I trust you are well and happy. It will be a
pleasure to hear from you.
Believe me yours very sincerely,
"BYRON.
"P.S.--How is Joe Murray?
"P.S.--I open my letter again to tell you that Fletcher having
petitioned to accompany me into the Morea, I have taken him with me,
contrary to the intention expressed in my letter."
The reader has not, I trust, passed carelessly over the latter part of
this letter. There is a healthfulness in the moral feeling so
unaffectedly expressed in it, which seems to answer for a heart sound
at the core, however passion might have scorched it. Some years after,
when he had become more confirmed in that artificial tone of banter,
in which it was, unluckily, his habit to speak of his own good
feelings, as well as those of others, however capable he might still
have been of the same amiable sentiments, I question much whether the
perverse fear of being thought desirous to pass for moral would not
have prevented him from thus naturally and honestly avowing them.
The following extract from a communication addressed to a
distinguished monthly work, by a traveller who, at this period,
happened to meet with Lord Byron at Constantinople, bears sufficiently
the features of authenticity to be presented, without hesitation, to
my readers.
"We were interrupted in our debate by the entrance of a stranger,
whom, on the first glance, I guessed to be an Englishman, but lately
arrived at Constantinople.
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