Sir
On two former occasions you have allowed me thro the channel of your Journal to contradict a calumnious accusation as publicly as it had been preferred;

& tho in these days of slander, such things hardly deserve refutation, there are reasons which induce me once more to request a similar favour.

Some An extracts from Cap^t Medwins recent publication of Lord Byrons Conversations

has been transmitted me by a friend, who happening to know what the facts are which are there falsified, is of opinion that it would not misbecome me to state them at this time. The <following> words which are given in that volume as <having proceeded from his Ldsp> Lord Byrons are as follows <Now then to the point. The following speech is reported by C^pt Medwin as Lord Byrons>:

“I am glad M^r Southey owns that article on “Foliage*”, which excited my choler so much. But who else could have been the author? Who but Southey would have had the baseness, under pretext of reviewing the work of one man, insidiously to make it a nest-egg for hatching malicious calumnies against others? – I say nothing of the critique itself on Foliage; – but what was the object of that article? I repeat, to vilify & scatter his dark & devilish insinuations against me & others. – Shame on the man who could wound an already bleeding heart; – be barbarous enough to revive the memory of an event that Shelley was perfectly innocent of, & found scandal on falsehood! Shelley taxed him with writing that article some years ago; & he had the audacity to admit that he had treasured up some opinions of Shelleys ten years before when he was on a visit at Keswick, & had made a note of them at the time.

I wish it to be distinctly understood that in noticing <replying to> these impudent falsehoods, I am not influenced by any desire of vindicating myself; – this would be wholly unnecessary considering from what quarter they come. I notice them for the sake of laying before the Public one sample more of the practises of the Satanic school,

& shewing what credit is due to Lord Byrons assertions. For that his Lordship said what is here ascribed to him <spoke to this effect & in this temper>, I have no doubt. Capt Medwin has, I dare say, accurately reported what he heard to the best of his recollection; & faithfully performed the honorable <worshipful> office of retailing all the effusions of spleen, slander & malignity which were uttered <vented> in his presence. Lord Byron, like Lord Bolingbroke, left a blunderbuss & the blunderbuss has only let out what it was charged with.

The reviewal in question I did not write. Lord Byron might have known this if he had enquired of M^r Murray, who would readily have assured him that I was not the author: & he might have known it from the reviewal itself, where the writer declares in plain words that he was a contemporary of Shelley’s, at Eton.

I had no concern in it directly or indirectly. But let it not be inferred that in thus disclaiming that paper, any disapproval of it is intended. Papers in the Quarterly Review have been ascribed to me (those on Keats’s poems for example)

which I have heartily condemned both for their spirit & manner. But for the one in question, its composition would be creditable to the most distinguished writer; nor is there any thing either in the opinions expressed, or in the manner of expressing them which a man of just & honourable principles would have hesitated to advance in his own person.

Most assuredly it contains nothing that I would not have avowed if I had written it, or subscribed as entirely assenting to & approving it.

It is not true that Shelley ever enquired of me whether I were the author of that paper, which purporting as it did to be written by an Etonian of his own standing, he very well knew I was not. But in this part of Lord Byrons statement there may be some mistake mingled with a great deal of malignant falsehood. M^r Shelley addressed a letter to me from Pisa asking if I were the author of a criticism in the Quarterly Review upon his Revolt of Islam,

– not exactly in Lord Byrons phrase taxing me with it, for he declared his own belief that I [MS torn]

but added that he was induced to ask the question by the positive declaration of some friends in England that the article was mine. Disclaiming <Denying> in my reply

that either he or any other person was entitled to propose such a question upon such grounds, I nevertheless assured him that I had not written the paper, & that I had never in any of my writings alluded to him in any way.

M^r Shelley having in the letter alluded to thought proper to make some remarks upon my opinions, I took occasion in reply to comment upon his; & to ask him (as the tree is known by its fruits)

whether he had found them conducive to his own happiness, & the happiness of those with whom he had been most nearly connected. This produced a second letter from him,

written in a tone partly of justification, partly of attack. I replied to this also;

not by any such <absurd> admission as Lord Byron has stated (which would have been both absurd & false) but by recapitulating to him, as a practical illustration of his principles, the leading circumstances of his own life, from the commencement of his career at University College;

the earlier facts I stated upon his own authority as I had heard them from his own lips, the latter were of public notoriety. – There the correspondence ended. On his part it had <been> conducted with the courtesy which was natural to him; on mine, in the spirit of one who was earnestly admonishing a fellow creature. (& a most guilty one!) of death & judgement.

This is the correspondence to <upon> which Lord Byron has alluded <misrepresentation has been constructed>: it is all that ever past between us, except a note from Shelley – some years before – accompanying a copy of his Alastor, & one of mine in acknowledgement of it.

I have preserved his letters, together with copies of my own: & if I had as little consideration for the feelings of [MS torn] as Cap^t. Medwin has displayed, it is not any tenderness toward the * dead that

[MS torn] the Preface to his Monody on Keats, Shelley, as I have been informed, asserts that I was the

It is not likely that Shelley should have communicated my part of this correspondence to Lord Byron, even if he did his own. Bearing testimony as his heart did to the truth of the <my> statement in every point, & impossible as it was to escape from the conclusion which was there brought home, I do not think he would have dared produce it. How much or how little of the truth was known to his Lordship, or with which of the party at Pisa the insolent & calumnious falsehood <misrepresentation> conveyed in his Lordship’s words originated, is of little consequence. I shall not parody the extract & ask who but Lord Byron; or who but Shelley could have had the baseness thus to found a scandal on falsehood, because I believe any Professor of the Satanic school is capable of it, any pupil of that school, & any visitor who has been admitted to the honours of a sitting there, & received the fraternal embrace.

The charge of scattering dark & devilish insinuations, is one which if Lord Byron were living I would throw back in his teeth. Me he had assailed without the slightest provocation, & with that unmanliness too which was peculiar to himself; & in this course he might have gone on without giving me the slightest pain <uneasiness>, or calling forth one animadversion in reply. When I came forward to attack his Lordship it was upon public, not upon private grounds. It was because hxx <x> had brought a stigma upon English literature that I accused him, because he had perverted great talents to the worst purposes: because he had set up for Pander General to the youth of Great Britain as long as his writings should endure: – because he had committed a high crime & misdemeanour against Society, by sending forth a work

in which

He was once for a short time my neighbour; I met him upon terms, not of friendship indeed, but certainly of mutual good will; I admired his talents, thought that he would outgrow his errors (perilous as they were) & trusted that meantime a kind & generous heart would resist the effect of fatal opinions which he had taken up in ignorance & boyhood. Therein I was mistaken [MS torn] to regard him with hope, he became to me an object for sorrow & aweful commiseration, not of any injurious or [MS torn] when I expressed myself with just severity concerning him, it was in direct communication to himself.

mockery was mingled with horrors, filth with impiety, profligacy with <sedition &> slander. For these offences I came forward to arraign him. The accusation was not made darkly, it was <not> insinuated; nor even advanced thro <under> the medium <cover> of a public journal <review>: I attacked him openly in my own name, & only not by his, because he had not then publicly avowed the flagitious production by which he will be remembered for lasting infamy. He replied in a manner altogether worthy of himself & his cause.

Contention with a generous & honourable opponent leads naturally to esteem, & probably to friendship: but next to such an antagonist, an enemy like Lord Byron is to be desired, – one who <by his conduct in the interest> divests himself of every claim to respect, – one whose baseness is such as to sanctify the vindictive feeling that it provokes, & upon whom the act of taking vengeance is that of administering justice. I answered him as he deserved to be answered,

– & the effect which that answer produced upon him Lordships feelings & countenance, has been described by his Lordships friendly chronicler, Capt Medwin.

He found the draught bitter in the mouth, & cold in the stomach, but it was of his own brewing.

One piece of advice I gave his Lordship on that occasion, which he was prudent enough to follow. I recommended him when he should attack me in future always to do it in rhyme.

This accordingly he did,

& this he might have continued to do till his heart ached, unnoticed by me. To the Poets license of fiction he was entitled in its fullest extent, nor did I care how much he might abuse the privilege. But if what appeared as mere fiction (with whatever venom it was compounded) in verse, had again assumed the plain prose form of calumny & falsehood, Lord Byron would have found me as ready in rejoinder the second time as the first.

There I found the portraiture of one who hated men, despised women, was sated with the vices of this world, & seemed to have no views or hopes beyond it. If any one be disposed to censure me for speaking thus of the departed, let him remember that it is in answer to posthumous slander. I have no pxxxxxs <taste> for morbid anatomy: my pursuits, thank Heaven, are of a cleanlier & healthier kind. Lord Byron was living when “I fastened his name upon the gibbet”,

– it is by his professed friends that he is now exhibited there, pendant at full length.

& the gallows where obscenity sedition & blasphemy are retailed in drams for the vulgar.

There remaind one farther disgrace <shame>; there remaind this exposure of his conversation which has compelled even his Ldps friends xxx x in their own defence to compare his oral statements <declarations> with his written words,

& thereby demonstrate that he was as reckless of truth as he was regardless of every other principle – incapable of sustaining those <better> feelings which sometimes suited to his birth station & high endowment which sometimes came across his better mind –

Sir
On two former occasions you have allowed me thro the channel of your journal to contradict a calmunious accusation as publicly as it had been preferred:

& tho in these days of slander such charges xxx xxxx hardly deserve refutation, there are reasons which induce me once more to request the same <like> <a similar> favour.

The following <An> extracts from Cap^t. Medwins recent publication of Lord Byrons Conversations,

hase been transmitted me by a friend, who happening to know what the facts are, <which are there xxxxx falsified> is of opinion that it would <not mis> become me to state them at this time. The words <which> are given as Lord Byrons <in that volume> are as follows.

“I am glad M^r Southey owns that article on “Foliage” which excited my choler so much. But who else could have been the Author? Who but Southey would have had the baseness, under pretext of reviewing the work of one man, insidiously to make it a nest-egg for hatching malicious calumnies against others? – I say nothing of the critique itself on “Foliage”; – but what was the object of that article? I repeat, to vilify & scatter his dark & devilish insinuations against me & others. – Shame on the man who could wound an already bleeding heart, – be barbarous enough to revive the memory of an event that Shelley was perfectly innocent of, – & found scandal on falsehood! – Shelley taxed him with writing that article some years ago; & he had the audacity to admit that he had treasured up some opinions of Shelley’s ten years before, when he was on a visit at Keswick, & had made a note of them at the time.”

I wish it to be distinctly understood that in giving the broadest & most unqualified contradiction to <noticing> these impudent falsehoods, I am not influenced by any desire of vindicating myself – this would be wholly unnecessary on my part considering from what quarter they abuse comes. I notice them only for the sake of laying before the Public one sample more of <the practice of the Satanic> Lord Byrons honour & veracity <school>,

& shewing thxx what credit is due to <Lord B.s> his assertions. For that his Lordship said what is here ascribed to him I can have no doubt. Cap^t. Medwin has I dare say accurately reported what he heard to the best of his recollection, – & faithfully performed the honourable office of retailing all the effusions of spleen, slander & malignity which were uttered in his presence. – Lord Byron like <Lord> Bolingbroke left a blunderbuss, & the blunderbuss has only let out what it was charged with.

The reviewal in question I did not write. Lord Byron might have known this if he had enquired of M^r Murray, who would readily have assured him that I was not the author; – - & he might have known it also from the reviewal itself, where the writer declares in plain words that he was a contemporary of Shelleys at Eton.

I had no concern in it, directly or indirectly. After this it would be superfluous to say that I never owned it. <But> Let

it not however be inferred that in thus disclaiming that paper, any disapproval of it is intended. Papers in the Quarterly Review have been ascribed to me (those on Keats’s poems for example)

which I have heartily condemned both for their spirit & manner But <for> the one in question its composition would be creditable to the most distinguished writer nor is there any thing either in the opinions expressed, or in the manner of expressing them that xx x which a man of honorab would <just &> honourable principles would have hesitated to subxx advance in his own name <person.> Most certainly it contains nothing which I would not have acknowledged <avowed> had I written it, or subscribed as entirely assenting to, it & approving it.

X It is true that M^r Shelley addressed a letter to me from Pisa asking if I were the author of that paper, <a criticism in the QR. upon his Revolt of Islam,

>- not exactly taxing <in Lord Bs phrase> me with it, for he declared his own persuasion <belief> that I was not, – which declaration I have at this time in his own handwriting. <but added that he was induced to ask the question by declaration the positive declaration of some friends in England that the article was mine.> Denying in my reply

that either he or any other person was entitled to propose such a question <upon such grounds ->, I nevertheless assured him that I had not <written that paper>, & that I had never in any of my writings alluded to him, in any way. Lord Byron says I owned the paper: whether that falsehood was originally his own, or Mr Shelleys, I neither know, nor care, believing them to have been equally destitute of veracity.

M^r Shelley having in the letter alluded to thought proper to make some remarks upon my opinions, I took occasion in reply to comment upon his, & to ask him (as the tree is known by its fruits)

whether he had found them conducive to his own happiness & the happiness of those with whom he had been most nearly connected. This produced a second letter from him,

written in a tone partly of justification, partly of attack. I replied to this epistle also:

– not by any such admission as Lord Byron has stated (which would have been both absurd & false) but by recapitulating to him, as a practical illustration of his principles, the xxxxxx principal events <leading circumstances> of his own life from the commencement of his career at University College:

the earlier facts were stated to him upon his own authority as I had heard them from his own lips; the latter were of public notoriety, or within my own certain knowledge. There the correspondence xx ended. On his part it had been conducted with the courtesy which was natural to him; – on mine, in the spirit of one who was earnestly admonishing a fellow creature, (& a most guilty one!) of death & judgement.

-ment of it.

– I have preserved his letters, together with copies of my own; & if I had as little consideration for the feelings of the living as Capt Medwin has displayd, it is not any tenderness toward the † dead that would withhold he from <now> publishing them at this time.

☨ In the Preface to his Monody on Keats,Shelley as I have been informed, asserts that I was the author of the critique criticism in the Quarterly Review upon that young mans poems, & that his death was occasioned by it. There was a degree of meanness in this (especially considering the temper & tenour of our correspondence) which I was not then prepared to expect from Shelley; – for that he believed me to be the author of that paper, I certainly do not believe.

Me he had repeatedly

assaild without the slightest provocation, – & sometimes

with that unmanliness <too> which was peculiar to himself; & in this course he might have continued <gone on> without exciting in <giving> me the slightest feeling of pain, or calling forth one animadversion in reply. When at last

I came forward to attack his Lordship, it was upon public not upon private grounds.

It was because he had brought a stigma upon English poetry <literature> that I accused him, because he had perverted great talents to the basest & most pernicious <worst foulest> purposes, – because he had set up for Pander general to the youth of Great Britain – as long as his writings should endure, – because he had committed a high crime & misdemeanour against society, by sending forth a work

in which mockery was mingled with horrors, filth with impiety, profligacy with slander. For these xxxxx offences I came forward to arraign him; the accusation was not made darkly, not insinuated, nor even advanced thro the medium of a review <public journal>; I attacked him openly, in my own name, & only not by his, because he had not then publicly avowd the flagitious production by which he will be remembered for lasting infamy. He replied in a manner altogether worthy of himself & his cause.

Next to being opposed to a <contention with a> generous & honourable enemy <foe opponent x xxxxxx>, with whom any contention leads naturally to esteem & probably to friendship, <but next to such an enem> such an antagonist, <an enemy like> Lord Byron is to be desired. – one who divests himself of all <every> claim to respect, – one whose baseness is such as to sanctify the vindictive feeling that it excites <provokes>, & upon whom the act of taking vengeance, is that of administering justice. I answered him as he deserved to be answered,

& the effect which that answer produced upon his Lordships feelings & countenance has been described by his <Lordships> friendly chronicler Capt Medwin.

He found the draught bitter in the mouth & cold in the

One piece of advice I gave his Lordship on that letter <time occasion> which he was prudent enough to take <follow>. I recommended him when he xxx should attack me in future always to do it in rhyme.

This accordingly he did,

& this he might have continued to do till his heart ached, unnoticed by me. It would have been otherwise if he had ventured again into the field of prose. To the Poets license of fiction he was entitled in its fullest extent, & however much he might have abused the privilege it would never have concerned me

<nor did I care how much he might abuse the privilege>. But if what appeared as mere fiction, (with whatever venom it was compounded> in verse, had again assumed the plain prose form of calumny & falsehood, Lord Byron would have found me as ready in rejoinder the second time as the first. I must have been as poor a creature as his own Devil in the Alps

if I could have been intimidated or silenced by him. Hate me he did, & always would have done unless a radical change had been effected in his whole character & nature; but despise me (in spite of his bravados) he never did, nor should, nor could have done. So rancorous a feeling as that with which he regarded me cannot coexist with contempt. And on my part tho I considered his empty insults as unworthy notice, <being> disgraceful as they were to no one but himself, it was not with contempt that I regarded Lord Byron. When I set my heel upon a vipers head, it is not in contempt that I tread upon the venomous & writhing reptile.

there I found the portraiture of one who hated men, despised women, was sated with the vices of this world, & seemed to have no views or hopes beyond it. – If any one be disposed to censure me for speaking thus of the departed, let him remember that it is an answer to posthumous calumny <slander>. I have no passion for morbid anatomy – my pursuits thank Heaven are of a cleanlier & healthier kind. Lord B. was living when I fastened his name upon the gibbet:

it is by his professed friends that he has been <is now> exhibited there – after death <pendant> at full length.