"The Chancellor has behaved nobly. You have also conducted yourself in the most satisfactory manner; and I have no fault to find with any body but the stage-players and their proprietor. I was always so civil to Elliston personally, that he ought to have been the last to attempt to injure me.
"There is a most rattling thunder-storm pelting away at this present writing; so that I write neither by day, nor by candle, nor torchlight, but by lightning light: the flashes are as brilliant as the most gaseous glow of the gas-light company. My chimney-board has just been thrown down by a gust of wind: I thought that it was the 'Bold Thunder' and 'Brisk Lightning' in person.—Three of us would be too many. There it goes—flash again! but
"I tax not you, ye elements, with unkindness;
I never gave ye franks, nor call'd upon you;
as I have done by and upon Mr. Elliston.
"Why do you not write? You should at least send me a line of particulars: I know nothing yet but by Galignani and the Honourable Douglas.
"Well, and how does our Pope controversy go on? and the pamphlet? It is impossible to write any news: the Austrian scoundrels rummage all letters.
"P.S. I could have sent you a good deal of gossip and some real information, were it not that all letters pass through the Barbarians' inspection, and I have no wish to inform them of any thing but my utter abhorrence of them and theirs. They have only conquered by treachery, however."
LETTER 428. TO ME. MOORE.
"Ravenna, May 20. 1821.