“Though I wrote to you on the 28th ultimo, I must acknowledge yours of this day, with the lines†. They are sublime, as well as beautiful, and in your very best mood and manner. They are also but too true. However, do not confound the scoundrels at the heel of the boot with their betters at the top of it. I assure you that there are some loftier spirits.
“Nothing, however, can be better than your poem, or more deserved by the Lazzaroni. They are now abhorred and disclaimed nowhere more than here. We will talk over these things (if we meet) some day, and I will recount my own adventures, some of which have been a little hazardous, perhaps.
“So, you have got the Letter on Bowles‡? I do not recollect to have said any thing of you that could offend,—certainly, nothing intentionally. As for * *, I meant him a compliment. I wrote the whole
† “Ay, down to the dust with them, slaves an they are,” &c. &c. |
‡ I had not, when I wrote, seen this pamphlet, as he supposes, but had merely heard from some friends, that his pen had “run a-muck” in it, and that I myself had not escaped a slight graze in its career. |
| A. D. 1821. | LIFE OF LORD BYRON. | 463 |
“As to Pope, I have always regarded him as the greatest name in our poetry. Depend upon it, the rest are barbarians. He is a Greek Temple, with a Gothic Cathedral on one hand, and a Turkish Mosque and all sorts of fantastic pagodas and conventicles about him. You may call Shakspeare and Milton pyramids, if you please, but I prefer the Temple of Theseus or the Parthenon to a mountain of burnt brickwork.
“The Murray has written to me but once, the day of its publication, when it seemed prosperous. But I have heard of late from England but rarely. Of Murray’s other publications (of mine), I know nothing,—nor whether he has published. He was to have done so a month ago. I wish you would do something,—or that we were together.
