“Natis in usum laetitiae,” &c.;

some passages of which I told him might be parodied, in allusion to some of his late adventures: 

    “Quanta laboras in Charybdi! 
    Digne puer meliore flamma!”
]

[Footnote 80:  In his first edition of The Giaour he had used this word as a trisyllable,—­“Bright as the gem of Giamschid,”—­but on my remarking to him, upon the authority of Richardson’s Persian Dictionary, that this was incorrect, he altered it to “Bright as the ruby of Giamschid.”  On seeing this, however, I wrote to him, “that, as the comparison of his heroine’s eye to a ‘ruby’ might unluckily call up the idea of its being blood-shot, he had better change the line to “Bright as the jewel of Giamschid;”—­which he accordingly did in the following edition.]

[Footnote 81:  Having already endeavoured to obviate the charge of vanity, to which I am aware I expose myself by being thus accessory to the publication of eulogies, so warm and so little merited, on myself, I shall here only add, that it will abundantly console me under such a charge, if, in whatever degree the judgment of my noble friend may be called in question for these praises, he shall, in the same proportion, receive credit for the good-nature and warm-heartedness by which they were dictated.]

[Footnote 82:  I had already, singularly enough, anticipated this suggestion, by making the daughter of a Peri the heroine of one of my stories, and detailing the love adventures of her aerial parent in an episode.  In acquainting Lord Byron with this circumstance, in my answer to the above letter, I added, “All I ask of your friendship is—­not that you will abstain from Peris on my account, for that is too much to ask of human (or, at least, author’s) nature—­but that, whenever you mean to pay your addresses to any of these aerial ladies, you will, at once, tell me so, frankly and instantly, and let me, at least, have my choice whether I shall be desperate enough to go on, with such a rival, or at once surrender the whole race into your hands, and take, for the future, to Antediluvians with Mr. Montgomery.”]

* * * * *

LETTER 135.  TO MR. MOORE.

     “August—­September, I mean—­1. 1813.

“I send you, begging your acceptance, Castellan, and three vols. on Turkish Literature, not yet looked into.  The last I will thank you to read, extract what you want, and return in a week, as they are lent to me by that brightest of Northern constellations, Mackintosh,—­amongst many other kind things into which India has warmed him, for I am sure your home Scotsman is of a less genial description.

“Your Peri, my dear M., is sacred and inviolable; I have no idea of touching the hem of her petticoat.  Your affectation of a dislike to encounter me is so flattering, that I begin to think myself a very fine fellow.  But