have long done every thing
in my power to suppress the circulation of the whole thing, I shall
always regret the wantonness or generality of many of its attacks. If
Coleridge writes his promised tragedy, Drury Lane will be set up."
Though harassed with pecuniary difficulties of all kinds, Byron
contrived to help Coleridge, who he had heard was in the greatest
distress.

He wrote to Moore:--"By the way, if poor Coleridge--who is a man of
wonderful talent, and in distress, and about to publish two volumes of
poesy and biography, and who has been worse used by the critics than
ever we were--will you, if he comes out, promise me to review him
favorably in the E.R.? Praise him I think you must; but will you also
praise him well,--of all things the most difficult? It will be the
making of him.

"This must be a secret between you and me, as Jeffrey might not like
such a project: nor, indeed, might he himself like it. But I do think he
only wants a pioneer and a spark or two to explode most gloriously."

He sent Murray a MS. tragedy of Coleridge, begging him to read it and to
publish it:----

"When you have been enabled to form an opinion on Mr. Coleridge's MS.,
you will oblige me by returning it, as, in fact, I have no authority to
let it out of my hands. I think most highly of it, and feel anxious that
you should be the publisher; but if you are not, I do not despair of
finding those who will."

As the reader knows, Byron, while in England, always gave away the
produce of his poems. To Coleridge he destined part of the sum offered
to him by Murray for "Parisina" and the "Siege of Corinth." Some
difficulty, however, having arisen, because Murray refused to pay the
100 guineas to any other than Byron himself, he borrowed it himself to
give it to Coleridge.

At the same time Byron paid so noble a tribute to Coleridge's talent,
and to his poem of "Christabel," by inserting a note on the subject in
his preface to the "Siege of Corinth," that Coleridge's editor took this
note as the epigraph.

"Christabel!--I won't have any one," he said, "sneer at 'Christabel;' it
is a fine wild poem."

In 1816 he wrote from Venice to Moore:--

"I hear that the E.R. has cut up Coleridge's 'Christabel,' and declared
against me for praising it. I praised it, firstly, because I thought
well of it; secondly, because Coleridge was in great distress, and after
doing what little I could for him in essentials, I thought that the
public avowal