Note 117 — LIFE OF LORD BYRON. (continued 5)
Reading edition
The reconciliation which took place between him and Dr. Butler, before his departure, is one of those instances of placability and pliableness with which his life abounded. We have seen, too, from the manner in which he mentions the circumstance in one of his note-books, that the reconcilement was of that generously retrospective kind, in which not only the feeling of hostility is renounced in future, but a strong regret expressed that it had been ever entertained.
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."