"I am glad you are satisfied with Murray, who seems to value dead lords more than live ones. I have just sent him the following answer to a proposition of his, "For Orford and for Waldegrave, &c. "The argument of the above is, that he wanted to 'stint me of my sizings,' as Lear says,--that is to say, _not_ to propose an extravagant price for an extravagant poem, as is becoming. Pray take his guineas, by all means--_I_ taught him that. He made me a filthy offer of _pounds_ once, but I told him that, like physicians, poets must be dealt with in guineas, as being the only advantage poets could have in the association with _them_, as votaries of Apollo. I write to you in hurry and bustle, which I will expound in my next. "Yours ever, &c. "P.S. You mention something of an attorney on his way to me on legal business. I have had no warning of such an apparition. What can the fellow want? I have some lawsuits and business, but have not heard of any thing to put me to the expense of a _travelling_ lawyer. They do enough, in that way, at home. "Ah, poor Queen I but perhaps it is for the best, if Herodotus's anecdote is to be believed. "Remember me to any friendly Angles of our mutual acquaintance. What are you doing? Here I have had my hands full with tyrants and their victims. There never _was_ such oppression, even in Ireland, scarcely!" * * * * * LETTER 447. TO MR. MURRAY. "Ravenna, August 31. 1821. "I have received the Juans, which are printed so _carelessly_, especially the fifth Canto, as to be disgraceful to me, and not creditable to you. It really must be _gone over again_ with the _manuscript_, the errors are so gross;--words added--changed--so as to make cacophony and nonsense. You have been careless of this poem because some of your squad don't approve of it; but I tell you that it will be long before you see any thing half so good as poetry or writing. Upon what principle have you omitted the note on Bacon and Voltaire? and one of the concluding stanzas sent as an addition? because it ended, I suppose, with-- "And do not link two virtuous souls for life Into that _moral centaur_ man and wife? "Now, I must say, once for all, that I will not permit any human being to take such liberties with my writings because I am absent. I desire the omissions to be replaced (except the stanza on Semiramis)--particularly the stanza upon the Turkish marriages; and I request that the whole be carefully gone over with the MS.