_The Giaour_ is now a thousand and odd lines. "Lord Fanny spins a
thousand such a day," [10] eh, Moore?--thou wilt needs be a wag, but I
forgive it. Yours ever,
BYRON.
P. S.--I perceive I have written a flippant and rather cold-hearted
letter! let it go, however. I have said nothing, either, of the
brilliant sex; but the fact is, I am at this moment in a far more
serious, and entirely new, scrape [11] than any of the last twelve
months,--and that is saying a good deal. It is unlucky we can neither
live with nor without these women.
I am now thinking of regretting that, just as I have left Newstead, you
reside near it. Did you ever see it? _do_--but don't tell me that you
like it. If I had known of such intellectual neighbourhood, I don't
think I should have quitted it. You could have come over so often, as a
bachelor,--for it was a thorough bachelor's mansion--plenty of wine and
such sordid sensualities--with books enough, room enough, and an air of
antiquity about all (except the lasses) that would have suited you, when
pensive, and served you to laugh at when in glee. I had built myself a
bath and a _vault_--and now I sha'n't even be buried in it. It is odd
that we can't even be certain of a _grave_, at least a particular one. I
remember, when about fifteen, reading your poems there, which I can
repeat almost now,--and asking all kinds of questions about the author,
when I heard that he was not dead according to the preface; wondering if
I should ever see him--and though, at that time, without the smallest
poetical propensity myself, very much taken, as you may imagine, with
that volume.
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