You cannot need my assuring you that if you will entrust me with the new poems, none of the things you fear shall occur, in proof of which I ask you to enquire with yourself, whether, if a person in constant correspondence and friendship with another, yet keeps a perfect silence on one subject, she cannot do so when at enmity and at a distance. Now, I never boasted of seeing the poems first, never even told my mother I had done so, never ventured an opinion concerning them but to you, and only once I remember, when Lord Byron said he had sent them to me (which I believe was not true), did I ever speak to him of them. In short, I have so little vanity about seeing things before others, that, if it were not some curiosity and lurking interest for the Childe’s works, you might not be requested so earnestly to send them; and, as it is, take your own way—I shall not murmur. How very well written and interesting Gifford’s ‘Life’ is! How free from all affectation, and how very just his few observations! I only wish he had written more. William Lamb writes more in that style than any one. I see another ‘Life’ is coming out of Sheridan. Believe me therefore sincerely thankful for what I am going to receive—as the young lady said to a duchess when she was desired by her parents to say “Grace.”
