or
edition of his works:--

"With regard to a future large edition, you may print all, or any thing,
_except_ '_English Bards_,' to the republication of which at no time
will I consent. I would not reprint them on any consideration. I don't
think them good for much, even in point of poetry; and, as to other
things, you are to recollect that I gave up the publication on account
of the Hollands, and I do not think that any time or circumstances
should cancel the suppression. Add to which, that, after being on terms
with almost all the bards and critics of the day, it would be savage at
any time, but worst of all _now_,[114] to revive this foolish lampoon."

"Whatever may have been the faults or indiscretion of this satire," says
Moore, "there are few who would now sit in judgment upon it so severely
as did the author himself, on reading it over nine years after, when he
had quitted England, never to return. The copy which he then perused is
now in possession of Mr. Murray, and the remarks which he has scribbled
over its pages are well worth transcribing. On the first leaf we
find:--

"The binding of this volume is considerably too valuable for its
contents. Nothing but the consideration of its being the property
of another prevents me from consigning this miserable record of
misplaced anger and indiscriminate acrimony to the flames.

BYRON."

To this ample reparation offered on account of his early satire we must
add the following paragraph, from the first letter he addressed to Sir
Walter Scott, in 1812:--

"I feel sorry that you should have thought it worth while to notice the
'_evil works of my nonage_,' as the thing is suppressed voluntarily; and
your explanation is too kind not to give me pain. The satire was written
when I was very young and very angry, and fully bent on displaying my
wrath and my wit, and now I am haunted by the ghosts of my wholesale
assertions. I can not sufficiently thank you for your praise."

Thus scrupulously did this conscientious man judge himself. And not only
do we find him repeating the same fine sentiment a hundred times, but he
caused the whole edition, then still in the hands of the publisher, to
be destroyed, which of course entailed a great sacrifice of money. He
became intimate with the principal personages whom he had attacked; and
even, in order to testify that no resentment continued to exist in his
mind against his guardian, Lord Carlisle, he se