On our return homewards, Shelley urged Byron to complete something he had begun. Byron smiled and replied,
"John Murray, my patron and paymaster, says my plays won't act. I don't mind that, for I told him they were not written for the stage-but he adds, my poesy won't sell: that I do mind, for I have an ‘itching palm.' He urges me to resume my old ‘Corsair style, to please the ladies.' John Murray is right, if not righteous: all I have yet written has been for women-kind; you must wait until I am forty, their influence will then die a natural death, and I will show the men what I can do.”.