Of late years, to dispense with Cocker's rigours,
And grow quite figurative with their figures.

XCIX

The poets of arithmetic are they

Who, though they prove not two and two to be Five, as they might do in a modest way,

Have plainly made it out that four are three,
Judging by what they take, and what they pay.
The Sinking Fund's unfathomable sea,

That most unliquidating liquid, leaves
The debt unsunk, yet sinks all it receives.

C

While Adeline dispensed her airs and graces,

The fair Fitz-Fulke seem'd very much at ease; Though too well bred to quiz men to their faces, Her laughing blue eyes with a glance could seize The ridicules of people in all places

That honey of your fashionable bees-
And store it up for mischievous enjoyment;
And this at present was her kind employment.

CI

However, the day closed, as days must close;
The evening also waned — and coffee came.
Each carriage was announced, and ladies rose,
And curtsying off, as curtsies country dame,
Retired with most unfashionable bows
Their docile esquires also did the same,

Delighted with their dinner and their host,
But with the Lady Adeline the most.

CII

Some praised her beauty; others her great grace;
The warmth of her politeness, whose sincerity
Was obvious in each feature of her face,

Whose traits were radiant with the rays of verity. Yes; she was truly worthy her high place!

No one could envy her deserved prosperity. And then her dress - what beautiful simplicity Draperied her form with curious felicity!

CIII

Meanwhile sweet Adeline deserved their praises,
By an impartial indemnification

For all her past exertion and soft phrases,

In a most edifying conversation,

Which turn'd upon their late guests' miens and faces,

And families, even to the last relation;

Their hideous wives, their horrid selves and dresses, And truculent distortion of their tresses.

CIV

True, she said little-'t was the rest that broke
Forth into universal epigram;

But then 't was to the purpose what she spoke:

Like Addison's "faint praise," so wont to damn, Her own but served to set off every joke,

As music chimes in with a melodrame.

How sweet the task to shield an absent friend!
I ask but this of mine, to not defend.

TO JOHN MURRAY1

GENOA, 10bre 25, 1822.

I HAD sent you back the Quarterly, without perusal, having resolved to read no more reviews, good, bad, or indifferent; but "who can control his fate?" Galignani, to whom my English studies are confined, has forwarded a copy of at least one-half of it, in his indefatigable Catchpenny weekly compilation; and as, "like Honour, it came unlooked for," I have looked through it. I must say that, upon the whole, that is, the whole of the half which I have read (for the other half is to be the Segment of Gal.'s next week's Circular), it is extremely handsome, and anything but unkind or unfair.2 As I take the good in good part, I must not, nor will not, quarrel with the bad what the Writer says of Don Juan is harsh, but it is inevitable. He must follow, or at least not directly oppose, the opinion of a prevailing, and yet not very firmly

:

1 Murray being no longer Byron's publisher, this is the last letter written to him during Byron's residence in Italy. His correspondence from Greece also was mainly with other friends or with business agents.

2 The review of Byron's Dramas was written by Bishop Heber "Even the Mystery of Cain, wicked as it may be, is the work of a nobler and more daring wickedness than that which delights in insulting the miseries, and stimulating the evil passions, and casting a cold-blooded ridicule over all the lofty and generous feelings of our nature; and it is better that Lord Byron should be a manichee, or a deist,- nay, we would almost say, if the thing were possible, it is better that he should be a moral and argumentative atheist, than the professed and systematic poet of seduction, adultery, and incest: the contemner of patriotism, the insulter of piety, the raker into every sink of vice and wretchedness to disgust and degrade and harden the hearts of his fellow-creatures.” —Quarterly Review, vol. xxvii. p. 477.

seated, party: a review may and will direct and "turn awry" the Currents of opinion, but it must not directly oppose them. Don Juan will be known by and bye, for what it is intended,—a Satire on abuses of the present states of Society, and not an eulogy of vice: it may be now and then voluptuous: I can't help that. Ariosto is worse; Smollett (see Lord Strutwell in vol. 2d of R[oderick] R[andom]) ten times worse; and Fielding no better. No Girl will ever be seduced by reading D. J.: no, no; she will go to Little's poems and Rousseau's romans for that, or even to the immaculate De Staël: they will encourage her, and not the Don, who laughs at that, and-and-most other things. most other things. But never mind

Ça ira!

And now to a less agreeable topic, of which pars magna es you Murray of Albemarle S and the other Murray of Bridge Street" Arcades Ambo" (" Murrays both") “et cant-are pares": ye, I say, between you, are the Causes of the prosecution of John Hunt, Esqre on account of the Vision. You, by sending him an incorrect copy, and the other, by his function. Egad, but H.'s Counsel will lay it on you with a trowel for your tergiversifying as to the MSS., etc., whereby poor H. (and, for anything I know, myself — I am willing enough) is likely to be impounded. Now, do you see what you and your friends do by your injudicious rudeness? actually cement a sort of

1 John Hunt, prosecuted and convicted for publishing The Vision of Judgment, was ordered to pay a fine of £100 and to find sureties, and, in default, to be imprisoned in the custody of the Marshal of the Marshalsea. The fine was paid, and the sureties provided.