On his arrival in London, towards the end of April, he found the first edition of his poem nearly exhausted; and set immediately about preparing another, to which he determined to prefix his name.  The additions he now made to the work were considerable,—­near a hundred new lines being introduced at the very opening[103],—­and it was not till about the middle of the ensuing month that the new edition was ready to go to press.  He had, during his absence from town, fixed definitely with his friend, Mr. Hobhouse, that they should leave England together on the following June, and it was his wish to see the last proofs of the volume corrected before his departure.

Among the new features of this edition was a Post-script to the Satire, in prose, which Mr. Dallas, much to the credit of his discretion and taste, most earnestly entreated the poet to suppress.  It is to be regretted that the adviser did not succeed in his efforts, as there runs a tone of bravado through this ill-judged effusion, which it is, at all times, painful to see a brave man assume.  For instance:—­“It may be said,” he observes, “that I quit England because I have censured these ‘persons of honour and wit about town;’ but I am coming back again, and their vengeance will keep hot till my return.  Those who know me can testify that my motives for leaving England are very different from fears, literary or personal; those who do not may be one day convinced.  Since the publication of this thing, my name has not been concealed; I have been mostly in London, ready to answer for my transgressions, and in daily expectation of sundry cartels; but, alas, ‘the age of chivalry is over,’ or, in the vulgar tongue, there is no spirit now-a-days.”

But, whatever may have been the faults or indiscretions of this Satire, there are few who would now sit in judgment upon it so severely as did the author himself, on reading it over nine years after, when he had quitted England, never to return.  The copy which he then perused is now in possession of Mr. Murray, and the remarks which he has scribbled over its pages are well worth transcribing.  On the first leaf we find—­

“The binding of this volume is considerably too valuable for its contents.

“Nothing but the consideration of its being the property of another prevents me from consigning this miserable record of misplaced anger and indiscriminate acrimony to the flames.

B.”

Opposite the passage,

                           “to be misled
    By Jeffrey’s heart, or Lamb’s Boeotian head,”

is written, “This was not just.  Neither the heart nor the head of these gentlemen are at all what they are here represented.”  Along the whole of the severe verses against Mr. Wordsworth he has scrawled “Unjust,”—­and the same verdict is affixed to those against Mr. Coleridge.  On his unmeasured attack upon Mr. Bowles, the comment is,—­“Too savage all this on Bowles;” and down the margin of the page containing the lines, “Health to immortal Jeffrey,” &c. he writes,—­“Too ferocious—­this is mere insanity;”—­adding, on the verses that follow ("Can none remember that eventful day?” &c.), “All this is bad, because personal.”