"13. Terrace, Piccadilly, September 25. 1815.
"Dear Sir,
"I am sorry you should feel uneasy at what has by no means troubled
me.[85] If your editor, his correspondents, and readers, are
amused, I have no objection to be the theme of all the ballads he
can find room for,--provided his lucubrations are confined to _me_
only.
"It is a long time since things of this kind have ceased to 'fright
me from my propriety;' nor do I know any similar attack which would
induce me to turn again,--unless it involved those connected with
me, whose qualities, I hope, are such as to exempt them in the eyes
of those who bear no good-will to myself. In such a case, supposing
it to occur--to _reverse_ the saying of Dr. Johnson,--'what the law
could not do for me, I would do for myself,' be the consequences
what they might.
"I return you, with many thanks, Colman and the letters. The poems,
I hope, you intended me to keep;--at least, I shall do so, till I
hear the contrary. Very truly yours."
[Footnote 85: Mr. Taylor having inserted in the Sun newspaper (of which
he was then chief proprietor) a sonnet to Lord Byron, in return for a
present which his Lordship had sent him of a handsomely bound copy of
all his works, there appeared in the same journal, on the following day
(from the pen of some person who had acquired a control over the paper),
a parody upon this sonnet, containing some disrespectful allusion to
Lady Byron; and it is to this circumstance, which Mr. Taylor had written
to explain, that the above letter, so creditable to the feelings of the
noble husband, refers.]
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