the dead the pain of those obligations he had, in his hour of need,
accepted from the living, I am luckily saved from the distaste of
speaking at any length, by the utter and most deserved oblivion into
which his volume has fallen. Never, indeed, was the right feeling of
the world upon such subjects more creditably displayed than in the
reception given universally to that ungenerous book;--even those the
least disposed to think approvingly of Lord Byron having shrunk back
from such a corroboration of their own opinion as could be afforded
by one who did not blush to derive his authority, as an accuser, from
those facilities of observation which he had enjoyed by having been
sheltered and fed under the very roof of the man whom he maligned.

With respect to the hostile feeling manifested in Mr. Hunt's work
towards myself, the sole revenge I shall take is, to lay before my
readers the passage in one of my letters which provoked it; and which
may claim, at least, the merit of not being a covert attack, as
throughout the whole of my remonstrances to Lord Byron on the subject
of his new literary allies, not a line did I ever write respecting
either Mr. Shelley or Mr. Hunt which I was not fully prepared, from
long knowledge of my correspondent, to find that he had instantly,
and as a matter of course, communicated to them. That this want of
retention was a fault in my noble friend, I am not inclined to deny;
but, being undisguised, it was easily guarded against, and, when
guarded against, harmless. Besides, such is the penalty generally to
be paid for frankness of character; and they who could have flattered
themselves that one so open about his own affairs as Lord Byron would
be much more discreet where the confidences of others were concerned,
would have had their own imprudence, not his, to blame for any injury
that their dependence upon his secrecy had brought on them.