In the month of August, Mr. M.G. Lewis arrived to pass some time with him; and he was soon after visited by Mr. Richard Sharpe, of whom he makes such honourable mention in the Journal already given, and with whom, as I have heard this gentleman say, it now gave him evident pleasure to converse about their common friends in England. Among those who appeared to have left the strongest impressions of interest and admiration on his mind was (as easily will be believed by all who know this distinguished person) Sir James Mackintosh. Soon after the arrival of his friends, Mr. Hobhouse and Mr. S. Davies, he set out, as we have seen, with the former on a tour through the Bernese Alps,--after accomplishing which journey, about the beginning of October he took his departure, accompanied by the same gentleman, for Italy. The first letter of the following series was, it will be seen, written a few days before he left Diodati. LETTER 247. TO MR. MURRAY. "Diodati, Oct. 5. 1816. "Save me a copy of 'Buck's Richard III.' republished by Longman; but do not send out more books, I have too many. "The 'Monody' is in too many paragraphs, which makes it unintelligible to me; if any one else understands it in the present form, they are wiser; however, as it cannot be rectified till my return, and has been already published, even publish it on in the collection--it will fill up the place of the omitted epistle. "Strike out 'by request of a friend,' which is sad trash, and must have been done to make it ridiculous. "Be careful in the printing the stanzas beginning, "'Though the day of my destiny,' &c. which I think well of as a composition. "'The Antiquary' is not the best of the three, but much above all the last twenty years, saving its elder brothers. Holcroft's Memoirs are valuable as showing strength of endurance in the man, which is worth more than all the talent in the world. "And so you have been publishing 'Margaret of Anjou' and an Assyrian tale, and refusing W.W.'s Waterloo, and the 'Hue and Cry.' I know not which most to admire, your rejections or acceptances. I believe that _prose_ is, after all, the most reputable, for certes, if one could foresee--but I won't go on--that is with this sentence; but poetry is, I fear, incurable. God help me! if I proceed in this scribbling, I shall have frittered away my mind before I am thirty, but it is at times a real relief to me. For the present--good evening." * * * * * LETTER 248. TO MR. MURRAY. "Martigny, October 9. 1816. "Thus far on my way to Italy. We have just passed the 'Fisse-Vache' (one of the first torrents in Switzerland) in time to view the iris which the sun flings along it before noon.