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"because he was tired of always hearing him called the Just," have produced the temporary exile of Pope from the State of Literature. But the term of his ostracism will expire, and the sooner the better, not for him, but for those who banished him, and for the coming generation, who

"Will blush to find their fathers were his foes."

I will now return to the writer of the article which has drawn forth these remarks, whom I honestly take to be John Wilson, a man of great powers and acquirements, well known to the public as the author of the "City of the Plague," "Isle of Palms," and other productions. I take the liberty of naming him, by the same species of courtesy which has induced him to designate me as the author of Don Juan. Upon the score of the Lake Poets, he may perhaps recall to mind that I merely express an opinion long ago entertained and specified in a letter to Mr. James Hogg, (1) which he the said James Hogg, somewhat contrary to the law of pens, showed to Mr. John Wilson, in the year 1814, as he himself informed me in his answer, telling me by way of apology, that "he'd be d-d if he could help it ;" and I am not conscious of any

(1) ["Oh! I have had the most amusing letter from Hogg, the Ettrick minstrel and shepherd. He wants me to recommend him to Murray; and, speaking of his present bookseller, whose bills' are never' lifted,' he adds, totidem verbis, God d-n him, and them both.' I laughed, and so would you too, at the way in which this execration is introduced. The said Hogg is a strange being, but of great, though uncouth, powers. I think very highly of him as a poet; but he, and half of these Scotch and Lake troubadours are spoilt by living in little circles and petty societies.” — B. Letters.]

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thing like "envy" or "exacerbation" at this moment which induces me to think better or worse of Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge as poets than I do now, although I do know one or two things more which have added to my contempt for them as individuals.

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(1) [Here the only copy of the pamphlet of 1819 fails us- some pages are lost, probably for ever The reader will find, on reference to the Notices of Lord Byron's Life (Vol. IV. p. 269. antè), that his Lordship was not less mistaken in attributing the "Remarks on Don Juan" in the Edinburgh Magazine to Professor Wilson, than in supposing Dr. Chalmers to have been the " Presbyter Anglicanus " who criticised his "Beppo" in the same journal. — E.]

DON JUAN.

CANTO THE FIRST. (1)

(1) [" Begun at Venice September 6.; finished Nov. 1. 1818.-B."]

FRAGMENT

On the back of the Poet's MS. of Canto I.

I would to heaven that I were so much clay,
As I am blood, bone, marrow, passion, feeling-
Because at least the past were pass'd away—
And for the future-(but I write this reeling,
Having got drunk exceedingly to-day,

So that I seem to stand upon the ceiling)

I say-the future is a serious matter.

And so for God's sake-hock and soda-water!

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DEDICATION. (1)

I.

BOB SOUTHEY! You're a poet-Poet-laureate,
And representative of all the race,

Although 'tis true that you turn'd out a Tory at
Last,-yours has lately been a common case,-
And now, my Epic Renegade! what are ye at?
With all the Lakers, in and out of place?
A nest of tuneful persons, to my eye
Like "four and twenty Blackbirds in a pye;

II.

"Which pye being open'd they began to sing" (This old song and new simile holds good), "A dainty dish to set before the King,"

Or Regent, who admires such kind of food;And Coleridge, too, has lately taken wing,

But like a hawk encumber'd with his hood,Explaining metaphysics to the nation

I wish he would explain his Explanation. (2)

(1) [This "Dedication" was suppressed, in 1819, with Lord Byron's reluctant consent; but, shortly after his death, its existence became notorious, in consequence of an article in the Westminster Review, generally ascribed to Sir John Hobhouse; and, for several years, the verses have been selling in the streets as a broadside. It could, therefore, serve no purpose to exclude them on the present occasion. - E.]

(2) [Mr. Coleridge's "Biographia Literaria" appeared in 1817.]

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