Sometimes, however, he shows a disposition to stand by his original decisions.  Thus, on the passage relating to a writer of certain obscure Epics (v. 793.), he says,—­“All right;” adding, of the same person, “I saw some letters of this fellow to an unfortunate poetess, whose productions (which the poor woman by no means thought vainly of) he attacked so roughly and bitterly, that I could hardly regret assailing him;—­even were it unjust, which it is not; for, verily, he is an ass.”  On the strong lines, too (v. 953.), upon Clarke (a writer in a magazine called the Satirist), he remarks,—­“Right enough,—­this was well deserved and well laid on.”

To the whole paragraph, beginning “Illustrious Holland,” are affixed the words “Bad enough;—­and on mistaken grounds besides.”  The bitter verses against Lord Carlisle he pronounces “Wrong also:—­the provocation was not sufficient to justify such acerbity;”—­and of a subsequent note respecting the same nobleman, he says, “Much too savage, whatever the foundation may be.”  Of Rosa Matilda (v. 738.) he tells us, “She has since married the Morning Post,—­an exceeding good match.”  To the verses, “When some brisk youth, the tenant of a stall,” &c., he has appended the following interesting note:—­“This was meant at poor Blackett, who was then patronised by A.I.B.[104];—­but that I did not know, or this would not have been written; at least I think not.”

Farther on, where Mr. Campbell and other poets are mentioned, the following gingle on the names of their respective poems is scribbled:—­

    “Pretty Miss Jacqueline
    Had a nose aquiline;
    And would assert rude
    Things of Miss Gertrude;
    While Mr. Marmion
    Led a great army on,
    Making Kehama look
    Like a fierce Mamaluke.”

Opposite the paragraph in praise of Mr. Crabbe he has written, “I consider Crabbe and Coleridge as the first of these times in point of power and genius.”  On his own line, in a subsequent paragraph, “And glory, like the phoenix mid her fires,” he says, comically, “The devil take that phoenix—­how came it there?” and his concluding remark on the whole poem is as follows:—­

“The greater part of this satire I most sincerely wish had never been written; not only on account of the injustice of much of the critical and some of the personal part of it, but the tone and temper are such as I cannot approve.

BYRON.”

“Diodata, Geneva, July 14. 1816.”

While engaged in preparing his new edition for the press, he was also gaily dispensing the hospitalities of Newstead to a party of young college friends, whom, with the prospect of so long an absence from England, he had assembled round him at the Abbey, for a sort of festive farewell.  The following letter from one of the party, Charles Skinner Matthews, though containing much less of the noble host himself than we could have wished, yet, as a picture, taken freshly and at the moment, of a scene so pregnant with character, will, I have little doubt, be highly acceptable to the reader.