“P.S.  I have taken these resolutions not from any irritation against you or yours, but simply upon reflection that all reading, either praise or censure, of myself has done me harm.  When I was in Switzerland and Greece, I was out of the way of hearing either, and how I wrote there!—­In Italy I am out of the way of it too; but latterly, partly through my fault, and partly through your kindness in wishing to send me the newest and most periodical publications, I have had a crowd of Reviews, &c. thrust upon me, which have bored me with their jargon, of one kind or another, and taken off my attention from greater objects.  You have also sent me a parcel of trash of poetry, for no reason that I can conceive, unless to provoke me to write a new ‘English Bards.’  Now this I wish to avoid; for if ever I do, it will be a strong production; and I desire peace as long as the fools will keep their nonsense out of my way."[54]

[Footnote 54:  It would be difficult to describe more strongly or more convincingly than Lord Byron has done in this letter the sort of petty, but thwarting obstructions and distractions which are at present thrown across the path of men of real talent by that swarm of minor critics and pretenders with whom the want of a vent in other professions has crowded all the walks of literature.  Nor is it only the writers of the day that suffer from this multifarious rush into the mart;—­the readers also, from having (as Lord Byron expresses it in another letter) “the superficies of too many things presented to them at once,” come to lose by degrees their powers of discrimination; and, in the same manner as the palate becomes confused in trying various wines, so the public taste declines in proportion as the impressions to which it is exposed multiply.]

* * * * *

LETTER 457.  TO MR. MOORE.

     “September 27. 1821.

“It was not Murray’s fault.  I did not send the MS. overture, but I send it now[55], and it may be restored;—­or, at any rate, you may keep the original, and give any copies you please.  I send it, as written, and as I read it to you—­I have no other copy.

“By last week’s two posts, in two packets, I sent to your address, at Paris, a longish poem upon the late Irishism of your countrymen in their reception of * * *.  Pray, have you received it?  It is in ‘the high Roman fashion,’ and full of ferocious phantasy.  As you could not well take up the matter with Paddy (being of the same nest), I have;—­but I hope still that I have done justice to his great men and his good heart.  As for * * *, you will find it laid on with a trowel.  I delight in your ’fact historical’—­is it a fact?

     “Yours, &c.