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LETTERS, DUTIFUL, BUT MASTERFUL

31

to a Lawyer for the prosecution of a Scoundrel, a late Servant.

(1807, April 19. Letter 72, to John Hanson, Vol. I., p. 128.)

I have no beds for the Hansons or any body else at present. The Hansons sleep at Mansfield. I do not know that I resemble Jean Jacques Rousseau. I have no ambition to be like so illustrious a madman -but this I know, that I shall live in my own manner, and as much alone as possible. When my rooms are ready, I shall be glad to see you; at present it would be improper, and uncomfortable to both parties. You can hardly object to my rendering my mansion habitable, notwithstanding my departure for Persia in March (or May at farthest), since you will be tenant till my return; and in case of any accident (for I have already arranged my will to be drawn up the moment I am twenty-one), I have taken care you shall have the house and manor for life, besides a sufficient income. So you see my improvements are not entirely selfish.

(1808, October 7, Newstead Abbey. Letter 100, to his Mother, Vol. I., p. 192.)

If you please, we will forget the things you mention. have no desire to remember them. When my rooms are finished, I shall be happy to see you; as I tell but the truth, you will not suspect me of evasion. I am furnishing the house more for you than myself, and I shall establish you in it before I sail for India, which I expect

to do in March, if nothing particularly obstructive

occurs.

(1808, November 2, Newstead Abbey. Letter 101, to his Mother, Vol. I., p. 194.)

I am living here alone, which suits my inclinations better than society of any kind. Mr Byron I have shaken off for two years, and I shall not resume her yoke in future, I am afraid my disposition will suffer in your estimation; but I can never forgive that woman, or breathe in comfort under the same roof.

I am a very unlucky fellow, for I think I had naturally not a bad heart; but it has been so bent, twisted, and trampled on, that it has now become as hard as a Highlander's heelpiece.

(1808, November 30. Letter 105, to the Hon.

Augusta Leigh, Vol. I., p. 203.)

I trust you like Newstead, and agree with your neighbours; but you know you are a vixen-is not that a dutiful appellation? Pray, take care of my books and several boxes of papers in the hands of Joseph; and pray leave me a few bottles of champagne to drink, for I am very thirsty ;-but I do not insist on the last article, without you like it. like it. I suppose you have your house full of silly women, prating scandalous things. Have you ever received my picture in oils from Sanders, London? It has been paid for these sixteen months: why do you not get it?

(1810, July 25, Athens. Letter 144, to his

Mother, Vol. I., p. 291.)

GRAY'S GREAT DISCOVERY

33

My poor mother died yesterday! and I am on my way from town to attend her to the family vault. I heard one day of her illness, the next of her death. Thank God her last moments were most tranquil. I am told she was in little pain, and not aware of her situation. I now feel the truth of Mr Gray's observation, "That we can only have one mother." Peace be with her! I have to thank you for your expressions of regard. If it will be any satisfaction, I have to inform you that in November next the editor of the Scourge will be tried for two different libels on the late Mr B. [accusing her of drunken habits and her son, Lord Byron, of being illegitimate] and myself (the decease of Mrs B. makes no difference in the proceedings); and as he is guilty, by his very foolish and unfounded assertion of a breach of privilege, he will be prosecuted with the utmost rigour.

I inform you of this, as you seem interested in the affair, which is now in the hands of the Attorney-General [who gave his opinion against legal proceedings, on the two grounds that a considerable time had elapsed since the publication, and that Byron himself had provoked the attack by an onslaught on Hewson Clarke, the editor, made in English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers.]

(1811, August 2. Letter 159, to John M. B. Pigot, Vol. I., p. 320.)

I trust that the decease of Mrs B. will not interrupt the prosecution of the Editor of the Magazine, less for the mere punishment of the rascal,

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than to set the question at rest, which, with the ignorant and weak-minded, might leave a wrong impression. I will have no stain on the Memory of my Mother; with a very large portion of foibles and irritability, she was without a vice (and in these days that is much). The laws of my country shall do her and me justice in the first instance; but, if they were deficient, the laws of modern Honour should decide. Cost what it may, Gold or blood, I will pursue to the last the cowardly calumniator of an absent man and a defenceless woman.

(1811, August 4. Letter 160, to John Hanson, Vol. I., p. 323.)

(3) His Pride and Quickness of Temper, as shown in a Propensity for Quarrelling and Duelling

I am concerned to be obliged again to trouble you, as I had hoped that our conversations had terminated amicably. Your good Father, it seems, has desired otherwise; he has just sent me a most agreeable epistle, in which I am honoured with the appellations of unfeeling and ungrateful. [The quarrel between Byron and the Leacroft family arose out of certain attentions paid by Byron to Miss Julia Leacroft. But as the consequences of all this must ultimately fall on you and myself, I merely write this to apprise you that the dispute is not of my seeking, and that, if we must cut each other's throats to please our relations, you will do me the justice to say it is from no personal animosity between us, or from any insult on my part, that such disagreeable events (for I am

MOORE'S HAPPY SENSE OF HONOUR

35

not so much enamoured of quarrels as to call them pleasant) have arisen.

(1807, February 4. Letter 64, to Captain John Leacroft, Vol. I., p. 115.)

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Your letter followed me from Notts to this place, which will account for the delay of my reply. Your former letter I never had the honour to receive;-be assured in whatever part of the world it had found me, I should have deemed it my duty to return and answer it in person. [In English Bards, etc., Byron had made fun of the duel between Moore and Jeffrey, which, provoked by the Edinburgh Review's attack on Moore's Odes, Epistles, and other Poems (July 1806), and frustrated by the inopportune arrival of the police, had been instrumental in bringing about a friendship between poet and critic.] . At the time of your meeting with M' Jeffrey, I had recently entered College, and remember to have heard and read a number of squibs on the occasion; and from the recollection of these I derived all my knowledge on the subject, without the slightest idea of "giving the lie" to an address which I never beheld. When I put my name to the production [i.e. to the second edition of English Bards, etc.], which has occasioned this correspondence, I became responsible to all whom it might concern,-to explain where it requires explanation, and, where insufficiently or too sufficiently explicit, at all events to satisfy. My situation leaves me no choice; it rests with the injured and the angry to obtain reparation in their own way.

With regard to the passage in question, you were

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