fourthly, I am not sure that he was the Queen's paramour or no, for
Robertson does not allude to this, though _Walter Scott does_, in
the list he gives of her admirers (as unfortunate) at the close of
'The Abbot.'

"I must have made all these mistakes in recollecting my mother's
account of the matter, although she was more accurate than I am,
being precise upon points of genealogy, like all the aristocratical
Scotch. She had a long list of ancestors, like Sir Lucius
O'Trigger's, most of whom are to be found in the old Scotch
Chronicles, Spalding, &c. in arms and doing mischief. I remember
well passing Loch Leven, as well as the Queen's Ferry: we were on
our way to England in 1798.

"Yours.

"You had better not publish Blackwood and the Roberts' prose,
except what regards Pope;--you have let the time slip by."

* * * * *

The Pamphlet in answer to Blackwood's Magazine, here mentioned, was
occasioned by an article in that work, entitled "Remarks on Don Juan,"
and though put to press by Mr. Murray, was never published. The writer
in the Magazine having, in reference to certain passages in Don Juan,
taken occasion to pass some severe strictures on the author's
matrimonial conduct, Lord Byron, in his reply, enters at some length
into that painful subject; and the following extracts from his
defence,--if defence it can be called, where there has never yet been
any definite charge,--will be perused with strong interest:--