and must be altered to—­

        “To break the master’s bread and salt.

     This is not so well, though—­confound it!”

[Footnote 75:  This is written on a separate slip of paper enclosed.]

* * * * *

LETTER 132.  TO MR. MURRAY.

     “Oct. 12. 1813.

“You must look The Giaour again over carefully; there are a few lapses, particularly in the last page.—­’I know ’twas false; she could not die;’ it was, and ought to be—­’I knew.’  Pray observe this and similar mistakes.

“I have received and read the British Review.  I really think the writer in most points very right.  The only mortifying thing is the accusation of imitation. Crabbe’s passage I never saw[76]; and Scott I no further meant to follow than in his lyric measure, which is Gray’s, Milton’s, and any one’s who likes it.  The Giaour is certainly a bad character, but not dangerous; and I think his fate and his feelings will meet with few proselytes.  I shall be very glad to hear from or of you, when you please; but don’t put yourself out of your way on my account.”

[Footnote 76:  The passage referred to by the Reviewers is in the poem entitled “Resentment;” and the following is, I take for granted, the part which Lord Byron is accused by them of having imitated:—­

    “Those are like wax—­apply them to the fire,
    Melting, they take th’ impressions you desire;
    Easy to mould, and fashion as you please,
    And again moulded with an equal ease: 
    Like smelted iron these the forms retain;
    But, once impress’d, will never melt again.”
]

* * * * *

LETTER 133.  TO MR. MOORE.

     “Bennet Street, August 22. 1813.

“As our late—­I might say, deceased—­correspondence had too much of the town-life leaven in it, we will now, ‘paulo majora,’ prattle a little of literature in all its branches; and first of the first—­criticism.  The Prince is at Brighton, and Jackson, the boxer, gone to Margate, having, I believe, decoyed Yarmouth to see a milling in that polite neighbourhood.  Made. de Stael Holstein has lost one of her young barons, who has been carbonadoed by a vile Teutonic adjutant,—­kilt and killed in a coffee-house at Scrawsenhawsen.  Corinne is, of course, what all mothers must be,—­but will, I venture to prophesy, do what few mothers could—­write an Essay upon it.  She cannot exist without a grievance—­and somebody to see, or read, how much grief becomes her.  I have not seen her since the event; but merely judge (not very charitably) from prior observation.

“In a ‘mail-coach copy’ of the Edinburgh, I perceive The Giaour is second article.  The numbers are still in the Leith smack—­pray,