rhaps the honour of the present may be
disputed. Did you write the good lines on ----, the Laker? * *

"The Queen has made a pretty theme for the journals. Was there ever
such evidence published? Why, it is worse than 'Little's Poems' or
'Don Juan.' If you don't write soon, I will 'make you a speech.'
Yours," &c.

[Footnote 1: I had mistaken the name of the lady he enquired after, and
reported her to him as dead. But, on the receipt of the above letter, I
discovered that his correspondent was Madame Sophie Gay, mother of the
celebrated poetess and beauty, Mademoiselle Delphine Gay.]

* * * * *

LETTER 395. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, 8bre 25 deg., 1820.

"Pray forward the enclosed to Lady Byron. It is on business.

"In thanking you for the Abbot, I made four grand mistakes, Sir
John Gordon was not of Gight, but of Bogagicht, and a son of
Huntley's. He suffered _not_ for his loyalty, but in an
insurrection. He had _nothing_ to do with Loch Leven, having been
dead some time at the period of the Queen's confinement: and,
fourthly, I am not sure that he was the Queen's paramour or no, for
Robertson does not allude to this, though _Walter Scott does_, in
the list he gives of her admirers (as unfortunate) at the close of
'The Abbot.'

"I must have made all these mistakes in recollecting my mother's
account of the matter, although she was more accurate than I am,
being precise upon points of genealogy, like all the aristocratical
Scotch. She had a long list of ancestors, like Sir Lucius
O'Trigger's, most of whom are to be found in the old Scotch
Chronicles, Spalding, &c. in arms and doing mischief. I remember
well passing Loch Leven, as well as the Queen's Ferry: we were on
our way to England in 1798.

"Yours.

"You had better not publish Blackwood and the Roberts' prose,
except what regards Pope;--you have let the time slip by."

* * * * *

The Pamphlet in answer to Blackwood's Magazine, here mentioned, was
occasioned by an article in that work, entitled "Remarks on Don Juan,"
and though put to press by Mr. Murray, was never published. The writer
in the Magazine having, in reference to certain passages in Don Juan,
taken occasion to pass some severe strictures on the author's
matrimonial conduct, Lord Byron, in his repl