“Besides this letter, you will receive three packets, containing, in all, 18 more sheets of Memoranda, which, I fear, will cost you more in postage
than they will ever produce by being printed in the next century. Instead of waiting so
long, if you could make any thing of them
| A. D. 1820. | LIFE OF LORD BYRON. | 383 |
“Over these latter sheets I would leave you a discretionary power*; because they contain, perhaps, a thing or two which is too sincere for the public. If I consent to your disposing of their reversion now, where would be the harm? Tastes may change. I would, in your case, make my essay to dispose of them, not publish, now; and if you (as is most likely) survive me, add what you please from your own knowledge; and, above all, contradict any thing, if I have mis-stated; for my first object is the truth, even at my own expense.
“I have some knowledge of your countryman, Muley Moloch, the lecturer. He wrote to me several letters upon Christianity, to convert me; and, if I had not been a Christian already, I should probably have been now, in consequence. I thought there was something of wild talent in him, mixed with a due leaven of absurdity,—as there must be in all talent, let loose upon the world, without a martingale.
The ministers seem still to persecute the Queen * * * * * * * but they won’t go out, the sans of b—es. Damn Reform—I want a place—what say you? You must applaud the honesty of the declaration, whatever you may think of the intention.
“I have quantities of paper in England, original and translated—tragedy, &c. &c. and am now copying out a Fifth Canto of Don Juan, 149 stanzas. So that there will be near three thin Albemarle, or two thick volumes of all sorts of my Muses. I mean to plunge thick, too, into the contest upon Pope, and to lay about me like a dragon till I make manure of * * * for the top of Parnassus.
“Those rogues are right—we do laugh at t’others—eh?—don’t we†?
* The power here meant is that of omitting passages that might be thought objectionable. He afterwards gave me this, as well as every other right, over the whole of the manuscript. † He here alludes to a humorous article, of which I had told him, in Blackwood’s Magazine, where the poets of the day were all grouped together in a variety of fantastic shapes, with “Lord Byron and little Moore laughing behind, as if they would split,” at the rest of the fraternity. |
| 384 | NOTICES OF THE | A. D. 1820. |
“If there are any acquaintances of mine, salute them. The priests here are trying to persecute me,—but no matter.
