whom its suppression would give pleasure.”  I did not hesitate one moment, it was cancelled instantly; and it is no fault of mine that it has ever been republished.  When I left England, in April, 1816, with no very violent intentions of troubling that country again, and amidst scenes of various kinds to distract my attention,—­almost my last act, I believe, was to sign a power of attorney, to yourself, to prevent or suppress any attempts (of which several had been made in Ireland) at a republication.  It is proper that I should state, that the persons with whom I was subsequently acquainted, whose names had occurred in that publication, were made my acquaintances at their own desire, or through the unsought intervention of others.  I never, to the best of my knowledge, sought a personal introduction to any.  Some of them to this day I know only by correspondence; and with one of those it was begun by myself, in consequence, however, of a polite verbal communication from a third person.

I have dwelt for an instant on these circumstances, because it has sometimes been made a subject of bitter reproach to me to have endeavoured to suppress that satire.  I never shrunk, as those who know me know, from any personal consequences which could be attached to its publication.  Of its subsequent suppression, as I possessed the copyright, I was the best judge and the sole master.  The circumstances which occasioned the suppression I have now stated; of the motives, each must judge according to his candour or malignity.  Mr. Bowles does me the honour to talk of “noble mind,” and “generous magnanimity;” and all this because “the circumstance would have been explained had not the book been suppressed.”  I see no “nobility of mind” in an act of simple justice; and I hate the word “magnanimity," because I have sometimes seen it applied to the grossest of impostors by the greatest of fools; but I would have “explained the circumstance,” notwithstanding “the suppression of the book,” if Mr. Bowles had expressed any desire that I should.  As the “gallant Galbraith” says to “Baillie Jarvie,” “Well, the devil take the mistake, and all that occasioned it.”  I have had as great and greater mistakes made about me personally and poetically, once a month for these last ten years, and never cared very much about correcting one or the other, at least after the first eight and forty hours had gone over them.

I must now, however, say a word or two about Pope, of whom you have my opinion more at large in the unpublished letter on or to (for I forget which) the editor of “Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine;”—­and here I doubt that Mr. Bowles will not approve of my sentiments.