“The ‘Hints,’ Hobhouse says, will require a good deal of slashing to suit the times, which will be a work of time, for I don’t feel at all laborious just now. Whatever effect they are to have would perhaps be greater in a separate form, and they also must have my name to them. Now, if you publish them in the same volume with Don Juan, they identify Don Juan as mine, which I don’t think worth a chancery suit about my daughter’s guardianship, as in your present code a facetious poem is sufficient to take away a man’s rights over his family.
“Of the state of things here it would be difficult and not very prudent to speak at large, the Huns opening all letters. I wonder if they can read them when they have opened them; if so, they may see, in my most legible hand, that I think them damned scoundrels and barbarians, and their emperor a fool, and themselves more fools than he; all which they may send to Vienna for any thing I care. They have got themselves masters of the Papal police, and are bullying away; but some day or other they will pay for all: it may not be very soon, because these unhappy Italians have no consistency among themselves; but I suppose that Providence will get tired of them at last, * * * * * *
