hich, perhaps, I could have
said still more: but I leave them all, and too soon.

"Do you remember the lines I sent you early last year, which you
still have? I don't wish (like Mr. Fitzgerald, in the Morning Post)
to claim the character of 'Vates' in all its translations, but were
they not a little prophetic? I mean those beginning, 'There's not a
joy the world can,' &c. &c., on which I rather pique myself as
being the truest, though the most melancholy, I ever wrote.

"What a scrawl have I sent you! You say nothing of yourself, except
that you are a Lancasterian churchwarden, and an encourager of
mendicants. When are you out? and how is your family? My child is
very well and flourishing, I hear; but I must see also. I feel no
disposition to resign it to the contagion of its grandmother's
society, though I am unwilling to take it from the mother. It is
weaned, however, and something about it must be decided. Ever," &c.

[Footnote 92: This sad doubt,--"if I _am_ at all,"--becomes no less
singular than sad when we recollect that six and thirty was actually the
age when he ceased to "be," and at a moment, too, when (as even the
least friendly to him allow) he was in that state of "progressing
merits" which he here jestingly anticipates.]

* * * * *

Having already gone so far in laying open to my readers some of the
sentiments which I entertained, respecting Lord Byron's marriage, at a
time when, little foreseeing that I should ever become his biographer, I
was, of course, uninfluenced by the peculiar bias supposed to belong to
that task, it may still further, perhaps, be permitted me to extract
from my reply to the foregoing letter some sentences of explanation
which its contents seemed to me to require.

"I had certainly no right to say any thing about the unluckiness of your
choice, though I rejoice now that I did, as it has drawn from you a
tribute which, however unaccountable and mysterious it renders the whole
affair, is highly honourable to both parties. What I meant in hinting a
doubt with respect to the object of your selection did not imply the
least impeachment of that perfect amiableness which the world, I find,
by common consent, allows to her. I only feared that she might have been
too perfect--too _precisely_ excellent--too matter-of-fact a paragon for
you to coalesce with comfortably; and that a person