n all the qualms and
terrors he had, at first, felt; and, had any further difficulties or
objections arisen, it is more than probable he might have relapsed into
his original intention. It was not long, however, before a person was
found willing and proud to undertake the publication. Mr. Murray, who,
at this period, resided in Fleet Street, having, some time before,
expressed a desire to be allowed to publish some work of Lord Byron, it
was in his hands that Mr. Dallas now placed the manuscript of Childe
Harold;--and thus was laid the first foundation of that connection
between this gentleman and the noble poet, which continued, with but a
temporary interruption, throughout the lifetime of the one, and has
proved an abundant source of honour, as well as emolument, to the other.

While thus busily engaged in his literary projects, and having, besides,
some law affairs to transact with his agent, he was called suddenly away
to Newstead by the intelligence of an event which seems to have affected
his mind far more deeply than, considering all the circumstances of the
case, could have been expected. Mrs. Byron, whose excessive corpulence
rendered her, at all times, rather a perilous subject for illness, had
been of late indisposed, but not to any alarming degree; nor does it
appear that, when the following note was written, there existed any
grounds for apprehension as to her state.

[Footnote 5: It is, however, less wonderful that authors should thus
misjudge their productions, when whole generations have sometimes fallen
into the same sort of error. The Sonnets of Petrarch were, by the
learned of his day, considered only worthy of the ballad-singers by whom
they were chanted about the streets; while his Epic Poem, "Africa," of
which few now even know the existence, was sought for on all sides, and
the smallest fragment of it begged from the author, for the libraries of
the learned.]

[Footnote 6: Gray, under the influence of a similar predilection,
preferred, for a long time, his Latin poems to those by which he has
gained such a station in English literature. "Shall we attribute this,"
says Mason, "to his having been educated at Eton, or to what other
cause? Certain it is, that when I first knew him, he seemed to set a
greater value on his Latin poetry than on that which he had composed in
his native language."]

[Footnote 7: One of the manuscript notes of Lord Byron on Mr.
D'Israeli's work, already referred to.--Vo