I have troubled you with this detail in consequence of Lord Byron’s charge, which he, who despises and defies, and has lampooned the Whigs all round, only invented out of wantonness, and for the sake of annoying me—­and he has certainly succeeded, thanks to your circulating this filthy ballad.  As for his Lordship’s vulgar notions about the mob, they are very fit for the Poet of the Morning Post, and for nobody else.  Nothing in the ballad annoyed me but the charge about the Cambridge club, because nothing else had the semblance of truth; and I own it has hurt me very much to find Lord Byron playing into the hands of the Holland House sycophants, for whom he has himself the most sovereign contempt, and whom in other days I myself have tried to induce him to tolerate.

I shall say no more on this unpleasant subject except that, by a letter which I have just received from Lord Byron, I think he is ashamed of his song.  I shall certainly speak as plainly to him as I have taken the liberty to do to you on this matter.  He was very wanton and you very indiscreet; but I trust neither one nor the other meant mischief, and there’s an end of it.  Do not aggravate matters by telling how much I have been annoyed.  Lord Byron has sent me a list of his new poems and some prose, all of which he requests me to prepare for the press for him.  The monied arrangement is to be made by Mr. Kinnaird.  When you are ready for me, the materials may be sent to me at this place, where I have taken up my abode for the season.

I remain, very truly yours, JOHN CAM HOBHOUSE.

Towards the end of 1820 Lord Byron wrote a long letter to Mr. Murray on Mr. Bowles’s strictures on the “Life and Writings of Pope.”  It was a subject perhaps unworthy of his pen, but being an ardent admirer of Pope, he thought it his duty to “bowl him [Bowles] down.”  “I mean to lay about me,” said Byron, “like a dragon, till I make manure of Bowles for the top of Parnassus.”

After some revision, the first and second letters to Bowles were published, and were well received.

The tragedy of “Sardanapalus,” the last three acts of which had been written in a fortnight, was despatched to Murray on May 30, 1821, and was within a few weeks followed by “The Two Foscari:  an Historical Tragedy”—­which had been composed within a month—­and on September 10 by “Cain, a Mystery.”  The three dramas, “Sardanapalus,” “The Two Foscari,” and “Cain, a Mystery,” were published together in December 1821, and Mr. Murray paid Lord Byron for them the sum of L2,710.

“Cain” was dedicated, by his consent, to Sir Walter Scott, who, in writing to Mr. Murray, described it as “a very grand and tremendous drama.”  On its first appearance it was reprinted in a cheap form by two booksellers, under the impression that the Court of Chancery would not protect it, and it therefore became necessary to take out an injunction to restrain these piratical publishers.