"I have to thank you for your letter, and your compliment to Don Juan. I said nothing to you about it, understanding that it is a sore subject with the moral reader, and has been the cause of a great row; but I am glad you like it. I will say nothing about the shipwreck, except that I hope you think it is as nautical and technical as verse could admit in the octave measure. "The poem has _not sold well_, so Murray says--'but the best judges, &c. say, &c.' so says that worthy man. I have never seen it in print. The third Canto is in advance about one hundred stanzas; but the failure of the two first has weakened my _estro_, and it will neither be so good as the two former, nor completed, unless I get a little more _riscaldato_ in its behalf. I understand the outcry was beyond every thing.--Pretty cant for people who read Tom Jones, and Roderick Random, and the Bath Guide, and Ariosto, and Dryden, and Pope--to say nothing of Little's Poems! Of course I refer to the _morality_ of these works, and not to any pretension of mine to compete with them in any thing but decency. I hope yours is the Paris edition, and that you did not pay the London price. I have seen neither except in the newspapers. "Pray make my respects to Mrs. H., and take care of your little boy. All my household have the fever and ague, except Fletcher, Allegra, and my_sen_ (as we used to say in Nottinghamshire), and the horses, and Mutz, and Moretto. In the beginning of November, perhaps sooner, I expect to have the pleasure of seeing you. To-day I got drenched by a thunder-storm, and my horse and groom too, and his horse all bemired up to the middle in a cross-road. It was summer at noon, and at five we were bewintered; but the lightning was sent perhaps to let us know that the summer was not yet over. It is queer weather for the 27th October. "Yours," &c. * * * * * LETTER 344. TO MR. MURRAY. "Venice, October 29. 1819. "Yours of the 15th came yesterday. I am sorry that you do not mention a large letter addressed to _your care_ for Lady Byron, from me, at Bologna, two months ago. Pray tell me, was this letter received and forwarded? "You say nothing of the vice-consulate for the Ravenna patrician, from which it is to be inferred that the thing will not be done. "I had written about a hundred stanzas of a _third_ Canto to Don Juan, but the reception of the two first is no encouragement to you nor me to proceed.