"--_Preface to Marino Faliero_. Is not "Romeo and Juliet" a love play?
--But why reason about such insincere, splenetic trash?--ED.]
* * * * *
Lewis's "Jamaica Journal" is delightful; it is almost the only unaffected
book of travels or touring I have read of late years. You have the man
himself, and not an inconsiderable man,--certainly a much finer mind than I
supposed before from the perusal of his romances, &c. It is by far his best
work, and will live and be popular. Those verses on the Hours are very
pretty; but the Isle of Devils is, like his romances,--a fever dream--
horrible, without point or terror.
_April_ 16. 1834.
SICILY.--MALTA--SIR ALEXANDER BALL.
I found that every thing in and about Sicily had been exaggerated by
travellers, except two things--the folly of the government and the
wretchedness of the people. _They_ did not admit of exaggeration.
Really you may learn the fundamental principles of political economy in a
very compendious way, by taking a short tour through Sicily, and simply
reversing in your own mind every law, custom, and ordinance you meet with.
I never was in a country in which every thing proceeding from man was so
exactly wrong.
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