he vulgar learned were tired of hearing
'Aristides called the Just,' and Scott the Best, and
ostracized him."--Byron (1821), vol. v. p. 72.]

The following letter was addressed to Lord Byron on the receipt of
that copy of The Giaour to which Mr. Ballantyne's Memorandum refers: I
believe the inscription to Scott first appeared on the ninth edition
of the poem:

TO THE RIGHT HON. LORD BYRON, LONDON.

MY LORD,--I have long owed you my best thanks for the
uncommon pleasure I had in perusing your high-spirited
Turkish fragment. But I should hardly have ventured to offer
them, well knowing how you must be overwhelmed by volunteer
intrusions of approbation (which always look as if the
writer valued his opinion at fully more than it may be
worth) unless I had to-day learned that I have an apology
for entering upon the subject, from your having so kindly
sent me a copy of the poem. I did not receive it sooner,
owing to my absence from Edinburgh, where it had been lying
quietly at my house in Castle Street; so that I must have
seemed ungrateful, when, in truth, I was only modest. The
last offence may be forgiven, as not common in a lawyer
{p.025} and poet; the first is said to be equal to the
crime of witchcraft, but many an act of my life hath shown
that I am no conjurer. If I were, however, ten times more
modest than twenty years' attendance at the Bar renders
probable, your flattering inscription would cure me of so
unfashionable a malady. I might, indeed, lately have had a
legal title to as much supremacy on Parnassus as can be
conferred by a sign-manual, for I had a very flattering
offer of the laurel; but as I felt obliged, for a great many
reasons, to decline it, I am altogether unconscious of any
other title to sit high upon the forked hill.

To return to The Giaour; I had lent my first edition, but
the whole being imprinted in my memory, I had no difficulty
in tracing the additions, which are great improvements, as I
should have conjectured aforehand merely from their being
additions. I hope your Lordship intends to proceed with this
fascinating style of composition. You have access to a
stream of sentiments, imagery, and manners, which are so
little known to us as to convey all the interest of novelty,
yet so endeared