is is fair play, if you
choose to risk it.

"Bartolini, the celebrated sculptor, wrote to me to desire to take
my bust: I consented, on condition that he also took that of the
Countess Guiccioli. He has taken both, and I think it will be
allowed that _hers_ is beautiful. I shall make you a present of
them both, to show that I don't bear malice, and as a compensation
for the trouble and squabble you had about Thorwaldsen's. Of my own
I can hardly speak, except that it is thought very like what I _now
am_, which is different from what I was, of course, since you saw
me. The sculptor is a famous one; and as it was done by _his own_
particular request, will be done well, probably.

"What is to be done about * * and his Commentary? He will die if he
is _not_ published; he will be damned, if he _is_; but that _he_
don't mind. We must publish him.

"All the _row_ about _me_ has no otherwise affected me than by the
attack upon yourself, which is ungenerous in Church and State: but
as all violence must in time have its proportionate re-action, you
will do better by and by. Yours very truly,

"NOEL BYRON."

* * * * *

LETTER 485. TO MR. MOORE.

"Pisa, March 8. 1822.

"You will have had enough of my letters by this time--yet one word
in answer to your present missive. You are quite wrong in thinking
that your '_advice_' had offended me; but I have already replied
(if not answered) on that point.

"With regard to Murray, as I really am the meekest and mildest of
men since Moses (though the public and mine 'excellent wife' cannot
find it out), I had already pacified myself and subsided back to
Albemarle Street, as my yesterday's _ye_pistle will have informed
you. But I thought that I had explained my causes of bile--at least
to you. Some instances of vacillation, occasional neglect, and
troublesome sincerity, real or imagined, are sufficient to put your
truly great author and man into a passion. But reflection, with
some aid from hellebore, hath already cured me 'pro tempore;' and,
if it had not, a request from you and Hobhouse would have come upon
me like two out of the 'tribus Anticyris,'--with which, however,
Horace despairs of purging a poet. I really feel ashamed of having
bored you so frequently and full