e friends, that his pen had "run
a-muck" in it, and that I myself had not escaped a slight graze in its
career.]

[Footnote 37: It may be sufficient to say of the use to which both Lord
Byron and Mr. Bowles thought it worth their while to apply my name in
this controversy, that, as far as my own knowledge of the subject
extended, I was disposed to agree with _neither_ of the extreme opinions
into which, as it appeared to me, my distinguished friends had
diverged;--neither with Lord Byron in that spirit of partisanship which
led him to place Pope _above_ Shakspeare and Milton, nor with Mr. Bowles
in such an application of the "principles" of poetry as could tend to
sink Pope, on the scale of his art, to any rank below the very first.
Such being the middle state of my opinion on the question, it will not
be difficult to understand how one of my controversial friends should be
as mistaken in supposing me to differ altogether from his views, as the
other was in taking for granted that I had ranged myself wholly on his
side.]

* * * * *

It was at this time that he began, under the title of "Detached
Thoughts," that Book of Notices or Memorandums, from which, in the
course of these pages, I have extracted so many curious illustrations of
his life and opinions, and of which the opening article is as follows:--

"Amongst various Journals, Memoranda, Diaries, &c. which I have kept in
the course of my living, I began one about three months ago, and carried
it on till I had filled one paper-book (thinnish), and two sheets or so
of another. I then left off, partly because I thought we should have
some business here, and I had furbished up my arms and got my apparatus
ready for taking a turn with the patriots, having my drawers full of
their proclamations, oaths, and resolutions, and my lower rooms of their
hidden weapons, of most calibres,--and partly because I had filled my
paper-book.

"But the Neapolitans have betrayed themselves and all the world; and
those who would have given their blood for Italy can now only give her
their tears.

"Some day or other, if dust holds together, I have been enough in the
secret (at least in this part of the country) to cast perhaps some
little light upon the atrocious treachery which has replunged Italy
into barbarism: at present, I have neither the time nor the temper.
However the _real_ Italians are not to blame; merely the scoundrels at
the _heel of the