I was not, as Lord Byron says in the song, the founder of this Club; [Footnote: "But when we at Cambridge were My boy Hobbie O! If my memory do not err, You founded a Whig Clubbie O!" ] on the contrary, thinking myself of mighty importance in those days, I recollect very well that some difficulty attended my consenting to belong to the club, and I have by me a letter from Lord Tavistock, in which the distinction between being a Whig _party_ man and a Revolution Whig is strongly insisted upon.
I have troubled you with this detail in consequence of Lord Byron's charge, which he, who despises and defies, and has lampooned the Whigs all round, only invented out of wantonness, and for the sake of annoying me--and he has certainly succeeded, thanks to your circulating this filthy ballad.

As for his Lordship's vulgar notions about the _mob_, they are very fit for the Poet of the _Morning Post_, and for nobody else.

Nothing in the ballad annoyed me but the charge about the Cambridge club, because nothing else had the semblance of truth; and I own it has hurt me very much to find Lord Byron playing into the hands of the Holland House sycophants, for whom he has himself the most sovereign contempt, and whom in other days I myself have tried to induce him to tolerate.
I shall say no more on this unpleasant subject except that, by a letter which I have just received from Lord Byron, I think he is ashamed of his song.

I shall certainly speak as plainly to him as I have taken the liberty to do to you on this matter.

He was very wanton and you very indiscreet; but I trust neither one nor the other meant mischief, and there's an end of it.