Chapter III: Letter 396: To Mr. Murray

"Ravenna, 9bre 4. 1820.

"I have received from Mr. Galignani the enclosed letters,
duplicates and receipts, which will explain themselves.[9] As the
poems are your property by purchase, right, and justice, _all
matters of publication, &c. &c. are for you to decide upon_. I know
not how far my compliance with Mr. Galignani's request might be
legal, and I doubt that it would not be honest. In case you choose
to arrange with him, I enclose the permits to you, and in so doing
I wash my hands of the business altogether. I sign them merely to
enable you to exert the power you justly possess more properly. I
will have nothing to do with it farther, except, in my answer to
Mr. Galignani, to state that the letters, &c. &c. are sent to you,
and the causes thereof.

"If you can check these foreign pirates, do; if not, put the
permissive papers in the fire. I can have no view nor object
whatever, but to secure to you your property.

"Yours, &c.

"P.S. I have read part of the Quarterly just arrived: Mr. Bowles
shall be answered:--he is not quite correct in his statement about
English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. They support Pope, I see, in
the Quarterly; let them continue to do so: it is a sin, and a
shame, and a _damnation_ to think that _Pope!!_ should require
it--but he does. Those miserable mountebanks of the day, the poets,
disgrace themselves and deny God in running down Pope, the most
_faultless_ of poets, and almost of men."

[Footnote 9: Mr. Galignani had applied to Lord Byron with the view of procuring from him such legal right over those works of his Lordship of which he had hitherto been the sole publisher in France, as would enable him to prevent others, in future, from usurping the same privilege.]

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