“I have written three more Cantos of Don Juan, and am hovering on the brink of another (the ninth).  The reason I want the stanzas again which I sent you is, that as these cantos contain a full detail (like the storm in Canto Second) of the siege and assault of Ismael, with much of sarcasm on those butchers in large business, your mercenary soldiery, it is a good opportunity of gracing the poem with * * *.  With these things and these fellows, it is necessary, in the present clash of philosophy and tyranny, to throw away the scabbard.  I know it is against fearful odds; but the battle must be fought; and it will be eventually for the good of mankind, whatever it may be for the individual who risks himself.

     “What do you think of your Irish bishop?  Do you remember Swift’s
     line, ‘Let me have a barrack—­a fig for the clergy?’ This seems
     to have been his reverence’s motto. * * *

     “Yours,” &c.

[Footnote 83:  In a letter to Mr. Murray, of an earlier date, which has been omitted to avoid repetitions, he says on the same subject, “You were all mistaken about Shelley, who was, without exception, the best and least selfish man I ever knew.”  There is also another passage in the same letter which, for its perfect truth, I must quote:—­“I have received your scrap, with Henry Drury’s letter enclosed.  It is just like him—­always kind and ready to oblige his old friends.”]

[Footnote 84:  A book which had just appeared, entitled “Memoirs of the Right Hon. Lord Byron.”]

[Footnote 85:  The remarkable pamphlet from which extracts have been already given in this work.]

[Footnote 86:  It had been asserted in a late Number of Blackwood, that both Lord Byron and myself were employed in writing satires against that Magazine.]

* * * * *

LETTER 503.  TO MR. MOORE.

     “Pisa, August 27. 1822.

“It is boring to trouble you with ‘such small gear;’ but it must be owned that I should be glad if you would enquire whether my Irish subscription ever reached the committee in Paris from Leghorn.  My reasons, like Vellum’s, ’are threefold:’—­First, I doubt the accuracy of all almoners, or remitters of benevolent cash; second, I do suspect that the said Committee, having in part served its time to time-serving, may have kept back the acknowledgment of an obnoxious politician’s name in their lists; and third, I feel pretty sure that I shall one day be twitted by the government scribes for having been a professor of love for Ireland, and not coming forward with the others in her distresses.

“It is not, as you may opine, that I am ambitious of having my name in the papers, as I can have that any day in the week gratis.  All I want is to know if the Reverend Thomas