--So that, after all, I shall not meditate our laureate's
death by pen or poison.
Will you present my best respects to Lady Holland? and believe me, hers
and yours very sincerely.
[Footnote 1: The ball was given in June, 1812, at Miss Johnson's (see
'Memoir of John Murray', vol. i. p. 212). In the words "predilection for
poetry" Byron probably refers to the phrase in the Regent's letter to
the Duke of York (February 13, 1812): "I have no predilections to
indulge, no resentments to gratify." Moore, in the 'Twopenny Post-bag',
twice fastens on the phrase. In "The Insurrection of the Papers", a
dream suggested by Lord Castlereagh's speech--"It would be impossible
for His Royal Highness to disengage his person from the accumulating
pile of papers that encompassed it"--he writes:
"But, oh, the basest of defections!
His Letter about 'predilections'--
His own dear Letter, void of grace,
Now flew up in its parent's face!"
And again, in the "Parody of a Celebrated Letter":
"I am proud to declare I have no predilections,
My heart is a sieve, where some scatter'd affections
Are just danc'd about for a moment or two,
And the 'finer' they are, the more sure to run through."]
[Footnote 2: The grandfather of Beau Brummell, who was in business in
Bury Street, St. James's, also let lodgings. One of his lodgers, Charles
Jenkinson, afterwards Earl of Liverpool, obtained for his landlord's
son, William Brummell, a clerkship in the Treasury.
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