"What Gifford says is very consolatory (of the first act). English, sterling _genuine English_, is a desideratum amongst you, and I am glad that I have got so much left; though Heaven knows how I retain it: I _hear_ none but from my valet, and his is _Nottinghamshire_: and I _see_ none but in your new publications, and theirs is _no_ language at all, but jargon. Even your * * * * is terribly stilted and affected, with '_very, very_' so soft and pamby. "Oh! if ever I do come amongst you again, I will give you such a 'Baviad and Maeviad!' not as good as the old, but even _better merited_. There never was such a _set_ as your _ragamuffins_ (I mean _not_ yours only, but every body's). What with the Cockneys, and the Lakers, and the _followers_ of Scott, and Moore, and Byron, you are in the very uttermost decline and degradation of literature. I can't think of it without all the remorse of a murderer. I wish that Johnson were alive again to crush them!" [Footnote 81: The angry note against English travellers appended to this tragedy, in consequence of an assertion made by some recent tourist, that he (or as it afterwards turned out, she) "had repeatedly declined an introduction to Lord Byron while in Italy."] * * * * * LETTER 385. TO MR. MURRAY. "Ravenna, Sept. 14. 1820. "What! not a line? Well, have it your own way. "I wish you would inform Perry, that his stupid paragraph is the cause of all my newspapers being stopped in Paris. The fools believe me in your infernal country, and have not sent on their gazettes, so that I know nothing of your beastly trial of the Queen. "I cannot avail myself of Mr. Gifford's remarks, because I have received none, except on the first act. Yours, &c. "P.S. Do, pray, beg the editors of papers to say any thing blackguard they please; but not to put me amongst their arrivals. They do me more mischief by such nonsense than all their abuse can do." * * * * * LETTER 386. TO MR. MURRAY. "Ravenna, Sept. 21. 1820. "So you are at your old tricks again. This is the second packet I have received unaccompanied by a single line of good, bad, or indifferent. It is strange that you have never forwarded any further observations of Gifford's. How am I to alter or amend, if I hear no further? or does this silence mean that it is well enough as it is, or too bad to be repaired? If the last, why do you not say so at once, instead of playing pretty, while you know that soon or late you must out with the truth. "Yours, &c.