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Letters to the Bishop of Llandaff [ed. by the Bishop, E. Copleston].
Letters to the Bishop of Llandaff - ed. by the Bishop, E. Copleston Author:John William Ward General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1840 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: DECLINES TAKING OFFICE. 53 C. ; but I wish the subject were properly treated in some publication of more merit and authority. Lord Byron has written another poem, which I have seen. It is very beautiful; but I doubt whether you would be inclined to shew any mercy to its great and palpable defect -- the repetition of the same character. Lara is just the same sort of gloomy, haughty, mysterious villain as Childe Harold, the Giaour, the Corsair, and all the rest. This is a strange mixture of fertility and barrenness. One would think it was easier to invent a new character, than to describe the old one over and over again. LETTER XI. 120, Park Street, August 9, 1814. Your letter has just reached me. Before I even thank you for it I will dispatch something I had to say about myself, and which, if I had not been hurried some days, and lazy on others, I should have written to acquaint you with a week ago. It is merely that I do not take the office that was proposed to me by Canning. The more I thought of the arrangement, as far as it respected myself, the less I was satisfied with it, and as those friends whom the publicity of the whole thing (for it soon became known) gave me an opportunity of consulting were for the far greater part of my opinion, I retracted my consent, and devolved the honours of the Privy Council upon Lord Binning. Canning thinks I have judged ill. Perhaps I have, but there is at least this comfort, that if, having declined, I afterwards think that I ought to have accepted, my regret will be of a less painful kind than if, having accepted, I should afterwards see cause to wish I had ...« less