LXXXIV.

And in a certain closet, where the wall

Was cover'd with old armour like a crust, The abbot said to them, « I give you all. »

Morgante rummaged piecemeal from the dust

The whole, which, save one cuirass, was too small,
And that too had the mail inlaid with rust.
They wonder'd how it fitted him exactly,
Which ne'er had suited others so compactly.

LXXXV.

"I was an immeasurable giant's, who By the great Milo of Agrante fell Before the abbey many years ago.

The story on the wall was figured well; In the last moment of the abbey's foe,

Who long had waged a war implacable: Precisely as the war occurr'd they drew him, And there was Milo as he overthrew him.

LXXXVI.

Seeing this history, Count Orlando said

In his own heart, «O God! who in the sky Know'st all things, how was Milo hither led?

Who caused the giant in this place to die?»
And certain letters, weeping, then he read,

So that he could not keep his visage dry,-
As I will tell in the ensuing story.
From evil keep you the high King of Glory!

NOTE TO MORGANTE MAGGIORE.

Gli dette in sulla testa un gran punzone." It is strange that Pulci should have literally anticipated the technical terms of my old friend and master, Jackson, and the art which he has carried to its highest pitch. « A punch on the head,» or « a punch in the head,» « un punzone in sulla testa,» is the exact and frequent phrase of our best pugilists, who little dream that they are talking the purest Tuscan.

LETTER

ΤΟ

ON THE

REV. W. L. BOWLES' STRICTURES

ON THE

LIFE AND WRITINGS OF POPE.

I'll play at Bowls with the sun and moon. » OLD SONG.

My mither 's auld, Sir, and she has rather forgotten hersel in speaking to my Leddy, that canna weel bide to be contradickit, (as I ken naebody likes it, if they could help themsels.)»

TALES OF MY LANDLORD, Old Mortality, vol. ii. p. 163.

LETTER.

Ravenna, February, 7th, 1821.

DEAR SIR,

In the different pamphlets which you have had the goodness to send me, on the Pope and Bowles' controversy, I perceive that my name is occasionally introduced by both parties. Mr Bowles refers more than once to what he is pleased to consider « a remarkable circumstance,» not only in his letter to Mr Campbell, but in his reply to the Quarterly. The Quarterly also and Mr Gilchrist have conferred on me the dangerous honour of a quotation; and Mr Bowles indirectly makes a kind of appeal to me personally, by saying, «Lord Byron, if he remembers the circumstance, will witness»—(witness IN ITALICS, an ominous character for a testimony at present).

mit me.

I shall not avail myself of a «non mi ricordo» even after so long a residence in Italy;—I do « remember the circumstance,»--and have no reluctance to relate it (since called upon so to do) as correctly as the distance of time and the impression of intervening events will perIn the year 1812, more than three years after the publication of « English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,» I had the honour of meeting Mr Bowles in the house of our venerable host of « Human Life, etc. » the last Argonaut of classic English poetry, and the Nestor of our inferior race of living poets. Mr Bowles calls this « soon after" the publication; but to me three years appear a considerable segment of the immortality of a modern poem. I recollect nothing of the rest of the company going into another room »nor, though I well