urprise that he had written nothing else. An admission or
confession followed that "he had occasionally written short poems,
besides a great many stanzas in Spenser's measure, relative to the
countries he had visited." "They are not," he added, "worth troubling
you with, but you shall have them all with you if you like." "So," says
Dallas, "came I by _Childe Harold_. He took it from a small trunk, with
a number of verses."

Dallas was "delighted," and on the evening of the same day (July
16)--before, let us hope, and not after, he had consulted his "Ionian
friend," Walter Rodwell Wright (see _Recollections_, p. 151, and _Diary_
of H.C. Robinson, 1872, i. 17)--he despatched a letter of enthusiastic
approval, which gratified Byron, but did not convince him of the
extraordinary merit of his work, or of its certainty of success. It was,
however, agreed that the MS. should be left with Dallas, that he should
arrange for its publication and hold the copyright. Dallas would have
entrusted the poem to Cawthorne, who had published _English Bards, and
Scotch Reviewers,_ and with whom, as Byron's intermediary, he was in
communication; but Byron objected on the ground that the firm did not
"stand high enough in the trade," and Longmans, who had been offered but
had declined the _English Bards_, were in no case to be approached. An
application to Miller, of Albemarle Street, came to nothing, because
Miller was Lord Elgin's bookseller and publisher (he had just brought
out the _Memorandum on Lord Elgin's Pursuits in Greece_), and _Childe
Harold_ denounced and reviled Lord Elgin. But Murray, of Fleet Street,
who had already expressed a wish to publish for Lord Byron, was willing
to take the matter into consideration. On the first of August Byron lost
his mother, on the third his friend Matthews was drowned in the Cam, and
for some weeks he could devote neither time nor thought to the fortunes
of his poem; but Dallas had bestirred himself, and on the eighteenth was
able to report that he had "seen Murray again," and that Murray was
anxious that Byron's name should appear on the title-page.

To this request Byron somewhat reluctantly acceded (August 21); and a
few days later (August 25) he informs Dallas that he has sent him
"exordiums, annotations, etc., for the forthcoming quarto," and has
written to Murray, urging him on no account to show the MS. to Juvenal,
that is, Gifford. But Gifford, as a matter of course, had been already
con