1820.] GROWN BASE AND MERCENARY. 405 the courteous reader, Mr. Saunders, calls Grub Street 1 in my drawer, which I have a little scheme to commit to your charge for England; only I must first cut up (or cut down) two aforesaid cantos into three, because I am grown base and mercenary, and it is an ill precedent to let my Mæcenas, Murray, get too much for his money. I am busy, also, with Pulci-translating-servilely translating, stanza for stanza, and line for line, two octaves every night, the same allowance as at Venice. Would you call at your banker's at Bologna, and ask him for some letters lying there for me, and burn them? -or I will-so do not burn them, but bring them,—and believe me, Ever and very affectionately yours, BYRON. P.S.-I have a particular wish to hear from yourself something about Cyprus, so pray recollect all that you can.-Good night. 775.-To John Murray. Ravenna, February 21, 1820. DEAR MURRAY,-The Bulldogs will be very agreeable: I have only those of this country, who, though good, and ready to fly at any thing, yet have not the I. "When Mr. W. Bankes✶✶ happened to tell him [Byron], one "day, that he had heard a Mr. Saunders (or some such name), then "resident at Venice, declare that, in his opinion, 'Don Juan was all "Grub-street,' such an effect had this disparaging speech upon his "mind (though coming from a person who, as he himself would "have it, was 'nothing but a d-d salt-fish seller '), that, for some "time after, by his own confession to Mr. Bankes, he could not "bring himself to write another line of the Poem; and, one "morning, opening a drawer where the neglected manuscript lay, "he said to his friend, 'Look here-this is all Mr. Saunders's Grub"street (Moore's Life, p. 421). |