With the exception of an Epilogue for a Private Theatrical, I have written nothing new for near six months. It is in vain to spur me on. I must wait. I cannot write without a genial impulse, and I have none. 'T is barren all and dearth. No matter; life is something without scribbling. I have got rid of my bad spirits, and hold up pretty well this rain-damned May. So we have lost another poet. [3] I never much relished his Lordship's mind, and shall be sorry if the Greeks have cause to miss him. He was to me offensive, and I never can make out his real _power_, which his admirers talk of. Why, a, line of Wordsworth's is a lever to lift the immortal spirit; Byron can only move the spleen. He was at best a satirist. In any other way, he was mean enough. I daresay I do him injustice; but I cannot love him, nor squeeze a tear to his memory. He did not like the world, and he has left it, as Alderman Curtis advised the Radicals, "if they don't like their country, damn 'em, let 'em leave it," they possessing no rood of ground in England, and he ten thousand acres. Byron was better than many Curtises. Farewell, and accept this apology for a letter from one who owes you so much in that kind. Yours ever truly, C. L. [1] "The Chimney-Sweeper's Friend, and Climbing-Boy's Album,"--a book, by James Montgomery, setting forth the wrongs of the little chimney-sweepers, for whose relief a society had been started. [2] The Society for Ameliorating the Condition of Infant Chimney-Sweepers. [3] Byron had died on April 19. LXXXIII. TO BERNARD BARTON. _August_, 1824.