"Yours, &c.
"P.S. My benediction to Mrs. Hoppner. How is your little boy? Allegra is growing, and has increased in good looks and obstinacy."
LETTER 370. TO MR. MURRAY.
"Ravenna, April 23. 1820.
"The proofs don't contain the last stanzas of Canto second, but end abruptly with the 105th stanza.
"I told you long ago that the new Cantos[72] were not good, and I also told you a reason. Recollect, I do not oblige you to publish them; you may suppress them, if you like, but I can alter nothing. I have erased the six stanzas about those two impostors * * * * (which I suppose will give you great pleasure), but I can do no more. I can neither recast, nor replace; but I give you leave to put it all into the fire, if you like, or not to publish, and I think that's sufficient.
"I told you that I wrote on with no good will—that I had been, not frightened, but hurt by the outcry, and, besides, that when I wrote last November, I was ill in body, and in very great distress of mind about some private things of my own; but you would have it: so I sent it to you, and to make it lighter, cut it in two—but I can't piece it together again. I can't cobble: I must 'either make a spoon or spoil a horn,'—and there's an end; for there's no remeid: but I leave you free will to suppress the whole, if you like it.
"About the Morgante Maggiore, I won't have a line omitted. It may circulate, or it may not; but all the criticism on earth sha'n't touch a line, unless it be because it is badly translated. Now you say, and I say, and others say, that the translation is a good one; and so it shall go to press as it is. Pulci must answer for his own irreligion: I answer for the translation only.
"Pray let Mr. Hobhouse look to the Italian next time in the proofs: this time, while I am scribbling to you, they are corrected by one who passes for the prettiest woman in Romagna, and even the Marches, as far as Ancona, be the other who she may.