"I never saw such stuff as is printed:--Gu_ll_eyaz instead of Gu_lb_eyaz, &c. Are you aware that Gulbeyaz is a real name, and the other nonsense? I copied the _Cantos_ out carefully, so that there is _no_ excuse, as the printer read, or at least _prints_, the MS. of the plays without error. "If you have no feeling for your own reputation, pray have some little for mine. I have read over the poem carefully, and I tell you, _it is poetry_. Your little envious knot of parson-poets may say what they please: time will show that I am not in this instance mistaken. "Desire my friend Hobhouse to correct the press, especially of the last Canto, from the manuscript as it is. It is enough to drive one out of one's reason to see the infernal torture of words from the original. For instance the line-- "And _pair_ their rhymes as Venus yokes her doves-- is printed "And _praise_ their rhymes, &c. Also '_precarious_' for '_precocious_;' and this line, stanza 133. "_And this strong extreme effect to tire no longer._ Now do turn to the manuscript and see if I ever wrote such a _line_: it is _not verse_. "No wonder the poem should fail (which, however, it won't, you will see) with such things allowed to creep about it. Replace what is omitted, and correct what is so shamefully misprinted, and let the poem have fair play; and I fear nothing. "I see in the last two numbers of the Quarterly a strong itching to assail me (see the review of 'The Etonian'); let it, and see if they sha'n't have enough of it. I do not allude to Gifford, who has always been my friend, and whom I do not consider as responsible for the articles written by others. "You will publish the plays when ready. I am in such a humour about this printing of Don Juan so inaccurately, that I must close this. "Yours. "P.S. I presume that you have _not_ lost the _stanza_ to which I allude? It was sent afterwards: look over my letters and find it." * * * * * LETTER 448.[48] TO MR. MURRAY.