in effect, while it is biting at the file. It is seldom, indeed, that I waste a word or a thought upon those who are perpetually assailing me; but abhorring, as I do, the personalities which disgrace our current literature, and averse from controversy as I am, both by principle and inclination, I make no profession of non-resistance. When the offence and, the offender are such as to call for the whip and the branding-iron, it has been both seen and felt that I can inflict them.

Lord Byron's present exacerbation is evidently produced by an infliction of this kind-not by hearsay reports of my conversation, four years ago, transmitted him from England. The cause may be found in certain remarks upon the Satanic school of poetry, contained, in my preface to the "Vision of Judgment." Well would it be for Lord Byron if he could look back on any of his writings with as much satisfaction as I shall always do upon what is there said of that flagitious school. Many persons, and parents especially, haye expressed their gratitude to me for having applied the branding-iron where it was so richly deserved. The Edinburgh Reviewer, indeed, with that honorable feeling by which his criticisms are too peculiarly distinguished, suppressing the remarks themselves, has imputed them wholly to envy on my part, I give him, in this instance, full credit for sincerity; I believe he was equally incapable of comprehending a worthier motive, or of inventing a worse; and, as I have never condescended to expose, in any instance, his pitiful malevolence, Ithank him for having, in this, stripped it bare himself, and exhibited it in its bald, naked, and undisguised deformity.

Lord Byron, like his encomiast, has not ventured to bring the. matter of those animadversions into view. He conceals the fact, that they are directed against the authors of blasphemous and lascivious books against men who, not content with indulging their own vices, labour to make others the slaves of sensuality, like themselves-against public panders, who, mingling impiety with lewdness, seek at once to destroy the cement of social order, and to carry profanation and pollution into private families, and into the hearts of individuals.

His lordship has thought it not unbecoming in him to call me a scribbler of all work. Let the word scribbler pass; it is not an ap pellation which will stick, like that of the Satanic school. But, if a scribbler, how am I one of all work? I will tell Lord Byron what have not scribbled-what kind of work I have not done. I have never published libels upon my friends and acquaintance, expressed my sorrow for those libels, and called them in during a mood of better mind; and

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then reissued them, when the evil spirit, which for a time has been cast out, had returned and taken possession, with seven others, more wicked than himself. I have never abused the power, of which every author is in some degree possessed, to wound the character of a man or the heart of a woman. I have never sent into the world a book to which I did not dare affix my name, or which I feared to claim in a court of justice if it were pirated by a knavish bookseller. I have never manufactured furniture for the brothel. None of these things have I done; none of the foul work by which literature is perverted to the injury of mankind. My hands are clean; there is no “damned spot" upon them—no taint, which "all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten."

Of the work which I have done it becomes me not here to speak, save only as relates to the Satanic school and its Coryphæus, the author of "Don Juan." I have held up that school to public detestation, as enemies to the religion, the institutions, and the domestic morals, of their country. I have given them a designation to which their founder and leader ANSWERS. I have sent a stone from my sling which has smitten their Goliath in the forehead. I have fastened his name upon the gibbet, for reproach and ignominy, as long as it shall endure. Take it down who can!

'One word of advice to Lord Byron before I conclude. When he attacks me again, let it be in rhyme: for one who has so little command of himself, it will be a great advantage that his temper should be obliged to keep tune; and, while he may still indulge in the same rankness and virulence of insult, the metre will, in some degree, seem to lessen its vulgarity. • ROBERT SOUTHEY.

• Keswick, Jan. 5, 1822.'

This letter seems to have made a great impression on Lord Byron, who, although he did not scruple to attack others, was himself very sensitive of reproof.

Mr. Medwin has given an account of a conversation of Lord Byron's, in which he spoke with great rancour and injustice of Mr. Southey; and yet, a few days afterwards, when Mr. Southey's reply to the attack in the appendix to the Two Foscari' met his eye, he was overflowing with rage, and talked, as Mr. Medwin says, of proceeding to England, to call the Laureate to a personal account. The whole of the passage is curious. Lord Byron, having said there were some persons who could forget and forgive, goes on thus:

"The Laureate is not one of that disposition, and exults over the

anticipated death-bed repentance of the objects of his hatred. Finding that his denunciations or panegyrics are of little or no avail here, he indulges himself in a vision as to what will be their fate hereafter, The third heaven is hardly good enough for a king, and Dante's worst birth in the "Inferno" is hardly bad enough for me. My kindness to his brother-in-law might have taught him to be more charitable. I said, in a note to the "Two Foscari," in answer to his vain boasting, that I had done more good in a year than Mr. Southey in the whole course of his shifting and turncoat existence, on which he seems to reflect with so much complacency. I did not mean to pride myself on the act to which I have just referred; and should not mention it to you, but that his self-sufficiency calls for the explanation. When Coleridge was in great distress I borrowed 1007. to give to him.'

Mr. Medwin continues to say-'Some days after this discussion appeared Mr. Southey's reply to the note in question. I happened to see the Literary Gazette" at Mr. Edgeworth's, and mentioned the general purport of the letter to Lord Byron during our evening ride. His anxiety to get a sight of it was so great, that he wrote me two notes in the course of the evening, entreating me to procure the paper. I at length succeeded, and took it to the Lanfranchi palace, at eleven o'clock (after coming from the opera)-an hour at which I was frequently in the habit of calling on him.

'He had left the Guiccioli earlier than usual, and I found him waiting with some impatience. I shall never forget his countenance as he glanced rapidly over the contents. He looked perfectly awful; his colour changed almost prismatically; his lips were as pale as death; he said not a word. He read it a second time, and with more attention than his rage had at first permitted, commenting on some of the passages as he went on. When he had finished he threw down the paper, and asked me if I thought there was any thing in the reply, of a personal nature, that demanded satisfaction, as, if there was, he would instantly set off for England, and call Southey to an account-muttering something about "whips," and "branding-irons," and "gibbets," and "wounding the heart of a woman"-words of Mr. Southey's. I said that, as to personality, his own expressions of "cowardly ferocity," "pitiful renegado," "hireling," were much stronger than any in the letter before me. He paused a moment, and said, "Perhaps you are right; but I will consider of it. You have not seen my Vision of Judgment.' I wish I had a copy to show you; but the only one I have is in London. I had almost decided not to publish it, but it

shall now go forth to the world. I will write to Douglas Kinnaird by to-morrow's post,—to night, not to delay its appearance. The question whom to get to print it. Murray will have nothing to say to it just now, while the prosecution of "Cain" hangs over his head. It was offered to Longman, but he declined on the plea of its injuring the sale of Southey's hexameters, of which he is the publisher. Hunt shall have it."

Mr. Southey has, since the publication of Mr. Medwin's book, thought fit to write a long letter to the editor of the Courier,' in which he denies the principal charges in this and the passages which succeed it in the Conversations,' and which are quoted in his letter. His anger against Mr. Medwin seems unfounded. That gentleman has fairly enough put himself forward ; and, as he has openly assumed all the responsibility which can attach to the statement, he must expect to be assailed by all those persons who are mentioned in it. As far as Mr. Southey's own character is concerned, and as far as his .opinion of Lord Byron is entitled to some weight, the letter is a very interesting one. It is as ample a contradiction of many of the reports which have long prevailed to his prejudice as can be desired:

'Sir,—On two former occasions you have allowed me, through the channel of your journal, to contradict a calumnious accusation as publicly as it had been preferred; and though, in these days of slander, such things hardly deserve refutation, there are reasons which induce me once more to request a similar favour.

"Some extracts from Captain Medwin's recent publication of “Lord Byron's Conversations" have been transmitted to 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. I wish it, however, to be distinctly understood, that in so doing I am not influenced by any desire of vindicating myself: that would be wholly unnecessary, considering from what quarter the charges come. I notice them for the sake of laying before the public one sample more of the practices of the Satanic school, and showing what credit is due to Lord Byron's assertions; for, that his lordship spoke to this effect, and in this temper, I have no doubt-Captain Medwin having, I dare say, to the best of his recollection, faithfully performed the worshipful office of retailing all the effusions of spleen, slander, and malignity, which were vented in his presence. Lord Byron is the person who suffers most by this; and, indeed, what man is there whose character would remain uninjured if every peevish or angry expression, every sportive or ex

travagant sally, thrown off in the unsuspicious and imagined safety of private life, were to be secretly noted down, and published, with no notice of circumstances to show how they had arisen, and when no explanation was possible? One of the offices which has been attributed to the devil is that of thus registering every idle word. There is an end of confidence or comfort in social intercourse if such a practice is to be tolerated by public opinion. When I take these conversations to be authentic, it is because, as far as I am concerned, they accord, both in matter and spirit, with what his lordship himself had written and published; aud it is on this account only that I deem them worthy of notice-the last notice that I shall ever bestow upon the subject. Let there be as many " More Last Words of Mr. Baxter" as the "reading public" may choose to pay for: they will draw forth no further reply from me."

Now, then, to the point. The following speech is reported by Captain Medwin as Lord Byron's:

"I am glad Mr. 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 reviving the work of one man, insidiously to make it a nestegg 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 and scatter his dark and devilish insinuations against me and 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-and found scandal on falsehood!-Shelley taxed him with writing that article some years ago; and he had the audacity to admit that he had treasured up some opinions of Shelley, ten years before, when he was on a visit at Keswick, and had made a note of them at the time."

• The reviewal in question I did not write. Lord Byron miglit have known this, if he had inquired of Mr. Murray, who would readily have assured him that I was not the author; and 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 disproval of it is intended. Papers in the

A volume of poems by Mr. Leigh Hunt. The reader who may be desirous of referring to the article will find it in the 18th vol. of the "Quarterly Review," p. 324.'