"Pisa, August 8. 1822.
"You will have heard by this time that Shelley and another
gentleman (Captain Williams) were drowned about a month ago (a
_month_ yesterday), in a squall off the Gulf of Spezia. There is
thus another man gone, about whom the world was ill-naturedly, and
ignorantly, and brutally mistaken. It will, perhaps, do him justice
_now_, when he can be no better for it.[83]
"I have not seen the thing you mention[84], and only heard of it
casually, nor have I any desire. The price is, as I saw in some
advertisements, fourteen shillings, which is too much to pay for a
libel on oneself. Some one said in a letter, that it was a Doctor
Watkins, who deals in the life and libel line. It must have
diminished your natural pleasure, as a friend (vide
Rochefoucault), to see yourself in it.
"With regard to the Blackwood fellows, I never published any thing
against them; nor, indeed, have seen their magazine (except in
Galignani's extracts) for these three years past. I once wrote, a
good while ago, some remarks [85] on their review of Don Juan, but
saying very little about themselves, and these were _not_
published. If you think that I ought to follow your example[86](and
I like to be in your company when I can) in contradicting their
impudence, you may shape this declaration of mine into a similar
paragraph for me. It is possible that you may have seen the little
I _did_ write (and never published) at Murray's;--it contained much
more about Southey than about the Blacks.
"If you think that I ought to do any thing about Watkins's book, I
should not care much about publishing _my Memoir now_, should it be
necessary to counteract the fellow. But, in _that_ case, I should
like to look over the _press_ myself. Let me know what you think,
or whether I had better _not_;--at least, not the second part,
which touches on the actual confines of still existing matters.
"I have written three more Cantos of Don Juan, and am hovering on
the brink of another (the ninth). The reason I want the stanzas
again which I sent you is, that as these cantos contain a full
detail (like the storm in Canto Second) of the siege and assault of
Ismael, with much of sarcasm on those butchers in large business,
your mercenary soldiery, it is a good opportunity of gracing the
poem with * * *. With these things and these fellows, it is
necessary, in the present clash of philosophy and tyranny, to throw
away the scabbard. I know it is against fearful odds; but the
battle must be fought; and it will be eventually for the good of
mankind, whatever it may be for the individual who risks himself.
"What do you think of your Irish bishop? Do you remember Swift's
line, 'Let me have a _barrack_--a fig for the _clergy_?' This seems
to have been his reverence's motto. * * *
"Yours," &c.
[Footnote 83: In a letter to Mr. Murray, of an earlier date, which has
been omitted to avoid repetitions, he says on the same subject, "You
were all mistaken about Shelley, who was, without exception, the _best_
and least selfish man I ever knew." There is also another passage in the
same letter which, for its perfect truth, I must quote:--"I have
received your scrap, with Henry Drury's letter enclosed. It is just like
him--always kind and ready to oblige his old friends."]
[Footnote 84: A book which had just appeared, entitled "Memoirs of the
Right Hon. Lord Byron."]
[Footnote 85: The remarkable pamphlet from which extracts have been
already given in this work.]
[Footnote 86: It had been asserted in a late Number of Blackwood, that
both Lord Byron and myself were employed in writing satires against that
Magazine.]
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