dans son palais, ce malheureux vieillard s'évanouit, épuisé par la violence qu'il s'était faite. Jacob devait encore passer une année en prison à la Canée, avant qu'on lui rendit la même liberté limitée à laquelle il était réduit avant cet événement; mais à peine fut-il débarqué sur cette terre d'exil, qu'il y mourut de dou

leur.

fit publier une défense de parler de cette révolution, sous peine d'être traduit devant les inquisiteurs d'état. Le 20 octobre, Pasqual Malipieri, procurateur de SaintMarc, fut élu pour successeur de Foscari; celui-ci n'eut pas néanmoins l'humiliation de vivre sujet, là où il avait régné. En entendant le son des cloches, qui sonnaient en actions de grace pour cette élection, il mourut subitement d'une hémorragie causée par une veine qui s'éclata dans sa poitrine.'

Dès-lors, et pendant quinze mois, le vieux doge accablé d'années et de chagrins, ne recouvra plus la force de son corps ou celle de son âme; il n'assistait plus à aucun des conseils, et il ne pouvait plus remplir aucune des fonctions de sa dignité. Il était entré dans sa quatre-vingt-sixième année, et si le conseil des dix avait eté susceptible de quelque pitié, il aurait attendu en silence la fin, sans doute prochaine, d'une carrière marquée par tant de gloire et tant de malheurs. Mais le chef du conseil des dix était alors Jacques Loredano, fils de Marc, et neveu de Pierre, le grand amiral, qui toute leur vie avaient été les ennemis acharnés du vieux doge. Ils avaient transmis leur haine à leurs enfants, et cette vieille rancune n'était pas encore satisfaite. Finstigation de Loredano, Jérôme Barbarigo, inquisiteur d'état, proposa au conseil des dix, au mois d'oc1 tobre 1457, de soumettre Foscari à une nouvelle humi- | liation. Dès que ce magistrat ne pouvait plus remplir ses fonctions, Barbarigo demanda qu'on nommât un autre doge. Le conseil, qui avait refusé par deux fois IN Lady Morgan's fearless and excellent work upon Tabdication de Foscari, parce que la constitution ne «Italy," I perceive the expression of «Rome of the pouvait la permettre, hésita avant de se mettre en con- Ocean» applied to Venice. The same phrase occurs in tradiction avec ses propres décrets. Les discussions the « Two Foscari.» My publisher can vouch for me dans le conseil et la junte se prolongèrent pendant huit that the tragedy was written and sent to England some jours, jusque fort avant dans la nuit. Cependant, on time before I had seen Lady Morgan's work, which I fit entrer dans l'assemblée Marco Foscari, procurateur only received on the 16th of August. Ihasten, however, de Saint-Marc, et Frère du doge, pour qu'il fût lié par to notice the coincidence, and to yield the originality of le redoutable serment du secret, et qu'il ne pût arrêter the phrase to her who first placed it before the public. les mesures de ses ennemis. Enfin, le conseil se rendit I am the more anxious to do this, as I am informed (for auprès du doge, et lui demanda d'abdiquer volontaire-I have seen but few of the specimens, and those accidentment un emploi qu'il ne pouvait plus exercer. « J'ai jure,» répondit le vieillard, «de remplir jusqu'à ma mort, selon mon honneur et ma conscience, les fonctions auxquelles ma patrie m'a appelé. Je ne puis me delier moi-même de mon serment; qu'un ordre des conseils dispose de moi, je m'y soumettrai, mais je ne le devancerai pas.»> Alors une nouvelle délibération du conseil délia François Foscari de son serment ducal, lui assura une pension de deux mille ducats pour le reste de sa vie, et lui ordonna d'évacuer en trois jours le palais, et de déposer les ornemens de sa dignité. Le doge ayant remarqué parmi les conseillers qui lui porLerent cet ordre, un chef de la quarantie qu'il ne connaissait pas, demanda son nom : « Je suis le fils de Marco Memmo, lui dit le conseiller.-« Ah! ton père était mou ami,» lui dit le vieux doge, en soupirant. Il donna aussitot des ordres pour qu'on transportât ses effets dus une maison à lui; et le lendemain, 23 octobre, on levit, se soutenant à peine, et appuyé sur son vieux frère, redescendre ces mêmes escaliers sur lesquels, trente-quatre ans auparavant, on l'avait vu installé avec tant de pompe, et traverser ces mêmes salles où la république avait reçu ses sermens. Le peuple entier parut indigné de tant de dureté exercée contre un vieillard qui respectait et qu'il aimait; mais le conseil des dix

« LE doge, blessé de trouver constamment un contradicteur et un censeur si amer dans son frère, lui dit un jour en plein conseil : Messire Augustin, vous faites tout votre possible pour hâter ma mort; vous vous flattez de me succéder: mais si les autres vous connaissent aussi bien que je vous connais, ils n'auront garde de vous élire.' Là dessus il se leva, ému de colère, rentra dans son appartement, et mourut quelques jours après. Ce frère contre lequel il s'était emporté fut précisément Ale successeur qu'on lui donna. C'était un mérite dont on aimait à tenir compte, surtout à un parent, de s'être mis en opposition avec le chef de la république.»2 Daru, Histoire de Venise, vol. ii. sec. xi. p. 533.

ally) that there have been lately brought against me charges of plagiarism. I have also had an anonymous sort of threatening intimation of the same kind, apparently with the intent of extorting money. To such charges I have no answer to make. One of them is ludicrous enough. I am reproached for having formed the description of a shipwreck in verse from the narratives of many actual shipwrecks in prose, selecting such materials as were most striking. Gibbon makes it a merit in Tasso «to have copied the minutest details of the siege of Jerusalem from the Chronicles.>> In me it may be a demerit, I presume; let it remain so. Whilst I have been occupied in defending Pope's character, the lower orders of Grub-street appear to have been assailing mine: this is as it should be, both in them and in me. One of the accusations in the nameless epistle alluded to is still more laughable: it states seriously that I «received five hundred pounds for writing advertisements for Day and Martin's patent blacking!» This is the highest compliment to my literary powers which I ever received. It states also that a person has been trying to make

Marin Sannto, Vite de' Duchi di Venezia, p. 1164.-Chronicum Eugubinum, T. XXI, p. 992.-Christoforo da Soldo Istoria Bresciana, T. XXI, p. 891.-Navigero Stovia Veneziana, T. XXIII, p. 1120.M. A. Sabellico. Deca III, L. VIII. f. 201.

2 The Venetians appear to have had a particular turn for breaking the hearts of their Doges: the above is another instance of the kind in the Doge Marco Barbarigo; he was succeeded by his brother Agostino Barbarigo, whose chief merit is above-mentioned.

acquaintance with Mr Townsend, a gentleman of the law, who was with me on business in Venice three years ago, for the purpose of obtaining any defamatory particulars of my life from this occasional visitor.»> Mr Townsend is welcome to say what he knows. I mention these particulars merely to show the world in general what the literary lower world contains, and their way of setting to work. Another charge made, I am told, in the « Literary Gazette» is, that I wrote the notes to « Queen Mab;» a work which I never saw till some time after its publication, and which I recollect showing to Mr Sotheby as a poem of great power and imagination. I never wrote a line of the notes, nor ever saw them except in their published form. No one knows better than their real author, that his opinions and mine differ materially upon the metaphysical portion of that work; though in common with all who are not blinded by baseness and bigotry, I highly admire the poetry of that and his other publications.

a moment upheld their dogmatic nonsense of theo-philanthropy. The church of England, if overthrown, will be swept away by the sectarians, and not by the sceptics. People are too wise, too well-informed, too certain of their own immense importance in the realms of space, ever to submit to the impiety of doubt. There may be a few such diffident speculators, like water in the pale sunbeam of human reason, but they are very few; and their opinions, without enthusiasm or appeal to the passions, can never gain proselytes-unless indeed, they are persecuted: that, to be sure, will increase any thing.

Mr S, with a cowardly ferocity, exults over the anticipated «death-bed repentance» of the objects of his dislike; and indulges himself in a pleasant « Vision of Judgment,» in prose as well as verse, full of impious impudence. What Mr S.'s sensations or ours may be in the awful moment of leaving this state of existence, neither he nor we can pretend to decide. In common, I presume, with most men of any reflection, I have not waited for a «death-bed» to repent of many of my actions, notwithstanding the « diabolical prides which this pitiful renegado in his rancour would impute to those who scorn him. Whether, upon the whole, the good or evil of my deeds may preponderate, is not for me to ascertain; but, as my means and opportunities have been greater, I shall limit my present defence to an asdegree,» have done more real good in any one given year, since I was twenty, than Mr Southey in the whole course of his shifting and turncoat existence. There are several actions to which I can look back with an honest pride, not to be damped by the calumnies of a hireling. There are others to which I recur with sorrow and repentance; but the only act of my life of which Mr Southey can have any real knowledge, as it was one which brought me in contact with a near connexion of his own, did no dishonour to that connexion nor to me.

Mr Southey, too, in his pious preface to a poem whose blasphemy is as harmless as the sedition of Wat Tyler, because it is equally absurd with that sincere production, calls upon the legislature to look to it,» as the toleration of such writings led to the French Revolution : not such writings as Wat Tyler, but as those of the « Satanic School.» This is not true, and Mr Southey knows it to be not true. Every French writer of any freedom was perse-sertion (easily proved, if necessary) that I, « in my cuted; Voltaire and Rousseau were exiles, Marmontel and Diderot were sent to the Bastille, and a perpetual war was waged with the whole class by the existing despotism. In the next place, the French Revolution was not occasioned by any writings whatsoever, but must have occurred had no such writers ever existed. It is the fashion to attribute every thing to the French revolution, and the French revolution to every thing but its real cause. That cause is obvious-the government exacted too much, and the people could neither give nor bear more. Without this, the Encyclopedists might have written their fingers off without the occurrence of a single alteration. And the English revolution-(the first, I mean) what was it occasioned by? The puritans were surely as pious and moral as Wesley or his biographer? Acts-world; and, if his creed be the right one, they will do acts on the part of government, and not writings against them, have caused the past convulsions, and are tending to the future.

I am not ignorant of Mr Southey's calumnies on a different occasion, knowing them to be such, which he scattered abroad, on his return from Switzerland, against me and others: they have done him no good in this

him less in the next. What his « death-bed» may be, it is not my province to predicate: let him settle it with his Maker, as I must do with mine. There is something at once ludicrous and blasphemous in this arrogant scribbler of all works sitting down to deal damnation and destruction upon his fellow creatures, with Wat Tyler, the ¦

I look upon such as inevitable, though no revolutionist: I wish to see the English constitution restored and not destroyed. Born an aristocrat, and naturally one by temper, with the greater part of my present pro-Apotheosis of George the Third, and the Elegy on Martin perty in the funds, what have I to gain by a revolution? Perhaps I have more to lose in every way than Mr Southey, with all his places and presents for panegyrics and abuse into the bargain. But that a revolution is inevitable, I repeat. The government may exult over the repression of petty tumults; these are but the receding waves repulsed and broken for a moment on the shore, while the great tide is still rolling on and gaining ground with every breaker. Mr Southey accuses us of attacking the religion of the country; and is he abetting it by writing lives of Wesley? One mode of worship is merely destroyed by another. There never was, nor ever will be, a country without a religion. We shall be told of France again: but it was only Paris and a frantic party, which for

the regicide, all shuffled together in his writing-desk. One of his consolations appears to be a Latin note from | a work of a Mr Landor, the author of «Gebir, whose friendship for Robert Southey will, it seems, «be an honour to him when the ephemeral disputes and ephemeral reputations of the day are forgotten.» I for one neither envy him «<the friendship,» nor the glory in reversion which is to accrue from it, like Mr Thelusson's fortune in the third and fourth generation.— This friendship will probably be as memorable as his 1 own epics, which (as I quoted to him ten or twelve years ago in « English Bards») Porson said «would be remembered when Homer and Virgil are forgotten, and not till then.»> For the present, I leave him.

Cain,

A MYSTERY.

-Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God bad made.---GR. iii. 1.

TO SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART.

This "Mystery of Cain" is Inscribed,

BY HIS OBLIGED FRIEND, AND FAITHFUL SERVANT,