The following is the passage, which Lord Byron, as I take for
granted, showed to Mr. Hunt, and to which one of his letters to
myself (February 20.) refers:--

"I am most anxious to know that you mean to emerge out of the
Liberal. It grieves me to urge any thing so much against Hunt's
interest; but I should not hesitate to use the same language to
himself, were I near him. I would, if I were you, serve him in every
possible way but this--I would give him (if he would accept of it)
the profits of the same works, published separately--but I would
_not_ mix myself up in this way with others. I would _not_ become a
partner in this sort of miscellaneous '_pot au feu_,' where the bad
flavour of one ingredient is sure to taint all the rest. I would be,
if I were _you_, alone, single-handed, and, as such, invincible."

While on the subject of Mr. Hunt, I shall avail myself of the
opportunity it affords me of introducing some portions of a letter
addressed to a friend of that gentleman by Lord Byron, in consequence
of an appeal made to the feelings of the latter on the score of his
professed "friendship" for Mr. Hunt. The avowals he here makes are, I
own, startling, and must be taken with more than the usual allowance,
not only for the particular mood of temper or spirits in which the
letter was written, but for the influence also of such slight casual
piques and resentments as might have been, just then, in their
darkening transit through his mind,--indisposing him, for the moment,
to those among his friends whom, in a sunnier mood, he would have
proclaimed as his most chosen and dearest.


LETTER 509. TO MRS. ----.