as the above is the following letter to Lord Holland,
accompanying a copy of his new publication, and written in a tone that
cannot fail to give a high idea of his good feeling and candour.

LETTER 91. TO LORD HOLLAND.

"St. James's Street, March 5. 1812.

"My Lord,

"May I request your Lordship to accept a copy of the thing which
accompanies this note? You have already so fully proved the truth
of the first line of Pope's couplet,

"'_Forgiveness to the injured doth belong,_'

that I long for an opportunity to give the lie to the verse that
follows. If I were not perfectly convinced that any thing I may
have formerly uttered in the boyish rashness of my misplaced
resentment had made as little impression as it deserved to make, I
should hardly have the confidence--perhaps your Lordship may give
it a stronger and more appropriate appellation--to send you a
quarto of the same scribbler. But your Lordship, I am sorry to
observe to-day, is troubled with the gout; if my book can produce a
_laugh_ against itself or the author, it will be of some service.
If it can set you to _sleep_, the benefit will be yet greater; and
as some facetious personage observed half a century ago, that
'poetry is a mere drug,' I offer you mine as a humble assistant to
the 'eau medicinale.' I trust you will forgive this and all my
other buffooneries, and believe me to be, with great respect,

"Your Lordship's obliged and

"Sincere servant,

"BYRON."

* * * * *

It was within two days after his speech in the House of Lords that
Childe Harold appeared[44];--and the impression which it produced upon
the public was as instantaneous as it has proved deep and lasting. The
permanence of such success genius alone could secure, but to its instant
and enthusiastic burst, other causes, besides the merit of the work,
concurred.

There are those who trace in the peculiar character of Lord Byron's
genius strong features of relationship to the times in which he lived;
who think that the great events which marked the close of the last
century, by giving a new impulse to men's minds, by habituating them to
the daring and the free, and allowing full vent to "the flash and
outbreak of fiery spirits," had led naturally to the production of such
a poet as Byron; and that he was, in short, as much the child