CHAPTER XVI.
BYRON'S DEATH AND THE DESTRUCTION OF HIS MEMOIRS No attempt has here been made to present a strictly chronological record of Mr.Murray's life; we have sought only so to group his correspondence as to lay before our readers the various episodes which go to form the business life of a publisher.

In pursuance of this plan we now proceed to narrate the closing incidents of his friendship with Lord Byron, reserving to subsequent chapters the various other transactions in which he was engaged.
During the later months of Byron's residence in Italy this friendship had suffered some interruption, due in part perhaps to questions which had arisen out of the publication of "Don Juan," and in part to the interference of the Hunts.

With the activity aroused by his expedition to Greece, Byron's better nature reasserted itself, and his last letter to his publisher, though already printed in Moore's Life, cannot be omitted from these pages: _Lord Byron to John Murray_.
MISSOLONGHI, _February_ 25, 1824.
I have heard from Mr.Douglas Kinnaird that you state "a report of a satire on Mr.Gifford having arrived from Italy, _said_ to be written by _me_! but that _you_ do not believe it." I dare say you do not, nor any body else, I should think.

Whoever asserts that I am the author or abettor of anything of the kind on Gifford lies in his throat.

I always regarded him as my literary father, and myself as his prodigal son; if any such composition exists, it is none of mine.