be, are those of negligence, and not of labour. I do not think this a merit, but it is a fact.

P.S.

Yours ever and truly,

or

N. B.

You see the great advantage of my new signature; - it may either stand for "Nota Bene " "Noel Byron," and, as such, will save much repetition, in writing either books or letters. Since I came here, I have been invited on board of the American squadron, and treated with all possible honour and ceremony. They have asked me to sit for my picture; and, as I was going away, an American lady took a rose from me (which had been given to me by a very pretty Italian lady that very morning), because, she said, "She was determined to send or take something which I had about me to America." There is a kind of Lalla Rookh incident for you! However, all these American honours arise, perhaps, not so much from their enthusiasm for my "Poeshic" as their belief in my dislike to the English, in which I have the satisfaction to coincide with them. I would rather, however, have a nod from an American, than a snuff-box from an emperor.1

TO ISAAC DISRAELI

MONTENERO, VILLA DUPUY, n2 Leghorn, June 10, 1822.

I really cannot know whether I am or am not the Genius you are pleased to call me, but I am very willing

1 Lady Holland had been left a snuff-box by Napoleon, which had been given to him by the Pope for his clemency in sparing Rome.

to put up with the mistake, if it be one. It is a title dearly enough bought by most men, to render it endurable, even when not quite clearly made out, which it never can be till the Posterity, whose decisions are merely dreams to ourselves, has sanctioned or denied it, while it can touch us no further.

Mr. Murray is in possession of an MSS. Memoir of mine (not to be published till I am in my grave) which, strange as it may seem, I never read over since it was written and have no desire to read over again. In it I have told what, as far as I know, is the truth - not the whole truth ·for if I had done so I must have involved much private and some dissipated history; but, nevertheless, nothing but the truth, as far as regard for others permitted it to appear.

I do not know whether you have seen those MSS.; but as you are curious in such things as relate to the human mind, I should feel gratified if you had.

I also sent him (Murray) a few days since, a commonplace book, by my friend Lord Clare, containing a few things which may perhaps aid his publication in case of his surviving me.

If there are any questions which you would like to ask me as connected with your Philosophy of the literary Mind (if mine be a literary mind), I will answer them fairly or give a reason for not — good, bad, or indifferent. At present I am paying the penalty of having helped to spoil the public taste, for, as long as I wrote in the false exaggerated style of youth and the times in which we live, they applauded me to the very echo; and within

these few years, when I have endeavoured at better things and written what I suspect to have the principle of duration in it, the Church, the Chancellor, and all men-even to my grand patron Francis Jeffrey Esq. of the E. R.- have risen up against me and my later publications. Such is Truth! Men dare not look her in the face, except by degrees: they mistake her for a Gorgon, instead of knowing her to be a Minerva.

I do not mean to apply this mythological simile to my own endeavours. I have only to turn over a few pages of your volumes to find innumerable and far more. illustrious instances.

It is lucky that I am of a temper not to be easily turned aside though by no means difficult to irritate. But I am making a dissertation instead of writing a letter. I write to you from the Villa Dupuy, near Leghorn, with the islands of Elba and Corsica visible from my balcony, and my old friend the Mediterranean rolling blue at my feet. As long as I retain my feeling and my passion for Nature, I can partly soften or subdue my other passions and resist or endure those of others.

I have the honour to be, truly, your obliged

and faithful Sert,

TO THOMAS MOORE

NOEL BYRON.

PISA, July 12, 1822.

Leigh Hunt is here, after a voyage of eight months, during which he has, I presume, made the Periplus of

Hanno the Carthaginian,1 and with much the same speed. He is setting up a Journal, to which I have promised to contribute; and in the first number the Vision of Judgment, by Quevedo Redivivus, will probably appear, with other articles.

Can you give us anything? He seems sanguine about the matter, but (entre nous) I am not. I do not, however, like to put him out of spirits by saying so; for he is bilious and unwell. Do, pray, answer this letter immediately.

Do send Hunt anything in prose or verse of yours, to start him handsomely — any lyrical, irical, or what you please.

TO JOHN MURRAY

PISA, August 3, 1822.

I presume you have heard that Mr. Shelley and Capt. Williams were lost on the 7th 2 ulto in their passage from Leghorn to Spezia in their own open boat. You may imagine the state of their families. I never saw such a scene, nor wish to see such another.

You were all brutally mistaken about Shelley who was, without exception, the best and least selfish man I

1 The weρíπλous of Hanno the Carthaginian, originally written in the Punic language, and afterwards translated into Greek, was inscribed on a tablet in the Temple of Cronos at Carthage. Hanno was sent on a mission beyond the Pillars of Hercules, to found Libyphoenician towns.

2 An error.

This disaster occurred on the 8th of July.

ever knew. I never knew one who was not a beast in

comparison.

TO THOMAS MOORE

PISA, August 27, 1822.

We have been burning the bodies of Shelley and Williams on the sea-shore, to render them fit for removal and regular interment. You can have no idea what an extraordinary effect such a funeral pile has, on a desolate shore, with mountains in the background and the sea before, and the singular appearance the salt and frankincense gave to the flame. All of Shelley was consumed except his heart, which would not take the flame, and is now preserved in spirits of wine.

Leigh Hunt is sweating articles for his new Journal; and both he and I think it somewhat shabby in you not to contribute. Will you become one of the properrioters? "Do, and we go snacks." I recommend you to think twice before you respond in the negative.

I have nearly (quite three) four new cantos of Don Juan ready. I obtained permission from the female Censor Morum1 of my morals to continue it, provided it were immaculate; so I have been as decent as need be. There is a deal of war- a siege, and all that, in the style,

1 Countess Guiccioli, who had exacted Byron's promise to write no more cantos of "Don Juan," on the completion of Canto V.