, raconteur,’ &c. Shall I make a short ‘O’Dowd’ out of the double fiasco? Only think, a two-barrelled blunder that made O’Dowd a witness at law, and Charles O’Malley a military authority! “When I was a doctor, I remember a Belgian buying ‘Harry Lorrequer’ as a medical book, and thinking that the style was singularly involved and figurative. “Oh dear, how my knuckle is singing, but not like the brook in Tennyson; it is no ‘pleasant tune.’ “Have you seen in ‘The Dublin E. Mail’ a very civil and cordial review of ‘O’Dowd,’ lengthy and with extracts? What a jolly note I got from the Bishop of Limmerick. He remembers a dinner I gave to himself and O’Sullivan, Archer Butler, and Whiteside, and we sat till 4 o’ the morning! _Noctes--Eheu fugaces!_ “Please say that some one has ordered ‘O’Dowd’ and liked it, or my gout will go to the stomach.” _To Mr John Blackwood._ “Florence, _Aug_. 12, 1864. “I recant: I don’t think the scene so bad as I did yesterday. I sent it off _corrected this night’s post_--and try and agree with me. Remember that Maitland’s mother (I don’t know who his father was) was an actress,--why wouldn’t she be a little melodramatic? Don’t you know what the old Irishwoman said to the sentry who threatened to run his bayonet into her? ‘Devil thank you! sure, that’s you’re thrade.’ So Mad. Brancaleoni was only giving a touch of her ‘thrade’ in her Cambyses vein. “I’m off to Spezzia, and my temper is so bad my family are glad to be rid of me. All the fault of the public, who won’t admire ‘O’Dowd.’” _To Mr John Blackwood._ “Villa Morelli, _Aug_. 24, 1864.