to the mood he happened to be in; and, I add, "they are for the most part on matters of dispute between us, and are all written in an uneasy, factitious spirit, as different from the straight-forward and sincere-looking style of the present, as his aspect in old times varied with his later one." All these shall come forward, when Mr. Moore's book appears; and if the person who holds the alleged "valedictory Epistle," so long and so hostile, for which the other valedictory Epistle was substituted, so short and so friendly, will come forward with it, and is a credible person, (for the reviewer's word would go for nothing,) I shall be very happy to see it for the first time, and to give it the due answer.

What the reviewer says about Mr. Shelley's having confessed to somebody, "with tears," that "he well knew he had been all in the wrong," is a phenomenon, which must come attested by all the magistrates Autolycus could

have thought of, before the most gullible per sons (out of the pale of the Quarterly) will believe it. With the exception of Queen Mab, I never remember him to have regretted any thing he had written but one poem with an obscure title, the existence of which is hardly known. His unfavourable opinion of Queen Mab he expressed publicly. His hopes had diminished when I last saw him; but when I told him that I hoped still, and that I thought hope itself a part of success, he fully assented to the utility of my opinion; and neither in word nor deed did he show himself a jot different from what he had ever been, except in his admiration of the satirical writings of Lord Byron. Lord Byron himself he spoke of as a man the most disagreeable to have any thing to do with, and one whose connexion he would have given up for ever, had he not thought it might turn to my advantage, and perhaps to the noble Lord's in consequence. As to the

alleged change in Mr. Shelley, Lord Byron, for one, certainly had no conception of any such thing: at least, if he has said so in his letters, (the assertions in which our credulous reviewer takes all for "matter of fact,") it was totally in opposition to the character, with which (in the teeth of his excessive eulogies of the deceased) he threatened to brand his memory, the moment he thought he had found reason to quarrel with it.

But I am again led away to say more than is necessary at present. I wait for Mr. Moore. Mr. Moore ought to have been ashamed of himself, when he acted in that underhand manner against his old acquaintance and his own cause. He knew what a situation I was in; what a family I had; what struggles I had gone through, for the sake of freedom; and how openly I had ever behaved to himself, both in what I ventured to praise in him and to differ with; and yet all this did not hinder him

from practising against the Liberal, in a way the most disingenuous towards me, and upon grounds the most ridiculous in him. I have since expressed my resentment in a strong but not ungenerous manner; and he has the credit, upon the very ground on which he ought to have spared me originally, and which collects in one burning spot of thought all that is painful in my past life, and bitter at present, of aiming a blow at me as the father of a family (which I am), and a fellow turn-spit (which I never was). I could have answered his metaphors with interest, had the bandying of abuse been to my taste, and many extreme cares not been upon me; but the same circumstances in my position, which, connected with all that I have done and hazarded in this world, show how impossible it was for me to speak of the dead in any rascally spirit of calculation, will not allow me to spare any truth whatsoever, (the other sex not suffering

by it,) which will hinder me from being crushed; and should his book render it necessary, I will most assuredly spare neither him, nor his publisher, nor any one person or thing, short of the exception just noticed, which will serve to fill up all that has been omitted, and to show of what sort of stuff a Lord and his advisers can be made.

Talk of speaking ill of a dead Lord, and an imaginary patron! How have I not been talked of and misrepresented in these matters between Lord Byron and myself, while I did not say a word on the subject? What patron, or dead person, lord or commoner, or king, or what excess of human infirmity, did Lord Byron spare, when the mood was upon him? How many persons has Mr. Moore himself not attacked in his day? Many that never offended him, and some whose calamities gave them a right to be spared. How might not Lord Byron (as the world shall see) have trampled