"'Oh the villain, he hath murdered my poor Timothy!'
"'Clincher. Damn your Timothy!—I tell you, woman, your husband has murdered me—he has carried away my fine jubilee clothes.'
"So Bowles has been telling a story, too ('tis in the Quarterly), about the woods of 'Madeira,' and so forth. I shall be at Bowles again, if he is not quiet. He mis-states, or mistakes, in a point or two. The paper is finished, and so is the letter.
"Yours," &c.
LETTER 393. TO MR. MURRAY.
"Ravenna, 9bre 9°, 1820.
"The talent you approve of is an amiable one, and might prove a 'national service,' but unfortunately I must be angry with a man before I draw his real portrait; and I can't deal in 'generals,' so that I trust never to have provocation enough to make a Gallery. If 'the parson' had not by many little dirty sneaking traits provoked it, I should have been silent, though I had observed him. Here follows an alteration: put—
Devil with such delight in damning,
That if at the resurrection
Unto him the free election
Of his future could be given,
'Twould be rather Hell than Heaven;
that is to say, if these two new lines do not too much lengthen out and weaken the amiability of the original thought and expression. You have a discretionary power about showing. I should think that Croker would not disrelish a sight of these light little humorous things, and may be indulged now and then.