"There is still, in the Doge's palace, the black veil painted over Faliero's picture, and the staircase whereon he was first crowned Doge, and subsequently decapitated. This was the thing that most struck my imagination in Venice--more than the Rialto, which I visited for the sake of Shylock; and more, too, than Schiller's '_Armenian_,' a novel which took a great hold of me when a boy. It is also called the 'Ghost Seer,' and I never walked down St. Mark's by moonlight without thinking of it, and 'at nine o'clock he died!'--But I hate things _all fiction_; and therefore the _Merchant_ and _Othello_ have no great associations to me: but _Pierre_ has. There should always be some foundation of fact for the most airy fabric, and pure invention is but the talent of a liar. "Maturin's tragedy.--By your account of him last year to me, he seemed a bit of a coxcomb, personally. Poor fellow! to be sure, he had had a long seasoning of adversity, which is not so hard to bear as t'other thing. I hope that this won't throw him back into the 'slough of Despond.' "You talk of 'marriage;'--ever since my own funeral, the word makes me giddy, and throws me into a cold sweat. Pray, don't repeat it. "You should close with Madame de Stael. This will be her best work, and permanently historical; it is on her father, the Revolution, and Buonaparte, &c. Bunstetten told me in Switzerland it was _very_ _great_. I have not seen it myself, but the author often. She was very kind to me at Copet. "There have been two articles in the Venice papers, one a Review of Glenarvon * * * *, and the other a Review of Childe Harold, in which it proclaims me the most rebellious and contumacious admirer of Buonaparte now surviving in Europe. Both these articles are translations from the Literary Gazette of German Jena. "Tell me that Walter Scott is better. I would not have him ill for the world. I suppose it was by sympathy that I had my fever at the same time. "I joy in the success of your Quarterly, but I must still stick by the Edinburgh; Jeffrey has done so by me, I must say, through every thing, and this is more than I deserved from him. I have more than once acknowledged to you by letter the 'Article' (and articles); say that you have received the said letters, as I do not otherwise know what letters arrive. Both Reviews came, but nothing more. M.'s play and the extract not yet come. "Write to say whether my Magician has arrived, with all his scenes, spells, &c. Yours ever, &c. "It is useless to send to the _Foreign Office_: nothing arrives to me by that conveyance. I suppose some zealous clerk thinks it a Tory duty to prevent it." * * * * * LETTER 271. TO MR. ROGERS. "Venice, April 4. 1817.