I can talk, to be sure, with the most incorrect fluency, and I can make myself understood--at all events by Italians, whose quick, sympathetic apprehension of one's meaning, and courteous readiness to assist a foreigner in any linguistic straits, are deserving of grateful recognition from all of us who, however involuntarily, maltreat their beautiful language.
But the colloquial use of a language must be acquired when the organs are young and lissom.

I began too late.

And besides, I have laboured under the great disadvantage that my deafness prevents me from sharing in the hourly lessons which those who hear all that is going on around them profit by.
Besides the above-mentioned historical works, I wrote well nigh a score, I think, of novels, which also had no great, but a fair, share of success.

The majority of them are on Italian subjects; and these, if I may be allowed to say so, are good.

The pictures they give of Italian men and women and things and habits are true, vivid, and accurate.