"Dorant's, March 28. 1808.
"I have lately received a copy of the new edition from Ridge, and it
is high time for me to return my best thanks to you for the trouble
you have taken in the superintendence. This I do most sincerely, and
only regret that Ridge has not seconded you as I could wish,--at
least, in the bindings, paper, &c., of the copy he sent to me. Perhaps
those for the public may be more respectable in such articles.
You have seen the Edinburgh Review, of course. I regret that Mrs.
Byron is so much annoyed. For my own part, these 'paper bullets of the
brain' have only taught me to stand fire; and, as I have been lucky
enough upon the whole, my repose and appetite are not discomposed.
Pratt, the gleaner, author, poet, &c. &c., addressed a long rhyming
epistle to me on the subject, by way of consolation; but it was not
well done, so I do not send it, though the name of the man might make
it go down. The E. R^s. have not performed their task well; at least
the literati tell me this; and I think _I_ could write a more
sarcastic critique on _myself_ than any yet published. For instance,
instead of the remark,--ill-natured enough, but not keen,--about
Macpherson, I (quoad reviewers) could have said, 'Alas, this imitation
only proves the assertion of Dr. Johnson, that many men, women, and
_children_, could write such poetry as Ossian's.'
"I am _thin_ and in exercise. During the spring or summer I trust we
shall meet. I hear Lord Ruthyn leaves Newstead in April. As soon as he
quits it for ever, I wish much you would take a ride over, survey the
mansion, and give me your candid opinion on the most advisable mode of
proceeding with regard to the _house_. _Entre nous_, I am cursedly
dipped; my debts, _every_ thing inclusive, will be nine or ten
thousand before I am twenty-one. But I have reason to think my
property will turn out better than general expectation may conceive.
Of Newstead I have little hope or care; but Hanson, my agent,
intimated my Lancashire property was worth three Newsteads. I believe
we have it hollow; though the defendants are protracting the
surrender, if possible, till after my majority, for the purpose of
forming some arrangement with me, thinking I shall probably prefer a
sum in hand to a reversion. Newstead I may _sell_;--perhaps I will
not,--though of that more anon. I will come down in May or June.
"Yours most truly," &c.
The sort of life which he led at this period between the dissipations
of London and of Cambridge, without a home to welcome, or even the
roof of a single relative to receive him, was but little calculated to
render him satisfied either with himself or the world. Unrestricted as
he was by deference to any will but his own,[91] even the pleasures
to which he was naturally most inclined prematurely palled upon him,
for want of those best zests of all enjoyment, rarity and restraint. I
have already quoted, from one of his note-books, a passage descriptive
of his feelings on first going to Cambridge, in which he says that
"one of the deadliest and heaviest feelings of his life was to feel
that he was no longer a boy."--"From that moment (he adds) I began to
grow old in my own esteem, and in my esteem age is not estimable. I
took my gradations in the vices with great promptitude, but they were
not to my taste; for my early passions, though violent in the extreme,
were concentrated, and hated division or spreading abroad. I could
have left or lost the whole world with, or for, that which I loved;
but, though my temperament was naturally burning, I could not share in
the common-place libertinism of the place and time without disgust.
And yet this very disgust, and my heart thrown back upon itself, threw
me into excesses perhaps more fatal than those from which I shrunk, as
fixing upon one (at a time) the passions which spread amongst many
would have hurt only myself."
Though, from the causes here alleged, the irregularities he, at this
period, gave way to were of a nature far less gross and miscellaneous
than those, perhaps, of any of his associates, yet, partly from the
vehemence which this concentration caused, and, still more, from that
strange pride in his own errors, which led him always to bring them
forth in the most conspicuous light, it so happened that one single
indiscretion, in his hands, was made to _go farther_, if I may so
express it, than a thousand in those of others. An instance of this,
that occurred about the time of which we are speaking, was, I am
inclined to think, the sole foundation of the mysterious allusions
just cited. An amour (if it may be dignified with such a name) of that
sort of casual description which less attachable natures would have
forgotten, and more prudent ones at least concealed, was by him
converted, at this period, and with circumstances of most unnecessary
display, into a connection of some continuance,--the object of it not
only becoming domesticated with him in lodgings at Brompton, but
accompanied him afterwards, disguised in boy's clothes, to Brighton.
He introduced this young person, who used to ride about with him in
her male attire, as his younger brother; and the late Lady P----, who
was at Brighton at the time, and had some suspicion of the real nature
of the relationship, said one day to the poet's companion, "What a
pretty horse that is you are riding!"--"Yes," answered the pretended
cavalier, "it was _gave_ me by my brother!"