ainest man on
earth, at least his own friends say so pretty loudly; and if he were
in other circumstances, I might be tempted to take him down a peg;
but not now,--it would be cruel. It is a cursed business; but neither
the motive nor the means rest upon my conscience, and it happens that
he and his brother _have_ been so far benefited by the publication in
a pecuniary point of view. His brother is a steady, bold fellow, such
as _Prynne_, for example, and full of moral, and, I hear, physical
courage.

[Footnote 1: The passage in one of my letters to which he here refers
shall be given presently.]

"And _you_ are _really_ recanting, or softening to the clergy! It
will do little good for you--it is _you_, not the poem, they are at.
They will say they frightened you--forbid it, Ireland!

"Yours ever,

"N.B."

Lord Byron had now, for some time, as may be collected from his
letters, begun to fancy that his reputation in England was on the
wane. The same thirst after fame, with the same sensitiveness to
every passing change of popular favour, which led Tasso at last to
look upon himself as the most despised of writers[1], had more than
once disposed Lord Byron, in the midst of all his triumphs, if not to
doubt their reality, at least to distrust their continuance; and
sometimes even, with that painful skill which sensibility supplies,
to extract out of the brightest tributes of success some omen of
future failure, or symptom of decline. New successes, however, still
came to dissipate these bodings of diffidence; nor was it till after
his unlucky coalition with Mr. Hunt in the Liberal, that any grounds
for such a suspicion of his having declined in public favour showed
themselves.

[Footnote 1: In one of his letters this poet says:--"Non posso negare
che io mi doglio oltramisura di esser stato tanto disprezzato dal
mondo quanto non e altro scrittore di questo secolo." In another
letter, however, after complaining of being "perseguitato da molti
piu che non era convenevole," he adds, with a proud prescience of his
future fame, "Laonde stimo di poter mene ragionevolmente richiamare
alla posterita."]

The chief inducements, on the part of Lord Byron, to this unworthy
alliance were, in the first place, a wish to second the kind views of
his friend Shelley in inviting Mr. Hunt to join him in Italy; and, in
the next, a desire to avail himself of the aid of one so experienced,
as an editor, in the favourite project he had