I am really writing to you before the billows of the passions you
excited have subsided. I have been most agreeably disappointed (a word I
cannot associate with the poem) at the story, which--what you hinted to
me and wrote--had alarmed me; and I should not have read it aloud to my
wife if my eye had not traced the delicate hand that transcribed it.
Mr. Murray enclosed to Lord Byron two notes, amounting to a thousand
guineas, for the copyright of the poems, but Lord Byron refused the
notes, declaring that the sum was too great.
"Your offer," he answered (January 3, 1816), "is _liberal_ in the
extreme, and much more than the poems can possibly be worth; but I
cannot accept it, and will not. You are most welcome to them as
additions to the collected volumes, without any demand or expectation on
my part whatever.... I am very glad that the handwriting was a
favourable omen of the _morale_ of the piece; but you must not trust to
that, as my copyist would write out anything I desired in all the
ignorance of innocence--I hope, however, in this instance, with no great
peril to either.
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