[14] The printer at Newark.
[15] Relative to a proposed reconciliation between Lord Carlisle and himself.
[16] Of the Satire.
[17] I had endeavoured to persuade him to take a part in parliamentary affairs, and to exercise his talent for oratory more frequently.
[18] In concluding my letter, having said "God bless you!" I added—"that is, if you have no objection."
[19] The statement of the Courier, &c.
[20] In asserting that he devoted but four days to the composition of The Bride, he must be understood to refer only to the first sketch of that poem,—the successive additions by which it was increased to its present length having occupied, as we have seen, a much longer period. The Corsair, on the contrary, was, from beginning to end, struck off at a heat—there being but little alteration or addition afterwards,—and the rapidity with which it was produced (being at the rate of nearly two hundred lines a day) would be altogether incredible, had we not his own, as well as his publisher's, testimony to the fact. Such an achievement,—taking into account the surpassing beauty of the work,—is, perhaps, wholly without a parallel in the history of Genius, and shows that 'écrire par passion,' as Rousseau expresses it, may be sometimes a shorter road to perfection than any that Art has ever struck out.
[21] Those bitter and powerful lines which he wrote on the opening of the vault that contained the remains of Henry VIII. and Charles I.
[22] He was not yet aware, it appears, that the anonymous manuscript sent to him by his publisher was from the pen of Mr. Knight.
[23] The manuscript of a long grave satire, entitled "Anti-Byron," which had been sent to Mr. Murray, and by him forwarded to Lord Byron, with a request—not meant, I believe, seriously—that he would give his opinion as to the propriety of publishing it.