ou for letting me see your two new cantos [the 3rd and
4th], which I return. What sublimity! what levity! what boldness! what
tenderness! what majesty! what trifling! what variety! what
_tediousness_!--for tedious to a strange degree, it must be confessed
that whole passages are, particularly the earlier stanzas of the fourth
canto. I know no man of such general powers of intellect as Brougham,
yet I think _him_ insufferably tedious; and I fancy the reason to be
that he has such _facility_ of expression that he is never recalled to a
_selection_ of his thoughts. A more costive orator would be obliged to
choose, and a man of his talents could not fail to choose the best; but
the power of uttering all and everything which passes across his mind,
tempts him to say all. He goes on without thought--I should rather say,
without pause. His speeches are poor from their richness, and dull from
their infinite variety. An impediment in his speech would make him a
perfect Demosthenes. Something of the same kind, and with something of
the same effect, is Lord Byron's wonderful fertility of thought and
facility of expression; and the Protean style of "Don Juan," instead of
checking (as the fetters of rhythm generally do) his natural activity,
not only gives him wider limits to range in, but even generates a more
roving disposition. I dare swear, if the truth were known, that his
digressions and repetitions generate one another, and that the happy
jingle of some of his comical rhymes has led him on to episodes of which
he never originally thought; and thus it is that, with the most
extraordinary merit, _merit of all kinds_, these two cantos have been
to _me_, in several points, tedious and even obscure.

As to the PRINCIPLES, all the world, and you, Mr. Murray, _first of
all_, have done this poem great injustice. There are levities here and
there, more than good taste approves, but nothing to make such a
terrible rout about--nothing so bad as "Tom Jones," nor within a hundred
degrees of "Count Fathom."

The writer goes on to remark that the personalities in the poem are more
to be deprecated than "its imputed looseness of principle":

I mean some expressions of political and personal feelings which, I
believe, he, in fact, never felt, and threw in wantonly and _de gaiete
de coeur_, and which he would have omitted, advisedly and _de bonte de
coeur_, if he had not been goaded by indiscreet, contradictory, and
urgent _criticisms_, whic