Byron, Marino Faliero and Letter to [John Murray]

Byron, Letter to [John Murray] (1821), Bowles Answer (1821), and Marino Faliero (1821); British Critic, 2nd Series, XV (May 1821), 463–474. The reviewer sets up the contrast between Byron and Pope on the one hand and Milton (whose Comus is quoted twice on p. 468), the truly moral poet. At the top of page 469 the allusions are to letters of Robert Burns and to Byron’s own letters to John Murray’s circle about his amours in Venice. On page 471, Arthur Thistlewood and Ings were two of the “Cato Street Conspiracy,” an attempt to assassinate the government ministers in February 1820; the reviewer hints at – but does not dare assert – Byron’s strong sympathy for such revolutionaries both in Italy and England.