The second enclosure in the note consisted of some verses, written by him, December 10th, 1820, on seeing the following paragraph in a newspaper:—­“Lady Byron is this year the lady patroness at the annual Charity Ball given at the Town Hall at Hinckley, Leicestershire, and Sir G. Crewe, Bart, the principal steward.”  These verses are full of strong and indignant feeling,—­every stanza concluding pointedly with the words “Charity Ball,”—­and the thought that predominates through the whole may be collected from a few of the opening lines:—­

    “What matter the pangs of a husband and father,
      If his sorrows in exile be great or be small,
    So the Pharisee’s glories around her she gather,
      And the Saint patronises her ‘Charity Ball.’

    “What matters—­a heart, which though faulty was feeling,
      Be driven to excesses which once could appal—­
    That the Sinner should suffer is only fair dealing,
      As the Saint keeps her charity back for ‘the Ball,’” &c. &c.

* * * * *

LETTER 460.  TO MR. MOORE.

     “September—­no—­October 1. 1821.

     “I have written to you lately, both in prose and verse, at great
     length, to Paris and London.  I presume that Mrs. Moore, or whoever
     is your Paris deputy, will forward my packets to you in London.

“I am setting off for Pisa, if a slight incipient intermittent fever do not prevent me.  I fear it is not strong enough to give Murray much chance of realising his thirteens again.  I hardly should regret it, I think, provided you raised your price upon him—­as what Lady Holderness (my sister’s grandmother, a Dutchwoman) used to call Augusta, her Residee Legatoo—­so as to provide for us all:  my bones with a splendid and larmoyante edition, and you with double what is extractable during my lifetime.

“I have a strong presentiment that (bating some out of the way accident) you will survive me.  The difference of eight years, or whatever it is, between our ages, is nothing.  I do not feel (nor am, indeed, anxious to feel) the principle of life in me tend to longevity.  My father and mother died, the one at thirty-five or six, and the other at forty-five; and Dr. Rush, or somebody else, says that nobody lives long, without having one parent, at least, an old stager.

“I should, to be sure, like to see out my eternal mother-in-law, not so much for her heritage, but from my natural antipathy.  But the indulgence of this natural desire is too much to expect from the Providence who presides over old women.  I bore you with all this about lives, because it has been put in my way by a calculation of insurances which Murray has sent me.  I really think you should have more, if I evaporate within a reasonable time.