can scarcely move for them. To be sure, the weather is not very inviting for their assistance.

I beg your pardon for altering your nomenclature, but old recollections are apt to float uppermost.

Believe me, yours ever and very truly,

1056.-To Thomas Moore.

N. B.

Genoa, February 20, 1823.

MY DEAR TOM,—I must again refer you to those two letters addressed to you at Passy before I read your speech in Galignani, etc., and which you do not seem to have received.1

Of Hunt I see little-once a month or so, and then on his own business, generally. You may easily suppose that I know too little of Hampstead and his satellites to have much communion or community with him. My whole present relation to him arose from Shelley's unexpected wreck. You would not have had me leave him in the street with his family, would you? and as to the other plan you mention, you forget how it would humiliate him-that his writings should be supposed to be dead weight!' Think a moment-he is perhaps the

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I. "I was never lucky enough to recover these two letters, though frequent inquiries were made about them at the French 'post-office" (Moore).

2. Byron was probably referring, as Moore supposes (Life, p. 574), to a passage in a recent letter from the latter: "I am most "anxious to know that you mean to emerge out of the Liberal. It grieves me to urge any thing so much against Hunt's interest; but "I should not hesitate to use the same language to himself, were I near him. I would, if I were you, serve him in every possible way but this-I would give him (if he would accept it) the profits "of the same works, published separately-but I would not mix "myself up in this way with others. I would not become a partner "in this sort of miscellaneous 'pot au feu,' where the bad flavour of one ingredient is sure to taint all the rest. I would be, if I were "you, alone, single-handed, and, as such, invincible."

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much better done, though I am no great judge of such

matters.

I send you some books; but the one you mention is not in my present possession, nor have I had, nor am likely to have, any copy for some time to come. The works of that Author are not often in my library, nor have I read many of them-indeed hardly any-since their publication. Werner came to me in a parcel from London, without my direction, and except the French translation (required by M. G[alignani]) and a scurvy ten-francs English Edition published at Paris, and sent as an index of Piracy by the indignant Galignani (to persuade me to let him have a copyright), I have not a line. But I err; there are two or three stray volumes; but they are of an old date, and scattered, I believe, amongst my other books, and I know not their place.

You have no great loss, however, I believe; for the poem is not of great repute, nor is likely to be so.

So much for scribbling; but it is your own blame, since you entered upon the subject.

I hope that my negociation will be more successful; it at least deserves to be so.

Yours always and affectly,

N. B.

1055-To Sir James Wedderburn Webster. Albaro, Feb. 16, 1823.

DEAR W.,-I cannot keep the book and take your money too for the binding, and if I do not keep it, I have still less right to it. I therefore return it, and request that you will not remand it on pain of Proscription

My "chilblains" are, I assure you, no joke, and I

can scarcely move for them. To be sure, the weather is not very inviting for their assistance.

I beg your pardon for altering your nomenclature, but old recollections are apt to float uppermost.

Believe me, yours ever and very truly,

1056.-To Thomas Moore.

N. B.

Genoa, February 20, 1823.

MY DEAR TOM,—I must again refer you to those two letters addressed to you at Passy before I read your speech in Galignani, etc., and which you do not seem to have received.1

Of Hunt I see little-once a month or so, and then on his own business, generally. You may easily suppose that I know too little of Hampstead and his satellites to have much communion or community with him. My whole present relation to him arose from Shelley's unexpected wreck. You would not have had me leave him in the street with his family, would you? and as to the other plan you mention, you forget how it would humiliate him-that his writings should be supposed to be dead weight!' Think a moment-he is perhaps the

I. "I was never lucky enough to recover these two letters, "though frequent inquiries were made about them at the French "post-office" (Moore).

2. Byron was probably referring, as Moore supposes (Life, p. 574), to a passage in a recent letter from the latter: "I am most "anxious to know that you mean to emerge out of the Liberal. It "grieves me to urge any thing so much against Hunt's interest; but I should not hesitate to use the same language to himself, were I near him. I would, if I were you, serve him in every possible "way but this-I would give him (if he would accept it) the profits "of the same works, published separately-but I would not mix "myself up in this way with others. I would not become a partner "in this sort of miscellaneous 'pot au feu,' where the bad flavour of "one ingredient is sure to taint all the rest. I would be, if I were "you, alone, single-handed, and, as such, invincible."

vainest man on earth, at least his own friends say so pretty loudly; and if he were in other circumstances, I might be tempted to take him down a peg; but not now, it would be cruel. It is a cursed business; but neither the motive nor the means rest upon my conscience, and it happens that he and his brother have been so far benefited by the publication in a pecuniary point of view. His brother is a steady, bold fellow, such as Prynne, for example, and full of moral, and, I hear, physical courage.

And you are really recanting, or softening to the clergy!1 It will do little good for you—it is you, not the They will say they frightened youBelieve me

poem, they are at. forbid it, Ireland!

Yours ever,

N. B.

1057. To Richard Belgrave Hoppner.

Genoa, Fy 27th 1823.

MY DEAR HOPPNER,-We must take what we can get; but you will tell Father Pasqual that he might have known that the value is triple what he proposed, and that I did not think him a dishonest man, when I printed at my own expence an Armenian Grammar in 1816-to

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1. Moore was toning down expressions in his Loves of the Angels, which he feared might give offence (see Appendix VI., " Byron in "Cephalonia "). In his Diary for December 27, 1822 (Memoirs, etc., vol. iv. p. 29), he notes that Lady Donegal had written, "I think you will feel I am right in not allowing Barbara to read it" (i.e. The Angels). The sentence seemed to "ring the death-knell" of his poem. "My book, then, was considered (why or wherefore it was in vain to inquire) improper, and what I thought the best, as "well as the most moral thing I had ever written, was to be doomed "to rank with the rubbish of Carlisle (sic) and Co. for ever." He at once attempted, in the fifth edition (ibid., p. 40), to "make the "Angels' completely Eastern," or, as he was advised (ibid., p. 44) to turn them "into Turks."

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oblige his Confraternity. You will take the best price you can get (would an auction do?) and remit the amount on my account to Messrs. Webb & Co., my bankers at Genoa, if possible, without expence save postage. I would take Siri's bills-at a month-or two-as they pleased. The whole Sum at present offered is 64 Sequins by the rogue of an Armenian.

I rejoice to see you in Spirits and should be glad to meet you any where on the face of the earth-even in England; but I am far from well, have had various. attacks since last summer, when I was fool enough to swim four hours-in a broiling Sun-after which all my Skin peeled off; then a fever came on, and I have never been quite right from that time-August. I am as thin as a Skeleton-thinner than you saw me at my first arrival in Venice, and thinner than yourself; there's a Climax! However, that may be temporary; but all my humours are topsy turvy-and playing the devil-now here, now there, and putting me to my patience, which is not exuberant.

Excuse haste. My best Comps to Mrs. H. Write when you like-and can-and believe me

Ever and truly yours obliged and affect!!

N. B.

1058.-To John Hunt.

Genoa, March 5th 1823.

SIR, I have received the proof of the A[ge] of Bronze] and returned it to Mr. Kinnaird. It is full (the earlier part) of the worst kind of printer's blunders viz.-transposition of the names in every direction so as to form a complete jumble. I have corrected this as well as I can; but I fear uselessly, unless the