"He has the whole of the MSS.; so put up prayers in your back shop, or in the printer's 'Chapel.'" [Footnote 12: Beppo.] * * * * * LETTER 306. TO MR. MURRAY. "Venice, January 27. 1818. "My father--that is, my Armenian father, Padre Pasquali--in the name of all the other fathers of our Convent, sends you the enclosed, greeting. "Inasmuch as it has pleased the translators of the long-lost and lately-found portions of the text of Eusebius to put forth the enclosed prospectus, of which I send six copies, you are hereby implored to obtain subscribers in the two Universities, and among the learned, and the unlearned who would unlearn their ignorance--This _they_ (the Convent) request, _I_ request, and _do you_ request. "I sent you Beppo some weeks agone. You must publish it alone; it has politics and ferocity, and won't do for your isthmus of a Journal. "Mr. Hobhouse, if the Alps have not broken his neck, is, or ought to be, swimming with my commentaries and his own coat of mail in his teeth and right hand, in a cork jacket, between Calais and Dover. "It is the height of the Carnival, and I am in the extreme and agonies of a new intrigue with I don't exactly know whom or what, except that she is insatiate of love, and won't take money, and has light hair and blue eyes, which are not common here, and that I met her at the Masque, and that when her mask is off, I am as wise as ever. I shall make what I can of the remainder of my youth." * * * * * LETTER 307. TO MR. MOORE. "Venice, February 2. 1818. "Your letter of December 8th arrived but this day, by some delay, common but inexplicable. Your domestic calamity is very grievous, and I feel with you as much as I _dare_ feel at all. Throughout life, your loss must be my loss, and your gain my gain; and, though my heart may ebb, there will always be a drop for you among the dregs. "I know how to feel with you, because (selfishness being always the substratum of our damnable clay) I am quite wrapt up in my own children. Besides my little legitimate, I have made unto myself an _il_legitimate since (to say nothing of one before[13]), and I look forward to one of these as the pillar of my old age, supposing that I ever reach--which I hope I never shall--that desolating period. I have a great love for my little Ada, though perhaps she may torture me, like * * *.