infidelity.  How far justice may have dictated this accusation, I cannot pretend to say; but, like the gentleman to whom my religious friends, in the warmth of their charity, have already devoted me, I am made worse than I really am.  However, to quit myself (the worst theme I could pitch upon), and return to my poems, I cannot sufficiently express my thanks, and I hope I shall some day have an opportunity of rendering them in person.  A second edition is now in the press, with some additions and considerable omissions; you will allow me to present you with a copy.  The Critical, Monthly, and Anti-Jacobin Reviews have been very indulgent; but the Eclectic has pronounced a furious Philippic, not against the book but the author, where you will find all I have mentioned asserted by a reverend divine who wrote the critique.

Your name and connection with our family have been long known to me, and I hope your person will be not less so:  you will find me an excellent compound of a ‘Brainless’ and a ’Stanhope.’[83] I am afraid you will hardly be able to read this, for my hand is almost as bad as my character; but you will find me, as legibly as possible,

“Your obliged and obedient servant,

“BYRON.”

There is here, evidently, a degree of pride in being thought to resemble the wicked Lord Lyttleton; and, lest his known irregularities should not bear him out in the pretension, he refers mysteriously, as was his habit, to certain untold events of his life, to warrant the parallel.[84] Mr. Dallas, who seems to have been but little prepared for such a reception of his compliments, escapes out of the difficulty by transferring to the young lord’s “candour” the praise he had so thanklessly bestowed on his morals in general; adding, that from the design Lord Byron had expressed in his preface of resigning the service of the Muses for a different vocation, he had “conceived him bent on pursuits which lead to the character of a legislator and statesman;—­had imagined him at one of the universities, training himself to habits of reasoning and eloquence, and storing up a large fund of history and law.”  It is in reply to this letter that the exposition of the noble poet’s opinions, to which I have above alluded, is contained.

LETTER 21.

TO MR. DALLAS.

“Dorant’s, January 21. 1808.

“Sir,

“Whenever leisure and inclination permit me the pleasure of a visit, I shall feel truly gratified in a personal acquaintance with one whose mind has been long known to me in his writings.

“You are so far correct in your conjecture, that I am a member of the University of Cambridge, where I shall take my degree of A. M. this term; but were reasoning, eloquence, or virtue, the objects of my search, Granta is not their metropolis, nor is the place of her situation an ‘El Dorado,’ far less an Utopia.  The intellects of her children are as stagnant as her Cam, and their pursuits limited to the church—­not of Christ, but of the nearest benefice.