[Footnote 7: "It was at least a _grammar_ 'school.'"]
"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.
"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.]
"Thanks for your letter, which hath come somewhat costively; but better late than never. Of it anon. Mr. Galignani, of the Press, hath, it seems, been sup-planted and sub-pirated by another Parisian publisher, who has audaciously printed an edition of L.B.'s Works, at the ultra-liberal price of ten francs, and (as Galignani piteously observes) eight francs only for booksellers! 'horresco referens.' Think of a man's _whole_ works producing so little!
"Galignani sends me, post haste, a permission _for him, from me,_ to publish, &c. &c. which _permit_ I have signed and sent to Mr. Murray of Albemarle Street. Will you explain to G. _that I_ have no right to dispose of Murray's works without his leave? and therefore I must refer him to M. to get the permit out of his claws--no easy matter, I suspect. I have written to G. to say as much; but a word of mouth from a 'great brother author' would convince him that I could not honestly have complied with his wish, though I might legally. What I could do, I have done, viz. signed the warrant and sent it to Murray. Let the dogs divide the carcass, if it is killed to their liking.