FRAGMENT II.

With regard to the E. B. I have no concealments, nor desire to have any, from you or yours: the suppression occurred (I am as sure as I can be of any thing) in the manner stated: I have never regretted that, but very often the composition—that is the humeur of a great deal in it. As to the quotation you allude to, I have no right, nor indeed desire, to prevent it; but, on the contrary, in common with all other writers, I do and ought to take it as a compliment.

The paper on the Methodists was sure to raise the bristles of the godly. I redde it, and agree with the writer lon one point, in which you and he perhaps differ; that an addiction to poetry is very generally the result of « an nneasy mind in an uneasy body;» disease or deformity have been the attendants of many of our best. Collins mad-Chatterton, I think, mad -Cowper mad-Pope crooked-Milton blind

Gray-(I have heard that the last was afflicted by an incurable and very grievous distemper,

though not generally known) and others— I have somewhere redde, however, that poets rarely go mad. I suppose the writer means that their insanity effervesces and evaporates in verse-may be so.

I have not had time nor paper to attack your system, which ought to be done, were it only because it is a system. So, by and by, have at

you.

Yours ever,

BYRON.

END OF VOL. I.