might
exasperate him into a relapse of libertinism, which, he says, he
plunged into not from taste, but from despair. La Guiccioli and her
brother (who is Lord Byron's friend and confidant, and acquiesces
perfectly in her connection with him) wish to go to Switzerland,
as Lord Byron says, merely from the novelty and pleasure of
travelling. Lord Byron prefers Tuscany or Lucca, and is trying to
persuade them to adopt his views. He has made _me_ write a long
letter to her to engage her to remain. An odd thing enough for an
utter stranger to write on subjects of the utmost delicacy to his
friend's mistress--but it seems destined that I am always to have
some active part in every body's affairs whom I approach. I have
set down, in tame Italian, the strongest reasons I can think of
against the Swiss emigration. To tell you the truth, I should be
very glad to accept as my fee his establishment in Tuscany. Ravenna
is a miserable place: the people are barbarous and wild, and their
language the most infernal _patois_ that you can imagine. He would
be in every respect better among the Tuscans.

"He has read to me one of the unpublished cantos of Don Juan, which
is astonishingly fine. It sets him not only above, but far above
all the poets of the day. Every word has the stamp of immortality.
This canto is in a style (but totally free from indelicacy, and
sustained with incredible ease and power) like the end of the
second canto: there is not a word which the most rigid assertor of
the dignity of human nature could desire to be cancelled: it
fulfils, in a certain degree, what I have long preached,--of
producing something wholly new, and relative to the age, and yet
surpassingly beautiful. It may be vanity, but I think I see the
trace of my earnest exhortations to him, to create something wholly
new. * * * *

"I am sure, if I asked, it would not be refused; yet there is
something in me that makes it impossible. Lord Byron and I are
excellent friends; and were I reduced to poverty, or were I a
writer who had no claim to a higher station than I possess, or did
I possess a higher than I deserve, we should appear in all things
as such, and I would freely ask him any favour. Such is not now the
case: the demon of mistrust and of pride lurks between two persons