I was presented, meantime, with one other occupation, the one best fitted to discipline my melancholy thoughts, which strayed backwards, over many a ruin, and through many a flowery glade, even to the mountain recess, from which in early youth I had first emerged.

During one of my rambles through the habitations of Rome, I found writing materials on a table in an author’s study. Parts of a manuscript lay scattered about. It contained a learned disquisition on the Italian language; one page an unfinished dedication to posterity, for whose profit the writer had sifted and selected the niceties of this harmonious language⁠—to whose everlasting benefit he bequeathed his labours.

I also will write a book, I cried⁠—for whom to read?⁠—to whom dedicated? And then with silly flourish (what so capricious and childish as despair?) I wrote,