were dictated.]

[Footnote 82: I had already, singularly enough, anticipated this
suggestion, by making the daughter of a Peri the heroine of one of my
stories, and detailing the love adventures of her aërial parent in an
episode. In acquainting Lord Byron with this circumstance, in my answer
to the above letter, I added, "All I ask of your friendship is--not that
you will abstain from Peris on my account, for that is too much to ask
of human (or, at least, author's) nature--but that, whenever you mean to
pay your addresses to any of these aërial ladies, you will, at once,
tell me so, frankly and instantly, and let me, at least, have my choice
whether I shall be desperate enough to go on, with such a rival, or at
once surrender the whole race into your hands, and take, for the future,
to Antediluvians with Mr. Montgomery."]

* * * * *

LETTER 135. TO MR. MOORE.

"August--September, I mean--1. 1813.

"I send you, begging your acceptance, Castellan, and three vols. on
Turkish Literature, not yet looked into. The _last_ I will thank
you to read, extract what you want, and return in a week, as they
are lent to me by that brightest of Northern constellations,
Mackintosh,--amongst many other kind things into which India has
warmed him, for I am sure your _home_ Scotsman is of a less genial
description.

"Your Peri, my dear M., is sacred and inviolable; I have no idea of