"Books of travels are expensive, and I don't want them, having travelled already; besides, they lie. Thank the author of 'The Profligate' for his (or her) present. Pray send me _no more_ poetry but what is rare and decidedly good. There is such a trash of Keats and the like upon my tables that I am ashamed to look at them. I say nothing against your parsons, your S * *s and your C * *s--it is all very fine--but pray dispense me from the pleasure. Instead of poetry, if you will favour me with a few soda-powders, I shall be delighted: but all prose ('bating _travels_ and novels NOT by Scott) is welcome, especially Scott's Tales of my Landlord, and so on. "In the notes to Marino Faliero, it may be as well to say that '_Benintende_' was not really of _the Ten_, but merely _Grand Chancellor_, a separate office (although important): it was an arbitrary alteration of mine. The Doges too were all _buried_ in St. _Mark's before_ Faliero. It is singular that when his predecessor, Andrea Dandolo, died, _the Ten_ made a law that _all_ the _future Doges_ should be _buried with their families, in their own churches,--one would think by a kind of presentiment_. So that all that is said of his _ancestral Doges_, as buried at St. John's and Paul's, is altered from the fact, _they being in St. Mark's. Make a note_ of this, and put _Editor_ as the subscription to it. "As I make such pretensions to accuracy, I should not like to be _twitted_ even with such trifles on that score. Of the play they may say what they please, but not so of my costume and _dram. pers._ they having been real existences. "I omitted Foscolo in my list of living _Venetian worthies, in the notes_, considering him as an _Italian_ in general, and not a mere provincial like the rest; and as an Italian I have spoken of him in the preface to Canto 4th of Childe Harold. "The French translation of us!!! _oime! oime!_--the German; but I don't understand the latter and his long dissertation at the end about the Fausts. Excuse haste. Of politics it is not safe to speak, but nothing is decided as yet. "I am in a very fierce humour at not having Scott's Monastery. You are _too liberal_ in quantity, and somewhat careless of the quality, of your missives. All the _Quarterlies_ (four in number) I had had before from you, and _two_ of the Edinburgh; but no matter; we shall have new ones by and by. No more Keats, I entreat:--flay him alive; if some of you don't, I must skin him myself. There is no bearing the drivelling idiotism of the manikin.