"Bartolini, the celebrated sculptor, wrote to me to desire to take my bust: I consented, on condition that he also took that of the Countess Guiccioli. He has taken both, and I think it will be allowed that _hers_ is beautiful. I shall make you a present of them both, to show that I don't bear malice, and as a compensation for the trouble and squabble you had about Thorwaldsen's. Of my own I can hardly speak, except that it is thought very like what I _now am_, which is different from what I was, of course, since you saw me. The sculptor is a famous one; and as it was done by _his own_ particular request, will be done well, probably. "What is to be done about * * and his Commentary? He will die if he is _not_ published; he will be damned, if he _is_; but that _he_ don't mind. We must publish him. "All the _row_ about _me_ has no otherwise affected me than by the attack upon yourself, which is ungenerous in Church and State: but as all violence must in time have its proportionate re-action, you will do better by and by. Yours very truly, "NOEL BYRON." * * * * * LETTER 485. TO MR. MOORE. "Pisa, March 8. 1822. "You will have had enough of my letters by this time--yet one word in answer to your present missive. You are quite wrong in thinking that your '_advice_' had offended me; but I have already replied (if not answered) on that point. "With regard to Murray, as I really am the meekest and mildest of men since Moses (though the public and mine 'excellent wife' cannot find it out), I had already pacified myself and subsided back to Albemarle Street, as my yesterday's _ye_pistle will have informed you. But I thought that I had explained my causes of bile--at least to you. Some instances of vacillation, occasional neglect, and troublesome sincerity, real or imagined, are sufficient to put your truly great author and man into a passion. But reflection, with some aid from hellebore, hath already cured me 'pro tempore;' and, if it had not, a request from you and Hobhouse would have come upon me like two out of the 'tribus Anticyris,'--with which, however, Horace despairs of purging a poet. I really feel ashamed of having bored you so frequently and fully of late. But what could I do? You are a friend--an absent one, alas!--and as I trust no one more, I trouble you in proportion.