or propose any present bargain about it or the new Mystery till we see if they succeed.  If they don’t sell (which is not unlikely), you sha’n’t pay; and I suppose this is fair play, if you choose to risk it.

“Bartolini, the celebrated sculptor, wrote to me to desire to take my bust:  I consented, on condition that he also took that of the Countess Guiccioli.  He has taken both, and I think it will be allowed that hers is beautiful.  I shall make you a present of them both, to show that I don’t bear malice, and as a compensation for the trouble and squabble you had about Thorwaldsen’s.  Of my own I can hardly speak, except that it is thought very like what I now am, which is different from what I was, of course, since you saw me.  The sculptor is a famous one; and as it was done by his own particular request, will be done well, probably.

     “What is to be done about * * and his Commentary?  He will die if he
     is not published; he will be damned, if he is; but that he
     don’t mind.  We must publish him.

“All the row about me has no otherwise affected me than by the attack upon yourself, which is ungenerous in Church and State:  but as all violence must in time have its proportionate re-action, you will do better by and by.  Yours very truly,

     “NOEL BYRON.”

* * * * *

LETTER 485.  TO MR. MOORE.

     “Pisa, March 8. 1822.

“You will have had enough of my letters by this time—­yet one word in answer to your present missive.  You are quite wrong in thinking that your ‘advice’ had offended me; but I have already replied (if not answered) on that point.

“With regard to Murray, as I really am the meekest and mildest of men since Moses (though the public and mine ‘excellent wife’ cannot find it out), I had already pacified myself and subsided back to Albemarle Street, as my yesterday’s yepistle will have informed you.  But I thought that I had explained my causes of bile—­at least to you.  Some instances of vacillation, occasional neglect, and troublesome sincerity, real or imagined, are sufficient to put your truly great author and man into a passion.  But reflection, with some aid from hellebore, hath already cured me ‘pro tempore;’ and, if it had not, a request from you and Hobhouse would have come upon me like two out of the ’tribus Anticyris,’—­with which, however, Horace despairs of purging a poet.  I really feel ashamed of having bored you so frequently and fully of late.  But what could I do?  You are a friend—­an absent one, alas!—­and as I trust no one more, I trouble you in proportion.

“This war of ‘Church and State’ has astonished me more than it disturbs; for I really thought ‘Cain’ a speculative and hardy, but still a harmless, production.