you are laughing at me—­’Stap my vitals, Tarn! thou art a very impudent person;’ and, if you are not laughing at me, you deserve to be laughed at.  Seriously, what on earth can you, or have you, to dread from any poetical flesh breathing?  It really puts me out of humour to hear you talk thus.

“‘The Giaour’ I have added to a good deal; but still in foolish fragments.  It contains about 1200 lines, or rather more—­now printing.  You will allow me to send you a copy.  You delight me much by telling me that I am in your good graces, and more particularly as to temper; for, unluckily, I have the reputation of a very bad one.  But they say the devil is amusing when pleased, and I must have been more venomous than the old serpent, to have hissed or stung in your company.  It may be, and would appear to a third person, an incredible thing, but I know you will believe me when I say, that I am as anxious for your success as one human being can be for another’s,—­as much as if I had never scribbled a line.  Surely the field of fame is wide enough for all; and if it were not, I would not willingly rob my neighbour of a rood of it.  Now you have a pretty property of some thousand acres there, and when you have passed your present Inclosure Bill, your income will be doubled, (there’s a metaphor, worthy of a Templar, namely, pert and low,) while my wild common is too remote to incommode you, and quite incapable of such fertility.  I send you (which return per post, as the printer would say) a curious letter from a friend of mine[83], which will let you into the origin of ‘The Giaour.’  Write soon.  Ever, dear Moore, yours most entirely, &c.

“P.S.—­This letter was written to me on account of a different story circulated by some gentlewomen of our acquaintance, a little too close to the text.  The part erased contained merely some Turkish names, and circumstantial evidence of the girl’s detection, not very important or decorous.”

[Footnote 83:  The letter of Lord Sligo, already given.]

* * * * *

LETTER 136.  TO MR. MOORE.

     “Sept. 5. 1813.

“You need not tie yourself down to a day with Toderini, but send him at your leisure, having anatomised him into such annotations as you want; I do not believe that he has ever undergone that process before, which is the best reason for not sparing him now.

“* * has returned to town, but not yet recovered of the Quarterly.  What fellows these reviewers are! ‘these bugs do fear us all.’  They made you fight, and me (the milkiest of men) a satirist, and will end by making * * madder than Ajax.  I have been reading Memory again, the other day, and Hope together, and retain all my preference of the former.  His elegance is really wonderful—­there is no such thing as a vulgar line in his book.