conservative, and loses no opportunity, whether in the House of
Lords or in private circles, of denouncing and repudiating the
mischievous and anarchical notions of his earlier day. Nor does he
fail to visit similar sins in other people with the sincerest
vengeance which his somewhat blunted pen is capable of inflicting.
Southey and he are on the most intimate terms. You are aware that,
some little time before the death of Moore, Byron caused that
brilliant but reprehensible man to be evicted from his house. Moore
took the insult so much to heart that, it is said to have been one
great cause of the fit of illness which brought him to the grave.
Others pretend that the lyrist died in a very happy state of mind,
singing one of his own sacred melodies, and expressing his belief
that it would be heard within the gate of paradise, and gain him
instant and honorable admittance. I wish he may have found it so.

I failed not, as you may suppose, in the course of conversation with
Lord Byron, to pay the weed of homage due to a mighty poet, by
allusions to passages in Childe Harold, and Manfred, and Don Juan,
which have made so large a portion of the music of my life. My
words, whether apt or otherwise, were at least warm with the
enthusiasm of one worthy to discourse of immortal poesy. It was
evident, however, that they did not go precisely to the right spot.
I could perceive that there was some mistake or other, and was not a
little angry with myself, and ashamed of my abortive attempt to
throw back, from my own heart to the gifted author's ear, the echo
of those strains that have resounded throughout the world. But by
and by the secret peeped quietly out. Byron,--I have the
information from his own lips, so that you need not hesitate to
repeat it in literary circles,--Byron is preparing a new edition of
his complete works, carefully corrected, expurgated, and amended, in