“W. and, after him, * *, has stolen one of my buffooneries about Mde. de Stael’s Metaphysics and the Fog, and passed it, by speech and letter, as their own.  As Gibbet says, ’they are the most of a gentleman of any on the road.’  W. is in sad enmity with the Whigs about this Review of Fox (if he did review him);—­all the epigrammatists and essayists are at him.  I hate odds, and wish he may beat them.  As for me, by the blessing of indifference, I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments; and, as it is the shortest and most agreeable and summary feeling imaginable, the first moment of an universal republic would convert me into an advocate for single and uncontradicted despotism.  The fact is, riches are power, and poverty is slavery all over the earth, and one sort of establishment is no better nor worse for a people than another.  I shall adhere to my party, because it would not be honourable to act otherwise; but, as to opinions, I don’t think politics worth an opinion. Conduct is another thing:—­if you begin with a party, go on with them.  I have no consistency, except in politics; and that probably arises from my indifference on the subject altogether.”

* * * * *

I must here be permitted to interrupt, for a while, the progress of this Journal,—­which extends through some months of the succeeding year,—­for the purpose of noticing, without infringement of chronological order, such parts of the poet’s literary history and correspondence as belong properly to the date of the year 1813.

At the beginning, as we have seen, of the month of December, The Bride of Abydos was published,—­having been struck off, like its predecessor, The Giaour, in one of those paroxysms of passion and imagination, which adventures such as the poet was now engaged in were, in a temperament like his, calculated to excite.  As the mathematician of old required but a spot to stand upon, to be able, as he boasted, to move the world, so a certain degree of foundation in fact seemed necessary to Byron, before that lever which he knew how to apply to the world of the passions could be wielded by him.  So small, however, was, in many instances, the connection with reality which satisfied him, that to aim at tracing through his stories these links with his own fate and fortunes, which were, after all, perhaps, visible but to his own fancy, would be a task as uncertain as unsafe;—­and this remark applies not only to The Bride of Abydos, but to The Corsair, Lara, and all the other beautiful fictions that followed, in which, though the emotions expressed by the poet may be, in general, regarded as vivid recollections of what had at different times agitated his own bosom, there are but little grounds,—­however he might himself, occasionally, encourage such a supposition,—­for connecting him personally with the groundwork or incidents of the stories.