Their mutual sympathy increased upon improved acquaintance with one another. When at Venice Byron was informed that Scott was ill, he said that he would not for all the world have him ill. "I suppose it is from sympathy that I have suffered from fever at the same time." At Ravenna a little later, on the 12th of January, 1821, he wrote down in his memoranda:—
"Scott is certainly the most wonderful writer of the day. His novels are a new literature in themselves, and his poetry as good as any, if not better (only on an erroneous system), and only ceased to be so popular, because the vulgar learned were tired of hearing Aristides called the Just, and Scott the Best, and ostracized them.
"I like him, too, for his manliness of character, for the extreme pleasantness of his conversation, and his good-nature toward myself personally. May he prosper! for he deserves it.
"I know no reading to which I fall with such alacrity as a work of W. Scott's. I shall give the seal with his bust on it to Mlle. la Comtesse Guiccioli this evening, who will be curious to have the effigies of a man so celebrated."
He did take the seal to the Countess Guiccioli, and she said that Byron's expressions about Scott were always most affectionate. "How I wish you knew him!" he often repeated.
He used to say that it was not the poetry of "Child Harold," but Scott's own superior prose that had done his poetry harm, and that if ever the public could by chance get tired of his novels, Scott might write in verse with equal success. He insisted that Scott had a dramatic talent, "talent," he said, "which people are loth to grant me." He said that the success of Scott's novels was not in the least due to the anonymous character he had adopted, and that he could not understand why he would not sign his name to works of such merit. He likewise asserted that of all the authors of his period, Scott was the least jealous. "He is too sure of his fame to fear any rivals, nor does he think of good works as Tuscans do of fever; that there is only a certain amount of it in the world, and that in communicating it to others, one gets rid of it."
"I never travel without taking Scott's novels with me," said Byron to Medwin, at Pisa; "it is a real library, a literary treasure; I can read them yearly with renewed pleasure."
A few days before his departure for Greece, he learned that M. Stendhall had published an article upon Racine and Shakspeare, wherein there were some unfavorable remarks about Walter Scott.
Notwithstanding his occupations preparatory to departure, he found time to write to Stendhall, and tell him how much he felt the injustice of these remarks, and to request that they should be rectified.
This letter of Byron's to M. Beyle will no doubt be read with universal admiration, as it points out most prominently all the goodness of his character:—