John Cam Hobhouse to John Murray, from Venice, 7 December 1817: 'Your new acquisition is a very fine finish to the three cantos already published [comments further] [...] it is possible that all other readers may agree with my simple self in liking this fourth canto better than anything Lord B. has ever written. I must confess I feel an affection for it more than ordinary, as part of it was begot, as it were, under my own eyes; for some of the stanzas owe their birth to our morning walk or evening ride at La Mara.'