The author of "Sketches Descriptive of Italy," (1820), etc., one of the hundred tours lately published, is extremely anxious to disclaim a possible plagiarism from Childe Harold and Beppo. See p. 159, vol. iv. He adds that still less could this presumed coincidence arise from "my conversation," as he had "repeatedly declined an introduction to me while in Italy."
Who this person may be I know not;[491] but he must have been deceived by all or any of those who "repeatedly offered to introduce" him, as I invariably refused to receive any English with whom I was not previously acquainted, even when they had letters from England. If the whole assertion is not an invention, I request this person not to sit down with the notion that he could have been introduced, since there has been nothing I have so carefully avoided as any kind of intercourse with his countrymen,—excepting the very few who were for a considerable time resident in Venice, or had been of my previous acquaintance. Whoever made him any such offer was possessed of impudence equal to that of making such an assertion without having had it. The fact is, that I hold in utter abhorrence any contact with the travelling English, as my friend the Consul General Hoppner and the Countess Benzoni (in whose house the Conversazione mostly frequented by them is held), could amply testify, were it worth while. I was persecuted by these tourists even to my riding ground at Lido, and reduced to the most disagreeable circuits to avoid them. At Madame Benzoni's I repeatedly refused to be introduced to them;—of a thousand such presentations pressed upon me, I accepted two, and both were to Irish women.
I should hardly have descended to speak of such trifles publicly, if the impudence of this "sketcher" had not forced me to a refutation of a disingenuous and gratuitously impertinent assertion; so meant to be, for what could it import to the reader to be told that the author "had repeatedly declined an introduction," even if it had been true, which, for the reasons I have above given, is scarcely possible. Except Lords Lansdowne, Jersey, and Lauderdale, Messrs. Scott, Hammond, Sir Humphry Davy, the late M. Lewis, W. Bankes, Mr. Hoppner, Thomas Moore, Lord Kinnaird, his brother, Mr. Joy, and Mr. Hobhouse, I do not recollect to have exchanged a word with another Englishman since I left their Country; and almost all these I had known before. The others,—and God knows there were some hundreds, who bored me with letters or visits, I refused to have any communication with, and shall be proud and happy when that wish becomes mutual.
FOOTNOTES:
[ [483] {462} Mr. Francis Cohen, afterwards Sir Francis Palgrave (1788-1861), the author of the Rise and Progress of the English Constitution, History of the Anglo-Saxons, etc., etc.
[ [483a] [In the earlier editions (1821-1825) Francis Cohen's translation (Appendix II.) is preceded by an Italian version (Appendix I.), taken directly from Muratori's edition of Marin Sanudo's _Vite dei Dogi_ (_Rerum Italicarum Scriptores_, 1733, xii. 628-635). The two versions are by no means identical. Cohen's "translation" is, presumably an accurate rendering of Sanudo's text, and must have been made either from the original MS. or from a transcript sent from Italy to England. Muratori's Italian is a _rifacimento_ of the original, which has been altered and condensed with a view to convenience or literary effect. Proper names of persons and places are changed, Sanudo's Venetian dialect gives place to Muratori's Italian, and notes which Sanudo added in the way of illustration and explanation are incorporated in the text. In the _Life of Marino Faliero_, pp. 199, 200 of the original text are omitted, and a passage from an old chronicle, which Sanudo gives as a note, is made to appear part of the original narrative. (See Preface to _Le Vite dei Dogi di Marin Sanudo_, by G. Monticolo, 1900; _Marino Faliero, La Congiura_, by V. Lazzarino; _Nuovo Archivio Veneto_, 1897, vol. xiii. pt. i. p. 15, note 1.)]
[ [484] {463}["Marin Faliero dalla bella moglie: altri la gode, ed egli la mantien." According to Andrea Navagero (It. Rer. Script., xxiii. 1038), the writing on the chair ran thus: "Becco Marino Falier dalla bella mogier" (vide ante, [p. 349]). Palgrave has bowdlerized Steno's lampoon.]
[ [485] {468}["Had a copy taken of an extract from Petrarch's Letters, with reference to the conspiracy of the Doge Marino Faliero, containing the poet's opinion of the matter."—Diary, February 11, 1821, Letters, 1901, v. 201.]