would regard it as an addition to the offence.  This, however, I must add, that the whole attack on the Regent was owing, not merely to the nonsense of the Post, but to his violation of those promises of conceding the Catholic claims, to which his princely word stood pledged.  The subject of the article was the ‘Dinner on St. Patrick’s day’.  All the Whig world was indignant at that violation; so were the Irish, of course, vehemently; and it was on the spur of this publicly indignant movement that I wrote what I did,—­as angrily and as much in earnest in the serious part of what I said as I was derisive in the rest.  I did not care for any factious object, nor was I what is called anti-monarchical.  I didn’t know Cobbett, or Henry Hunt, or any demagogue, even by sight, except Sir Francis Burdett, and him by sight alone.  Nor did I ever see, or speak a word with them, afterwards.  I knew nothing, in fact, of politics themselves, except in some of those large and, as it appeared to me, obvious phases, which, at all events, have since become obvious to most people, and in fighting for which (if a man can be said to fight for a ’phase’!) I suffered all that Tories could inflict upon me,—­by expenses in law and calumnies in literature;—­reform, Catholic claims, free trade, abolition of flogging, right of free speech, as opposed by attorneys-general.  I was, in fact, all the while nothing but a poetic student, appearing in politics once a week, but given up entirely to letters almost all the rest of it, and loving nothing so much as a book and a walk in the fields.  I was precisely the sort of person, in these respects, which I am at this moment.  As to George the Fourth, I aided, years afterwards, in publicly wishing him well—­’years having brought the philosophic mind’.  I believe I even expressed regret at not having given him the excuses due to all human beings (the passage, I take it, is in the book which Colburn called Lord Byron and his Contemporaries); and when I consider that Moore has been pensioned, not only in spite of all his libels on him, but perhaps by very reason of their Whig partisanship, I should think it hard to be refused a pension purely because I openly suffered for what I had earnestly said.  I knew George the Fourth’s physician, Sir William Knighton, who had been mine before I was imprisoned (it was not he who was the royal agent alluded to); and, if my memory does not deceive me, Sir William told me that George had been gratified by the book above mentioned.  Perhaps he had found out, by Sir William’s help, that I was not an ill-natured man, or one who could not outlive what was mistaken in himself or resentful in others.  As to my opinions about Governments, the bad conduct of the Allies, and of Napoleon, and the old Bourbons, certainly made them waver as to what might be ultimately best, monarchy or republicanism; but they ended in favour of their old predilections; and no man, for a long while, has been less a republican