“Your recollection and invitation do me great honour; but I am going to be ‘married, and can’t come.’  My intended is two hundred miles off, and the moment my business here is arranged, I must set out in a great hurry to be happy.  Miss Milbanke is the good-natured person who has undertaken me, and, of course, I am very much in love, and as silly as all single gentlemen must be in that sentimental situation.  I have been accepted these three weeks; but when the event will take place, I don’t exactly know.  It depends partly upon lawyers, who are never in a hurry.  One can be sure of nothing; but, at present, there appears no other interruption to this intention, which seems as mutual as possible, and now no secret, though I did not tell first,—­and all our relatives are congratulating away to right and left in the most fatiguing manner.

“You perhaps know the lady.  She is niece to Lady Melbourne, and cousin to Lady Cowper and others of your acquaintance, and has no fault, except being a great deal too good for me, and that I must pardon, if nobody else should.  It might have been two years ago, and, if it had, would have saved me a world of trouble.  She has employed the interval in refusing about half a dozen of my particular friends, (as she did me once, by the way,) and has taken me at last, for which I am very much obliged to her.  I wish it was well over, for I do hate bustle, and there is no marrying without some;—­and then, I must not marry in a black coat, they tell me, and I can’t bear a blue one.

“Pray forgive me for scribbling all this nonsense.  You know I must be serious all the rest of my life, and this is a parting piece of buffoonery, which I write with tears in my eyes, expecting to be agitated.  Believe me most seriously and sincerely your obliged servant, BYRON.

     “P.S.  My best rems. to Lord * * on his return.”

* * * * *

LETTER 203.  TO MR. MOORE.

     “October 7. 1814.

“Notwithstanding the contradictory paragraph in the Morning Chronicle, which must have been sent by * *, or perhaps—­I know not why I should suspect Claughton of such a thing, and yet I partly do, because it might interrupt his renewal of purchase, if so disposed; in short it matters not, but we are all in the road to matrimony—­lawyers settling, relations congratulating, my intended as kind as heart could wish, and every one, whose opinion I value, very glad of it.  All her relatives, and all mine too, seem equally pleased.

“Perry was very sorry, and has re-contradicted, as you will perceive by this day’s paper.  It was, to be sure, a devil of an insertion, since the first paragraph came from Sir Ralph’s own County Journal, and this in the teeth of it would appear to him and his as my denial.  But I have written