My good Lord Byron, while you
are revelling in all the sensual and intellectual luxury which the
successful sale of Newstead Abbey has procured for you, you little
think of the privations to which you have subjected us unfortunate
Reviewers, ... in order to enable us to purchase your lordship's
expensive publication."]
* * * * *
310.--To Thomas Moore.
4, Benedictine Street, St. James's, July 8, 1813.
I presume by your silence that I have blundered into something noxious
in my reply to your letter, for the which I beg leave to send beforehand
a sweeping apology, which you may apply to any, or all, parts of that
unfortunate epistle. If I err in my conjecture, I expect the like from
you in putting our correspondence so long in quarantine. God he knows
what I have said; but he also knows (if he is not as indifferent to
mortals as the _nonchalant_ deities of Lucretius), that you are the last
person I want to offend. So, if I have,--why the devil don't you say it
at once, and expectorate your spleen?
Rogers is out of town with Madame de Stael, who hath published an Essay
against Suicide, [1] which, I presume, will make somebody shoot
himself;--as a sermon by Blenkinsop, in _proof_ of Christianity, sent a
hitherto most orthodox acquaintance of mine out of a chapel of ease a
perfect atheist. Have you found or founded a residence yet? and have you
begun or finished a poem? If you won't tell me what _I_ have done, pray
say what you have done, or left undone, yourself.
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