and the British Government and the head of that Government, I cannot but hope and believe that these blemishes in the first cantos would be wiped away in the next edition; and that some that occur in the two cantos (which you sent me) would never see the light.  What interest can Lord Byron have in being the poet of a party in politics?...  In politics, he cannot be what he appears, or rather what Messrs. Hobhouse and Leigh Hunt wish to make him appear.  A man of his birth, a man of his taste, a man of his talents, a man of his habits, can have nothing in common with such miserable creatures as we now call Radicals, of whom I know not that I can better express the illiterate and blind ignorance and vulgarity than by saying that the best informed of them have probably never heard of Lord Byron.  No, no, Lord Byron may be indulgent to these jackal followers of his; he may connive at their use of his name—­nay, it is not to be denied that he has given them too, too much countenance—­but he never can, I should think, now that he sees not only the road but the rate they are going, continue to take a part so contrary to all his own interests and feelings, and to the feelings and interests of all the respectable part of his country....  But what is to be the end of all this rigmarole of mine?  To conclude, this—­to advise you, for your own sake as a tradesman, for Lord Byron’s sake as a poet, for the sake of good literature and good principles, which ought to be united, to take such measures as you may be able to venture upon to get Lord Byron to revise these two cantos, and not to make another step in the odious path which Hobhouse beckons him to pursue....

Yours ever,

J.W.  CROKER.

But Byron would alter nothing more in his “Don Juan.”  He accepted the corrections of Gifford in his “Tragedies,” but “Don Juan” was never submitted to him.  Hobhouse was occasionally applied to, because he knew Lord Byron’s handwriting; but even his suggestions of alterations or corrections of “Don Juan” were in most cases declined, and moreover about this time a slight coolness had sprung up between him and Byron.  When Hobhouse was standing for Westminster with Sir Francis Burdett, Lord Byron sent a song about him in a letter to Mr. Murray.  It ran to the tune of “My Boy Tammy?  O!”

“Who are now the People’s men? 
  My boy Hobby O! 
Yourself and Burdett, Gentlemen,
  And Blackguard Hunt and Cobby O!

“When to the mob you make a speech,
  My boy Hobby O! 
How do you keep without their reach
  The watch without your fobby O?”
[Footnote:  The rest of the song is printed in Murray’s Magazine, No. 3.]

Lord Byron asked Murray to show the song not only to some of his friends—­who got it by heart and had it printed in the newspapers—­but also to Hobhouse himself.  “I know,” said his Lordship, “that he will never forgive me, but I really have no patience with him for letting himself be put in quod by such a set of ragamuffins.”  Mr. Hobhouse, however, was angry with Byron for his lampoon and with Murray for showing it to his friends.  He accordingly wrote the following letter, which contains some interesting particulars of the Whig Club at Cambridge in Byron’s University days: