exception of two agues, both of which I quickly got over.

My plans will so much depend on circumstances, that I shall not venture to lay down an opinion on the subject. My prospects are not very promising, but I suppose we shall wrestle through life like our neighbours; indeed, by Hanson's last advices, I have some apprehension of finding Newstead dismantled by Messrs. Brothers, etc., and he seems determined to force me into selling it; but he will be baffled. I don't suppose I shall be much pestered with visitors; but if I am, you must receive them, for I am determined to have nobody breaking in upon my retirement: you know that I was never fond of society, and I am less so than before. I have brought you a shawl, and a quantity of attar of roses, but these I must smuggle, if possible. I trust to find my library in tolerable order.

Fletcher is no doubt arrived. I shall separate the mill from Mr. B's farm, for his son is too gay a deceiver to inherit both, and place Fletcher in it, who has served me faithfully, and whose wife is a good woman; besides, it is necessary to sober young Mr. B, or he will people the parish with bastards. In a word, if he had seduced a dairy-maid, he might have found something like an apology; but the girl is his equal, and in high life or low life reparation is made in such circumstances. But I shall not interfere further than (like Buonaparte) by dismembering Mr. B.'s kingdom, and erecting part of it into a principality for field-marshal Fletcher! I hope you govern my little empire and its sad load of

national debt with a wary hand. To drop my metaphor, I beg leave to subscribe myself, yours BYRON.

ever,

P.S.-July 14.-This letter was written to be sent from Portsmouth, but, on arriving there, the squadron was ordered to the Nore, from whence I shall forward it. This I have not done before, supposing you might be alarmed by the interval mentioned in the letter being longer than expected between our arrival in port and my appearance at Newstead.

TO MR. DALLAS

'Volage' frigate, at sea, June 28, 1811.

My dear Sir,-After two years' absence (to a day, Ixxviii on the 2nd of July, before which we shall not arrive at Portsmouth), I am retracing my way to England. I have, as you know, spent the greater part of that period in Turkey, except two months in Spain and Portugal, which were then accessible. I have seen everything most remarkable in Turkey, particularly the Troad, Greece, Constantinople, and Albania, into which last region very few have penetrated so high as Hobhouse and myself. I don't know that I have done anything to distinguish me from other voyagers, unless you will reckon my swimming from Sestos to Abydos, on May 3, 1810, a tolerable feat for a modern.

I am coming back with little prospect of pleasure at home, and with a body a little shaken by one or two smart fevers, but a spirit I hope yet unbroken.

My affairs, it seems, are considerably involved, and much business must be done with lawyers, colliers, farmers, and creditors. Now this, to a man who hates bustle as he hates a bishop, is a serious concern. But enough of my home department.

I find I have been scolding Cawthorn without a cause, as I found two parcels with two letters from you on my return to Malta. By these it appears you have not received a letter from Constantinople, addressed to Longman's, but it was of

no consequence.

My Satire it seems is in a fourth edition, a success rather above the middling run, but not much for a production which, from its topics, must be temporary, and of course be successful at first, or not at all. At this period, when I can think and act more coolly, I regret that I have written it, though I shall probably find it forgotten by all except those whom it has offended. My friend Hobhouse's Miscellany has not succeeded, but he himself writes so goodhumouredly on the subject, I don't know whether to laugh or cry with him. He met with your son at Cadiz, of whom he speaks highly.

Yours and Pratt's protégé, Blackett the cobbler, is dead, in spite of his rhymes, and is probably one of the instances where death has saved a man from damnation. You were the ruin of that poor fellow amongst you: had it not been for his patrons he might now have been in very good plight, shoe(not verse-) making: but you have made him immortal with a vengeance. I write this, supposing poetry, patronage, and strong waters to have been

the death of him. If you are in town in or about the beginning of July, you will find me at Dorant's, in Albemarle Street, glad to see you. I have an imitation of Horace's Art of Poetry ready for Cawthorn, but don't let that deter you, for I shan't inflict it upon you. You know I never read my rhymes to visitors. I shall quit town in a few days for Notts, and thence to Rochdale. I shall send this the moment we arrive in harbour, that is a week hence.Yours ever sincerely, BYRON.

TO MR. HENRY DRURY

'Volage' frigate, off Ushant,
July 7, 1811.

My dear Drury,-After two years' absence (on the Ixxix 2nd) and some odd days I am approaching your country; the day of our arrival you will see by the outside date of my letter; at present we are becalmed comfortably close to Brest Harbour; I have never been so near it since I left Duck Puddle. The enclosed letter is from a friend of yours, Surgeon Tucker, whom I met with in Greece, and so on to Malta, where he administered to me for three complaints, viz., a a Tertian fever, and the Hemorrhoides, all of which I literally had at once, though he assured me the morbid action of only one of these distempers could act at a time, which was a great comfort, though they relieved one another as regularly as sentinels, and very nearly sent me back to Acheron, my old acquaintance, which I left fine and flowing in Albania. We left Malta thirty-four days ago, and

• ,

(except the Gut of Gibraltar, which we passed with an easterly wind as easy as an oil Glyster) we have had a tedious passage out.

You have never written, this comes of matrimony; Hodgson has, so you see the balance of friendship is on the bachelor's side. I am at present well; that is, I have only two out of the three aforesaid complaints, and these I hope to be cured of, as they say one's native fogs are vastly salubrious.

You will either see or hear from or of me soon after the receipt of this, as I pass through town to repair my irreparable affairs, and thence I must go to Notts and raise rents, and to Lancs and sell collieries, and back to London and pay debts, for it seems I shall neither have coals or comfort till I go down to Rochdale in person. I have brought home some marbles for Hobhouse, and for myself 'four ancient Athenian skulls dug out of Sarcophagi,' a 'phial of Attic Hemlock,' 'four live tortoises,' a greyhound (died on the passage), two live Greek servants, one an Athenian, tother a Yaniote, who can speak nothing but Romaic and Italian, and myself, as Moses in the Vicar of Wakefield says slily, and I may say it too, for I have as little cause to boast of my expedition as he of his to the fair. I wrote to you from the Cyanaean Rocks, to tell you I had swum from Sestos to Abydos; have you received my letter? . . . Hobhouse went to England to fish up his Miscellany, which foundered (so he tells me) in the Gulph of Lethe. I dare say it capsized with the vile goods of his contributory friends, for his own share was very portable. However, I hope he will either weigh up