been the immediate cause of its publication, I added
these words: "I tell this fact assuredly not from any little vanity which
it may appear to betray;--for the truth is, were I not as liberal and as
candid in respect to my own productions, as I hope I am to others, I could
not have been gratified by the present circumstance; for the marginal
notes of the noble author convey no flattery;--but amidst their pungency,
and sometimes their truth, the circumstance that a man of genius could
reperuse this slight effusion at two different periods of his life, was a
sufficient authority, at least for an author, to return it once more to
the anvil."

Some time after the publication of this edition of "The Literary
Character," which was in fact a new work, I was shown, through the
kindness of an English gentleman lately returned from Italy, a copy of it,
which had been given to him by Lord Byron, and which again contained
marginal notes by the noble author. These were peculiarly interesting, and
were chiefly occasioned by observations on his character, which appeared
in the work.

In 1822 I published a new edition of this work, greatly enlarged, and in
two volumes. I took this opportunity of inserting the manuscript Notes of
Lord Byron, with the exception of one, which, however characteristic of
the amiable feelings of the noble poet, and however gratifying to my own,
I had no wish to obtrude on the notice of the public.[A]

[Footnote A: As everything connected with the reading of a mind like Lord
BYRON'S interesting to the philosophical inquirer, this note may now be
preserved. On that passage of the Preface of the second Edition which I
have already quoted, his Lordship was thus pleased to write:

"I was wrong, but I was young and petulant, and probably wrote down
anything, little thinking that those observations would be betrayed to the
author, whose abilities I have always respected, and whose works in
general I have read oftener than perhaps those of any English author
whatever, except such as treat of Turkey."]

Soon after the publication of this third edition, I received
the following letter from his lordship:--

_"Montenero, Villa Dupuy, near Leghorn, June 10, 1822._

"DEAR SIR,--If you will permit me to call you so,--I had some time ago
taken up my pen at Pisa, to thank you for the present of your new edition
of the 'Literary Character,' which has often been to me a consolation, and
always a pleasure. I was inte