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"of their country. On their imprisonment he was pro

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scribed, and secreted for six weeks in what are called "the liberties of Dublin; but was at length betrayed

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by a woman.

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Major Sirr and a party of the military entered his bed-room, which he always kept unlocked. At the voices "he started up in bed and seized his pistols, when Major Sirr fired and wounded him. Taken to prison, he soon after died of his wound, before he could be brought to trial. Such was the fate of one who had all the qua"lifications of a hero and a patriot! Had he lived, perhaps Ireland had not now been a land of Helots."

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"What did you mean," asked I one day, "by that line in 'Beppo,'

'Some play the devil, and then write a novel'?"

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"I alluded,” replied he, to a novel that had some fame " in consequence of its being considered a history of my "life and adventures, character and exploits, mixed up "with innumerable lies and lampoons upon others. Ma

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"dame de Staël asked me if the picture was like me," and the Germans think it is not a caricature. One of my foreign biographers has tacked name, place, and cir"cumstance to the Florence fable, and gives me a princi"pal instead of a subordinate part in a certain tragical history therein narrated. Unfortunately for my biographers, I was never at Florence for more than a few days "in my life; and Fiorabella's beautiful flowers are not so

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quickly plucked or blighted. Hence, however, it has "been alleged that murder is my instinct; and to make "innocence my victim and my prey, part of my nature. I

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imagine that this dark hint took its origin from one of 66 my Notes in 'The Giaour,' in which I said that the coun"tenance of a person dying by stabs retained the character "of ferocity, or of the particular passion imprinted on it, " at the moment of dissolution. A sage reviewer makes "this comment on my remark:-' It must have been the "result of personal observation!'

"But I am made out a very

amiable person in that "novel! The only thing belonging to me in it, is part of

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a letter; but it is mixed up with much fictitious and "poetical matter. Shelley told me he was offered, by "the bookseller in Bond Street, no small sum if he would

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compile the Notes of that book into a story; but that he "declined the offer.

"the authoress, I have seen letters of

"written than any part of that novel.

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But if I know

hers much better

A lady of
A lady of my ac-

book was going to

"the press, she was threatened with cutting a prominent

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figure in it if

But the story would only fur

"nish evidence of the unauthenticity of the nature of the “materials, and shew the manner and spirit with which "the piece was got up.-Yet I don't know why I have "been led to talk about such nonsense, which I paid no

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more attention to than I have to the continual calum"nies and lies that have been unceasingly circulated about me, in public prints, and through anonymous letters. "I got a whole heap of them when I was at Venice, and

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at last found out that I had to thank Mr. Sotheby for "the greater share of them. It was under the waspishness produced by this discovery that I made him figure " also in my 'Beppo' as an antique gentleman of rhyme,'

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a 'bustling Botherby,' &c. I always thought him the most “insufferable of bores, and the curse of the Hampbell, as "Edgeworth was of his club. There was a society formed

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for the suppression of Edgeworth, and sending him back

to Ireland ;--but I should have left the other to his

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that Rogers pretended to take "for an old arm-chair, if he had not made himself an active

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bore, by dunning me with disagreeable news,--and, what

was worse, and more nauseous and indigestible still, with his criticisms and advice.

"When Galignani was about to publish a new edition of my works, he applied to Moore to furnish him with some anecdotes of me; and it was suggested that we should get

up a series of the most unaccountable and improbable ad"ventures, to gull the Parisian and travelling world with: "but I thought afterwards that he had quite enough of "the fabulous at command without our inventing any thing new, which indeed would have required inge“nuity.*

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* The reader will laugh when I tell him that it was asserted to a friend of mine, that the lines To Thyrza,' published with the first Canto of Childe Harold,' were addressed to--his bear. There is nothing so malignant that hatred will not invent, or folly believe.

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You tell me that the Baron Lutzerode has been asking you for some authentic particulars of my life, to affix to his translation of Cain,' and thus contradict the German stories circulated about me, and which, I understand, even Goëthe believes. Why don't you write something for him, Medwin? I believe you know more of me than any one else,- things even that are not in "the book."

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I said, “My friend the Baron is a great enthusiast about you, and I am sure you would like him.”

"Taafe told me the other day," he replied, " a noble trait "of him, which perhaps you have not heard, and which "makes me highly respect him. An only child of his was

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dangerously ill of a malignant fever: it was supposed by "the physicians that he might be saved by bleeding, but "blood would not follow the lancet, and the Baron breathed "the vein with his mouth. The boy died, and the father "took the contagion, and was near following his child to "the grave."

"Well then," said I, "shall I bring the Baron?"

I have declined," replied Lord Byron," going to Court;

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