Now, I expected this would have procured me a sonnet at least in return, but he did not even deign ever once to notice it, spite of all my attempts to draw him out about it. You, who know what an excessively sensitive creature I am, will easily conceive the heart-in-one's-mouthishness of my sensations, when I found out his real opinion of me. It happened one day that he left me alone in his study. He had no sooner turned his back than I began to fumble among his books and papers. What I most earnestly sought was the copy I gave him of my "Story of Rimini," thinking to find it full of notes in his own hand-writing. It was not even half cut open! A proof he had not half read it. Against "my dear Byron," in the dedication (for you know I dedicated it to him) I found written "Familiar Cockney," and in the last leaf cut--that is as far as I presume he had read,--was written the following critique:-- "O! Crimini, Crimini! What a mimini, pimini, Story of Rimini!" This you will say was sufficiently cut-one-to-the-heartish, but this was little compared with what follows. Among other things, I found the MS. of the Twelfth Canto of Don Juan, which will shortly appear. By the way, it is rather unfair in him, to say no less of it, to throw "Cockney" in my teeth at every turn, considering that I have now quite given up talking of Highgate and Primrose Hill, ever since I have seen the Apennines--and to a friend, too! But it is my friend Byron's way; he calls and uncalls all his friends round, once in every four or five years, or so. But to my extract from his next canto:-- "Filthy scum! These Hunts, Hones, Despards, Thistlewoods, and Ings! These worms with which we politicians angle, We leave at last on Ketch's line to dangle. Poor drivelling dupes! and can they think that we By birth ennobled, and no little proud Of our nobility, would stoop to be Companion'd with the base, plebeian crowd; Or that the crack-brain'd Bysshe, or Cockney Leigh, Or Gentle Johnny[51] e'er had been allow'd To sicken us with their familiarity, Forgetful of their distance and disparity, But that we turn'd them to our dirty uses? My tool I've lately placed upon the shelf, So patronize my Cockney now who chooses; I've ta'en to do my dirty work myself. I find, too, that in fashion my abuse is, And brings--not that I value it--the pelf; But, let me hint, there's need of cash to victual ye E'en in this cheapest of all countries--Italy.