a fearfully long letter. This sheet must be blank, and is merely a wrapper, to preclude the tabellarians of the post from peeping. You once complained of my not writing;-I will 'heap coals of fire upon your head' by not complaining of your not reading.—Ever, my dear Moore, your'n (isn't that the Staffordshire termination ?), BYRON.

TO MR. MOORE

July 27, 1813.

When you next imitate the style of Tacitus, pray clxxxiii add, de moribus Germanorum ;-this last was a piece of barbarous silence, and could only be taken from the Woods, and, as such, I attribute it entirely to your sylvan sequestration at Mayfield Cottage. You will find on casting up accounts, that you are my debtor by several sheets and one epistle. I shall bring my action;—if you don't discharge, expect to hear from my attorney. I have forwarded your letter to Ruggiero; but don't make a postman of me again, for fear I should be tempted to violate your sanctity of wax or wafer.-Believe me ever yours indignantly,

BN.

TO MR. MOORE

July 28, 1813.

Can't you be satisfied with the pangs of my clxxxiv jealousy of Rogers, without actually making me the pander of your epistolary intrigue? This is the second letter you have enclosed to my address, notwithstanding a miraculous long answer, and a subsequent short one or two of your own.

If you do

so again, I can't tell to what pitch my fury may soar. I shall send you verse or arsenic, as likely as anything,-four thousand couplets on sheets beyond the privilege of franking; that privilege, sir, of which you take an undue advantage over a too susceptible senator, by forwarding your lucubrations to every one but himself. I won't frank from you, or for you, or to you-may I be curst if I do, unless you mend your manners. I disown you--I disclaim you —and by all the powers of Eulogy, I will write a panegyric upon you-or dedicate a quarto-if you don't make me ample amends.

P.S.-I am in training to dine with Sheridan and Rogers this evening. I have a little spite against R., and will shed his 'Clary wines pottle-deep.' This is nearly my ultimate or penultimate letter; for I am quite equipped, and only wait a passage. Perhaps I may wait a few weeks for Sligo, but not if I can help it.

clxxxv

TO MR. CROKER

Bt. Str., August 2, 1813. Dear Sir, I was honoured with your unexpected and very obliging letter, when on the point of leaving London, which prevented me from acknowledging my obligation as quickly as I felt it sincerely. I am endeavouring 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 honour to be, most truly, your obliged and most obedient servant,

BYRON.

TO MR. MURRAY

August (6), 1813.

If you send more proofs, I shall never finish this clxxxvi infernal story-Ecce signum-thirty-three more lines enclosed! to the utter discomfiture of the printer, and, I fear, not to your advantage.

TO MR. MURRAY

B.

Half-past two in the morning, Aug. 10, 1813.

Dear Sir, Pray suspend the proofs, for I am bitten clxxxvii again, and have quantities for other parts of the bravura. Yours ever,

B.

P.S.-You shall have them in the course of the

day.

TO MR. MOORE

Bennet Street, August 22, 1813.

As our late-I might say, deceased-correspond- clxxxviii ence 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-criticism. The Prince is at Brighton, and Jackson, the boxer, gone to Margate, having, I believe, decoyed Yarmouth to see a milling in that polite neighbourhood. Made. de Stael-Holstein has lost one of her young barons, who has been carbonadoed by a vile Teutonic adjutant,-kilt and killed in a coffee-house at Scrawsenhawsen. Corinne is, of course, what all mothers must be, but will, I venture to prophesy, do what

few mothers could-write an Essay upon it. She cannot exist without a grievance and somebody to see, or read, how much grief becomes her. I have not seen her since the event; but merely judge (not very charitably) from prior observation.

In a 'mail-coach copy' of the Edinburgh, I perceive The Giaour is second article. The numbers are still in the Leith smack-pray which way is the wind? The said article is so very mild and sentimental, that it must be written by Jeffrey in love;— you know he is gone to America to marry some fair one, of whom he has been, for several quarters, éperdument amoureux. Seriously--as Winifred Jenkins says of Lismahago-Mr. Jeffrey (or his deputy) 'has done the handsome thing by me,' and I say nothing. But this I will say, if you and I had knocked one another on the head in this quarrel, how he would have laughed, and what a mighty bad figure we should have cut in our posthumous works. By-the

by, I was call'd in the other day to mediate between two gentlemen bent upon carnage, and,—after a long struggle between the natural desire of destroying one's fellow-creatures, and the dislike of seeing men play the fool for 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, 'not 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!-I believe, since Drunken Barnaby's Journal, nothing like it has drenched the press. All green-room and taproom-drams and the drama-brandy, whisky-punch, and, latterly, toddy, overflow every page. Two things are rather marvellous: first, that a man should live so long drunk, and, next, that he should 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 too regularly registered.

All this time you wonder I am not gone; so do I; but the accounts of the plague are very perplexing— not so much for the thing itself as the quarantine established in all ports, and from all places, even from England. It is true, the forty or sixty days would, in all probability, be as foolishly spent on shore as in the ship; but one likes to have one's choice, nevertheless. Town is awfully empty; but not the worse for that. I am really puzzled with 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-kandkerchief! If the winter treated Buonaparte with so little ceremony, what would it inflict upon your solitary traveller?— Give me a sun, I care not how hot, and sherbet, I care not how cool, and my Heaven is as easily made as your Persian's. The Giaour is now a thousand and odd lines. 'Lord Fanny spins a thousand such