Letters and Journals of Lord Byron
Lord Byron to Percy Bysshe Shelley, 12 December 1821
“Enclosed is a note for you from ——. His reasons are all very true, I dare say, and it
might and may be of personal inconvenience to us. But that does not appear to me to be a
reason to allow a being to be burnt without trying to save him. To save him by any means
but remonstrance, is of course out of the question; but I do not
see why a temperate remonstrance should hurt any one. Lord Guilford is the man, if he would undertake it. He
knows the Grand Duke personally, and might, perhaps, prevail upon him to interfere. But,
as he goes to-morrow, you must be quick, or it will be useless. Make any use of my name
that you please.
“Yours ever, &c.”
Frederick North, fifth earl of Guilford (1766-1827)
Son of the prime minister; he was governor of Ceylon (1798-1805) and an enthusiastic
philhellene who founded the Ionian University at Corfu. He succeeded to the title in
1817.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
English poet, with Byron in Switzerland in 1816; author of
Queen
Mab (1813),
The Revolt of Islam (1817),
The Cenci and
Prometheus Unbound (1820), and
Adonais (1821).
John Taaffe (1787-1862)
The son of John Taaffe of Smarmore Castle, Co. Louth in Ireland; he was the translator of
Dante and companion of Shelley and Byron in Italy, where he died in 1862.
