I

would te thus much for me to his lordship. | bells. Mr. Hobhouse's quarto will be out immedi Though the transaction speaks plainly in itself for ately; pray send to the author for an early copy, the borrower's folly and the lender's usury, it never which I wish to take abroad with me. was my intention to quash the demand, as I legally "P. S. see the Examiner threatens some obmight, nor to withhold payment of principal, or, servations upon you next week. What can you perhaps even unlawful interest. You know what have done to share the wrath which has heretofore iny situation has been, and what it is. I have parted been principally expended upon the Prince with an estate, (which has been in my family for presume all your Scribleri will be drawn up in bat nearly three hundred years, and was never disgraced tle array in defence of the modern Tonson- Mr by being in possession of a lawyer, a churchman, or Bucke, for instance. a woman, during that period,) to liquidate this and "Send in my account to Bennet street, as I wish similar demands; and tue payment of the purchase to settle it before sailing." is still withheld, and may be, perhaps, for years. If, therefore, I am under the necessity of making those persons wait for their money, (which, considering the terms, they can afford to suffer,) it is my misfortune.

LETTER CLVI.

TO MR. MURRAY

"Maidenhead, June 13, 1813.

"When I arrived at majority in 1809, I offered my own security on legal interest, and it was refused. Now, I will not accede to this. This man I may have seen, but I have no recollection of the names I have read the 'Strictures,' which of any parties but the agents and the securities. The moment I can, it is assuredly my intention to are just enough, and not grossly abusive, in very pay my debts. This person's case may be a hard fair couplets. There is a note against Massinger one; but, under all circumstances, what is mine? near the end, and one cannot quarrel with one's I could not foresee that the purchaser of my estate company, at any rate. The author detects some was to demur in paying for it. incongruous figures in a passage of English Bards, page 23, but which edition I do not know. In the sole copy in your possession-I mean the fifth edition-you may make these alterations, that 1 may profit (though a little too late) by his remarks: For hellish instinct,' substitute brutal instinct; ' harpies' alter to felons; and for blood-hounds' write hell-hounds.'t These be 'very bitter words, by my troth,' and the alterations not much sweeter; but as I shall not publish the thing, they can do no harm, but are a satisfaction to me in the way of amendment. The passage is only twelve lines.

"I am glad it happens to be in my power so far to accommodate my Israelite, and only wish I could do as much for the rest of the Twelve Tribes. "Ever yours, dear R.

LETTER CLIV.

TO MR. MURRAY.

"BN."

"You do not answer me about H.'s book; I want to write to him, and not to say any thing unpleas"Westall has, I believe, agreed to illustrate ing. If you direct to post-office, Portsmouth, till your book, and I fancy one of the engravings will called for, I will send and receive your letter. You be from the pretty little girl you saw the other day,t never told me of the forthcoming critique on Cothough without her name, and merely as a model lumbus, which is not too fair; and I do not think for some sketch connected with the subject. I justice quite done to the Pleasures,' which surely would also have the portrait (which you saw to-day) entitle the author to a higher rank than that assigned of the friend who is mentioned in the text at the close of Canto first, and in the notes,-which are subjects sufficient to authorize that addition."

him in the Quarterly. But I must not cavil at the decisions of the invisible infallibles; and the article is very well written. The general horror of frag ments' makes me tremulous for the Giaour; but you would publish it-I presume, by this time, to your repentance. But as I consented, whatever be Early in the spring he brought out, anonymously, its fate, I won't now quarrel with you, even though his poem on Waltzing, which, though full of very I detect it in my pastry; but I shall not open a pie lively satire, fell so far short of what was now ex-without apprehension for some weeks. pected from him by the public, that the disavowal of it, which, as we see by the following letter, he thought right to put forth, found ready credence.

"The books which may be marked G. O., I will carry out. Do you know Clarke's Naufragia? I am told that he asserts the first volume of Robinson Crusoe was written by the first Lord Oxford, when in the Tower, and given by him to Defoe; if true, it is a curious anecdote. Have you got back Lord Brooke's MS.? and what does Heber say of it? Write to me at Portsmouth. "Ever yours, &c.

"N.'

LETTER CLV.

TO MR. MURRAY.

"April 21, 1813.

LETTER CLVII.

TO MR. MURRAY.

June 18, 1812

"I shall be in town by Sunday next, and will call and have some conversation on the subject of Westall's designs. I am to sit to him for a picture at the request of a friend of mine, and as Sanders's is not a good one, you will probably prefer the other. I wish you to have Sanders's taken down and sent to my lodgings immediately-before my arrival. I Will you forward the enclosed answer to the hear that a certain malicious publication on Waltz- kindest letter I ever received in my life, my sense ing is attributed to me. This report, I suppose, of which I can neither express to Mr. Gifford him you will take care to contradict, as the author, I am self nor to any one else.

sure, will not like that I should wear his cap and

•A vwait' Chlide Harold.

↑ Lady Chariots Harley, to whom, under the name of lanthe, the introdactory Enes Childe Harold were afterward addressed.

"DEAR SIR,

LETTER CLVIII.

TO W. GIFFORD, ESQ.

"June 18, 1813.

LETTER CLX.

TO MR. MOORE.

"MY DEAR SIR, "4, Benedictine street, St. James's July 8, 1813. "I feel greatly at a loss how to write to you at all into something noxious in my reply to your letter; "I presume by your silence that I have blundered -still more to thank you as I ought. If you knew for the which I beg leave to send, beforehand, the veneration with which I have ever regarded you, sweeping apology, which you may apply to any, or long before I had the most distant prospect of be-all, parts of that unfortunate epistle. If I err in coming your acquaintance, literary or personal, my my conjecture, I expect the like from you, in putembarrassment would not surprise you. "Any suggestion of yours, even were it conveyed God, he knows what I have said; but he also knows, ting our correspondence so long in quarantine in the less tender shape of the text of the Baviad, (if he is not as indifferent to mortals as the nonor a Monk Mason note in Massinger, would have chalant deities of Lucretius,) that you are the last been obeyed; I should have endeavored to improve person I want to offend. So, if I have,-why the myself by your censure: judge then if I should be devil don't you say it at once, and expectorate your less willing to profit by your kindness. It is not spleen?

my betters:

for me to bandy compliments with my elders and "Rogers is out of town with Madame de Stafl, receive your approbation with grati- who hath published an Essay against Suicide, tude, and will not return my brass for your gold, by which, I presume, will make somebody shoot himexpressing more fully those sentiments of admira-self; as a sermon by Blinkensop, in proof of Christion, which, however sincere, would, I know, be tianity, sent a hitherto most orthodox acquaintance unwelcome. of mine out of a chapel of ease a perfect atheist.

If you

"To your advice on religious topics, I shall equal-Have you found or founded a residence yet? and ly attend. Perhaps the best way will be by avoiding have you begun or finished a Poem? them altogether. The already published objection- won't tell me what I have done, pray say what able passages have been much commented upon, you have done, or left undone, yourself. I am but certainly have been rather strongly interpreted. still in equipment for voyaging, and anxious to I am no bigot to infidelity, and did not expect that, hear from, or of, you before I go, which anxiety because I doubted the immortality of man, I should you should remove more readily, as you think be charged with denying the existence of a God. shan't cogitate about you afterward. I shall give It was the comparative insignificance of ourselves the lie to that calumny by fifty foreign letters, par and our world, when placed in comparison with the ticularly from any place where the plague is rife,mighty whole, of which it is an atom, that first led without a drop of vinegar or a whiff of sulphur to me to imagine that our pretensions to eternity save you from infection. Pray write: I am sorry to might be overrated. # say that*

This, and being early disgusted with a Calvan- The Oxfords have sailed almost a fortnight, istic Scotch school, when I was cudgelled to church, and my sister is in town, which is a great comfortfor the first ten years of my life, afflicted me with for, never having been much together, we are natthis malady; for, after all, it is, I believe, a disease urally more attached to each other. I presume the of the mind as much as other kinds of hypochon- illuminations have conflagrated to Derby (or wher dria."

ever you are) by this time. We are just recovering from tumult, and train oil, and transparent fripperies, and all the noise and nonsense of victory. Drury Lane had a large M. W. which some thought was Marshal Wellington; others that it might be translated into Manager Whitbread; while the ladies of the vicinity and the saloon conceived the last letter to be complimentary to themselves. I leave this to the commentators to illuminate. I you don't answer this, I shan't say what you deserve, but I think I deserve a reply. Do you conceive there is no Post-Bag but the Twopenny? Sunburn me, if you are not too bad."

LETTER CLXI.

TO MR. MOORE.

"July 13, 1813

"Murray, the aval of publishers, the Anac of "Your letter set me at ease; for I really thought stationers, has a design upon you in the paper line. (as I hear of your susceptibility) that I had said-I He wants you to become the staple and stipendiary know not what-but something I should have been editor of a periodical work. What say you? Will very sorry for, had it, or I, offended you; though I you be bound, like Kit Smart, to write for ninety- don't see how a man with a beautiful wife, his own nine years in the Universal Visiter?' Seriously, he children, quiet, fame, competency, and friends, (I talks of hundreds a year, and-though I hate prat- will vouch for a thousand, which is more than I will ing of the beggerly elements-his proposal may be for a unit in my own behalf,) can be offended with to your honor and profit, and, I am very sure, will any thing. be to our pleasure.

"Do you know, Moore, I am amazingly inclined

"I don't know what to say about 'friendship.' I-remember I say but inclined to be seriously never was in friendship but once, in my nineteenth enamored with Lady A. F.-but this has ruined year, and then it gave me as much trouble as love. all my prospects. However, you know her; is she I am afraid, as Whitbread's sire said to the king, clever, or sensible, or good-tempered? either would when he wanted to knight him, that I am too old do I scratch out the will. I don't ask as to her but, nevertheless, no one wishes you more friends, beauty, that I see; but my circumstances are mend fame, and felicity, than "Yours, &c." ing, and were not my other prospects blackening, I

would take a wife, and that should be the woman, the one hundred and fifty left alive, and they are had I a chance. I do not yet know her much, but for the Town's-end (query, might not Falstaff mean better than I did. the Bow-street officer? I dare say Malone's post "I want to get away, but find difficulty in com- humous edition will have it so) for life. passing a passage in a ship of war. They had bet- "Since I wrote last, I have been into the country. ter let me go; if I cannot, patriotism is the word-I journeyed by night-no incident or accident, but nay, an' they'll mouth, I'll rant as well as they.' an alarm on the part of ray valet on the outside, Now, what are you doing? writing, we all hope, for who, in crossing Epping Forest, actually, I believe, our own sakes. Remember you must edit my flung down his purse before a mile-stone, with a posthumous works, with a Life of the Author, for glowworm in the second figure of number XIX.which I will send you Confessions, dated 'Lazaret- mistaking it for a footpad and dark lantern. I can to, Smyrna, Malta, or Palermo-one can die any only attribute his fears to a pair of new pistols, where. wherewith I had armed him; and he thought it

There is to be a thing on Tuesday ycleped a necessary to display his vigilance by calling out to national fête. The Regent and * are to be me whenever we passed any thing-no matter there, and every body else, who has shillings enough whether moving or stationary. Conceive ten miles, for what was once a guinea. Vauxhall is the scene with a tremor every furlong. I have scribbled you -there are six tickets issued for the modest women, a fearfully long letter. This sheet must be blank, and it is supposed there will be three to spare. The and is merely a wrapper, to preclude the tabellapassports for the lax are beyond my arithmetic. rians of the post from peeping. You once com "P. S. The Staël last night attacked me most plained of my not writing;-I will heap coals of furiously-said that I had no right to make love-fire upon your head' by not complaining of your not that I had used ✦✦ barbarously-that I had no reading. Ever, my dear Moore, your'n, (isn't that the Staffordshire termination ?) feeling, and was totally insensible to la belle passion, and had been all my life.' I am very glad to hear it, but did not know it before. Let me hear from you anon."

"BYRON

LETTER CLXII.

TO MR. MOORE.

"July 25, 1813.

LETTER CLXIII.

TO MR. MOORE.

"July 27, 1813.

"When you next imitate the style of Tacitus,' I am not well versed enough in the ways of sin- pray add, de moribus Germanorum;'-this last was a piece of barbarous silence, and could only be gle women to make much matrimonial progress. * * "I have been dining like the dragon of Wantley entirely to your sylvan sequestration at Mayfield taken from the Woods, and, as such, I attribute it for this last week. My head aches with the vintage of various cellars, and my brains are muddled as that you are my debtor by several sheets and one You will find, on casting up accounts, Cottage. their dregs. I met your friends, the D**s: she sung one of your best songs so well, that, but for epistle. I shall bring my action ;-if you don't discharge, expect to hear from my attorney. I have the appearance of affectation, I could have cried; forwarded your letter to Ruggiero; but don't make be reminds me of Hunt, but handsomer, and more postman of me again, for fear I should be tempted musical in soul, perhaps. I wish to God he may to violate your sanctity of wax or wafer.

conquer his horrible anomalous complaint. The
upper part of her face is beautiful, and she seeme
much attached to her husband. He is right, nev
ertheless, in leaving this nauseous town.
winter would infallibly destroy her complexion, and
the second, very probably every thing else.

The first

"I must tell you a story. M ** (of indifferent memory) was dining out the other day, and complaining of the Prince's coldness to his old wassailers. D (a learned Jew) bored him with questions-why thus? and why that? Why did the Prince act thus? Why, sir, on account of Lord *, who ought to be ashamed of himself! And why ought Lord to be ashamed of himself? 'Because the Prince, sir, *

·

"Believe me ever yours, indignantly,

LETTER CLXIV.

TO MR. MOORE.

"BN.

"July, B, 1915.

"Can't you be satisfied with the pangs of my jealousy of Rogers, without actually making me the pander of your epistolary intrigue? This is the second letter you have enclosed to my address, And why, sir, did the Prince cut you?' 'Because, notwithstanding a miraculous long answer, and a G-d d-mme, sir, I stuck to my principles.' 'And subsequent one or two of your own. If you do so why did you stick to your principles?' again, I can't tell to what pitch my fury may soar. Is not this last question the best that ever was I shall send you verse or arsenic, as likely as any put, when you consider to whom? It nearly killed thing,-four thousand couplets on sheets beyond M. Perhaps you may think it stupid, but, as the privilege of franking; that privilege, sir, of Goldsmith said about the peas, it was a very good which you take an undue advantage over a too ioke when I heard it-as I did from an ear-witness susceptible senator, by forwarding your lucubrations -and is only spoiled in my narration. to every one but himself. I wont frank from you, "The season has closed with a Dandy Ball;-but or for you, or to you, may I be cursed if I do, unless I have dinners with the Harrowbys, Rogers, and you mend your manners. I disown you-I disclaim Frere and Mackintosh, where I shall drink your you-and by all the powers of Eulogy, I will write health in a silent bumper, and regret your absence a panegyric upon you-or dedicate a quarto-if you till 100 much canaries wash away my memory, don't make me ample amends.

or render it superfluous by a vision of you at the "P. S. I am in training to dine with Sheridan opposite side of the table. Canning has disbanded and Rogers this evening. I have a little spite his party by a speech from his against R., and will shed his Clary wines pottle the true throne of a Tory. Conceive his turning deep.' This is nearly my ultimate or penultimate them off in a formal harangue, and bidding them letter; for I am quite equipped, and only wit a *hink for themselves. I have led my ragamuffins passage. Perhaps I may wait a few weeks tow where they are well peppered. There are but three of Sligo; but not if I can help it."

I was honored with your unexpected and very obliging letter when on the point of leaving Lon- day." don, which prevented me from acknowledging my obligation as quickly as I felt it sincerely. I am endeavoring all in my power to be ready before Saturday; and even if I should not succeed, I can only blame my own tardiness, which will not the less enhance the benefit I have lost. I have only to add my hope of forgiveness for all my trespasses on your time and patience, and with my best wishes for your public and private welfare, I have the honor to be, most truly,

Your obliged and most obedient servant,
BYRON."

P.S. I leave this to your discretion: if any nage, and, after a long struggle between the body thinks the old line a good one, or the cheese a natural desire of destroying one's fe low-creatures, bad one, don't accept either. But, in that case, and the dislike of seeing men play the fool for the word share is repeated soon after in the line

similar mistakes.

nothing,-I got one to make an apology, and the other to take it, and left them to live happy ever after. One was a peer, the other a friend untitled, and both fond of high play;-and one, I can swear for, though very mild, no fearful,' and so dead a shot, that, though the other is the thinnest of men, he would have split him like a cane. They both conducted themselves very well, and I put them out of pain as soon as I could.

There is an American Life of G. F. Cooke, Scurra deceased, lately published. Such a book !—İ believe, since Drunken Barnaby's Journal, nothing like it has drenched the press. All green-room and tap-room-drams and the drama-brandy, whiskeypunch, and, latterly, toddy, overflow every page should live so long drunk, and, next, that he should Two things are rather marvellous-first, that a man have found a sober biographer. There are some very laughable things in it, nevertheless :-but the pints he swallowed, and the parts he performed, are

"I have received and read the British Review. I too regularly registered. really think the writer in most points very right.

"All this time you wonder that I am not gone: The only mortifying thing is the accusation of so do I; but the accounts of the plague are very imitation. Crabbe's passage I never saw, and Scott perplexing-not so much for the thing itself as the I no further meant to follow than in his lyric quarantine established in all ports, and from all It is true the forty or measure, which is Gray's, Milton's, and any one's places, even from England.

my account."

you

who likes it. The Giaour' is certainly a bad sixty days would, in all probability, be as foolishly character, but not dangerous; and I think his fate spent on shore as in the ship; but one likes to have one's choice, nevertheless. Town is awfully empty; and his feelings will meet with few proselytes. shall be very glad to hear from or of but not the worse for that. I am really puzzled with when you, please; but don't put yourself out of your way on my perfect ignorance of what I mean to do;-not stay, if I can help it, but where to go? Sligo is for the North,-a pleasant place, Petersburgh, in September, with one's ears and nose in a muff or else tumbling into one's neckcloth or pocket hand kerchief! If the winter treated Bonaparte with so little ceremony, what would it inflict upon your solitary traveller? give me a sun, I care not how hot, and sherbet, care not how cool, and my Heaven is as easily made as your Persian's. The Giaour is now one thousand and odd lines. Lord Fanny spins a thousand such a day,' eh, Moore ? thou wilt needs be a wag, but I forgive it. "Yours ever, "BN."

LETTER CLXIX.

TO MR. MOORE.

"Bennet street, Aug. 22, 1813.

"As our late-I might say, deceased-correspondence had too much of the town-life leaven in it, we will now paulo majora,' prattle a little of literature in all its branches; and first of the first- "P. S. I perceive I have written a flippant and criticism. The Prince is at Brighton, and Jackson, rather cold-hearted letter: let it go, however. I the boxer, gone to Margate, having, I believe, have said nothing, either, of the brilliant sex; but decoyed Yarmouth to see a milling in that polite the fact is, I am at this moment, in a far more serineighborhood. Made. de Stael Holstein has lost ous, and entirely new scrape than any of the last one of her young barons, who has been carbona- twelvemonth,-and that is saying a good deal. doed by a vile Teutonic adjutant,-kilt and killed It is unlucky we can neither live with or without in a coffee-house at Scrawsenhawsen. Corinne is, these women. of course, what all mothers must be,-but will, Í "I am now thinking and regretting that just as I venture to prophesy, do what few mothers could have left Newstead, you reside near it. Did you write an Essay upon it. She can not exist without ever see it? do-but don't tell me that you like it. a grievance and somebody to see, or read, how If I had known of such intellectual neighborhood, I much grief becomes her. I have not seen her since don't think I should have quitted it. You could the event; but merely judge (not very charitably) have come over so often, as a bachelor,--for it was from prior observation. a thorough bachelor's mansion-plenty of wine and

"In a mail-coach copy' of the Edinburgh, such sordid sensualities-with books enough, room perceive the 'Giaour' is second article. The numbers enough, and an air of antiquity about all (except are still in the Leith smack-pray, which way is the the lasses) that would have suited you, when per wind? The said article is so very mild and senti- sive, and served you to laugh at when in glee. I mental, that it must be written by Jeffrey in love; had built myself a bath and a vault-and now 1 -you know he is gone to America to marry some shan't even be buried in it. It is odd that we can't fair one, of whom he has been for several quarters, even be certain of a grave, at least a particular one. perdument amoureur. Seriously-as Winifred Jen- I remember, when about fifteen, reading your poems kins says of Lismahago-Mr. Jeffrey (or his deputy) there,-which I can repeat almost now,-And askhas done the handsome thing by me,' and I saying all kinds of questions about the author, when I nothing. But this I will say,-if you and I had heard he was not dead according to the preface; knocked one another on the head in this quarrel, wondering if I should ever see him-and though, how he would have laughed, and what a mighty at that time, without the smallest poetical propenbad figure we should have cut in our posthumous sity myself, very much taken, as you may imagine, works. By-the-by, I was called in the other day to with that volume. Adieu-1 commit you to the mediate between two gentlemen bent upon car

See Don Juan, Canto 2., stanza zví.

"A Persian's heav'n is easily made-
'Tis but black eves and lemonade.”—Moore,