than myself, monarchies and courts appearing to me salutary for the good and graces of mankind, and Americanisms anything but either.  But nobody, I conceive, that knew my writings, or heard of me truly from others, ever took me for a republican.  William the Fourth saw or heard nothing of me to hinder his letting Lord Melbourne give me L200 out of the Royal Fund.  Queen Victoria gave me another, through the same kind friend.  She also went twice to see my play; and everybody knows how I praise and love her. I do not think, therefore, in reference to the pension, that the public would care twopence about George the Fourth, one way or the other; or that if any remembered the case at all, they would connect the pension in the least with anything about him, but attribute it solely to the Queen’s and Minister’s goodness, and the wants of a sincere and not undeserving man of letters, distinguished for his loyal attachment.  I certainly think the L500 fine ought not to have been taken out of my pocket, or the other two L125 either; and I think also, that a liberal Whig minister might reasonably and privately think some compensation on those accounts due to me. I have been fighting his own fight from first to last, and helping to prepare matters for his triumph.  But still the above, in my opinion, is what the public would think of the matter, and my friends of the press could lay it entirely to the literary account.

GEORGE GORDON NOEL, LORD BYRON

1788-1824

To MR. HODGSON

Travel in Portugal

Lisbon, 16 July, 1809.

Thus far have we pursued our route, and seen all sorts of marvellous sights, palaces, convents, &c.,—­which, being to be heard in my friend Hobhouse’s forthcoming Book of Travels, I shall not anticipate by smuggling any account whatsoever to you in a private and clandestine manner.  I must just observe, that the village of Cintra in Estremadura is the most beautiful, perhaps, in the world.

I am very happy here, because I loves oranges, and talks bad Latin to the monks, who understand it, as it is like their own,—­and I goes into society (with my pocket pistols), and I swims in the Tagus all across at once, and I rides on an ass or a mule, and swears Portuguese, and have got bites from the mosquitoes.  But what of that?  Comfort must not be expected by folks that go a-pleasuring.

When the Portuguese are pertinacious, I say ’Carracho!’—­the great oath of the grandees, that very well supplies the place of ’Damme!’—­and when dissatisfied with my neighbour, I pronounce him ‘Ambra di merdo’.  With these two phrases, and a third,’Avra bouro’, which signifieth ‘Get an ass’, I am universally understood to be a person of degree and a master of languages.  How merrily we lives that travellers be!—­if we had food and raiment.  But, in sober sadness, anything is better than England, and I am infinitely amused with my pilgrimage, as far as it has gone.