h, in some cases, were dark enough to be called
_calumnies_. But these are blowing over, if not blown over; and I cannot
but think that if Mr. Gifford, or some friend in whose taste and
disinterestedness Lord Byron could rely, were to point out to him the
cruelty to individuals, the injury to the national character, the
offence to public taste, and the injury to his own reputation, of such
passages as those about Southey and Waterloo and the British Government
and the head of that Government, I cannot but hope and believe that
these blemishes in the first cantos would be wiped away in the next
edition; and that some that occur in the two cantos (which you sent me)
would never see the light. What interest can Lord Byron have in being
the poet of a party in politics?... In politics, he cannot be what he
appears, or rather what Messrs. Hobhouse and Leigh Hunt wish to make him
appear. A man of his birth, a man of his taste, a man of his talents, a
man of his habits, can have nothing in common with such miserable
creatures as we now call _Radicals_, of whom I know not that I can
better express the illiterate and blind ignorance and vulgarity than by
saying that the best informed of them have probably never heard of Lord
Byron. No, no, Lord Byron may be indulgent to these jackal followers of
his; he may connive at their use of his name--nay, it is not to be
denied that he has given them too, too much countenance--but he never
can, I should think, now that he sees not only the road but the rate
they are going, continue to take a part so contrary to all his own
interests and feelings, and to the feelings and interests of all the
respectable part of his country.... But what is to be the end of all
this rigmarole of mine? To conclude, this--to advise you, for your own
sake as a tradesman, for Lord Byron's sake as a poet, for the sake of
good literature and good principles, which ought to be united, to take
such measures as you may be able to venture upon to get Lord Byron to
revise these two cantos, and not to make another step in the odious path
which Hobhouse beckons him to pursue....

Yours ever,

J.W. CROKER.

But Byron would alter nothing more in his "Don Juan." He accepted the
corrections of Gifford in his "Tragedies," but "Don Juan" was never
submitted to him. Hobhouse was occasionally applied to, because he knew
Lord Byron's handwriting; but even his suggestions of alterations or
corrections of "Don Juan" were in most