14fl Byron's Memoirs. QFEB. 



The letter is a specimen of that comic mixture of melancholy in phrase, 

 and practical indulgence in matters of pleasure, which so happily con- 

 trives to make the sentimental reader grieve over the sorrows of a volup- 

 tuary, revelling at the moment in the grossest excesses : 



" It is ray intention to remain at Venice during- the winter, probably as it 

 has always been, next to the East, the greenest island of my imagination. It 

 has not disappointed me, though its evident decay would perhaps have that 

 effect upon others. But I have been familiar with ruins too long to dislike deso- 

 lation." 



He then drops into the practical portion of the tale : 



<f I have got some extremely good apartments in the house of a ' Merchant 

 of Venice,' who is a good deal occupied with business, and has a wife in her 

 twenty-second year. Marianna is, in her appearance, altogether like an ante- 

 lope. She has the large, black, oriental eye; her features 'are regular, and 

 rather aquiline ; mouth, small ; skin, clear and soft" &c. 



" Nov. 23. You will perceive that my description, which was proceeding 

 with the minuteness of a passport, has been interrupted for several days. In 

 the mean time * * * " 



Then follows a break in the letter, which Mr. Moore has filled up 

 with stars, and which every one else may fill up as it pleases his fancy. 

 These breaks are continually occurring, and argue that the general cor- 

 respondence must have been of a very extraordinary and of a prodigiously 

 confidential nature. 



In one of these letters, he breaks off the subject of the Venetian's 

 wife, whom he had now taken as his acknowledged mistress, and in her 

 husband's house too such are the easy manners of foreign life ! to 

 give a little sketch of the world around him : 



" Oh ! by the way, I forgot, when I wrote to you from Verona, to tell you 



that at Milan I met with a countrymen of your's, a Colonel , a very excellent, 



good-natured fellow who knows and shews all about Milan, and is, as it 

 were, a native here. This is his history, at least an episode of it : 



" Six-and-twenty years ago, the Colonel then an Ensign being in Italy, 

 fell in love with the Marchesa * * *, and she with him. The lady must be 

 at least twenty years his senior. The war broke out ; he returned to England, 

 to serve, not his country for that is Ireland but England, which is a dif- 

 ferent thing; and she Heaven knows what she did! In the year 1814, the 

 first annunciation of the definitive treaty of peace (and tyranny) was developed 

 to the astonished Milanese, by the arrival of Colonel * * *, who, flinging him- 

 self at full length at the feet of Madame, murmured forth, in half-forgotten 

 Irish- Italian, eternal vows of indelible constancy. The lady screamed, and 

 exclaimed, ' Who are you ?' The Colonel cried, ' Why, don't you know me ? 

 I am so and so,' &c. ; till at length the Marchesa, mounting from reminis- 

 cence to reminiscence, through the lovers of the intermediate twenty-five 

 years, arrived at last at the recollection of her povero sub-lieutenant. She 

 then said, ' Was there ever such virtue !' (that was the very word) ; and, 

 being now a widow, gave him apartments in her palace, reinstated him in all 

 the rights of wrong, and held him up to the admiring world as a miracle of 

 incontinent fidelity, arid the unshaken Abdiel of absence." 



All this is followed by a ballad on King Lud, lively and clever 

 enough : 



" As the Liberty-lads o'er the sea 

 Bought their freedom, and cheaply, with blood, 

 So we, boys, we 

 Will die fighting, or live free, 

 And down with all kings but King Lud. 



