Not content with this private atonement to Dr. Butler, it was his
intention, had he published another edition of the Hours of Idleness,
to substitute for the offensive verses against that gentleman, a frank
avowal of the wrong he had been guilty of in giving vent to them. This
fact, so creditable to the candour of his nature, I learn from a loose
sheet in his handwriting, containing the following corrections. In
place of the passage beginning "Or if my Muse a pedant's portrait
drew," he meant to insert--
"If once my Muse a harsher portrait drew,
Warm with her wrongs, and deem'd the likeness true,
By cooler judgment taught, her fault she owns,--
With noble minds a fault, confess'd, atones."
And to the passage immediately succeeding his warm praise of Dr.
Drury--"Pomposus fills his magisterial chair," it was his intention to
give the following turn:--
"Another fills his magisterial chair;
Reluctant Ida owns a stranger's care;
Oh may like honours crown his future name,--
If such his virtues, such shall be his fame."
]
[Footnote 118: Lord Byron used sometimes to mention a strange story,
which the commander of the packet, Captain Kidd, related to him on the
passage. This officer stated that, being asleep one night in his
berth, he was awakened by the pressure of something heavy on his
limbs, and, there being a faint light in the room, could see, as he
thought, distinctly, the figure of his brother, who was at that time
in the naval service in the East Indies, dressed in his uniform, and
stretched across the bed.
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