[Footnote 6: The strange verses that follow are from a poem by Keats.--In a manuscript note on this passage of the pamphlet, dated November 12. 1821, Lord Byron says, "Mr. Keats died at Rome about a year after this was written, of a decline produced by his having burst a blood-vessel on reading the article on his 'Endymion' in the Quarterly Review. I have read the article before and since; and, although it is bitter, I do not think that a man should permit himself to be killed by it. But a young man little dreams what he must inevitably encounter in the course of a life ambitious of public notice. My indignation at Mr. Keats's depreciation of Pope has hardly permitted me to do justice to his own genius, which, malgrè all the fantastic fopperies of his style, was undoubtedly of great promise. His fragment of 'Hyperion' seems actually inspired by the Titans, and is as sublime as Æschylus. He is a loss to our literature; and the more so, as he himself, before his death, is said to have been persuaded that he had not taken the right line, and was reforming his style upon the more classical models of the language."] [Footnote 7: "It was at least a _grammar_ 'school.'"] [Footnote 8: "So spelt by the author."] * * * * * LETTER 396. TO MR. MURRAY. "Ravenna, 9bre 4. 1820. "I have received from Mr. Galignani the enclosed letters, duplicates and receipts, which will explain themselves.[9] As the poems are your property by purchase, right, and justice, _all matters of publication, &c. &c. are for you to decide upon_. I know not how far my compliance with Mr. Galignani's request might be legal, and I doubt that it would not be honest. In case you choose to arrange with him, I enclose the permits to you, and in so doing I wash my hands of the business altogether. I sign them merely to enable you to exert the power you justly possess more properly. I will have nothing to do with it farther, except, in my answer to Mr. Galignani, to state that the letters, &c. &c. are sent to you, and the causes thereof. "If you can check these foreign pirates, do; if not, put the permissive papers in the fire. I can have no view nor object whatever, but to secure to you your property. "Yours, &c. "P.S. I have read part of the Quarterly just arrived: Mr. Bowles shall be answered:--he is not quite correct in his statement about English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. They support Pope, I see, in the Quarterly; let them continue to do so: it is a sin, and a shame, and a _damnation_ to think that _Pope!!_ should require it--but he does. Those miserable mountebanks of the day, the poets, disgrace themselves and deny God in running down Pope, the most _faultless_ of poets, and almost of men."