“Since I wrote the enclosed a week ago, and for some weeks before, I have not had a line from you: now, I should be glad to know upon what principle of common or uncommon feeling, you leave me without any information but what I derive from garbled gazettes in English, and abusive ones in Italian (the Germans hating me, as a coal-heaver), while all this kick-up has been going on about the play? You shabby fellow!!! Were it not for two letters from Douglas Kinnaird, I should have been as ignorant as you are negligent.
“So, I hear Bowles has been abusing Hobhouse? if that’s the case, he has broken the truce, like Morillo’s successor, and I will cut him out, as Cochrane did the Esmeralda.
“Since I wrote the enclosed packet, I have completed (but
not copied out) four acts of a new tragedy. When I have finished the fifth, I will copy it out. It is on the
subject of ‘Sardanapalus,’ the last king
of the Assyrians. The words Queen and Pavilion occur, but it is not an allusion to his Britannic Majesty, as you may
tremulously imagine. This you will one day see (if I finish it), as I have made
Sardanapalus
brave (though voluptuous, as history represents him), and also as
amiable as my poor
| A. D. 1821. | LIFE OF LORD BYRON. | 489 |
