"To-night there was a ----[67] Lottery after the opera; it is an odd ceremony. Bankes and I took tickets of it, and buffooned together very merrily. He is gone to Firenze. Mrs. J * * should have sent you my postscript; there was no occasion to have bored you in person. I never interfere in anybody's squabbles,--she may scratch your face herself. "The weather here has been dreadful--snow several feet--a _fiume_, broke down a bridge, and flooded heaven knows how many _campi_; then rain came--and it is still thawing--so that my saddle-horses have a sinecure till the roads become more practicable. Why did Lega give away the goat? a blockhead--I must have him again. "Will you pay Missiaglia and the Buffo Buffini of the Gran Bretagna? I heard from Moore, who is at Paris; I had previously written to him in London, but he has not yet got my letter, apparently. "Believe me," &c. [Footnote 67: The word here, being under the seal, is illegible.] * * * * * LETTER 355. TO MR. MURRAY. "Ravenna, February 7. 1820. "I have had no letter from you these two months; but since I came here in December, 1819, I sent you a letter for Moore, who is God knows _where_--in Paris or London, I presume. I have copied and cut the third Canto of Don Juan _into two_, because it was too long; and I tell you this beforehand, because in case of any reckoning between you and me, these two are only to go for one, as this was the original form, and, in fact, the two together are not longer than one of the first: so remember that I have not made this division to _double_ upon _you_; but merely to suppress some tediousness in the aspect of the thing. I should have served you a pretty trick if I had sent you, for example, cantos of 50 stanzas each. "I am translating the first Canto of Pulci's Morgante Maggiore, and have half done it; but these last days of the Carnival confuse and interrupt every thing. "I have not yet sent off the Cantos, and have some doubt whether they ought to be published, for they have not the spirit of the first. The outcry has not frightened but it has _hurt_ me, and I have not written _con amore_ this time. It is very decent, however, and as dull as 'the last new comedy.' "I think my translations of Pulci will make you stare. It must be put by the original, stanza for stanza, and verse for verse; and you will see what was permitted in a Catholic country and a bigoted age to a churchman, on the score of religion;--and so tell those buffoons who accuse me of attacking the Liturgy.