“I am sorry you should feel uneasy at what has by no means troubled me.[85] If your editor, his correspondents, and readers, are amused, I have no objection to be the theme of all the ballads he can find room for,—­provided his lucubrations are confined to me only.

“It is a long time since things of this kind have ceased to ’fright me from my propriety;’ nor do I know any similar attack which would induce me to turn again,—­unless it involved those connected with me, whose qualities, I hope, are such as to exempt them in the eyes of those who bear no good-will to myself.  In such a case, supposing it to occur—­to reverse the saying of Dr. Johnson,—­’what the law could not do for me, I would do for myself,’ be the consequences what they might.

     “I return you, with many thanks, Colman and the letters.  The poems,
     I hope, you intended me to keep;—­at least, I shall do so, till I
     hear the contrary.  Very truly yours.”

[Footnote 85:  Mr. Taylor having inserted in the Sun newspaper (of which he was then chief proprietor) a sonnet to Lord Byron, in return for a present which his Lordship had sent him of a handsomely bound copy of all his works, there appeared in the same journal, on the following day (from the pen of some person who had acquired a control over the paper), a parody upon this sonnet, containing some disrespectful allusion to Lady Byron; and it is to this circumstance, which Mr. Taylor had written to explain, that the above letter, so creditable to the feelings of the noble husband, refers.]

* * * * *

TO MR. MURRAY.

     “Sept. 25. 1815.

“Will you publish the Drury Lane ‘Magpie?’ or, what is more, will you give fifty, or even forty, pounds for the copyright of the said?  I have undertaken to ask you this question on behalf of the translator, and wish you would.  We can’t get so much for him by ten pounds from any body else, and I, knowing your magnificence, would be glad of an answer.  Ever,” &c.

* * * * *

LETTER 226.  TO MR. MURRAY.

     “September 27. 1815.

“That’s right and splendid, and becoming a publisher of high degree.  Mr. Concanen (the translator) will be delighted, and pay his washerwoman; and, in reward for your bountiful behaviour in this instance, I won’t ask you to publish any more for Drury Lane, or any lane whatever, again.  You will have no tragedy or any thing else from me, I assure you, and may think yourself lucky in having got rid of me, for good and all, without more damage.  But I’ll tell you what we will do for you,—­act Sotheby’s Ivan, which will succeed; and then your present and next impression of the dramas of that dramatic gentleman will be expedited to your heart’s content; and if there is any thing very good, you shall have the refusal; but