Full text of "Works"
presented
to
Xibrarp
of
of Toronto
OB
professor Hlfreo JSafter
3anuars 15, 1941
The Works
OF
LORD BYRON.
The Works
OF
LORD BYRON.
A NEW, REVISED AND ENLARGED EDITION,
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS.
Letters and Journals. Vol. V.
EDITED BY
ROWLAND E. PROTHERO, M.A.,
FORMERLY FELLOW OF ALL SOITLS COLLEGE, OXFORD.
LONDON :
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.
1901.
•err - 1 ' -mmm**. -
EEN I • ;
PRESERVA1
SfcRVJCI
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107394'
PREFACE.
THE period covered by Volume V. of Byron's Letters
and Journals (April, 1820 — October, 1821) includes the
remainder of his residence in the Palazzo Guiccioli at
Ravenna and the commencement of his stay in the
Palazzo Lanfranchi at Pisa. Within these dates the
Italian Revolution broke out and failed; Count and
Countess Guiccioli were separated by Papal decree ; the
Gambas were exiled from Ravenna, and Byron followed
their fortunes.
The excitement of these events stirred Byron's literary
activity. In poetry he wrote the Fifth Canto of Don
Juan, Marino Faliero, Sardanapalus, The Two Foscari,
Cam, Heaven and Earth, The Vision of Judgment, and
The Blues. In prose, besides increasing his correspond-
ence, he kept a Diary for January and February, 1821
(Chapter XXL), filled a " paper-book " with " Detached
"Thoughts" (Chapter XXIIL), and wrote the Two
Letters to John Murray on Bowles's Strictures upon Pope
(Appendix III.).
Of the 183 letters, which belong to the period, and
are printed in Volume V., 68 were unknown to Halleck,
VI PREFACE.
whose collection has hitherto been the most complete.
The last letter in this volume, written to Moore from Pisa
in December, 1821, is numbered in Moore's Life, 474;
in Halleck's collection, 542 ; in this edition, 968.
Apart from new letters, or from additions made to
others which have hitherto been published in an in-
complete form, the chief feature of fresh interest is
the chapter (XXIII.) containing Byron's " Detached
" Thoughts." Large extracts from this collection have
been made in previous editions ; but the passages have
been quoted in scattered fragments, without any indication
of their order or connection. The original manuscript is
now, for the first time, printed in its entirety.
Attention has been kindly called by Mr. C. K.
Shorter to a series of extracts from letters, published
thirty years ago in a well-known magazine. With few
exceptions, these extracts are taken from the genuine
letters, written by Byron to Mrs. Leigh, which have been
published in their entirety, from the original documents,
in previous volumes of this collection. It is not known
by whom the extracts were made, or by whose agency
they reached the press : they are not only fragmentary
in form, but, in many instances, when compared with the
originals, they have evidently undergone considerable
alterations. Two of these extracts purport to be taken
from letters written in the autumn of 1820. In the
circumstances, it has been decided not to include them
in this collection.
R. E. PROTHERO.
November 1 6, 1900.
LIST OF LETTERS.
1820.
PAGE
786. April 3. To Lady Byron I
787. April 6. „ „ 2
788. April 6. To John Hanson 3
789. April 9. To John Murray 5
790. April 1 1. „ ,, 7
791. April 16. ,, „ 8
792. April 18. To Richard Belgrave Hoppner .... 10
793. April 22. ,, ,, „ .... 12
794. April 23. To John Murray 16
795. May 8. „ „ . 20
796. May 20. ,, ,, 25
797. May 20. To Richard Belgrave Hoppner .... 26
798. May 20. To John Murray 27
799. May 24. To Thomas Moore 29
800. May 25. To Richard Belgrave Hoppner .... 33
801. June i. To Thomas Moore 34
802. June 7. To John Murray 36
803. June 8. „ , „ 40
804. June 9. To Thomas Moore 41
805. June 12. To Richard Belgrave Hoppner .... 43
806. June 15. To Charles Hanson 45
807. July 6. To John Murray 46
808. July 13. To Thomas Moore 48
809. July 17. To John Murray 52
810. July 20. To Richard Belgrave Hoppner .... 55
811. July 22. To John Murray 57
812. July 24. ,, ,, 62
v"l LIST OF LETTERS.
PACK
813. July 27. To John Hanson 62
814. Aug. 2. To Charles Hanson 63
815. Aug. 7. To John Murray 63
816. Aug. 12. „ 64
817. Aug. 17.
818. Aug. 22.
819. Aug. 24.
820. Aug. 29.
821. Aug. 31.
65
66
66
66
67
822. Aug. 31. To John Hanson 69
823. Aug. 31. To Thomas Moore 70
824. Sept. 7. To John Murray 71
825. SeptS. „ „ 73
826. Sept. 10. To Richard Belgrave Hoppner .... 73
827. Sept. n. To John Murray 75
828. Sept. 14. „ , 76
829. Sept. 21. „ „ 76
830. Sept. 23. „ „ 77
831. Sept. 28. „ „ 80
832. Sept. 28. „ „ 81
833. Oct. i. To Richard Belgrave Hoppner .... 86
834. Oct. 6. To John Murray 86
835. Oct. 8. „ „ 89
836. Oct. 12. „ , 93
837. Oct. 12. To John Hanson 97
838. Oct. 13. To Richard Belgrave Hoppner .... 98
839. Oct. 16. To John Murray 98
840. Oct. 17. „ „ loo
841. Oct. 17. ToiThomas Moore 104
842. Oct. 25. To John Murray 106
843. Nov. 4. „ , 107
844. Nov. 5. To Thomas Moore no
845. Nov. 9. To John Murray 113
846. Nov. 18. „ „ 118
847. Nov. 19. „ „ 121
848. Nov. 23. „ ,, 128
849. Nov. 30. To John Hanson 130
850. Dec. 9. To Thomas Moore 131
851. Dec. 9. „ „ 133
852. Dec. 9. To John Murray 135
853. Dec. 10. „ ,, 137
854. Dec. 14. „ „ 137
LIST OF LETTERS.
855. Dec. 22. To Francis Hodgson 140
856. Dec. 25. To Thomas Moore 143
857. Dec. 28. To John Murray 145
1821.
858. Jan. 2. To Thomas Moore 212
859. Jan. 4. To John Murray 216
860. Jan. 6. , ,, 219
861. Jan. n. , „ 221
862. Jan. ii. , „ 222
863. Jan. 19. , „ 224
864. Jan. 20. , „ 226
865. Jan. 20. , ,, 228
866. Jan. 22. To Thomas Moore 229
867. Jan. 27. To John Murray 231
868. Jan. 28. To Richard Beigrave Hoppner .... 233
869. Feb. 2. To John Murray 234
870. Feb. 12. „ „ 237
871. Feb. 15. To Elizabeth, Duchess of Devonshire . . 237
872. Feb. 16. To John Murray 241
873. Feb. 21. „ „ 246
874. Feb. 22. To Thomas Moore 251
875. Feb. 26. To John Murray 253
876. March I. „ ,, 254
877. March 2. „ ,, 256
878. March 9. ,, ,, 257
879. March 12. ,, „ 258
880. March— „ ,, 258
88 1. April 3. To Richard Belgrave Hoppner .... 262
882. April 21. To John Murray 265
883. April 26. To Percy Bysshe Shelley 266
884. April 26. To John Murray 269
885. April 28. To Thomas Moore 271
886. Mays. „ , 273
887. May 8. To John Murray 275
888. May 10. „ „ 276
889. May ii. To Richard Belgrave Hoppner .... 279
890. May 12. To Francis Hodgson 281
891. May 14. To John Murray 285
892. May 14. To Thomas Moore 286
893. May 17. To Richard Belgrave Hoppner .... 288
894. May 19. To John Murray 289
LIST OF LETTERS.
895. Undated. To Madame Guiccioli 294
896. May 20. To Thomas Moore 295
897. May 25. To Richard Belgrave Hoppner .... 296
898. May 25. To John Murray 297
899. May 28. „ „ 30°
900. May 30. „ „ 3°°
901. May 31. To Richard Belgrave Hoppner .... 302
902. June 4. To Thomas Moore 3°3
903. June 12. To Giovanni Battista Missiaglia .... 307
904. June 14. To John Murray 3°8
905. June 22. To Thomas Moore 3°9
906. June 29. To John Murray 311
907. July 5. To Thomas Moore 3r8
908. July 6. To John Murray 320
909- July 7- „ » 321
910. July 9. „ „ 322
911. July 14. ,, „ 322
912. July 22. „ „ 324
913. July 23. To Richard Belgrave Hoppner .... 327
914. July 30. To John Murray 329
915. Aug. 2. To Thomas Moore 332
916. Aug. 4. To John Murray 337
917. Aug. 7. „ „ 338
918. Aug. 7. „ „ 338
919. Aug. 10. „ „ 342
920. Aug. 13. „ , 343
921. Aug. 16. ,, ,, ... 344
922. Aug. 23. „ , 346
923. Aug. 24. To Thomas Moore 349
924. Aug. 31. To John Murray 351
925. Undated. ,, „ 354
926. Aug. 31. To J. Mawman 354
927. Sept. 3. To Thomas Moore 355
928. Sept. 4. To John Murray 357
929. Sept. 4. ,, ,, 357
930. Undated. ,, ,, 359
931. Sept. 9. „ „ 36o
932. Sept. 10. „ „ 36o
933. Sept. 12. „ „ 361
934. Sept. 17. To Thomas Moore 3^4
935. Sept. 19. „ , 364
936. Sept. 20. „ „ 369
LIST OF LETTERS.
XI
937. Sept. 20. To John Murray 369
938. Sept. 24. „ „ 373
939. Sept. 27. „ 376
940. Sept. 27. To Thomas Moore 377
941.. Sept. 28. To John Murray 378
942. Sept. 29. To Thomas Moore 381
943. [Mar. i.] To Lady Byron 382
944. Oct. i. To Thomas Moore 384
945. Oct. 4. To John Murray 386
946. Oct. 6. To Thomas Moore 387
947. Oct. 9. To John Murray 388
948. Oct. 20. „ „ 392
949. Oct. 21. To Samuel Rogers 394
950. Oct. 26. To John Murray 396
951. Oct. 26. „ „ 397
952. Oct. 28. To Thomas Moore 397
953. Oct. 30. To John Murray 400
954. Nov. 3. „ „ 469
955. Nov. 9. „ „ 472
956. Nov. 12. ,, ,, 472
957. Nov. 14. „ ,, 473
958. Undated. „ „ 475
959. Nov. 1 6. To Thomas Moore 475
960. Nov. 17. To Lady Byron 479
961. Nov. 20. To Douglas Kinnaird 481
962. Nov. 24. To John Murray 483
963. Dec. 4. „ „ 486
964. Dec. 8. To John Sheppard 488
965. Dec. 10. To John Murray 491
966. Dec. 12. To Thomas Moore 493
967. Dec. 12. To Percy Bysshe Shelley 495
968. Undated. To Thomas Moore 495
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
XX. REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT IN ITALY—
ALLEGRA AND JANE CLAIRMONT — COUN-
TESS GUICCIOLI SEPARATED FROM HER
HUSBAND — THE TRIAL OF QUEEN CARO-
LINE— MARINO FALIERO — DON JUAN,
CANTO V. ... ... ... ... i
XXI. EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY, JANUARY 4 TO
FEBRUARY 27, 1821 ... ... ... 147
XXII. REPRESENTATION OF MARINO FALIERO —
COLLAPSE OF REVOLUTIONARY MOVE-
MENT IN ITALY — LETTERS AGAINST
BOWLES'S CRITICISM OF POPE— EXILE
OF THE GAMBAS — DEATH OF KEATS —
SARDANAPALUS, THE Two FOSCARI,
AND CAIN— SHELLEY'S VISIT TO BYRON
AT RAVENNA — "THE IRISH AVATAR" —
THE VISION OF JUDGMENT ... ... 212
XXIII. " MY DICTIONARY," MAY, 1821 — DETACHED
THOUGHTS, OCTOBER 15, 1821, TO MAY 18,
1822 ... ... ... ... 403
XXIV. HEAYEN AND EARTH — OPINIONS ON
CAIN ... ... ... ... 469
XIV CONTENTS.
PAGE
APPENDIX I. LETTERS FROM SHELLEY TO BYRON,
FROM JANE CLAIRMONT TO
BYRON, AND FROM SHELLEY TO
JANE CLAIRMONT ... ... 497
„ II. GOETHE AND BYRON ... ... 503
„ III. CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BYRON
AND BOWLES AS TO THE POETRY
AND CHARACTER OF POPE ... 522
„ IV. THOMAS MULOCK'S LINES TO
BYRON ... ... ... 593
„ V. BYRON'S ADDRESS TO THE NEA-
POLITAN INSURGENTS ... 595
„ VI. BACON'S APOPHTHEGMS ... 597
„ VII. REPLY OF WILLIAM TURNER TO
BYRON'S LETTER ... ... 60 1
„ VIII. SOME ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE AND
WRITINGS OF THE LATE GEORGE
RUSSELL OF A. BY HENRY FER-
GUSON ... ... ... 604
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
BYRON, FROM A SKETCH BY COUNT D'ORSAY,
TAKEN IN MAY, 1823 ... ... ... Frontispiece
THE COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON, FROM THE
PICTURE BY SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE,
P.R.A., IN THE HERTFORD HOUSE COL-
LECTION ... ... ... ... To face p. 4
THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA, FROM A
DRAWING BY ANGELO ALESSANDRI, IN
THE POSSESSION OF JOHN MURRAY, ESQ. ,, ,, 156
SHELLEY, FROM THE PICTURE BY Miss AMELIA
CURRAN, PAINTED IN ROME IN l8ig ... ,, ,, 266
THE PALAZZO LANFRANCHI, PISA, FROM A
DRAWING BY O. F. M. WARD, IN THE .,i
POSSESSION OF JOHN MURRAY, ESQ. ... ,, „ * -394
BYRON, AS HE APPEARED AFTER HIS DAILY
RIDE AT PISA AND GENOA, FROM A SIL-
HOUETTE CUT IN PAPER BY MRS. LEIGH
HUNT „ „ 494
THE
LETTERS OF LORD BYRON.
CHAPTER XX.
THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA, APRIL —
DECEMBER, 1820.
REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT IN ITALY — ALLEGRA AND
JANE CLAIRMONT — COUNTESS GUICCIOLI SEPARATED
FROM HER HUSBAND — THE TRIAL OF QUEEN CARO-
LINE— MARINO FALIERO — DON JUAN, CANTO V.
786.— To Lady Byron.1
Ravenna, April 3, 1820.
I RECEIVED yesterday your answer dated March 10.
My offer was an honest one, and surely could be only
I. Lady Byron's answer to Byron's letter of January I, 1820, was
sent by him to Moore, in whose Diary it is published (Memoirs, etc.,
vol. iii. pp. 114, 115) —
"Kirkby Mallory, March 10, 1820.
"I received your letter of January I, offering to my perusal a
' memoir of part of your life. I decline to inspect it. I consider
' the publication or circulation of such a composition at any time
' as prejudicial to Ada's future happiness. For my own sake, I
1 have no reason to shrink from publication ; but, notwithstanding
' the injuries which I have suffered, I should lament some of the
' consequences.
" A. BYRON."
Byron's reply, given above, was sent by him to Moore to forward
to Lady Byron.
VOL. V. ^* C
2 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
construed as such even by the most malignant Casuistry.
I could answer you ; but it is too late, and it is not worth
while.
To the mysterious menace of the last sentence —
whatever its import may be — and I really cannot pretend
to unriddle it, — I could hardly be very sensible, even if I
understood it, as, before it could take place, I shall be
where " nothing can touch him farther." x I advise yo,u,
however, to anticipate the period of your intention ; for
be assured no power of figures can avail beyond the
present; and, if it could, I would answer with the
Florentine 2 —
" Ed io, che posto son con loro in croce
e certo
LayZmz moglie, piii ch'altro, mi nuoce."
BYRON.
787.— To Lady Byron.3
Ravenna, April 6l.h 1820.
In February last, at the suggestion of Mr. Douglas
Kinnaird, I wrote to you on the proposition of the
1. Macbeth, act iii. sc. 2.
2. Byron quotes from Dante's Inferno, canto xvi. lines 43-45.
In Round 3 of Circle vii. of Hell, Dante meets three Florentines —
Guido Guerra, Tegghiaio Aldobrandi, and Jacopo Rusticucci — who
have sinned against nature. The latter is the spokesman —
1 ' Ed io, che posto son con loro in croce,
Jacopo Rusticucci fui ; e certo
La fiera moglie piu ch'altro mi nuoce."
Rusticucci held a distinguished place in the councils of Florence,
representing her (1254) in her foreign affairs. He owed his place in
Hell to the savage temper of his wife, and his story is told by
Benvenuto Rambaldi da Imola to illustrate the consequences of
ill-assorted marriages. " Vir popularis, sed tamen valde politicus
"etmoralis. . . . qui poterat videri satis felix . . . nisi habuisset
"uxorem pravam ; habuit enim mulierem ferocem, cum qua vivere
"non poterat ; ideo dedit se turpitudini."
3. Printed from a draft in the possession of Mr. Murray.
1 820.] THE BLESSINGTON MORTGAGE. 3
Dublin investment,1 and, to put you more in possession
of his opinions, I enclosed his letter. I now enclose you
a statement of Mr. Hanson's, and, to say the truth, I am
at a loss what to think or decide upon between such very
opposite views of the question.
Perhaps you will lay it before your trustees. I for
my own part am ignorant of business, and am so little
able to judge, that I should be disposed to think with
them, whatever their ideas may be upon the subject.
One thing is certain ; I cannot consent to sell out of the
funds at a loss, and the Dublin House should be insured.
Excuse all this trouble; but as it is your affair as
well as mine, you will pardon it. I have an innate
distrust and detestation of the public funds and their
precarious [ ? ] ; but still the sacrifice of the removal
(at least at present) may be too great. I do not know
what to think, nor does any body else, I believe.
Yours,
BYRON.
I iecd. yours of March lo".1, and enclosed an answer
(to Mr. Thomas Moore) to be forwarded to you.
788.— To John Hanson.
Ravenna, April 6^ 1820.
DEAR SIR, — I have just received yours dated March
22d. Your January packet only arrived last Sunday, so
I. Charles John Gardiner (1782-1829), who succeeded his father
(1798) as second Viscount Mountjoy, and was created Earl of
Blessington in 1816, had impaired his fortune by his taste for
magnificence, passion for the stage, and reckless expenditure. He
owned the Ormond Quays as well as Henrietta Street in Dublin,
and it was on this property that Byron was advised to advance
money. But the advance was in the end not made by Byron's
trustees. Lord Blessington married, (i) in 1812, Mary Campbell,
widow of Major Browne ; (2) in 1818, Marguerite Power, second
daughter of Edmund Power, of Curragheen, co. Waterford, and
widow of Maurice St. Leger Farmer, Captain 47th Regiment.
4 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
that I shall put off replying to it for the present (as there
is a witness wanting for the Scotch deed, etc.), and
answer your March epistle, which, as you yourself say,
is of much more importance.
But how shall I answer ?
Between the devil and deep Sea,1
Between the Lawyer and Trustee —
it is difficult to decide. Mr. Kinnaird writes that the
Mortgage is the most advantageous thing possible; you
write that it is quite the contrary. You are both my old
acquaintances, both men of business, and both give good
reasons for both your opinions ; and the result is that I
finish by having no opinion at all. I cannot see that it
could any way be the interest of either to persuade me
either one way or the other, unless you thought it for my
advantage. In short, do settle it among you if you can,
for I am at my wits' end betwixt your contrary opinions.
One thing is positive. / will not agree to sell out of the
funds at a loss, and the Dublin House property must be
insured; but you should not have waited till the Funds
get low again, as you have done, so as to make the affair
impracticable. I retain, however, my bad opinion of the
funds, and must insist on the money being one day
placed on better security somewhere. Of Irish Security,
and Irish Law, I know nothing, and cannot take upon
me to dispute your Statement ; but I prefer higher
Interest for my Money (like everybody else I believe),
and shall be glad to make as much as I can at the least
risk possible.
It is a pity that I am not upon the Spot, but I
I. So Cuddie Headrigg, appealing to Claverhouse to save
Morton from the Cameronians, found himself "atween the deil and
" the deep sea." — Old Mortality, chap, xxxiii.
1820.] BETWEEN LAWYER AND TRUSTEE. 5
cannot make it at all convenient to come to England for
the present.
I am truly pleased to hear that there is a prospect of
terminating the Rochdale Business, in one way or the
other : pray see if out. It has been hitherto a dead loss
of time and expences, but may I suppose pay in the long
run; and if you could for once be a little qiiicker about that,
or anything else, it would be a great gain to me and no
loss to you, as our final Settlement naturally will depend
in some measure upon the result. If the claim could be
adjusted, and the whole brought to the hammer, I could
clear every thing, and know what I really possess.
Pray write to me (direct to Ravenna). I do not feel
justified in the present state of the funds, and on your
statement, of urging the fulfilment of the Blessington
Mortgage, and yet I feel sorry that it does not seem
feasible. At any rate, see Mr. Kinnaird upon it and
come to some decision. Let me hear about Rochdale.
Yours ever truly,
BYRON.
P.S. — Advance old Joe Murray whatever may be
necessary and proper, and it will be deducted from my
Bankers ace'
789. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, April 9, 1820.
D? S*, — In the name of all the devils in — the
printing office, why don't you write to acknowledge the
receipt of the second, third, and fourth packets, viz.
the Pulci — translation and original, the Danticles,
the Observations on, etc.? You forget that you keep
me in hot water till I know whether they are arrived,
or if I must have the bore of recopying.
6 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
I send you " a Song of Triumph " by W. Botherby,
Esq1?, price sixpence, on the Election of J. C. H. Esqre
for Westminster (not for publication) ;
Would you go to the House by the true gate,
Much faster than ever Whig Charley went ;
Let Parliament send you to Newgate,
And Newgate will send you to Parliament.
Have you gotten the cream of translations, Francesca
of Rimini, from the Inferno ? Why, I have sent you a
warehouse of trash within the last month, and you have
no sort of feeling about you : a pastry-cook would have
had twice the gratitude, and thanked me at least for the
quantity.
To make the letter heavier, I enclose you the
Cardinal Legate's (one Campeius) circular for his
Conversazione this evening : it is the anniversary of the
Pope's tiaration, and all polite Christians, even of the
Lutheran creed, must go and be civil. And there will
be a Circle, and a Faro-table, (for shillings, that is — they
don't allow high play) and all the beauty, nobility, and
Sanctity of Ravenna present. The Cardinal himself is a
very good-natured little fellow, Bishop of Imola and
Legate here, — a devout believer in all the doctrines of
the Church. He has kept his housekeeper these forty
years, for his carnal recreation ; but is reckoned a pious
man, and a moral liver.
I am not quite sure that I won't be among you this
autumn, for I find that business don't go on — what with
trustees and Lawyers — as it should do, "with all
" deliberate speed." They differ about investments in
Ireland.
Between the devil and deep Sea,
Between the Lawyer and Trustee,
l82O.] MARINO FALIERO BEGUN. ^
I am puzzled ; and so much time is lost by my not being
upon the spot — what with answers, demurs, rejoinders,
that it may be I must come and look to it. For one
says do, and t'other don't, so that I know not which way
to turn. But perhaps they can manage without me.
Yours ever,
B.
P.S. — I have begun a tragedy on the subject of
Marino Faliero,1 the Doge of Venice ; but you shan't see
it these six years, if you don't acknowledge my packets
with more quickness and precision. Always write, if but
a line, by return of post, when anything arrives, which is
not a mere letter.
Address direct to Ravenna ; it saves a week's time,
and much postage.
790. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, April 11* 1820.
DEAR MURRAY, — Pray forward the enclosed letter to
a fiddler. In Italy they are called " Professors of the
"Violin." You should establish one at each of the
universities.
Yours,
B.
P.S. — Pray forward it carefully with a frank : it is
from a poor fellow to his musical Uncle, of whom nothing
has been heard these three years (though what he can
have been doing at Belfast, Belfast best knows), so that
they are afraid of some mischief having befallen him or
his fiddle.
I. Published with the Prophecy of Dante, April 21, 1821.
8 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
791. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, April 16, 1820.
DEAR MURRAY, — Post after post arrives without
bringing any acknowledgement from you of the different
packets (excepting the first) which I have sent within the
last two months, all of which ought to be arrived long
ere now ; and as they were announced in other letters,
you ought at least to say whether they are come or not.
You are not expected to write frequent or long letters, as
your time is much occupied ; but when parcels that have
cost some pains in the composition, and great trouble in
the copying, are sent to you, I should at least be put out
of Suspense by the immediate acknowledgement, per
return of post, addressed directly to Ravenna. I am
naturally — knowing what continental posts are — anxious
to hear that they are arrived ; especially as I loathe the
task of copying so much, that if there was a human being
that could copy my blotted MSS. he should have all they
can ever bring for his trouble. All I desire is two lines,
to say, such a day I received such a packet : there are
now at least six unacknowledged. This is neither kind
nor courteous.
I have, besides, another reason for desiring you to be
speedy, which is, that there is THAT brewing in Italy
which will speedily cut off all security of communication,
and set all your Anglo-travellers flying in every direction,
with their usual fortitude in foreign tumults. The
Spanish and French affairs have set the Italians in a
ferment ; l and no wonder : they have been too long
I. In France, after the fall of Decazes, who, as Chateaubriand
said, "slipped in the blood" of the Due de Berri (assassinated
February 13, 1820), the Due de Richelieu abandoned the attempt
to reconcile revolutionary changes with Bourbon principles. The
Government became reactionary. The franchise was restricted,
liberty of the press attacked, education entrusted to the clergy, and
1 820.] ITALY IN A FERMENT. 9
trampled on. This will make a sad scene for your
exquisite traveller, but not for the resident, who naturally
the loyalty of the army alienated by the treatment of imperialist
veterans. Discontent, fanned by the songs of Beranger, spread
rapidly. The chevaliers de la liberte allied with the Carbonari, and
in their Ventes, or lodges, were enrolled men like Lafayette and
Lafitte. Plots were formed which led to insurrections at Befort,
Marseilles, Saumur, and La Rochelle. The attempted risings were
suppressed ; the despatch of a military force into Spain, April,
1823, relieved the discontent of the army, and the crisis was post-
poned.
In Spain and Italy the revolutionary movement was more
formidable, and for the moment more successful. In Spain,
March 9, 1820, Ferdinand VII. was forced, by the insurrection
headed by Riego and Quiroga, to take the oath of fidelity to the
free constitution sanctioned by the Cortes in 1812, and abolished by
himself in 1814. A similar demand for representative government
was made by the Neapolitans. Ferdinand IV. King of Naples,
and afterwards Ferdinand I. of the Two Sicilies, on his restoration
to the throne of Naples (1815), promised a government in which
' ' the people should be sovereign, and the monarchy only the de-
" positary of the laws." But he afterwards bound himself by a
secret treaty with Austria to introduce no principles of government
opposed to those adopted in Austrian Italy. An insurrection,
actively fostered by the Carbonari, broke out among the cavalry at
Nola, July 2, 1820. The revolt spread with the utmost rapidity.
Guglielmo Pepe, as Captain-general of the constitutional forces,
entered Naples (July 6, 1820), and received a solemn oath, accepting
the new Spanish Constitution, from Ferdinand, who declared his
son, the Duke of Calabria, Vicar-General of the kingdom (July 13).
In October, 1820, the sovereigns of Russia, Austria, and Prussia,
met at Troppau, and, on their invitation, Ferdinand went to their
adjourned conference at Laybach in December. In February, 1821,
the allied sovereigns issued a declaration against the revolutionary
constitution, and sent an Austrian army to re-establish and maintain
the old system of government.
Early in 1821 the Austrian army, under Marshal Frimont, crossed
the Po and marched on Naples. The Neapolitans, under Pepe and
Carrascosa, made a short stand near Rieti (March 7), but were
defeated, and attempted no further resistance. Pepe fled to Barce-
lona. Carrascosa made terms for himself with the Austrians, who
(March 23, 1821) entered Naples. In the following May Ferdinand
returned to his capital.
A widespread revolution was preparing in Italy ; but it had no
organization, and was crushed without difficulty. In Piedmont —
at Turin and Genoa — the Spanish constitution was established, and
the king, Victor Emmanuel I., abdicated in favour of his brother,
Charles Felix (March, 1821) ; but the Piedmontese constitution-
alists were defeated by the Austrians near Novara (April 8), and
10 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
wishes a people to redress itself. I shall, if permitted
by the natives, remain to see what will come of it, and
perhaps to take a turn with them, like Dugald Dalgetty
and his horse, in case of business ; for I shall think it
by far the most interesting spectacle and moment in
existence, to see the Italians send the Barbarians of all
nations back to their own dens. I have lived long
enough among them to feel more for them as a nation
than for any other people in existence j but they want
Union, and they want principle; and I doubt their
success. However, they will try, probably ; and if they
do, it will be a good cause. No Italian can hate an
Austrian more than I do ; unless it be the English,
the Austrians seem to me the most obnoxious race under
the Sky.
But I doubt, if anything be done, it won't be so
quietly as in Spain. To be sure, Revolutions are not
to be made with Rose-water,1 where there are foreigners
as Masters.
Write while you can ; for it is but the toss up of a
Paul that there will not be a row that will somewhat
retard the Mail by and bye.
Address right to Ravenna.
Yours,
B.
792. — To Richard Belgrave Hoppner.
Ravenna, April 18, 1820.
DEAR HOPPNER, — I have caused write to Siri and
Willhalm to send with Vincenzo in a boat, the camp-beds
submitted. At Modena, Milan, Ravenna, and Florence, risings were
expected ; but they either came to nothing, or were immediately
crushed.
I. " Voulez-vous qu'on vous fasse des revolutions a 1'eau rose ? "
— Marmontel, Mlmoires (fun Fire, etc., Livre xiv. (CEuvres com-
pities, ed. 1818-19, torn. ii. p. 294).
l8zO.] SIR H. DAVY AT RAVENNA. II
and swords left in their care when I quitted Venice.
There are also several pounds of Mantoris best powder
in a Japan case ; but unless I felt sure of getting it away
from V. without seizure, I won't have it ventured. I can
get it in here, by means of an acquaintance in the
Customs, who has offered to get it ashore for me ; but
should like to be certiorated of its safety in leaving
Venice. I would not lose it for its weight in gold —
there is none such in Italy, as I take it to be.
I wrote to you a week or so ago, and hope you are
in good plight and spirits. Sir Humphry Davy l is here,
and was last night at the Cardinal's. As I had been
there last Sunday, and yesterday was warm, I did not go,
which I should have done, if I had thought of meeting
the Man of Chemistry. He called this morning, and I
shall go in search of him at Corso time. I believe,
to-day being Monday, there is no great conversazione,
and only the family one at the Marchese Cavalli's,
where I go as a relation sometimes ; so that, unless he
stays a day or two, we should hardly meet in public.
The theatre is to open in May for the fair, if there
is not a row in all Italy by that time, — the Spanish
business has set them all a-constitutioning, and what will
be the end, no one knows — it is also necessary thereunto
to have a beginning.
You see the blackguards have brought in Hobhouse
for Westminster. Rochfoucault says that " there is
"something in the misfortunes of our best friends not
" unpleasing to us," 2 and it is to this that I attribute my
not being so sorry for his election as I ought to be,
seeing that it will eventually be a millstone round his
1. See Letters, vol. ii. p. 226, note 2.
2. Maximes et Reflexions morales ; ccxli. : " Dans 1'adversite de
' ' nos meilleurs amis, nous trouvons souvent quelque chose qui ne
"nous deplait pas."
12 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
neck, for what can he do ? he can't take place ; he can't
take power in any case ; if he succeeds in reforming, he
will be stoned for his pains ; — and if he fails, there he is
stationary as Lecturer for Westminster.
Would you go to the House by the true gate,
Much faster than ever Whig Charley went ;
Let Parliament send you to Newgate,
And Newgate will send you to Parliament.
But Hobhouse is a man of real talent however, and will
make the best of his situation as he has done hitherto.
Yours ever and truly,
BYRON.
P.S. — My benediction to Mrs. Hoppner. How is
your little boy ? Allegra is growing, and has increased
in good looks and obstinacy.
793. — To Richard Belgrave Hoppner.
Ravenna, April 22'.' 1820.
MY DEAR HOPPNER, — With regard to Gnoatto, I
cannot relent in favour of Madame Mocenigo, who
protects a rascal and retains him in her service. Suppose
the case of your Servant or mine, you having the same
claim upon F[letche]r or I upon your Tim, would either
of us retain them an instant unless they paid the debt ?
As " there is no force in the decrees of Venice," * no
Justice to be obtained from the tribunals, — because even
conviction does not compel payment, nor enforce punish-
ment,— you must excuse me when I repeat that not one
farthing of the rent shall be paid > till either Gnoatto pays
me his debt, or quits Madame Mocenigo's service. I
i . Merchant of Venice^ act iv. sc. I .
1 820.] NO REDRESS, NO RENT. 13
will abide by the consequences ; but I could wish that no
time was lost in apprizing her of the affair. You must
not mind her relation Seranzo's statement ; he may be a
very good man, but he is but a Venetian, which I take
to be in the present age the ne plus ultra of human
abasement in all moral qualities whatsoever. I dislike
differing from you in opinion ; but I have no other
course to take, and either Gnoatto pays me, or quits her
Service, or I will resist to the uttermost the liquidation
of her rent. I have nothing against her, nor for her ;
I owe her neither ill will, nor kindness; — but if she
protects a Scoundrel, and there is no other redress, I will
make some.
It has been and always will be the case where there
is no law. Individuals must then right themselves.
They have set the example " and it shall go hard but I
"will better the Instruction."1 Two words from her
would suffice to make the villain do his duty ; if they are
not said, or if they have no effect, let him be dismissed ;
if not, as I have said, so will I do.
I wrote last week to Siri to desire Vincenzo to be sent
to take charge of the beds and Swords to this place by
Sea. I am in no hurry for the books, — none whatever,
— and don't want them.
Pray has not Mingaldo the Biography of living
people ? 2 — it is not here, nor in your list. I am not at
all sure that he has it either, but it may be possible.
Let Castelli go on to the last. I am determined to
see Merryweather out in this business, just to discover
what is or is not to be done in their tribunals, and if
ever I cross him, as I have tried the law in vain, (since
1. Merchant of Venice^ act iii. sc. I.
2. Probably Colburn's Biographical Dictionary of the Living
Authors of Great Britain and Ireland: comprising Literary Memoirs
and Anecdotes of their Lives, etc. London, 1816, 8vo.
14 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
it has but convicted him and then done nothing in
consequence) — I will try a shorter process with that
personage.
About Allegra, I can only say to Claire l — that I so
I. After Allegra returned in October, 1818, from her stay at Este
with her mother, she remained with Byron, under the care of a
maid chosen by Mrs. Hoppner. She had suffered from the unwhole-
some climate of Venice, and, as Mrs. Hoppner wrote to Mary
Shelley, January, 1819, "estdevenue tranquille et serieuse comme
"une petite vieille, ce qui nous peine beaucoup" (Dowden's Lifeof
Shelley, vol. ii. p. 328). For several months no news of the child
was heard by the Shelleys, except that Mrs. Vavassour's offer to
adopt her had been declined by Byron (Letters, vol. iv. p. 325,
note i). When Byron settled at Ravenna, in the- house of Count
Guiccioli, Miss Clairmont appealed to him through the Hoppners
to be allowed to see Allegra. This appeal Byron answers in the
following paragraph. The substance of his reply was communicated,
April 30, by Mrs. Hoppner to Claire, who refers in her journal to
the answer as "concerning green fruit and God" (Dowden's Life
of Shelley, vol. ii. p. 329, note). Professor Dowden prints, from a
rough draft in Miss Clairmont's handwriting (ibid., pp. 329, 330),
the mother's direct appeal to see her child, and her protest against
the idea, here apparently for the first time expressed, of placing
Allegra in a convent : —
"I beg from you the indulgence of a visit from my child, because
" that I am weaker every day, and more miserable. I have already
' proved in ten thousand ways that I have so loved her as to have
' commanded, nay, to have destroyed, such of my feelings as would
' have been injurious to her welfare. You answer my request by
' menacing, if I do not continue to suffer in silence, that you will
' inflict the greatest of all evils on my child — you threaten to put
' her in a convent, where she will be equally divided from us both.
' . . . This calls to my remembrance the story in the Bible, where
' Solomon judges between the two women ; the false parent was
'willing the child should be divided, but the feelings of the real
'one made her consent to any deprivation rather than her child
' should be destroyed : so I am willing to undergo any affliction
' rather than her whole life should be spoilt by a convent education."
Byron's reply, though necessarily shown to Miss Clairmont, was
written to Shelley, who in answer condemns its harsh tone, but
admits the wisdom of Byron's resolution to separate the mother and
the child (May 26, 1820). The letters from Shelley to Byron, and
from Shelley to Jane Clairmont, printed in Appendix I., dated
respectively September 17, 1820, and March, 1822 (?), illustrate the
writer's sound judgment and good feeling. In the same Appendix
will be found Jane Clairmont's appeal to Byron against placing
Allegra in the convent at Bagnacavallo.
i Sao.] ALLEGRA'S EDUCATION. 15
totally disapprove of the mode of Children's treatment in
their family, that I should look upon the Child as going
into a hospital. Is it not so ? Have they reared one l ?
Her health here has hitherto been excellent, and her
temper not bad; she is sometimes vain and obstinate,
but always clean and cheerful, and as, in a year or two,
I shall either send her to England, or put her in a
Convent for education, these defects will be remedied as
far as they can in human nature. But the Child shall
not quit me again to perish of Starvation, and green fruit,
or be taught to believe that there is no Deity. Whenever
there is convenience of vicinity and access, her Mother
can always have her with her ; otherwise no. It was so
stipulated from the beginning.
The Girl is not so well off as with you, but far better
than with them ; the fact is she is spoilt, being a great
favourite with every body on account of the fairness of
her Skin, which shines among their dusky children like
the milky way, but there is no comparison of her situation
now, and that under Elise, or with them. She has grown
considerably, is very clean, and lively. She has plenty
of air and exercise at home, and she goes out daily with
M? Guiccioli in her carriage to the Corso.
The paper is finished and so must the letter be.
Yours ever,
B.
My best respects to Mrs. H. and the little boy — and
Dorville.
I. Shelley and his wife Mary had lost three children — an infant,
born February 22, 1815, died March 6, 1815; Clara Everina, born
September 2, 1817, died at Venice, September 24, 1818 ; William,
born January 24, 1816, died at Rome, June 7, 1819.
1 6 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
794. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, April 23, 1820.
DEAR MURRAY, — The proofs don't contain the last
stanzas of Canto second, but end abruptly with the losth
Stanza.
I told you long ago that the new Cantos 1 were not
good, and I also told you a reason : recollect, I do not
oblige you to publish them ; you may suppress them, if
you like, but I can alter nothing. I have erased the
six stanzas about those two impostors, Southey and
Wordsworth (which I suppose will give you great
pleasure), but I can do no more. I can neither recast,
nor replace ; but I give you leave to put it all into the
fire, if you like, or not to publish, and I think that's
sufficient.
I told you that I wrote on with no good will — that I
had been, not frightened, but hurt by the outcry, and,
besides that, when I wrote last November, I was ill in
body, and in very great distress of mind about some
private things of my own ; but you would have it : so I
sent it to you, and to make it lighter, cut it in two — but
I can't piece it together again. I can't cobble : I must
" either make a spoon or spoil a horn," 2 — and there's an
end ; for there's no remeid : but I leave you free will to
suppress the whole, if you like it.
1. Don Juan, Cantos III., IV.
2. So the elder Mr. Fairford, when his son, Alan, made his suc-
cessful debut in the case of " Poor Peter Peebles versus Plainstanes,"
answered the congratulations of his friends, ' ' his voice faltering, as
' he replied, ' Ay, ay, I kend Alan was the lad to make a spoon or
' spoil a horn.' " Scott explains in a note the origin of the proverb :
' Said of an adventurous gipsy, who resolves at all risks to convert
'a sheep's horn into a spoon" (Redgauntlet, chap. i. of the
'Narrative"). So also Baillie Nicol Jarvie (Rob Roy, chap, xxii.)
ays, " Mr. Osbaldistone is a gude honest gentleman ; but I aye
' said he was ane o' them wad make a spune or spoil a horn, as my
'father the worthy deacon used to say."
1 8 20.] SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART. IJ
About the Morgante Maggiore, I won't have a line
omitted: it may circulate, or it may not; but all the
Criticism on earth shan't touch a line, unless it be
because it is badly translated. Now you say, and I say,
and others say, that the translation is a good one ; and
so it shall go to press as it is. Pulci must answer for his
own irreligion : I answer for the translation only.
I am glad you have got the Dante ; and there should
be by this time a translation of his Francesca of Rimini
arrived to append to it.
I sent you a quantity of prose observations x in answer
to Wilson, but I shall not publish them at present : keep
them by you as documents.
Pray let Mr. Hobhouse look to the Italian next time
in the proofs : this time, while I am scribbling to you,
they are corrected by one who passes for the prettiest
woman in Romagna, and even the Marches, as far as
Ancona — be the other who she may.
I am glad you like my answer to your enquiries
about Italian Society : it is fit you should like something,
and be damned to you.
My love to Scott. I shall think higher of knighthood
ever after for his being dubbed.2 By the way, he is the
first poet titled for his talent in Britain : it has happened
abroad before now; but on the continent titles are
universal and worthless. Why don't you send me
Ivanhoe and the Monastery ?3 I have never written to
Sir Walter, for I know he has a thousand things, and I
a thousand nothings, to do ; but I hope to see him at
1. See Letters, vol. iv. Appendix IX.
2. In the Gazette for April I, 1820, appears the announcement :
"The dignity of Baronet granted to Walter Scott, Esq. (the cele-
brated poet), and his heirs male."
3. Ivanhoe, The Monastery ; and The Abbot, were all published in
1820.
VOL. V. C
1 8 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
Abbotsford before very long, and I will sweat his Claret
for him, though Italian abstemiousness has made my
brain but a shilpit1 concern for a Scotch sitting inter
pocula. I love Scott and Moore, and all the better
brethren; but I hate and abhor that puddle of water-
worms whom you have taken into your troop in the
history line I see. I am obliged to end abruptly.
Yours,
B.
P.S. — You say that one Jialf* is very good : you are
wrong; for, if it were, it would be the finest poem in
existence. Where is the poetry of which one half is
good ? is it the ^Eneid? is it Milton's? is it Dry den's ? is
it any one's except Pope's and Goldsmith's, of which all
is good ? and yet these two last are the poets your pond
poets would explode. But if one half 'of the two new
Cantos be good in your opinion, what the devil would
you have more ? No — no : no poetry is generally good
— only by fits and starts — and you are lucky to get a
sparkle here and there. You might as well want a
Midnight all stars as rhyme all perfect.
We are on the verge of a row here. Last night they
have overwritten all the city walls with " Up with the
" Republic ! " and " death to the Pope ! " etc., etc. This
would be nothing in London, where the walls are
privileged, and where, when somebody went to Chancellor
Thurlow to tell him, as an alarming sign, that he had
seen " Death to the king " on the park wall, old Thurlow
asked him if he had ever seen " * " chalked on the same
place, to which the alarmist responding in the affirmative,
1. Balmawhapple, carousing at Luckie Macleary's, and fortified
by the Bear and the Hen, ' ' pronounced the claret shilpit, and
"demanded brandy with great vociferation " ( IVavwley, chap. xi.).
2. Of Don Juan.
1 820.] MURAL INSCRIPTIONS. 1 9
Thurlow resumed " and so have I for these last 30 years,
" and yet it never * * * *." But here it is a different
thing : they are not used to such fierce political inscrip-
tions, and the police is all on the alert, and the Cardinal
glares pale through all his purple.
April 24, 1820, 8 o'clock, P.M.
The police have been, all Noon and after, searching
for the Inscribers, but have caught none as yet. They
must have been all night about it, for the " Live republics
" — death to popes and priests," are innumerable, and
plastered over all the palaces : ours has plenty. There
is " down with the Nobility," too — they are down enough
already, for that matter. A very heavy rain and wind
having come on, I did not get on horseback to go out
and " skirr the country ; " but I shall mount tomorrow,
and take a canter among the peasantry, who are a
savage, resolute race, always riding with guns in their
hands. I wonder they don't suspect the Serenaders, for
they play on the guitar all night, here as in Spain, to their
Mistresses.
Talking of politics, as Caleb Quotem l says, pray look
at the Conclusion of my Ode on Waterloo? written in the
year 1815, and, comparing it with the Duke de Bern's
1. In The Review, or the Wags of Windsor, by G. Colman the
Younger. The phrase is, however, not used by his " Caleb
"Quotem," a character which he appropriated from Henry Lee
(1765-1836), whose "Caleb Quotem" was played at the Hay-
market, July 6, 1798, under the title of Throw Physic to the Dogs.
2. " Even in this low world of care
Freedom ne'er shall want an heir ;
Millions breathe but to inherit
Her for ever bounding spirit.
When once more her hosts assemble,
Tyrants shall believe and tremble ;
Smile they at this idle threat ?
Crimson tears will follow yet."
20 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
catastrophe in 1820 : l tell me if I have not as good a
right to the character of " Vates" in both senses of the
word, as Fitzgerald and Coleridge ? 2
" Crimson tears will follow yet " —
and have not they ?
I can't pretend to foresee what will happen among
you Englishers at this distance, but I vaticinate a row in
Italy ; in whilk case, I don't know that I won't have a
finger in it. I dislike the Austrians, and think the
Italians infamously oppressed j and if they begin, why,
I will recommend "the erection of a Sconce upon
" Drumsnab," 3 like Dugald Dalgetty.
795. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, May 8, 1820.
DEAR MURRAY, — From your not having written again,
an intention which your letter of y" 7th Ult° indicated, I
have to presume that " Tfie Prophecy of Dante " has not
been found more worthy than its immediate precursors
in the eyes of your illustrious Synod. In that case, you
will be in some perplexity; to end which, I repeat to
you, that you are not to consider yourself as bound or
pledged to publish any thing because it is mine, but
always to act according to your own views, or opinions,
or those of your friends ; and to be sure that you will
in no degree offend me by " declining the article," to use
1. Pierre-Louis Louvel (1785-1820), by trade a saddler, murdered
the Due de Berri, grandson of Louis XVIII., and second son of the
Comte d'Artois, afterwards Charles X., as he returned to the Opera,
February 13, 1820. The murder and Louvel's louche regard horri-
fied Victor Hugo, who wrote an ode on "La Mort du Due de
" Berri " (Odes et Ballades, Livre I. Ode vii.).
2. For W. T. Fitzgerald, see Letters, vol. iii. p. IO, note I. For
S. T. Coleridge, see ibid., vol. iii. p. 190, no te 3.
3. The Legend of Montrose, chap. x.
l82O.] SUPPRESSION OF CHILDE HAROLD. 21
a technical phrase. The Prose observations on J?
Wilson's attack,1 I do not intend for publication at this
time ; and I sent a copy of verses to Mr. Kinnaird (they
were written last year, on crossing the Po 2) which must
not be published either. I mention this, because it is
probable he may give you a copy. Pray recollect this,
as they are mere verses of Society, and written upon
private feelings and passions. And, moreover, I cannot
consent to any mutilations or omissions of Puld : the
original has been ever free from such in Italy, the Capital
of Christianity, and the translation may be so in England ;
though you will think it strange that they should have
allowed such freedom for so many centuries to the
Morgante, while the other day they confiscated the whole
translation of the 4"? Canto of Childe H\aroi\d, and have
persecuted Leoni,3 the translator — so he writes me, and
so I could have told him, had he consulted me before
his publication. This shows how much more politics
interest men in these parts than religion. Half a dozen
invectives against tyranny confiscate C? H'- in a month ;
and eight and twenty cantos of quizzing Monks and
Knights, and Church Government, are let loose for
centuries. I copy Leoni's account : —
"Non ignorera forse che la mia versione del 4°
" Canto del Childe Harold fu confiscata in ogni parte :
"ed io stesso ho dovuto soffrir vessazioni altrettanto
" ridicole quanto illiberali, ad arte che alcuni versi fossero
" esclusi dalla censura. Ma siccome il divieto non fa
" d'ordinario che accrescere la curiosita cosi quel carme
1. See Letters, vol. iv. Appendix IX.
2. " Stanzas to the Po," written, it is said, when Byron was on
his way to meet Countess Guiccioli at Ravenna.
3. L' Italia. Canto IV. del Pellegrinaggio di Childe Harold . . .
tradotto da Michele Leoni, Italia (London?), 1819, 8?. Leoni also
translated the Lament of Tasso (Lamento del Tasso . . . Recato
in Italiano da M. Leoni, Pisa, 1818).
22 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
" sull' Italia e ricercato piU che mai, e penso di farlo
" ristampare in Inghilterra senza nulla escludere. Scia-
" gurata condizione di questa mia patria ! se patria si
" pub chiamare una terra cos! awilita dalla fortuna, dagli
" uomini, da se medesima."
Rose will translate this to you. Has he had his
letter ? I enclosed it to you months ago.
This intended piece of publication I shall dissuade
him from, or he may chance to see the inside of St.
Angelo's. The last Sentence of his letter is the common
and pathetic sentiment of all his Countrymen, who
execrate Castlereagh as the cause, by the conduct of the
English at Genoa.1 Surely that man will not die in his
bed : there is no spot of the earth where his name is not
a hissing, and a curse. Imagine what must be the man's
talent for Odium, who has contrived to spread his
infamy like a pestilence from Ireland to Italy, and to
make his name an execration in all languages.
Talking of Ireland, Sir Humphry Davy 2 was here last
1. The Republic of Genoa, conquered by the French in 1797,
lived a short life as the Ligurian Republic until, in 1805, it was
absorbed by the French Empire. In 1814 Lord William Bentinck
compelled the French troops to evacuate the city, proclaimed the
restoration of the Genoese constitution as it existed before I797»
and pledged the honour of the Allied Powers that the independence
of Genoa should be respected. But at the Congress of Vienna
republics were unfashionable, and nationalities were sacrificed to
political equilibrium. Genoa was annexed to Piedmont, its ancient
rival, and the British troops were withdrawn, February, 1815.
In making the decision of the Congress known to Colonel
Dalrymple, the British commander, Castlereagh regretted his in-
ability "to preserve to Genoa a separate existence," insisted on the
"generous disposition of the King of Sardinia," and hoped that the
Genoese of every class would accept the new rule as "a benefit."
But it appears {Castlereagh Correspondence, 3rd series, vol. ii. pp. 18,
221) that Bentinck made his promise with Castlereagh's knowledge,
though Castlereagh denied ( Wellington Supplementary Despatches,
vol. ix. p. 64) that Bentinck had any authority from the British
Government. The Genoese believed that they had been betrayed,
and saw in Castlereagh the traitor.
2. " Davy," writes Moore, in his Diary for May 19, 1820
1820.1
UNROLLING PAPYRI.
fortnight, and I was in his company in the house of a very
pretty Italian Lady of rank, who, by way of displaying her
learning in presence of the great Chemist then describing
his fourteenth ascension of Mount Vesuvius, asked " if
"there was not a similar Volcano in Ireland 1" My
only notion of an Irish Volcano consisted of the Lake of
Killarney, which I naturally conceived her to mean ; but,
on second thoughts, I divined that she alluded to Ice-
land and to Hecla — and so it proved, though she
sustained her volcanic topography for some time with all
the amiable pertinacity of " the Feminie." She soon
after turned to me and asked me various questions about
Sir Humphry's philosophy, and I explained as well as an
Oracle his skill in gases, safety lamps, and in ungluing
the Pompeian MSS.1 "But what do you call him?"
(Memoirs^ etc., vol. iii. p. 118), "went to Ravenna to see Lord
' Byron, who is now living domesticated with the Guiccioli and her
' husband after all. He was rather anxious to get off with Davy to
' Bologna, professedly for the purpose of seeing Lady Davy, but I
' have no doubt with a wish to give his Contessa the slip."
i. In the Philosophical Transactions (1821, pp. 191, 192) will be
bund a paper read by Sir Humphry Davy (March 15, 1821), on
"Some Observations and Experiments on the Papyri found in the
Ruins of Herculaneum." From this paper the following extract
s taken : —
" During the two months that I was actively employed in experi-
' ments on the papyri at Naples, I had succeeded, with the assist -
' ance of six of the persons attached to the Museum, and whom I had
'engaged for the purpose, in partially unrolling 23 MSS., from
' which fragments of writing were obtained, and in examining
' about 1 20 others, which afforded no hopes of success ; and I should
' gladly have gone on with the undertaking, from the mere pros-
' pect of a possibility of discovering some better results, had not the
' labour, in itself difficult and unpleasant, been made more so, by
' the conduct of the persons at the head of this department in the
' Museum. At first every disposition was shown to promote my
' researches ; for the papyri remaining unrolled were considered by
' them as incapable of affording anything legible by the former
'methods, or, to use their own word, disperati ; and the efficacy
' and use of the new processes were fully allowed by the Svolgatori,
' or unrollers of the Museum ; and I was for some time permitted
' to choose and operate upon the specimens at my own pleasure.
24 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
said she. " A great Chemist," quoth I. " What can he
" do ? " repeated the lady. " Almost any thing," said I.
" Oh, then, mio Caro, do pray beg him to give me some-
" thing to dye my eyebrows black. I have tried a
"thousand things, and the colours all come off; and
" besides, they don't grow : can't he invent something to
" make them grow ? " All this with the greatest earnest-
ness ; and what you will be surprized at, she is neither
ignorant nor a fool, but really well educated and clever.
But they speak like children, when first out of their
convents; and, after all, this is better than an English
blue-stocking.
I did not tell Sir Humphry of this last piece of
philosophy, not knowing how he might take it. He is
gone on towards England. Sotheby has sent him a
poem on his undoing the MSS., which Sir H. says is a
bad one. Who the devil doubts it ? Davy was much
taken with Ravenna, and the primitive Italianism of the
people, who are unused to foreigners : but he only staid
a day.
Send me Scott's novels and some news.
P.S. — I have begun and advanced into the second
Act of a tragedy on the subject of the Doge's Conspiracy
' When, however, the Reverend Peter Elmsley, whose zeal for the
' promotion of ancient literature brought him to Naples for the
' purpose of assisting in the undertaking, began to examine the frag-
1 ments unrolled, a jealousy, with regard to his assistance, was
' immediately manifested ; and obstacles, which the kind interfer-
'ence of Sir William A'Court was not always capable of removing,
' were soon opposed to the progress of our enquiries ; and these
' obstacles were so multiplied, and made so vexatious towards the
' end of February, that we conceived it would be both a waste of
'the public money, and a compromise of our own characters, to
' proceed." For the improvements in Padre Piaggi's method of
unrolling the MSS. (described in the Annual Register for 1820, p.
504), which were suggested by Sir H. Davy, see Philosophical
Transactions, 1821, p. 199.
1 820.] THOMAS CAMPBELL CORRECTED. 25
(i.e. the story of Marino Faliero) ; but my present feeling
is so little encouraging on such matters, that I begin to
think I have mined my talent out, and proceed in no
great phantasy of finding a new vein.
P.S. — I sometimes think (if the Italians don't rise)
of coming over to England in the Autumn after the
coronation, (at which I would not appear, on account of
my family Schism with " the feminie ") but as yet I can
decide nothing. The place must be a great deal changed
since I left it, now more than four years ago.
May gth, 1820. Address directly to Ravenna.
796. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, May 20, 1820.
Murray, my dear, make my respects to Thomas
Campbell, and tell him from me, with faith and friend-
ship, three things that he must right in his Poets :
Firstly, he says Anstey's Bath Guide Characters are
taken from Smollett. 'Tis impossible : — the Gtiide was
published in 1766, and Humphrey Clinker in 1771 —
dunque, 'tis Smollett who has taken from Anstey.1
Secondly, he does not know to whom Cowper alludes,
when he says that there was one who " built a church to
" God, and then blasphemed his name : " it was " Deo
" erexit Voltaire " to whom that maniacal Calvinist and
coddled poet alludes.2 Thirdly, he misquotes and spoils
1. Campbell's Specimens of the British Poets, with biographical
and critical notices, etc., was published in 1819 (7 vols., London).
The corrections pointed out by Byron were not made in subsequent
editions of the biographical portion of the work. In the Notice
of Christopher Anstey (Notices of the British Poets, ed. 1819,
p. 439), Campbell says of The New Bath Guide, "The droll and
' ' familiar manner of the poem is original, but its leading characters
"are evidently borrowed from Smollett."
2. In his Notice of Cowper (Notices, etc., ed. 1819, p. 358),
Campbell lays stress on the impersonal character of his satires. " I
26 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
a passage from Shakespeare, "to gild refined gold, to
" paint the lily," etc. ; for lily he puts rose, and bedevils
in more words than one the whole quotation.1
Now, Tom is a fine fellow ; but he should be correct ;
for the i-1 is an injustice (to Anstey), the 2"? an ignorance,
and the third a blunder. Tell him all this, and let him
take it in good part ; for I might have rammed it into a
review and vexed him — instead of which, I act like a
Christian.
Yours,
B.
797. — To Richard Belgrave Hoppner.
Ravenna, May 20".' 1820.
MY DEAR HOPPNER, — Let Merryweather be kept in
for one week, and then let him out for a Scoundrel. Tell
him that such is the lesson for the ungrateful, and let this
be a warning; a little common feeling, and common
honesty would have saved him from useless expence and
utter ruin.
"know not," he adds in a note, "to whom he alludes in these
" lines : —
' ' ' Nor he who, for the bane of thousands born,
Built God a church, and laugh'd His word to scorn.' "
The lines are from Cowper's Retirement, and the allusion is, as
Byron says, to Voltaire.
i. Campbell, in his Notice of Burns (Notices, etc., ed. 1819, p.
245), says, "Every reader must recal abundance of thoughts in
"his love-songs, to which any attempt to superadd a tone of
" gallantry would not be
" 'To gild refined gold, to paint the rose,
Or add fresh perfume to the violet ; '
" but to debase the metal, and to take the odour and colour from the
"flower." The quotation from King John (act iv. sc. 2) should
be, as Byron points out —
"To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet."
1820.] A MORAL LESSON. 27
Never would I pursue a man to Jail for a mere debtt
and never will I forgive one for ingratitude such as this
Villain's. But let him go and be damned (once in though
first) ; but I could much wish you to see him and
inoculate him with a moral sense by shewing him the
result of his rascality.
As to Mother Mocenigo, we'll battle with her, and her
ragamuffin. Castelli must dungeon Merryweather, if it
be but for a day, I don't want to hurt, only to teach
him.
I write to you in such haste and such heat ; it seems
to be under the dog (or bitch) Star that I can no more,
but sottoscribble myself,
Yours ever,
B.
P.S. — My best respects to the Consolessa and
Compts. to Mr. Dorville.
Hobhouse is angry with me for a ballad * and epigram
I made upon him ; only think — how odd !
798. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, May 2Oth, 1820.
DEAR MURRAY, — First and foremost, you must
forward my letter to Moore dated 2d January, which I
said you might open, but desired you to forward. Now,
you should really not forget these little things, because
they do mischief among friends. You are an excellent
man, a great man, and live among great men, but do
pray recollect your absent friends and authors.
I return you the packets. The prose (the Edin. Mag.
answer) looks better than I thought it would, and yon
i. See Letters, vol. iv. p. 423, note I, and Appendix XI.
28 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
may publish it: there will be a row, but I'll fight it out
one way or another. You are wrong : I never had those
" two ladies," l upon my honour ! Never believe but half
of such stories. Southey was a damned scoundrel to
spread such a lie of a woman, whose mother he did his
best to get and could not.
So you and Hobhouse have squabbled about my
ballad : you should not have circulated it ; but I
am glad you are by the ears, you both deserve it —
he for having been in Newgate, and you for not being
there.
Excuse haste : if you knew what I have on hand, you
would.
In the first place, your packets ; then a letter from
Kinnaird, on the most urgent business : another from
Moore, about a communication to Lady B[yron] of
importance ; a fourth from the mother of Allegra ; and,
fifthly, at Ravenna, the Contessa G. is on the eve of
being divorced on account of our having been taken
together quasi in the fact, and, what is worse, that she
did not deny it : but the Italian public are on our side,
particularly the women, — and the men also, because they
say that he had no business to take the business up now
after a year of toleration. The law is against him,
because he slept with his wife after her admission. All
her relations (who are numerous, high in rank, and
powerful) are furious against him for his conduct, and his
not wishing to be cuckolded at ///mscore, when every one
else is at ONE. I am warned to be on my guard, as he
is very capable of employing Sicarii — this is Latin as
well as Italian, so you can understand it ; but I have
arms, and don't mind them, thinking that I can pepper
his ragamuffins if they don't come unawares, and that, if
i. See Letters, vol. iv. pp. 298, 482.
l82O.] THE BEGGAR'S OPERA QUOTED. 29
they do, one may as well end that way as another ; and
it would besides serve yoti as an advertisement : —
" Man may escape from rope or Gun, etc.
But he who takes Woman, Woman, Woman," etc.1
Yours,
B.
P.S. — I have looked over the press, but Heaven
knows how : think what I have on hand and the post
going out tomorrow. Do you remember the epitaph on
Voltaire ? 2
" Cy git 1'enfant gate," etc.
" Here lies the spoilt child
Of the World which he spoil'd."
The original is in Grimm and Diderot, etc., etc., etc.
799. — To Thomas Moore.
Ravenna, May 24, 1820.
I wrote to you a few days ago. There is also a letter
of January last for you at Murray's, which will explain to
you why I am here. Murray ought to have forwarded
1. The Beggar's Opera, act ii. sc. 2 —
Air. — Macheath.
" Courtiers, courtiers, think it no harm."
Man may escape from rope and gun,
Nay, some have outliv'd the doctor 's pill ;
Who takes a woman, must be undone,
That basilisk is sure to kill.
The fly, that sips treacle, is lost in the sweets,
So he, that tastes woman, woman, woman,
He, that tastes woman, ruin meets.
2. In the Correspondance Littcraire, Partie II'.ne torn. iv".ie p. 355,
ed. 1812, the epitaph is thus given —
" Epitaphe de Voltaire, faite par une dame de Lausanne —
' Ci git 1'enfant gate du monde qu'il gata.' "
30 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
it long ago. I enclose you an epistle from a country-
woman of yours at Paris, which has moved my entrails.1
You will have the goodness, perhaps, to enquire into the
truth of her story, and I will help her as far as I can, —
though not in the useless way she proposes. Her letter
is evidently unstudied, and so natural, that the ortho-
graphy is also in a state of nature.
Here is a poor creature, ill and solitary, who thinks,
as a last resource, of translating you or me into French !
Was there ever such a notion? It seems to me the
consummation of despair. Pray enquire, and let me
know, and, if you could draw a bill on me here for a few
hundred francs, at your banker's, I will duly honour it, —
that is, if she is not an impostor. If not, let me know,
that I may get something remitted by my banker Longhi,
of Bologna, for I have no correspondence myself at
Paris : but tell her she must not translate ; — if she does,
it will be the height of ingratitude.
I had a letter (not of the same kind, but in French
and flattery) from a Madame Sophie Gail, of Paris, whom
I take to be the spouse of a Gallo-Greek of that name.2
1. Moore, in his Diary for June, 1820 (Memoirs, etc., vol. Hi. p.
123), writes, "Received a letter from Lord Byron about the 7'.'1 or
' 8"?, commissioning me to find out an Irishwoman of the name of
' Mahony, who had written to him to request he would let her
'have the proof sheets of one of his new works, that she might
' translate it into French, and so make a little money by being first
' in the field with a translation, she being an orphan, etc. ... I
' called upon the lady, and found her so respectably dressed and
' lodged, that I felt delicate, at first, about mentioning the gift
' Lord Byron intended for her ; and when, on my second visit, 1
' presented the fifteen Napoleons, the poor girl refused them, saying
' it was not in that way she wished to be served ; having contrived
' hitherto, though an orphan, to support herself without pecuniary
' assistance from any one."
2. Moore describes Jean Baptiste Gail (1755-1829), Professor of
Greek Literature in the College de France at Paris, "whose edition
' of Anacreon I remember my mother buying for me when I was
'about nineteen, and busy with my own translations," as "a
1 820.] THE BEST ADVICE. 31
Who is she ? and what is she ? and how came she to take
an interest in my poeshie or its author? If you know
her, tell her, with my compliments, that, as I only read
French, I have not answered her letter ; but would have
done so in Italian, if I had not thought it would look
like an affectation. I have just been scolding my monkey
for tearing the seal of her letter, and spoiling a mock
book, in which I put rose leaves. I had a civet-cat the
other day, too; but it ran away, after scratching my
monkey's cheek, and I am in search of it still. It was
the fiercest beast I ever saw, and like * * in the face and
manner.
I have a world of things to say ; but, as they are not
come to a denouement^ I don't care to begin their history
till it is wound up. After you went, I had a fever, but
got well again without bark. Sir Humphry Davy was
here the other day, and liked Ravenna very much. He
will tell you any thing you may wish to know about the
place and your humble servitor.
Your apprehensions (arising from Scott's) were un-
founded. There are no damages in this country, but
there will probably be a separation between them, as her
family, which is a principal one, by its connections, are
very much against him, for the whole of his conduct ; —
and he is old and obstinate, and she is young and a
woman, determined to sacrifice every thing to her affec-
tions. I have given her the best advice, viz. to stay with
him, — pointing out the state of a separated woman, (for
"convivial and rather weak old man" (Memoirs, etc., January 24,
1820, vol. iii. p. 100). He was, however, a very distinguished
scholar, who had done good service to the study of Greek in France.
His wife, nee Sophie Garre (1776-1819), was celebrated for her
novels and her musical talents. Her opera, les Deux Jaloux, had
gained a great success in 1813. She was dead at the time of
Byron's letter. Byron's correspondent was really Madame Sophie
Gay, mother of Delphine Gay afterwards Madame de Girardin.
32 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
the priests won't let lovers live openly together, unless
the husband sanctions it,) and making the most exquisite
moral reflections, — but to no purpose. She says, " I will
" stay with him, if he will let you remain with me. It is
" hard that I should be the only woman in Romagna who
" is not to have her Amico ; but, if not, I will not live with
" him; and as for the consequences, love, etc., etc., etc."
— you know how females reason on such occasions.
He says he has let it go on till he can do so no longer.
But he wants her to stay, and dismiss me ; for he doesn't
like to pay back her dowry and to make an alimony.
Her relations are rather for the separation, as they detest
him, — indeed, so does every body. The populace and
the women are, as usual, all for those who are in the
wrong, viz. the lady and her lover. I should have
retreated, but honour, and an erysipelas which has
attacked her, prevent me, — to say nothing of love, for I
love her most entirely, though not enough to persuade
her to sacrifice every thing to a frenzy. " I see how it
" will end ; she will be the sixteenth Mrs. Shuffleton." 1
My paper is finished, and so must this letter.
Yours ever,
B.
P.S. — I regret that you have not completed the Italian
Fudges.2 Pray, how come you to be still in Paris?
Murray has four or five things of mine in hand — the new
Don Juan, which his back-shop synod don't admire ; — a
1. In John Bull, or the Englishman 's Fireside, by George
Colman the Younger (act ii. sc. 2), the Honourable Tom Shuffleton
says, " Fine blue eyes, faith, and very like my Fanny's. Yes, I
"see how it will end ;— she'll be the fifteenth Mrs. Shuffleton."
2. Moore at one time proposed to continue his Fudge Family in
Paris (1818), by a series of letters in verse from the Fudge family in
Italy. He did not carry out the plan. The Fudges in England :
being a sequel to the " Fudge Family in Paris," appeared in 1823.
1 820.] GOETHE ON MANFRED. 33
translation of the first canto of Pulci's Morgante Maggiore,
excellent; — a short ditto from Dante, not so much
approved : the Prophecy of Dante > very grand and worthy,
etc., etc., etc. : — a furious prose answer to Blackwood's
" Observations on Don Juan" with a savage Defence of
Pope — likely to make a row. The opinions above I
quote from Murray and his Utican senate; — you will
form your own, when you see the things.
You will have no great chance of seeing me, for I
begin to think I must finish in Italy. But, if you come
my way, you shall have a tureen of macaroni. Pray tell
me about yourself, and your intents.
My trustees are going to lend Earl Blessington sixty
thousand pounds (at six per cent.) on a Dublin mortgage.
Only think of my becoming an Irish absentee !
800. — To Richard Belgrave Hoppner.
Ravenna, May 25, 1820.
A German named Ruppsecht has sent me, heaven
knows why, several Deutsche Gazettes, of all which I
understand neither word nor letter. I have sent you the
enclosed to beg you to translate to me some remarks,
which appear to be Goethe's upon Manfred?- — and if I
may judge by two notes of admiration (generally put
after something ridiculous by us) and the word " hypocon-
" drisch" are any thing but favourable. I shall regret
this, for I should have been proud of Goethe's good
word ; but I shan't alter my opinion of him, even though
he should be savage.
Will you excuse this trouble, and do me this favour ?
I. For Goethe's criticism on Manfred, Hoppner's translation, and
a general note on Goethe and Byron, see Appendix II.
VOL. V. D
34 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
— Never mind — soften nothing — I am literary proof —
having had good and evil said in most modern languages.
Believe me, etc.
80 1. — To Thomas Moore.
Ravenna, June 1, 1820.
I have received a Parisian letter from W[edderburn]
W[ebster], which I prefer answering through you, if that
worthy be still at Paris, and, as he says, an occasional
visitor of yours. In November last he wrote to me a
well-meaning letter, stating, for some reasons of his own,
his belief that a re-union might be effected between Lady
B. and myself. To this I answered as usual; and he
sent me a second letter, repeating his notions, which
letter I have never answered, having had a thousand
other things to think of. He now writes as if he believed
that he had offended me by touching on the topic ; and
I wish you to assure him that I am not at all so, — but,
on the contrary, obliged by his good nature. At the
same time acquaint him the thing is impossible. You
know this, as well as I, — and there let it end.
I believe that I showed you his epistle in autumn
last. He asks me if I have heard of my " laureat " at
Paris,1 — somebody who has written " a most sanguinary
I. Byron refers to Lamartine's "L'Homme — k Lord Byron," one
of the poems in his Premieres Meditations Pottiques (1820). Lamar-
tine was an ardent admirer of Byron. In the subsequent "Com-
" mentaire " on the poem he thus describes its origin —
"J'entendis parler pour la premiere fois de lui [Byron] par un de
'mes anciens amis qui revenait d'Angleterre en 1819. Le seul
' recit de quelques-uns de ses poemes m'ebranla 1'imagination. . . .
' Je lus, dans un recueil periodique de Geneve, quelques fragments
'traduits du Corsaire, de Lara, de Manfred. Je devins ivre de
1 cette poesie. J'avais enfin trouve la fibre sensible d'un poete a
' 1'unisson des mes voix interieures. . . . Je n'adressai point ces
' vers 4 Lord Byron. . . . J'ai lu depuis, dans ses Memoires, qu'il
1 avail entendu parler de cette meditation d'un jeune Fra^ais, mais
' qu'il ne 1'avait pas lue. II ne savait pas notre langue."
1820.] COUNT GUICCIOLI'S SEPARATION. 35
" Epitre" against me; but whether in French, or Dutch,
or on what score, I know not, and he don't say, — except
that (for my satisfaction) he says it is the best thing in
the fellow's volume. If there is anything of the kind
that I ought to know, you will doubtless tell me. I
suppose it to be something of the usual sort ; — he says,
he don't remember the author's name.
I wrote to you some ten days ago, and expect an
answer at your leisure.
The separation business still continues, and all the
world are implicated, including priests and cardinals.
The public opinion is furious against him, because he
ought to have cut the matter short at first, and not
waited twelve months to begin. He has been trying at
evidence, but can get none sufficient; for what would
make fifty divorces in England won't do here — there
must be the most decided proofs. * * *
It is the first cause of the kind attempted in Ravenna
for these two hundred years; for, though they often
separate, they assign a different motive. You know that
the continental incontinent are more delicate than the
English, and don't like proclaiming their coronation in a
court, even when nobody doubts it.
All her relations are furious against him. The father
has challenged him — a superfluous valour, for he don't
fight, though suspected of two assassinations — one of the
famous Monzoni of Forli. Warning was given me not
to take such long rides in the Pine Forest without being
on my guard ; so I take my stiletto and a pair of pistols
in my pocket during my daily rides.
I won't stir from this place till the matter is settled
one way or the other. She is as femininely firm as
possible ; and the opinion is so much against him, that
the advocates decline to undertake his cause, because they
3 6 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
say that he is either a fool or a rogue — fool, if he did not
discover the liaison till now ; and rogue, if he did know
it, and waited for some bad end to divulge it. In short,
there has been nothing like it since the days of Guido di
Polenta's family,1 in these parts.
If the man has me taken off, like Polonius " say, he
" made a good end," 2 — for a melodrame. The principal
security is, that he has not the courage to spend twenty
scudi — the average price of a clean-handed bravo —
otherwise there is no want of opportunity, for I ride
about the woods every evening, with one servant, and
sometimes an acquaintance, who latterly looks a little
queer in solitary bits of bushes.
Good bye. — Write to yours ever, etc.
802. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, June 7, 1820.
DEAR MURRAY, — Enclosed is something which will
interest you, (to wit), the opinion of the Greatest man of
Germany — perhaps of Europe — upon one of the great
men of your advertisements, (all "famous hands," as
Jacob Tonson3 used to say of his ragamuffins,) — in
short, a critique of Goethe's upon Manfred. There is
the original, Mr. Hoppner's translation, and an Italian
one; keep them all in your archives, — for the opinions
of such a man as Goethe, whether favourable or not,
are always interesting, and this is moreover favourable.
1. Guido Vecchio da Polenta (d. 1310), whose "eagle" brooded
over Ravenna in the days of Dante, was the father of Francesca da
Rimini.
2. Hamlet, act iv. sc. 5.
3. "Perhaps I should myself be much better pleased, if I were
" told you called me your little friend, than if you complimented
' ' me with the title of a great genius or an eminent hand, as Jacob
"does all his authors." — Pope to Steele, November 29, 1712
(Courthope's Pope, vol. vi. p. 396).
1 8 20.] BARRY CORNWALL. 37
His Faiist I never read, for I don't know German ; but
Matthew Monk Lewis, in 1816, at Coligny, translated
most of it to me viva voce, and I was naturally much
struck with it; but it was the Staubach and the Jungfrau,
and something else, much more than Faustus, that made
me write Manfred. The first Scene, however, and that
of Faustus are very similar. Acknowledge this letter.
Yours ever,
B.
P.S. — I have received Ivanhoe ; — good. Pray send
me some tooth powder and tincture of Myrrh, by Waite^
etc. Ricdardetto should have been translated literally,
or not at alL As to puffing Whistlecraft, it ivorit do : *
I'll tell you why some day or other. Cornwall's a poet,2
1. Probably this alludes to an article on Whistlecraft, in the
Quarterly Review, vol. xxi. ; in which the reviewer (p. 503) says,
" About a hundred years ago, a poem, bearing a certain degree of
" affinity to the ' Specimen,' was produced by Monsignor Forteguerri,
' ' a writer who in genius and means was far inferior to the English
"Poet," etc., etc. Niccolo Forteguerri (1674-1735), a native of
Pistoja, and a cardinal, wrote Ricdardetto (pub. 1738), a broad
burlesque of Ariosto. The poem, already twice translated into
French verse (Dumouriez, 1766; Due de Nivernais, 1796), may
have helped to suggest to Frere his Prospectus and Specimen of an
Intended National Work, by William and Robert Whistlecraft.
2. Bryan Waller Procter (1787-1874), father of Adelaide Procter
(1825-1864), entered Harrow School in February, 1801. He became
a solicitor, then a barrister, and finally (1832-61) a metropolitan
commissioner in lunacy. But though the law was his profession,
literature, especially before his marriage (1824) with Miss Skepper,
was his passion. Under the disguise of "Barry Cornwall," a partial
anagram of his real name, he published his Dramatic Scenes in 1819 ;
his Mercian Colonna appeared in the next year, his Sicilian Story
in 1821. In the two last-named works the influence of Leigh Hunt
was conspicuous, as Byron remarks (p. 217); but Moore gratified
his feeling against Hunt by omitting the name, now for the first time
restored, at the expense of Byron's critical insight. Procter's
Mirandola was produced at Covent Garden, January 9, 1821, with
Macready as the "Duke of Mirandola;" Charles Kemble as his
son, "Guido;" Miss Foote as " Isidora ; " and Mrs. Faucit as
"Isabella." Genest (English Stage, vol. ix. pp. 102, 103) calls it
38 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
but spoilt by the detestable Schools of the day. Mrs.
Hemans l is a poet also, but too stiltified and apostrophic,
" a pretty good play," and says that it was acted sixteen times.
Some of Procter's best poetical work is contained in his English
Songs and other Smaller Poems (1832). As an intimate friend of
"Elia," he wrote a charming biography of Charles Lamb (Charles
Lamb : a Memoir, 1866-68). He made himself responsible for part
of the expenses of the publication of Shelley's posthumous poetry.
The following is a letter from Procter to Byron : —
" March 19, 1821, 25, Store Street, Bedford Square.
" MY LORD, — It gave me much pleasure to learn that you had
" some recollection of a Harrow boy, as well as that you felt some
"interest in my poetical progress. It has, in truth, been fortunate.
" Pray endeavour to believe that I am obliged by your remembering
" me. I sent you in January, thro' Mr. Murray, who promised to
" forward it, a copy of my play of Mirandola, which was very
" well received. I scarcely know how you will like it, but the style
" is after a better fashion, I think, than what has generally been
"followed of late years. I shall try to do better some of these
" days, and in the mean time, if you have an idle five minutes,
" I need not say that I shall feel flattered by your devoting them to
"me. I am induced to say thus much because you have already
" taken the trouble of thinking of me and my little literary ventures.
" There is little book-news at present. Scott's Kenilworth has
" been very well received, and there is a great deal of dramatic
"power in the tale, tho' it is too much like a fragment of history,
" and not altogether complete in itself, perhaps. Southey has tried
"the English hexameter, and has written 7'he Vision of Jitdg-
" ment ; but it will not be popular, I apprehend. I have not read
" it. Thomas Moore has been in France, and has written nothing,
" as you know. I wish he would dispatch one of his little piquant
" duodecimos here. We want something to enliven us. Don Juan
" is not out yet. Pray don't keep him back ; he is rather wicked,
"but very delightful. Have you seen Shelley's Cencil It is a
"very powerful performance, I think, tho' I wish he would let those
"disagreeable subjects alone. Poor Keats is at Rome, dying, I
" hear. Wordsworth and Coleridge are idle, as far as poetry is
" concerned. This is all the news in my possession.
" The Neapolitans have stirred our lazy blood a little. I hope,
"however, that they will not (nor the Austrians) make your stay at
" Venice either perilous or uncomfortable. Do not allow the hot
"sun of the South to beget indolence upon you, but pray write as
"much as is consistent with your health ; about this latter point I
" beg you to believe that I am interested, as well as most sincerely
" about every thing you do.
" I am, my dear lord,
" Your most obliged and sincere servt.,
"B. W. PROCTER.
" I do not send you my last book, Martian Colonna, as Mr.
l820.] COURAGE IN DEATH. 39
and quite wrong : men died calmly before the Christian
sera, and since, without Christianity — witness the Romans,
and, lately, Thistlewood,2 Sandt,3 and Louvel 4 — men who
ought to have been weighed down with their crimes, even
had they believed. A deathbed is a matter of nerves
and constitution, and not of religion. Voltaire was
frightened, Frederick of Prussia not : Christians the
same, according to their strength rather than their creed.
What does Helga Herbert5 mean by his Stanza ? which.
" Murray may perhaps have forwarded it to you among other new
" publications. It is rather a hasty affair."
1. Mrs. Hemans, in The Sceptic (1820), based the truth of religion
on the misery of man without it, — especially at the moment of death.
2. Arthur Thistlewood (1770-1820), son of a Lincolnshire farmer,
had three times attempted to inaugurate a revolution in London
(Spa Fields, December 2, 1816 ; Smithfield, September 6, 1817 ;
and October 12, 1817). For the first attempt he was tried for high
treason ; but the case was not proceeded with. From May, 1818, to
May, 1819, he was imprisoned in Horsham Gaol for a threatened
breach of the peace by a challenge which he sent to Lord Sidmouth.
Despairing of revolution, he fell back on assassination. His plan
was to assassinate the Ministers at a Cabinet dinner to be given at
Lord Harrowby's, February 23, 1820. On tke evening of the 23rd
the conspirators were arrested in a loft over a stable in Cato Street.
Thistlewood escaped, but was taken next day in Moorfields. He
was hanged in front of Newgate, defiant to the last, on May i, 1820.
3. Charles Sandt (1795-1820) assassinated Kotzebue (1761-1819),
whom he suspected of being a Russian spy, at Mannheim, March 23,
1819. After the murder he exclaimed, "God, I thank Thee, for
"having permitted me to accomplish this act!" and plunged the
knife in his own breast. He was executed at Mannheim, May 20,
1820, going to the scaffold as to &f$te, and his last words were, that
he died "for the liberty of Germany."
4. For Pierre-Louis Louvel, see p. 20, note i.
5. The Hon. William Herbert (1778-1847), poet, linguist,
botanist, ornithologist, and divine, was the third son of the first Earl
of Carnarvon. He began life as a barrister, and became M.P. first
for Hampshire (1806), then for Cricklade (l8n). Ordained in
1814, he was made Dean of Manchester in 1840. As a boy at Eton,
he had edited the Muses Etonenses (1795). *n 1804-6 he published,
in two parts, his Select Icelandic Poetry. Herbert was one of the
earliest Edinburgh Reviewers, and hence Byron alludes to him in
English Bards, and Scotch- Reviewers, lines 510, 511 —
" Herbert shall wield Thor's hammer, and sometimes
In gratitude, thou'lt praise his rugged rhymes."
40 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
is octave got drunk or gone mad. He ought to have
his ears boxed with Thor's hammer for rhyming so
fantastically.
803. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, June 8"? 1 820.
DEAR MURRAY, — It is intimated to me that there is
some demur and backwardness on your part to make
propositions with regard to the MSS. transmitted to you
at your own request. How or why this should occur,
when you were in no respect limited to any terms, I
know not, and do not care — contenting myself with
repeating that the two cantos of Juan were to reckon as
one only, and that, even in that case you are not to consider
yourself as bound by your former proposition, particularly
as your people may have a bad opinion of the production,
the whilk I am by no means prepared to dispute.
With regard to the other MSS. (the prose will not be
published in any case), I named nothing, and left the
matter to you and to my friends. If you are the least
shy (I do not say you are wrong), you can put the whole
of the MSS. in Mr. Hobhouse's hands; and there the
matter ends. Your declining to publish will not be any
offence to me.
Yours in haste,
B.
His Helga, a poem in seven cantos, appeared in 1815, and Hedin, or
the Spectre of the Tomb, in 1820. The metre of Hedin is peculiar.
Stanza Ivii. runs as follows : —
" Strange signs upon the tomb her hands did trace;
Then to strong spells she did herself address,
And in slow measure breathed that fatal strain,
Whose awful harmony can wake the slain,
Rive the cold grave, and work the charmer's will.
Thrice, as she called on Hedin, rang the plain ;
Thrice echoed the dread name from hill to hill ;
Thrice the dark wold sent back the sound, and all was still."
i Sao.] MOORE'S BIOGRAPHER. 41
804, — To Thomas Moore.
Ravenna, June 9, 1820.
Galignani has just sent me the Paris edition of your
works (which I wrote to order), and I am glad to see
my old friends with a French face. I have been skim-
ming and dipping, in and over them, like a swallow, and
as pleased as one. It is the first time that I had seen
the Melodies without music ; and, I don't know how, but
I can't read in a music-book — the crotchets confound the
words in my head, though I recollect them perfectly
when sung. Music assists my memory through the ear,
not through the eye ; I mean, that her quavers perplex
me upon paper, but they are a help when heard. And
thus I was glad to see the words without their borrowed
robes ; — to my mind they look none the worse for their
nudity.
The biographer1 has made a botch of your life —
calling your father "a venerable old gentleman," and
prattling of " Addison," and " dowager countesses." If
I. In the " Sketch of Thomas Moore," prefixed to the collected
edition of his works published by Galignani, the biographer speaks
of " Mr. Moore, sen., a venerable old gentleman, the father of our
"bard." Alluding to Moore's marriage with Miss Dyke, he says
that "the fate of Addison with his Countess Dowager" held "out
"no encouragement for the ambitious love of Mr. Moore." In his
report of Moore's speech at Morrison's Hotel, Dublin, on June 8,
1818, he represents Moore as saying, in response to Lord Charle-
mont's toast of "the living Poets of Great Britain," "Can I
' name to you a Byron, without recalling to your hearts recollections
' of all that his mighty genius has awakened there ; his energy, his
' burning words, his intense passion, that disposition of fine fancy
' to wander only among the ruins of the heart, to dwell in places
' which the fire of feeling has desolated, and, like the chestnut-tree,
' that grows best in volcanic soils, to luxuriate most where the
' conflagration of passion has left its mark ? " Other poets men-
tioned by Moore were Scott, Southey, Rogers, Campbell, Words-
worth, Crabbe, Maturin whose dramatic powers were "consecrated
"by the applause of a Scott and a Byron," Sheil, Phillips, and
Lady Morgan.
42 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
that damned fellow was to write my life, I would certainly
take his. And then, at the Dublin dinner, you have
"made a speech" (do you recollect, at Douglas K.'s.,
" Sir, he made me a speech ? ") too complimentary to
the "living poets," and somewhat redolent of universal
praise. I am but too well off in it, but * * *
You have not sent me any poetical or personal news
of yourself. Why don't you complete an Italian Tour of
the Fudges ? I have just been turning over Little, which
I knew by heart in 1803, being then in my fifteenth
summer. Heigho ! I believe all the mischief I have
ever done, or sung, has been owing to that confounded
book of yours.
In my last I told you of a cargo of " Poeshie," which
I had sent to M. at his own impatient desire ; — and, now
he has got it, he don't like it, and demurs. Perhaps he
is right. I have no great opinion of any of my last ship-
ment, except a translation from Pulci, which is word for
word, and verse for verse.
I am in the third act of a Tragedy ; but whether it
will be finished or not, I know not: I have, at this
present, too many passions of my own on hand to do
justice to those of the dead. Besides the vexations
mentioned in my last, I have incurred a quarrel with the
Pope's carabiniers, or gens d'armerie^ who have petitioned
the Cardinal against my liveries, as resembling too nearly
their own lousy uniform. They particularly object to
the epaulettes, which all the world with us have on upon
gala days. My liveries are of the colours conforming to
my arms, and have been the family hue since the year
1066.
I have sent a trenchant reply, as you may suppose ;
and have given to understand that, if any soldados of that
respectable corps insult my servants, I will do likewise
1820.] TIRESOME FEUDS FOR A QUIET MAN. 43
by their gallant commanders; and I have directed my
ragamuffins, six in number, who are tolerably savage, to
defend themselves, in case of aggression; and, on
holidays and gaudy days, I shall arm the whole set,
including myself, in case of accidents or treachery. I
used to play pretty well at the broad-sword, once upon
a time, at Angelo's; but I should like the pistol, our
national buccaneer weapon, better, though I am out of
practice at present. However, I can "wink and hold
" out mine iron." l It makes me think (the whole thing
does) of Romeo and Juliet — " now, Gregory, remember
" thy swashing blow." 2
All these feuds, however, with the Cavalier for his
wife, and the troopers for my liveries, are very tiresome
to a quiet man, who does his best to please all the world,
and longs for fellowship and good will. Pray write.
I am yours, etc.
805. — To Richard Belgrave Hoppner.
Ravenna, June 12"? 1820.
MY DEAR HOPPNER, — The accident is very disagree-
able, but I do not see why you are to make up the loss,
until it is quite clear that the money is lost ; nor even
then, because I am not at all disposed to have you suffer
for an act of trouble for another. If the money has been
paid, and not accounted for (by Dorville's illness), it
rests with me to supply the deficit, and, even if not, I am
not at all clear on the justice of your making up the
money of another, because it has been stolen from your
bureau. You will of course examine into the matter
thoroughly, because otherwise you live in a state of
1. Henry V., act ii. sc. I.
2. Romeo and Jttliet, act 5. sc. I.
44 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
perpetual suspicion. Are you sure that the whole sum
came from the Bankers ? was it counted since it passed
to you by Mr. Dorville or by yourself? or was it kept
unmixed with any cash of your own expences? — in
Venice and with Venetian servants any thing is possible
and probable that savours of villainy.
You may give up the house immediately and licentiate
the Servitors, and pray, if it likes you not, sell the
Gondola, and keep that produce and in (sic) the other
balance in your hands till you can clear up this
matter.
Mother Mocenigo will probably try a bill for break-
ables, to which I reckoned that the new Canal posts and
pillars, and the new door at the other end, together with
the year's rent, and the house given up without further
occupation, are an ample compensation for any cracking
of crockery of her's in qflitto. Is it not so? how say
you? the Canal posts and doors cost many hundred
francs, and she may be content, or she may be damned ;
it is no great matter which. Should I ever go to Venice
again, I will betake me to the Hostel or Inn.
I was greatly obliged by your translation from the
German; but it is no time to plague you with such
nonsense now, when in the full exasperation of this
vexatious deficit.
Make my best respects to Mrs. Hoppner, who doubt-
less wishes me at the devil for all this trouble, and pray
write.
And believe me, yours ever and truly,
BYRON.
P.S. — Allegra is well and obstinate, much grown and
a favourite.
My love to your little boy.
1820.] A SUMMONS TO THE CORONATION. 45
806. — To Charles Hanson.
Ravenna, June 15"? 1820.
MY DEAR CHARLES, — After a mature consideration
I decided to agree to the mortgage, and sent my consent
addressed jointly to Mr. Kinnaird with your father, a few
days ago.
The contents of the January packet have not been
returned, because I presume that both the witnesses must
be Britons, and the only one here besides myself is my
servant Fletcher. Upon this point let me be avised.
It would have given me pleasure that the Rochdale
suit could have been terminated amicably, and without
further law, but by arbitration; but since it must go
before a Court, I resign myself to the decision, and wish
to hear the result.
I shall not return to England for the present, but I
wish you to send me (obtain it) my summons as a Peer
to the Coronation l (from curiosity), and let me know if
we have any claims in our family (as connected with
Sherwood Forest) to carry any part of the mummery,
that they may not lapse, but, by being presented, be
preserved to my Successors.
It will give me great pleasure to hear further from
you on these points ; and I beg you to believe me, with
my best regards to your father and family,
Yours ever and truly,
BYRON.
I. The Coronation of George IV. was originally fixed for August
I, 1820. But, owing to the proceedings against the Queen, the
ceremony did not take place till July 19, 1821.
46 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
807. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, July 6"? 1820.
DEAR MURRAY, — My former letters will prove that I
found no fault with your opinions nor with you for acting
upon them — but I do protest against your keeping me
four months in suspense — without any answer at all. As
it is you will keep back the remaining trash till I have
woven the tragedy of which I am in the 4th act. With
regard to terms I have already said that I named and
name none. They are points which I leave between you
and my friends, as I cannot judge upon the subject;
neither to you nor to them have I named any sum, nor
have I thought of any, nor does it matter But if you
don't answer my letters I shall resort to the Row — where
I shall not find probably good manners or liberality —
but at least I shall have an answer of some kind. You
must not treat a blood horse as you do your hacks, other-
wise he'll bolt out of the course. Keep back the stuff
till I can send you the remainder — but recollect that I
don't promise that the tragedy will be a whit better than
the rest. All I shall require then will be a positive
answer but a speedy one — and not an awkward delay.
Now you have spoken out are you any the worse for it ?
and could not you have done so five months ago ? Do
you think I lay a stress on the merits of my " poeshie."
I assure you I have many other things to think of. At
present I am eager to know the result of the Colliery
question between the Rochdale people and myself. The
cause has been heard — but as yet Judgement is not
passed — at least if it is I have not heard of it. Here is
one thing of importance to my private affairs. The next
is that I have been the cause of a great conjugal scrape
here — which is now before the Pope (seriously I assure
l820.j VITTORIA CARAMBANA. 47
you) and what the decision of his Sanctity will be no
one can predicate. It would be odd that having left
England for one Woman ("Vittoria Carambana the
" White Devil " 1 to wit) I should have to quit Italy for
another. The husband is the greatest man in these parts
with 100000 Scudi a year — but he is a great Brunello 2 in
1. Byron refers to John Webster's play of The White Devil, pub-
lished in 1612 under the following title : The White Divel, or, the
Tragedy of Paulo\ Giordano Ursini, Duke of Brachiano, With the
Life and Death of Vittoria Corombona the famous Venetian Curtizan.
Acted by the Queenes Maiesties Seruants. Written by John Webster
(London, 1612, 4*°). In the tragedy Brachiano, married to
Isabella de Medici, loves Vittoria, wife to Camillo. Vittoria's
brother, Flamineo, promotes Brachiano's intrigue, and contrives
the murder of Camillo and Isabella. <? Tried before the Duke of
Florence, Isabella's brother, and the Cardinal Monticelso, Vittoria
defends herself with such art that, though condemned, she wins the
love of the Duke. He writes to her in the " Convent of Convertites,"
where she is confined, suggesting a plan for her escape. Brachiano
gains possession of the letter, and uses the plan for his own purposes.
The Duke kills Brachiano, and two of his friends kill Flamineo
and Vittoria.
From 1663 to 1682 the play was one of the stock pieces at the
Theatre Royal (Genest's English Stage, vol. i. pp. 334 and 346).
Speaking of the fine trial scene, Charles Lamb says (Specimens of
Eng. Dram. Poets, p. 229) —
" This White Devil of Italy sets off a bad cause so speciously,
' and pleads with such an innocence resembling boldness, that we
' seem to see that matchless beauty of her face which inspires such
' gay confidence into her : and are ready to expect, when she has
'done her pleadings, that her very judges, her accusers, the grave
' ambassadors who sit as spectators, and all the court, will rise and
' make proffer to defend her in spite of the utmost conviction of her
' guilt."
The story is founded on history. Vittoria Accoramboni (1557-
1585) married (1573) Francesco Peretti, nephew of Cardinal Mon-
talto, afterwards Pope Sixtus V. Peretti was murdered (1581),
and his widow, in the same year, was tried for the crime, and
acquitted. She then married Paolo Giordano Orsini, Duke of
Bracciano, himself suspected of the assassination. When Peretti's
uncle became (1585) Pope, Orsini and his wife fled to Venice.
There he died, not without suspicion of poison, and at the close of
the same year (December 22, 1585) Vittoria and her brother
Flaminio were murdered at Padua. The story is told at length
by J. A. Symonds, in his Renaissance in Italy, " The Catholic
" Reaction," part i. pp. 381-399.
2. In Orlando Furioso "Brunello" is a leader in the Saracen
48 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
politics and private life — and is shrewdly suspected of
more than one murder. The relatives are on my side
because they dislike him. We wait the event.
Yours truly,
B.
808. — To Thomas Moore.
Ravenna, July 13, 1820.
To remove or increase your Irish anxiety about my
being " in a wisp," l I answer your letter forthwith ;
premising that, as I am a " Will of the wisp," I may
chance to flit out of it. But, first, a word on the Memoir ; 2
— I have no objection, nay, I would rather that one
correct copy was taken and deposited in honourable
hands, in case of accidents happening to the original ;
for you know that I have none, and have never even
re-read, nor, indeed, read at all what is there written ; I
only know that I wrote it with the fullest intention to be
army, the misshapen dwarf to whom the king gave the talismanic
ring—
" Brunello is his name that hath the ring,
Most leud and false, but politike and wise."
Sir John Harington's translation of Orlando
Furioso, bk. iii. stanza 58.
1. "An Irish phrase for being in a scrape " (Moore).
2. In Moore's Rhymes on the Road, Extract vii. ( Works, ed.
1854, vol. vii. pp. 301-304), will be found a poem written at
Venice when about to open the Memoirs for the first time —
" Let me a moment, — ere with fear and hope
Of gloomy, glorious things, these leaves I ope —
As one, in fairy tale, to whom the key
Of some enchanter's secret halls is given,
Doubts, while he enters, slowly, tremblingly,
If he shall meet with shapes from hell or heaven
Let me, a moment, think what thousands live
O'er the wide earth this instant, who would give,
Gladly, whole sleepless nights to bend the brow
Over these precious leaves, as I do now," etc., etc.
1820.] THE POPE'S DECREE. 49
" faithful and true " in my narrative, but not impartial —
no, by the Lord ! I can't pretend to be that, while I feel.
But I wish to give every body concerned the opportunity
to contradict or correct me.
I have no objection to any proper person seeing what
is there written, — seeing it was written, like every thing
else, for the purpose of being read, however much many
writings may fail in arriving at that object.
With regard to " the wisp," the Pope has pronounced
their separation. The decree came yesterday from
Babylon, — it was she and her friends who demanded it,
on the grounds of her husband's (the noble Count
Cavalier's) extraordinary usage. He opposed it with all
his might because of the alimony, which has been
assigned, with all her goods, chattels, carriage, etc., to be
restored by him.1 In Italy they can't divorce. He
insisted on her giving me up, and he would forgive every
thing, — even the adultery, which he swears that he can
prove by " famous witnesses." But, in this country, the
very courts hold such proofs in abhorrence, the Italians
being as much more delicate in public than the English,
as they are more passionate in private.
The friends and relatives, who are numerous and
powerful, reply to him — " You, yourself, are either fool
" or knave, — fool, if you did not see the consequences of
" the approximation of these two young persons, — knave,
"if you connive at it. Take your choice, — but don't
" break out (after twelve months of the closest intimacy,
"under your own eyes and positive sanction) with a
" scandal, which can only make you ridiculous and her
" unhappy."
I. On July 1 6 Madame Guiccioli left Ravenna, and retired to
a villa belonging to her father, Count Gamba, about fifteen miles
from the city. The alimony allowed by her husband was ,£200 a
year.
VOL. V. E
50 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
He swore that he thought our intercourse was purely
amicable, and that / was more partial to him than to her,
till melancholy testimony proved the contrary. To this
they answer, that "Will of this wisp" was not an un-
known person, and that " clamosa Fama " had not pro-
claimed the purity of my morals ; — that her brother, a
year ago, wrote from Rome to warn him that his wife
would infallibly be led astray by this ignis fatuus, unless
he took proper measures, all of which he neglected to
take, etc., etc.
Now he says that he encouraged my return to
Ravenna, to see " in quanti piedi di acqua siamo" and he
has found enough to drown him in. In short,
" Ce ne fut pas le tout ; sa femme se plaignit —
Proces — La parente se joint en excuse et dit
Que du Docteur venoit tout le mauvais menage ;
Que cet homme etoit fou, que sa femme etoit sage.
On fit casser le mariage." 1
It is best to let the women alone, in the way of conflict,
for they are sure to win against the field. She returns to
her father's house, and I can only see her under great
restrictions — such is the custom of the country. The
relations behave very well: — I offered any settlement,
but they refused to accept it, and swear she shan't live
with G. (as he has tried to prove her faithless), but that
he shall maintain her ; and, in fact, a judgment to this
effect came yesterday. I am, of course, in an awkward
situation enough.
I have heard no more of the carabiniers who
I. Byron quotes from La Fontaine's "Le Roi Candaule et le
" Maftre en Droit" The last lines are—
" Et puis la dame se rendit
Belle et bonne religieuse
A Saint-Croissant en Vavoureuse
Un prelat lui donna 1'habit." j
1 820.] LAMARTINE ON BYRON. 51
protested against my liveries. They are not popular,
those same soldiers, and, in a small row, the other night,
one was slain, another wounded, and divers put to flight,
by some of the Romagnuole youth, who are dexterous,
and somewhat liberal of the knife. The perpetrators are
not discovered, but I hope and believe that none of my
ragamuffins were in it, though they are somewhat savage,
and secretly armed, like most of the inhabitants. It is
their way, and saves sometimes a good deal of litigation.
There is a revolution at Naples. If so, it will prob-
ably leave a card at Ravenna in its way to Lombardy.
Your publishers seem to have used you like mine.
M. has shuffled, and almost insinuated that my last
productions are dull. Dull, sir ! — damme, dull ! I
believe he is right. He begs for the completion of my
tragedy of Marino Faliero^ none of which is yet gone to
England. The fifth act is nearly completed, but it is
dreadfully long — 40 sheets of long paper of 4 pages each
— about 150 when printed; but "so full of pastime and
" prodigality " that I think it will do.
Pray send and publish your Pome upon me; and
don't be afraid of praising me too highly. I shall pocket
my blushes.
" Not actionable ! " — Chantretfenfer! l — by * * that's
" a speech," and I won't put up with it. A pretty title to
give a man for doubting if there be any such place !
So my Gail is gone — and Miss Mah0/zy won't take
I. The phrase occurs in the Premieres Meditations Pottiques of
Lamartine, towards the end of the poem " L'Homme — a Lord
" Byron."
" Mais silence, 6 ma lyre ! Et toi, qui dans tes mains
Tiens le cceur palpitant des sensibles humains,
Byron, viens en tirer des torrents d'harmonie ;
C'est pour la verite que Dieu fit le genie.
Jette un cri vers le ciel, 6 chantre des enfers !
Le ciel meme aux damnes enviera tes concerts."
52 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
money. I am very glad of it — I like to be generous, free
of expense. But beg her not to translate me.
Oh, pray tell Galignani that I shall send him a screed
of doctrine if he don't be more punctual. Somebody
regularly detains two, and sometimes four, of his
Messengers by the way. Do, pray, entreat him to be
more precise. News are worth money in this remote
kingdom of the Ostrogoths.
Pray, reply. I should like much to share some of
your Champagne and La Fitte, but I am too Italian for
Paris in general. Make Murray send my letter to you —
it is full of epigrams.
Yours, etc.
809. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, July 17, 1820.
DEAR MURRAY, — Moore writes that he has not yet
received my letter of January 2? consigned to your care
for him. I believe this is the sixth time I have begged
of you to forward it, and I shall be obliged by your so
doing.
I have received some books, and quarterlies, and
Edinburgh*, for all which I am grateful : they contain all
I know of England, except by Galignani's newspaper.
The tragedy is completed, but now comes the task of
copy and correction. It is very long, (42 Sheets of long
paper, of 4 pages each), and I believe must make more
than 140 or 150 pages, besides many historical extracts
as notes, which I mean to append. History is closely
followed. Dr. Moore's account1 is in some respects
I. Dr. John Moore (1729-1802) published his View of Society and
Manners in Italy (2 vols., 8vo) in 1781. In the Preface to Marino
Faliero, Byron speaks of Moore's account as "false and flippant,
"full of stale jests about old men and young wives, and wondering
" at so great an effect from so slight a cause."
1 8 20.] A LIST OF AUTHORITIES. 53
false, and in all foolish and flippant. None of the
Chronicles (and I have consulted Sanuto,1 Sandi,
Navagero, and an anonymous Siege of Zara, besides the
histories of Laugier, Daru, Sismondi, etc.) state, or even
hint, that he begged his life; they merely say that he
did not deny the conspiracy. He was one of their great
men, — commanded at the siege of Zara, beat 80,000
Hungarians, killing 8000, and at the same time kept the
town he was besieging in order. Took Capo d'Istria ;
was ambassador at Genoa, Rome, and finally Doge,
where he fell for treason, in attempting to alter the
Government, by what Sanuto calls a Judgement on him,
for, many years before (when Podesta and Captain of
Treviso), having knocked down a bishop, who was
sluggish in carrying the host at a procession. He
" saddles him," as Thwackum did Square, " with a Judge-
" ment ; " 2 but does not mention whether he had been
punished at the time for what would appear very strange
even now, and must have been still more so in an age of
Papal power and glory. Sanuto says, that Heaven took
away his senses for this buffet in his old age, and in-
duced him to conspire. — Pero fu permesso che il Faliero
perdette rintelletto, etc.
I don't know what your parlour boarders will think
of the drama I have founded upon this extraordinary
event: the only similar one in history is the story of
1. Marino Sanuto (1466-1535) wrote Vitce ducum Venetorum ab
origine urbis, sive ab anno 421 ad annum 1493. Though the title is
in Latin, the work is in Italian. It was first published by Muratori
in J733 (Rerum Italicorum Scriptores, torn. xxii.). In the Preface
and Notes to Marino Faliero, Byron quotes as his authorities
Sanuto, Vettor Sandi, Andrea Navagero, the anonymous account
of the siege of Zara preserved in Morelli's Monumenti Veneziani,
Laugier's Histoire de Venise, Daru's Histoire de la Rtpublique de
Venise, Sismondi's Histoire des ReptMiques Italiennes, and Petrarch's
letters.
2. Tom Jones, bk. iv.
54 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
Agis, King of Sparta,1 a prince with the Commons
against the aristocracy, and losing his life therefor ; but
it shall be sent when copied.
I should be glad to know why your Quartering-
Reviewers, at the close of the Fall of Jei-usalem, accuse
me of Manicheism ? a compliment to which the sweetener
of " one of the mightiest Spirits " by no means reconciles
me. The poem they review is very noble; but could
they not do justice to the writer without converting him
into my religious Antidote? I am not a Manichean,
nor an ,/4/y-chean. I should like to know what harm
my " poeshies " have done : I can't tell what your people
mean by making me a hobgoblin.2
1. Agis IV., King of Sparta (B.C. 244-240), said to one of his
executioners whom he saw in tears, " Weep not, my man ! Though
" I suffer death contrary both to law and justice, yet am I in happier
"case than my murderers" (Plutarch, APIS, 20). "Pausamas's
"statement that Agis was killed in the battle is implicitly contra-
" dieted by Plutarch, who describes in detail how Agis was seized
"by conspirators in Sparta and put to death" (Eraser's Pausanias,
vol. iv. p. 217).
2. The Fall of Jerusalem, by Henry Hart Milman, appeared in
1820. In the Preface to Marino Faliero, Byron, speaking of the
play, says, " But surely there is dramatic power somewhere, where
' Joanna Baillie, and Milman, and John Wilson exist. The ' City
' of the Plague ' and the ' Fall of Jerusalem ' are full of the best
' ' materiel ' for tragedy that has been seen since Horace Walpole,
'except passages of Ethel wald and De Montfort." The Quarterly
eviewer, Bishop Heber, says, " Mr. Milman has much to add to his
' own reputation and that of his country. Remarkably as Britain
'is now distinguished by its living poetical talent, our time has
' room for him. For sacred poetry (a walk which Milton alone has
'hitherto successfully trodden) his taste, his peculiar talents, his
' education, and his profession appear alike to designate him ; and,
' while by a strange predilection for the worser half of Manicheism,
'one of the mightiest spirits of the age has, apparently, devoted
' himself and his genius to the adornment and extension of evil, we
' may be well exhilarated by the accession of a new and potent ally
' to the cause of human virtue and happiness, whose example may
' furnish an additional evidence that purity and weakness are not
' synonymous, and that the torch of genius never burns so bright
' as when duly kindled at the altar." — Quarterly Review on the Fall
of Jerusalem, vol. xxiii. p. 225.
1 8 20.] TWICE A HOBGOBLIN. 55
This is the second thing of the same sort: they
could not even give a lift to that poor Creature, Gaily
Knight, without a similar insinuation about "moody
"passions." Now, are not the passions the food and
fuel of poesy ? I greatly admire Milman ; but they had
better not bring me down upon Gaily, for whom I have
no such admiration. I suppose he buys two thousand
pounds' worth of books in a year, which makes you so
tender of him. But he won't do, my Murray: he's
middling, and writes like a Country Gentleman — for the
County Newspaper.
I shall be glad to hear from you, and you'll write
now, because you will want to keep me in a good
humour till you can see what the tragedy is fit for. I
know your ways, my Admiral.
Yours ever truly,
B.
810. — To Richard Belgrave Hoppner.
Ravenna, July 2O'1; 1820.
MY DEAR HOPPNER, — On Vincenzo's return I will
send you some books, though the latter arrivals have not
been very interesting you shall have the best of them.
You do not mention that Vincenzo delivered to you a
paper with sixty francs ; he had it; did you get it? they
were for the tickets.
Lega tells me that the Mocenigo Inventory was
delivered last week; is it so? I made him send to
Venice on purpose.
With regard to Mrs. Mocenigo, I am ready to
deliver up the palace directly ; with respect to breakables
she can have no claim till June next, the rent being
stipulated as prior payment (and paid), but not the
articles missing till the whole period was expired. I
56 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
have replenished three times over, and made good by
the equivalent of the doors, and Canal posts (to say
nothing of the exorbitant rent), any little damage done
to her pottery. If any articles are taken by mistake,
they shall be restored or replaced; but I will submit
to no exorbitant charge, nor imposition. You had best
state this by Seranzo, who seduced me into having
anything to do with her, and who has probably still
something of the gentleman about him. What she may
do, I neither know nor care : if they like law, they shall
have it for years to come, and if they gain, what then ?
They will find it difficult to "shear the Wolf" no longer
in Lombardy. They are a damned infamous set, and, to
prevent any unpleasantness to you with that nest of
whores and scoundrels, state my words as my words;
who can blame you when you merely take the trouble to
repeat what I say, and to restore what I am disposed to
give up, — that is her house, — a year before it is due,
thereby losing a year's rent ?
I can hardly spare Lega at this moment, or I would
willingly send him. At any rate you can give up the
house, and let us battle for her crockery afterwards.
I regret to hear what you say of yourself, if you want
any cash, pray use any balance in your hands (of course)
without ceremony. I am glad the Gondola was sold at
any price as I only wanted to get rid of it.
I am not very well, having had a twinge of fever
again ; the heat is 83 in the Shade.
I suppose you know that there is a Revolution at
Naples.
Yours ever and truly, in haste,
BYRON.
P.S. — I have finished a tragedy in five acts, Marino
1820.] SPARKS OF THE VOLCANO. 57
Faliero ; but now comes the bore of copying, and in
this weather too.
Comp1.5 to Madame Hoppner.
811. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, July 22n<? 1820.
DEAR MURRAY, — The tragedy is finished, but when
it will be copied is more than can be reckoned upon.
We are here upon the eve of evolutions and revolutions.
Naples is revolutionized, and the ferment is among the
Romagnuoles, by far the bravest and most original of
the present Italians, though still half savage. Buonaparte
said the troops from Romagna were the best of his Italic
corps, and I believe it. The Neapolitans are not worth
a curse, and will be beaten if it comes to fighting : the
rest of Italy, I think, might stand. The Cardinal is at
his wits' end ; it is true that he had not far to go. Some
papal towns on the Neapolitan frontier have already
revolted. Here there are as yet but the sparks of the
volcano; but the ground is hot, and the air sultry.
Three assassinations last week here and at Faenza — an
anti-liberal priest, a factor, and a trooper last night, — I
heard the pistol-shot that brought him down within a
short distance of my own door. There had been quarrels
between the troops and people of some duration : this is
the third soldier wounded within the last month. There
is a great commotion in people's minds, which will lead
to nobody knows what — a row probably. There are
secret Societies all over the country as in Germany, who
cut off those obnoxious to them, like the Free tribunals,
be they high or low ; and then it becomes impossible to
discover or punish the assassins — their measures are
taken so well.
58 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
You ask me about the books. Jerusakm l is the best ;
Anastasius 2 good, but no more written by a Greek than
by a Hebrew ; the Diary of an Invalid good and true,
bating a few mistakes about Serventismo? which no
1. The Fall of Jerusalem, a dramatic poem by Henry Hart
Milman (1820).
2. Anastasius, or Memoirs of a Greek, -written at the close of the
Eighteenth Century (1819), was written by Thomas Hope (1770-
1831), son of a wealthy merchant of Amsterdam, who settled in
England in 1796. As a collector of ancient vases and marbles, and
as a writer on Household Furniture and Interior Decoration (1807),
Byron alludes to Hope in a suppressed stanza of Childe Harold,
Canto II. —
" Nor that lesser wight,
The victim sad of vase-collecting spleen,
House-furnisher withal, one Thomas hight."
In 1810 Hope disputed the price of his wife's portrait with the
artist, Dubost, who revenged himself by exhibiting a caricature of
them as " Beauty and the Beast." In Hints from Horace (lines 7, 8,
and note l) Byron refers to the exhibition —
" Or low Dubost — as once the world has seen —
Degrade God's creatures in his graphic spleen ? "
Byron evidently regarded Hope, in Sydney Smith's phrase, as only
" the man of chairs and tables, the gentleman of sophas, the GEdipus
"of coal-boxes, he who meditated on muffineers and planned
" pokers," and was surprised at the power which he displayed in his
Anastasius. The book was at first attributed to Byron. It is
reviewed as his in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine for September,
1821 (pp. 200-206). "I must," wrote Croker to Murray (Memoir
of John Murray, vol. ii. p. 76), "believe in the 'Metempsychosis,'
"and that Tom Hope's late body is now the tabernacle of Lord
"Byron's soul." Byron told Lady Blessington (Conversations, p.
64) that he wept bitterly, on reading Anastasius, first because he
had not written the book, and then because Hope had. He added
that "he would have given his two most approved poems to have
4 ' been the author of Anastasius. " Scott, in the Introduction to
T/ie Talisman, says that "the author of Anastasius . . . had de-
4 scribed the manners and vices of the Eastern nations, not only
4 with fidelity, but with the humour of Le Sage and the ludicrous
4 power of Fielding himself."
3. "It is indeed, nine times in ten, to the fault of the husband,
' that the infidelity of the wife is to be ascribed . . . the truth is
4 better attested by the exemplary conduct of those women, whose
4 husbands take upon themselves to perform the offices of affection,
4 that are ordinarily left to the Cavaliere. . . . Nor is it always a
' criminal connexion that subsists between a Lady and her Cavaliere,
4 though it is generally supposed to be so. ... The Lady must not
l820.] SERVENTISMO. 59
foreigner can understand or really know without residing
years in the country. I read that part (translated that is)
to some of the ladies in the way of knowing how far it
was accurate, and they laughed, particularly at the part
where he says that " they must not have children by their
"lover." "Assuredly" (was the answer), "we don't
" pretend to say that it is right ; but men cannot conceive
" the repugnance that a woman has to have children except
" by the man she loves'' They have been known even to
obtain abortions when it was by the other, but that is rare.
I know one instance, however, of a woman making
herself miscarry, because she wanted to meet her lover
(they were in two different cities) in the lying-in month
(hers was or should have been in October). She was a
very pretty woman — young and clever — and brought on
by it a malady which she has not recovered to this day :
however, she met her Amico by it at the proper time. It
is but fair to say that he had dissuaded her from this
piece of amatory atrocity, and was very angry when he
knew that she had committed it; but the "it was for
"your sake, to meet you at the time, which could not
" have been otherwise accomplished," applied to his Self
love, disarmed him ; and they set about supplying the loss.
I have had a little touch of fever again ; but it has
receded. The heat is 85 in the shade.
I remember what you say of the Queen : it happened
in Lady Ox 's boudoir or dressing room, if I recollect
rightly ; but it was not her Majesty's fault, though very
laughable at the time : a minute sooner, she might have
stumbled on something still more awkward. How the
Porcelain came there I cannot conceive, and remember
"have children by her Paramour ;— at least, the notoriety of such a
"fact would be attended with the loss of reputation." — Diary of
an In-valid (ed. 1820), pp. 258-262.
60 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
asking Lady O. afterwards, who laid the blame on the
Servants. I think the Queen will win * — I wish she may :
i. Queen Caroline (1768-1821), second daughter of Duke Charles
of Brunswick- Wolfenbiittel by the Princess Augusta, sister of
George III., married, April 8, 1795, her first cousin George, Prince
of Wales, afterwards George IV. After the birth of Princess
Charlotte (January 7, 1796), the prince deserted his wife, from
whom, three months later, he was formally separated. In 1806
rumours spread by Lady Douglas induced George III. to issue a
commission of inquiry into the conduct of the princess. The com-
mission, though it censured her levity of manners, acquitted her
from anymore serious charge. On August 9, 1814, with the consent
of the prince regent, the princess, who was forbidden the court or
access to her daughter, went abroad. Early in her residence on the
Continent, she engaged Bartolommeo Bergami as her courier, made
him her chamberlain, procured for him a knighthood of Malta and
a barony in Sicily, and promoted his relations to important offices
about her person. She travelled in the East, and afterwards settled
for some time at Como and Pesaro.
Some of the charges against the queen probably originated in her
irrepressible spirits and want of dignity. Sir William Cell, a
member of her household, writing to Miss Berry, September 29,
1817 (Journal, etc., of Miss Berry, vol. iii. p. 145), says, "If fate
'ever puts you in the way, make her tell you how the Empress
' Marie Louisa invited her to Parma ; how the attendants dined in
' the outer room ; and how, in full dress feathers, and velvet
' chairs with heavy gold legs and backs, the two ladies sat at a
' very long tete-a-tete before dinner at a fire. ' You imagine it not
' very entertaining ; I assure you, very doll (dull), I yarn (yawn),
' and she de same ; mein Gott, I balance on my chaire mit my feet
' pon die fire. What you tink ? I tomble all back mit di chair,
' and mit meine legs in die air ; man see nothing more als my
' feet. I die from laugh, and what you tink she do ? She stir not,
' she laugh not ; but mit die utmost gravity she say, " Mon Dieu,
'madame, comme vous m'avez effraye." I go in fits of laugh, and
' she repeat di same word witout variation or change of feature.
' I not able to resist bursting out every moment at dinner, and die
' to get away to my gens to tell die story. We all scream mit di
' ridiculousness for my situation.' "
On the death of George III. (January 29, 1820) she returned to
England as queen, was enthusiastically received at Dover (June 5),
and entered London (June 6) "at seven o'clock in the evening, in
'an open landau, the alderman (Wood) sitting by her side, and
' Lady A. Hamilton backwards ! . . . She took up her residence
' at Alderman Wood's house in South Audley Street. Ever since
' her arrival, the house has been surrounded by immense crowds of
' people, huzzaing, and crying, ' Long live Queen Caroline ! ' " (Lady
C. Lindsay's Journal of the Queen's Trial, Journal, etc., of Miss
Berry, vol. iii. pp. 238, 239). Proceedings were at once taken
l820.j WORTH OF ITALIAN WITNESSES. 6l
she was always very civil to me. You must not trust
Italian witnesses: nobody believes them in their own
courts; why should you? For 50 or 100 Sequins you
may have any testimony you please, and the Judge into
the bargain.
Yours ever,
B.
Pray forward my letter of January to Mr. Moore.
against her. A message from the king was presented to the House
of Lords by Lord Liverpool, June 6, 1820, communicating "certain
"papers respecting the conduct of Her Majesty since her departure
" from this kingdom," and recommending them to the consideration
of the House. The papers were contained in a green bag. A
secret committee of fifteen peers was appointed by ballot, June 8,
to whom the papers were referred. On their report (July 4), Lord
Liverpool proposed, July 5, a Bill of Pains and Penalties : " An
"Act to deprive Her Majesty Queen Caroline Amelia Elizabeth of
" the title, prerogatives, rights, privileges, and exemptions of Queen-
" Consort of this realm, and to dissolve the marriage between His
' ' Majesty and the said Caroline Amelia Elizabeth." The Bill was read
a first time the same day, and the second reading was fixed for August
17. On that day the trial began. The division was taken November
6, when 123 voted for the second reading of the Bill, and 95 against.
The queen was defended by her Attorney-General, Henry
Brougham ; by her Solicitor-General, Thomas Benman ; by " Dr.
" Lushington, a civilian ; and Messrs. John Williams, Tindal and
" Wilde, utter barristers."
Meanwhile pamphlets and squibs ridiculing the king and the
Government poured from the press ; indignation meetings were held
throughout the country, and popular feeling ran high in the queen's
favour. So great was the excitement that, on November 10, Lord
Liverpool withdrew the Bill, and the queen went in state to St.
Paul's, ten days later, to return thanks for her acquittal. At the
coronation of George IV., July 19, 1821, she was refused admission
to the ceremony, and the blow is said to have proved fatal. Taken
ill the next day, she died August 7, 1821.
Byron, stimulated by Hobhouse, took an interest in the cause of
the queen, who had shown him civility in London, and, while living
at Pesaro, was known to Countess Guiccioli. He had long intended
to return to England and challenge Brougham, but abandoned his
intention, lest the challenge should injure her defence. He en-
deavoured to induce witnesses on her behalf to go from Italy to
England, collected information as to the character of witnesses called
against her, and suppressed a stanza in Don Juan which seemed to
reflect on her character. The queen's story forms the subject of
Mrs. Stepney Rawson's novel, A Lady of the Regency (1900).
62 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
8 1 2. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, July 24.^, 1820.
DEAR MURRAY, — Enclosed is the account from
Marin Sanuto of Faliero,1 etc. You must have it trans-
lated (to append original and translation to the drama
when published) : it is very curious and simple in itself,
and authentic; I have compared it with the other
histories. That blackguard Dr. Moore has published a
false and flippant story of the transaction.
Yours,
B.
P.S. The first act goes by this post. Recollect that,
without previously reading the Chronicle, it is difficult to
understand the tragedy. So, translate. I had this
reprinted separately on purpose.
813. — To John Hanson.
Ravenna, July 27"? 1820.
DEAR SIR, — I have received from Mr. Kinnaird the
intelligence of the Rochdale decision.2 It has not sur-
prized me, and there is no more to be said. Even if a
further question could arise, I am not disposed to carry
it higher. What I desire to be done, and done quickly,
is to bring the Manor, and my remaining rights
immediately to auction, and sell it to the highest bidder
1. The original, and a translation by Francis Cohen, afterwards
Sir Francis Palgrave (see Letters, vol. iv. p. 341, note i), were added
to the first edition of Marino Faliero as Appendix I. and II.
2. In the Court of Exchequer, before the Lord Chief Baron,
June 5, 1820, the Rochdale case came on for trial. James Dearden
obtained an injunction restraining Byron from prosecuting a writ
of ejectment to recover possession of mineral property at Rochdale.
The property was sold to Dearden in 1823.
l820.] THE ROCHDALE LITIGATION. 63
without consideration of price : it will at least pay the
law expences, and part of the remaining debts.
Pray let this be done without delay, and believe me
Yours very truly,
BYRON.
P.S. — I presume that you proceed in the transfer
from the funds to the Irish Mortgage.
814. — To Charles Hanson.
Ravenna, August 2? 1820.
DEAR CHARLES, — I have received your letter. That
being the case, I hereby authorize you to enter an Appeal
immediately. Inform me when and where the further
proceedings will come on.
Yours truly and affectionately,
BYRON.
815. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, Agosto 7°, 1820.
DEAR MURRAY, — I have sent you three acts of the
tragedy, and am copying the others slowly but daily.
Enclosed are some verses * Rose sent me two years ago
and more. They are excellent description.
Pray desire Douglas K. to give you a copy of my
lines to the Po in 1819 : they say " they be good rhymes,"
and will serve to swell your next volume. Whenever
you publish, publish all as you will, except the two Juans,
which had better be annexed to a new edition of the two
first, as they are not worth separate publication, and I
won't barter about them.
I. For the verses, see Lettws, vol. iv. pp. 212-214.
64 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
Pulci is my favourite, that is, my translation : I think
it the acme of putting one language into another.
I have sent you my say upon your recent books.
Ricciarda l I have not yet read, having lent it to the
natives, who will pronounce upon it. The Italians have
as yet no tragedy — Alfieri's are political dialogues, except
Mirra.
Bankes has done miracles of research and enterprize —
salute him.
I am yours,
B.
Pray send me by the first opportunity some of Waiters
red tooth-powder.
8 1 6. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, August I2t!?, 1820.
DEAR MURRAY, — Ecco, the fourth Act.
Received powder — tincture — books. The first wel-
come, second ditto — the prose at least; but no more
modern poesy, I pray ; neither Mrs. Hewoman's, nor any
female or male Tadpole of Poet Wordsworth's, nor
any of his ragamuffins.
Send me more tincture by all means, and Scott's
novels — the Monastery.
We are on the eve of a row here : Italy's primed and
loaded, and many a finger itching for the trigger. So
write letters while you can. I can say no more in mine,
for they open all.
Yours very truly,
B.
I. Rictiardat Tragedia (in five acts), was published by Niccolo
Ugo Foscolo in 1820. (For Foscolo, see Letters, vol. iv. p. 283,
note I.)
1 820.] TRIAL OF QUEEN CAROLINE. 65
P.S. — Recollect that I told you months ago what
would happen ; it is the same all over the boot, though
the heel has been the first to kick : never mind these
enigmas — they'll explain themselves.
817. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, August I7t!.1 1820.
DEAR MORAY, — In t'other parcel is the 5l-h Act.
Enclosed in this are some notes — historical. Pray send
me no proofs ; it is the thing I can least bear to see.
The preface shall be written and sent in a few days.
Acknowledge the arrival by return of post.
Yours.
P.S. — The time for the Dante would be good now
(did not her Majesty occupy all nonsense), as Italy is on
the eve of great things.
I hear Mr. Hoby says "that it makes him weep to
" see her — She reminds him so much of Jane Shore."
Mr. Hoby the Bootmaker's soft heart is sore,
For seeing the Queen makes him think of Jane Shore ;
And, in fact, such a likeness should always be seen —
Why should Queens not be whores ? Every Whore is a
QUEAN.
This is only an epigram to the ear. I think she will win :
I am sure she ought, poor woman.
Is it true that absent peers are to be mulcted ? does
this include those who have not taken the oaths in the
present parliament ? I can't come, and I won't pay.
VOL. v.
66 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
8 1 8.— To John Murray.
August 22"d 1 82O.
DEAR MURRAY, — None of your damned proofs now
recoiled ; print, paste, plaster, and destroy — but don't let
me have any of your cursed printers' trash to pore over.
For the rest, I neither know nor care.
Yours,
B.
819. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, August 24"? 1820.
DEAR MURRAY, — Enclosed is an additional note to
the play sent you the other day. The preface is sent
too, but as I wrote it in a hurry (the latter part par-
ticularly), it may want some alterations : if so, let me
know, and what your parlour boarders think of the
matter. Remember, I can form no opinion of the merits
of this production, and will abide by your Synod's. If
you should publish, publish them all about the same
time ; it will be at least a collection of opposites.
You should not publish the new Cantos of Juan
separately; but let them go in quietly with the first
reprint of the others, so that they may make little noise,
as they are not equal to the first. The Pulci, the Dante,
and the Drama, you are to publish as you like, if at all.
B.
820. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, August 29".' 1820.
DEAR MURRAY, — I enclose to you for Mr. Hobhouse
(with liberty to read and translate, or get translated if
you can — it will be nuts for Rose) copies of the letter of
1820.]
HER MOTHER'S DAUGHTER.
67
Cavalier Commendatore G. to his wife's brother at
Rome, and other documents explaining this business
which has put us all in hot water here. Remember that
Guiccioli is telling his own story > true in some things, and
very false in the details. The Pope has decreed against
him ; so also have his wife's relations, which is much. No
man has a right to pretend blindness, after letting a girl
of twenty travel with another man, and afterwards taking
that man into his house. You want to know Italy:
there's more than Lady Morgan can tell me in these
sheets, if carefully perused.
The enclosed are authentic : I have seen the originals.
Yours ever,
B.
821. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, August 3 Is.', 1820.
DEAR MURRAY, — I have "put my Soul into the
" tragedy" (as you if it); but you know that there are
damned souls as well as tragedies. Recollect that it is
not a political play, though it may look like it ; it is
strictly historical : read the history and judge.
Ada's picture is her mother's : I am glad of it — the
mother made a good daughter. Send me Gifford's
opinion, and never mind the Archbishop. I can neither
send you away, nor give you a hundred pistoles, nor a
better taste. I send you a tragedy, and you ask for
" facetious epistles ; " a little like your predecessor, who
advised Dr. Prideaux to "put some more humour into
" his Life of Mahomet." *
I. Humphrey Prideaux (1648-1724), Dean of Norwich (1702-
24), published The True Nature of Imposture fully displayed in
the Life of Mahomet, in 1697, and The Old and New Testament
68 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
The drawings for Juan l are superb : the brush has
beat the poetry. In the annexed proof of Marino
Faliero, the half line — " The law, my Prince " must be
stopped thus — as the Doge interrupts Bertuccio Faliero.
Bankes is a wonderful fellow ; there is hardly one of
my School and College cotemporaries that has not turned
out more or less celebrated. Peel, Palmerstone, Bankes,
Hobhouse, Tavistock, Bob Mills, Douglas Kinnaird, etc.,
etc., have all of them talked and been talked of.
Then there is your Galley Knight, and all that — ; but
I believe that (except Milman perhaps) I am still the
youngest of the fifteen hundred first of living poets,
as W™ *worth is the oldest. Galley Knight is some
Seasons my Senior : pretty Galley I so" amiable" 1 ! You
Goose, you — such fellows should be flung into Fleet
Ditch. I would rather be a Galley Slave than a Galley
Knight — so utterly do I despise the middling mounte-
bank's mediocrity in every thing but his Income.
We are here going to fight a little, next month, if the
Huns don't cross the Po, and probably if they do : I
can't say more now. If anything happens, you have
matter for a posthumous work, and Moore has my
memoirs in MSS. ; so pray be civil. Depend upon it,
there will be savage work, if once they begin here. The
French courage proceeds from vanity, the German from
phlegm, the Turkish from fanaticism and opium, the
Spanish from pride, the English from coolness, the
Dutch from obstinacy, the Russian from insensibility,
connected, etc., in 1716-18. Of both books the story is told that the
bookseller, to whom he offered the MS., wished that he had "put
" more humour " into the work.
I . The twenty-one drawings for Don Juan were by R. Westall,
R.A. They were engraved by C. Heath, and published by the
Findens (London, 1820), in three forms, and at three prices :
fcp. 8vo, £i los. Off. ; 8vo, £2 zs. od. ; 410,^3 3J. <*/.
1820.] LADY C. LAMB AT ALMACK'S. 69
but the Italian from anger ; so you'll see that they will
spare nothing.
What you say of Lady Caroline Lamb's " Juan " at
the Masquerade * don't surprise me : I only wonder that
she went so far as "the Theatre" for "the Devils"
having them so much more natural at home ; or if they
were busy, she might have borrowed the *, her Mother's
— Lady Besborough to wit — the * * of the last half
Century.
Yours,
B.
822. — To John Hanson.
Ravenna, August 31s! 1820.
DEAR SIR, — I pray you to make haste with the title
deeds ; otherwise there will be a half year's interest lost,
and the funds are falling daily. See what you do by
your confounded delays. Pray, expedite, dispatch.
You have never sent me Counsel's opinion on an
appeal, as promised. I am in favour of the appeal, if it
shows a glimpse of ultimate success. The deeds you
sent me in the winter cannot be signed for lack of
English witnesses.
With my best remembrances to all your family,
believe me,
Yours very truly and affectionately,
BYRON.
I. The Morning Chronicle for Friday, August I, 1820, describes
Lady C. Lamb's appearance at a masquerade at Almack's : " Lady
1 Caroline Lamb appeared, for the first time, in the character of
'Don Giovanni, but unfortunately there were too many Devils
' provided for the climax. There seemed to be a whole legion of
' them, principal and subordinate ; and so little inclined were they
' ' to do their spiriting gent ly,' that (notwithstanding they had been
'repeatedly drilled by the Don in private), they appeared deter -
' mined to carry the whole crowd off to Tartarus by a coup de main.'"
70 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
823. — To Thomas Moore.
Ravenna, August 31, 1820.
D — n your mezzo cammin 1 — you should say " the
" prime of life," a much more consolatory phrase. Besides,
it is not correct. I was born in 1788, and consequently
am but thirty-two. You are mistaken on another point.
The " Sequin Box " 2 never came into requisition, nor is
it likely to do so. It were better that it had, for then
a man is not bound, you know. As to reform, I did
reform — what would you have ? " Rebellion lay in his
" way, and he found it." I verily believe that nor you,
nor any man of poetical temperament, can avoid a strong
passion of some kind. It is the poetry of life. What
should I have known or written, had I been a quiet,
mercantile politician, or a lord in waiting ? A man must
travel, and turmoil, or there is no existence. Besides, I
only meant to be a Cavalier Servente, and had no idea
it would turn out a romance, in the Anglo fashion.
However, I suspect I know a thing or two of Italy —
more than Lady Morgan has picked up in her posting.
What do Englishmen know of Italians beyond their
museums and saloons — and some hack * *, en passant ?
Now, I have lived in the heart of their houses, in parts
of Italy freshest and least influenced by strangers, — have
seen and become (pars magna fui) a portion of their
1. "I had congratulated him upon arriving at what Dante calls
" the mezzo cammin of life, the age of thirty-three " (Moore).
" Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita."
Dante, Inferno, Canto I. stanza 5.
2. Moore notes, in his Diary for October 9, 1819 (Memoirs, etc.,
vol. Hi. p. 27), "Lord B., Scott says, getting fond of money; he
" keeps a box, into which he occasionally puts sequins ; he has now
" collected about 300, and his great delight, Scott tells me, is to
"open the box and contemplate his store." Probably Moore had
suggested that at some stage in his relations with Countess Guiccioli
the " Sequin-Box" might prove useful.
1 820.] HOBY ON THE QUEEN. 71
hopes, and fears, and passions, and am almost inoculated
into a family. This is to see men and things as they
are.
You say that I called you " quiet " l — I don't recollect
any thing of the sort. On the contrary, you are always
in scrapes.
What think you of the Queen ? I hear Mr. Hoby
says, " that it makes him weep to see her, she reminds
" him so much of Jane Shore."
Mr. Hoby the bootmaker's heart is quite sore,
For seeing the Queen makes him think of Jane Shore ;
And, in fact, * *
Pray excuse this ribaldry. What is your poem about?
Write and tell me all about it and you.
Yours, etc.
P.S. — Did you write the lively quiz on Peter Bell ? 2
It has wit enough to be yours, and almost too much to
be any body else's now going. It was in Galignani the
other day or week.
824. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, September 7, 1820.
DEAR MURRAY, — In correcting the proofs you must
refer to the Manuscript, because there are in it various
readings. Pray attend to this, and choose what Gifford
thinks best. Let me know what he thinks of the whole.
You speak of Lady Noel's illness : she is not of
1. "I had mistaken the concluding words of his letter of the Qth
"of June" (Moore).
2. The Fancy : A Selection from the Poetical Remains of Peter
Corcoran (1820), was by John Hamilton Reynolds, for whom,
see Letters, vol. iii. p. 45, note \.
72 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
those who die : — the amiable only do ; and those whose
death would do good live. Whenever she is pleased to
return, it may be presumed that she will take her " divin-
"ing rod" x along with her; it may be of use to her at
home, as well as to the " rich man " of the Evangelists.
Pray do not let the papers paragraph me back to
England : they may say what they please — any loathsome
abuse — but that. Contradict it.2
My last letters will have taught you to expect an
explosion here : it was primed and loaded, but they
hesitated to fire the train. One of the Cities shirked
from the league. I cannot write more at large for a
thousand reasons. Our "puir kill folk " offered to strike,
and to raise the first banner. But Bologna paused — and
now 'tis Autumn, and the season half over. " Oh Jerusa-
" salem, Jerusalem ! " the Huns are on the Po ; but if once
they pass it on their march to Naples, all Italy will rise
behind them : the Dogs — the Wolves — may they perish
like the Host of Sennacherib ! If you want to publish
the PropJiecy of Dante, you never will have a better
time.
Thanks for books — but as yet no Monastery of
Walter Scott's, the ONLY book except Edinburgh and
Quarterly which I desire to see. Why do you send me
so much trash upon Italy — such tears, etc., which I know
must be false ? Matthews is good — very good : all the
rest are like Sotheby's " Good" or like Sotheby himself,
1 . Lady Noel used the divining-rod to discover water.
2. "We rejoice to learn that Lord Byron yesterday arrived in
" town from Italy. The noble lord has finished a tragedy, which we
" should hope will be brought out at Drury Lane theatre, before Mr.
" Kean's departure for America." — Morning Chronicle, August 18,
1820. " Tell me," writes Mrs. Piozzi from Penzance to Miss
Willoughby, August 25, 1820, " what wonders Lord Byron is come
"home to do, for I see his arrival in the paper" (Autobiography,
f'c., of Mrs. Piozzi, vol. ii. p. 456).
1820.] A "TRASHY TOURIST" CONTRADICTED. 73
that old rotten Medlar of Rhyme. The Queen — how is
it ? prospers She ?
825. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, Septt 8t!? 1820.
DEAR MURRAY, — You will please to publish the
enclosed note x withoiit altering a word, and to inform the
author, that I will answer personally any offence to him.
He is a cursed impudent liar, — you shall not alter or
omit a syllable : publish the note at the end of the play,
and answer this.
Yours,
B.
P.S. — You sometimes take the liberty of omitting
what I send for publication : if you do so in this instance,
I will never speak to you again as long as I breathe.
826. — To Richard Belgrave Hoppner.
Ravenna, Sept? lo1!? 1820.
MY DEAR HOPPNER, — Ecco Advocate Fossati's letter.
No paper has nor will be signed. Pray draw on me for
the Napoleons, for I have no mode of remitting them
otherwise ; Missiaglia would empower some one here to
receive them for you, as it is not a piazza bancale.
I regret that you have such a bad opinion of Shiloh ; 2
1. The note, printed at the end of Marino Faliero, attacks the
author of Sketches Descriptive of Italy, etc., who had said (vol. iv.
pp. 159, 160, note}, "I repeatedly declined an introduction" to
Byron "while in Italy." Byron characterizes the statement as a
"disingenuous and gratuitously impertinent assertion." He after-
wards desired Murray to cancel the note, on learning that the author
was a woman (see p. 84, note i).
2. " Shiloh " is Shelley, who published The Revolt of Islam in 1818,
and The Cenci : a Tragedy in Five Acts in 1819. The charges made
74 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
you used to have a good one. Surely he has talent and
honour, but is crazy against religion and morality. His
tragedy is sad work; but the subject renders it so.
His Islam had much poetry. You seem lately to have
got some notion against him.
Clare writes me the most insolent letters about
Allegra ; see what a man gets by taking care of natural
children ! Were it not for the poor little child's sake, I
am almost tempted to send her back to her atheistical
mother, but that would be too bad ; you cannot conceive
against Shelley in the spring of 1820, which had altered Hoppner's
good opinion of the poet, were those made by Elise and Paolo Foggi.
Elise, described by Miss Clairmont as " a very superior Swiss woman
" of about thirty, a mother herself" (Dowden's Life of Shelley ; vol.
ii. p. 190, note), had nursed Mrs. Shelley's children, and Allegra,
whom she accompanied to Venice in 1818. Returning to Shelley's
service, she married his Italian servant, Paolo Foggi, a rascal who
was afterwards dismissed for misconduct. In 1820 Foggi, backed
by his wife, began to revenge himself by accusing Shelley of
abominable crimes. When Shelley came to stay with Byron at
Ravenna in August, 1821, he learnt from Byron what some of the
accusations were. Writing to his wife, August 7, 1821, Shelley tells
her the story which Mr. and Mrs. Hoppner believed on the authority
of Elise : " Elise says that Claire was my mistress. . . . She then
' proceeds to say that Claire was with child by me ; that I gave her
' the most violent medicine to procure abortion ; that this not
' succeeding, she was brought to bed, and that I immediately tore
' the child from her and sent it to the Foundling Hospital. ... In
' addition, she says that both I and Claire treated you in the most
' shameful manner ; that I neglected and beat you, and that Claire
' never let a day pass without offering you insults of the most violent
'kind, in which she was abetted by me" (ibid., p. 423). Mary
Shelley's indignant defence of her husband, written to Mrs. Hoppner,
was sent to Shelley to be copied, and forwarded. (For the letter, see
ibid., pp. 425-427.) Mrs. Shelley wished that Byron should see it.
Shelley therefore gave it to Byron, who "engaged to send it with
"his own comments to the Hoppners." The letter was found
among Byron's papers at his death. On this fact, together with the
late Lady Shelley's recollections of Mary Shelley's account of a
subsequent conversation with the Hoppners, Professor Dowden (ibid.,
p. 429) founds the charge that Byron never sent the letter. It seems,
however, not impossible that the letter was sent, and, at Byron's
request, returned. As the answer to a charge closely affecting the
mother of Allegra, it would be natural that he should wish to keep
the document.
1820.] BEDLAM BEHAVIOUR. 75
the excess of her insolence, and I know not why, for I
have been at great care and expense, — taking a house in
the country on purpose for her. She has two maids and
every possible attention. If Clare thinks that she shall
ever interfere with the child's morals or education, she
mistakes ; she never shall. The girl shall be a Christian
and a married woman, if possible. As to seeing her, she
may see her — under proper restrictions ; but she is not
to throw every thing into confusion with her Bedlam
behaviour. To express it delicately, I think Madame
Clare is a damned bitch. What think you ?
Yours ever and truly,
827. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, Sept. n, 1820.
DEAR MURRAY, — Here is another historical note for
you. I want to be as near truth as the Drama can be.
Last post I sent you a note fierce as Faliero himself,
in answer to a trashy tourist, who pretends that he could
have been introduced to me. Let me have a proof of it,
that I may cut its lava into some shape.
What Gifford says is very consolatory (of the first
act). " English, sterling genuine English" is a desidera-
tum amongst you, and I am glad that I have got so
much left ; though heaven knows how I retain it : I hear
none but from my Valet, and his is Nottinghamshire :
and I see none but in your new publications, and theirs
is no language at all, but jargon. Even your " New
" Jerusalem " is terribly stilted and affected, with " very,
" very " — so soft and pamby.
Oh ! if ever I do come amongst you again, I will
give you such a Baviad and Mczviad ! not as good as
76 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
the old, but even better merited. There never was such
a Set as your ragamitffins (I mean not yours only, but
every body's). What with the Cockneys, and the Lakers,
and the followers of Scott, and Moore, and Byron, you
are in the very uttermost decline and degradation of
literature. I can't think of it without all the remorse of
a murderer. I wish that Johnson were alive again to
crush them !
I have as yet only had the first and second acts, and
no opinion upon the second.
828.— To John Murray.
Ravenna, Sept. 14, 1820.
What ? not a line. Well, have it your own way.
I wish you would inform Perry, that his stupid para-
graph is the cause of all my newspapers being stopped
in Paris. The fools believe me in your infernal country,
and have not sent on their Gazettes, so that I know
nothing of your beastly trial of the Queen.
I cannot avail myself of Mr. Gifford's remarks,
because I have received none, except on the first act.
Yours,
B.
P.S. — Do, pray, beg the Editors of papers to say
anything blackguard they please; but not to put me
amongst their arrivals : they do me more mischief by
such nonsense than all their abuse can do.
829. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, Sept. 21, 1820.
So you are at your old tricks again. This is the
second packet I have received unaccompanied by a
1 820.] REPORTED RETURN TO LONDON. 77
single line of good, bad, or indifferent. It is strange
that you have never forwarded any further observations
of GirTord's : how am I to alter or amend, if I hear no
further ? or does this silence mean that it is well enough
as it is, or too bad to be repaired ? If the last, why do
you not say so at once, instead of playing pretty, since
you know that soon or late you must out with the truth.
Yours,
B.
P.S. — My Sister tells me that you sent to her to
enquire where I was, believing in my arrival " driving a
11 curricle" etc., etc., into palace yard : do you think me a
coxcomb or a madman, to be capable of such an exhibi-
tion? My Sister knew me better, and told you that
could not be true : you might as well have thought me
entering on " a pale horse," like Death in the Revela-
tions.
830. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, Sept. 23, 1820.
DEAR MURRAY, — Get from Mr. Hobhouse, and send
me a proof (with the Latin) of my Hints from H., etc. :
it has now the " nonum prematur in annum " complete for
its production, being written at Athens in iBn. I
have a notion that, with some omissions of names and
passages, it will do ; and I could put my late observations
for Pope among the notes, with the date of 1820, and so
on. As far as versification goes, it is good; and, on
looking back to what I wrote about that period, I am
astonished to see how little I have trained on. I wrote
better then than now ; but that comes from my having
fallen into the atrocious bad state of the times — partly.
78 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
It has been kept too, nine years ; nobody keeps their
piece nine years now-a-days, except Douglas K. ; he
kept his nine years and then restored her to the public.
If I can trim it for present publication, what with the
other things you have of mine, you will have a volume or
two of variety at least: for there will be all measures,
styles, and topics, whether good or no. I am anxious to
hear what Gifford thinks of the tragedy; pray let me
know. I really do not know what to think myself.
If the Germans pass the Po, they will be treated to a
Mass out of the Cardinal de Retz's Breviary}- Galley
I. Jean Fra^ois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz (1614-1679),
as Archbishop of Paris, was one of the leaders of the Fronde (1649-
52), and received his cardinal's hat from Anne of Austria. After the
collapse of the insurrection, he was imprisoned at Nantes. Escaping
from prison, he lived in exile, and only returned when he had been
deprived of his archbishopric. He was, however, given, in com-
pensation for the loss of his see, the Abbey of St. Denis, where he
died in 1679. During the latter part of his turbulent life he lived
in retirement at Commercy and other places, absorbed in writing his
Mhnoires and paying his debts. Madame de Sevigne called him
'le heros du Breviaire," as contrasted with Turenne, "le heros de
' 1'epee." Writing to Madame de Grignan, August 21, 1675 (Lettres,
ed. 1818, tome iii. p. 416), she says, " Vous parlez si dignement du
' Cardinal de Retz et de sa retraite, que, pour cela seul, vous seriez
' digne de son estime et de son amitie. . . . Ce que vous dites de
'M. Turenne merite d'entrer dans son panegyrique . . . Depuis
'la mort du heros de la guerre, celui du breviaire s'est retire a
1 Commerci."
Byron probably means that, if the Austrians crossed the Po, they
would be met by a popular insurrection and the dagger. The
Cardinal, in his Memoires (ed. Geneva, 1777, torn. ii. p. 122), thus
explains the origin of the allusion : ' ' Tout le monde etoit dans la
' defiance, et je puis dire sans exageration, que sans meme excepter
' les conseillers, il n'y avoit pas vingt hommes dans le palais qui
'ne fussent armes de poignards. Pour moi je n'en avois point
' voulu porter ; M. de Brissac m'en fit prendre un par force, un jour
'ou il paroissoit qu'on pourroit s'echauffer plus qu'a 1'ordinaire.
' De telles armes, qui me convenoient peu, me causerent un chagrin
' qui me fut des plus sensibles. M. de Beaufort, qui etoit un peu
'lourd et etourdi de son naturel, voyant la garde du stilet dont
' le bout paroissoit un peu hors de ma poche, le montra a Arnaud, a
' la Moussaye et a des Roches, Capitaine des gardes de M. le prince,
' en leur disant : Voila le breviare de M. le Coadjuteur ; j'entendis
' la raillerie, mais a dire vrai, je ne la soutins pas de bon coeur."
1820.] ITALIAN TESTIMONY. 79
Knight's a fool, and could not understand this — Frere
will : it is as pretty a conceit as you would wish to see
upon a Summer's day.
Nobody here believes a word of the evidence against
the Queen : the very mob cry shame against their
countrymen, and say, that for half the money spent upon
the trial, any testimony whatever may be brought out of
Italy.1 This you may rely upon as fact : I told you as
much before. As to what travellers report, what are
travellers? Now I have lived among the Italians — not
Florenced, and Romed, and Galleried, and Conversationed
it for a few months, and then home again— but been of
their families, and friendships, and feuds, and loves, and
councils, and correspondence, in a part of Italy least
known to foreigners; and have been amongst them of
all classes, from the Conte to the Contadino; and you
may be sure of what I say to you.
Yours,
B.
I. Among the Italian witnesses, collected by the "Milan Com-
" mission," and examined for the Bill against the queen, were
Teodoro Majocchi, a livery servant of the princess ; Gaetano
Paturzo, a Neapolitan sailor ; Vincenzo Gargiulo, a sailor of
Messina ; Francesco Birollo, a Piedmontese cook ; Pietro Cuchi,
agent of the Albergo Grande at Trieste ; Giuseppe Bianchi, door-
porter of the Grande Bretagne at Venice ; Paolo Kaggazoni, a
mason employed at the Villa d'Este ; Paolo Oggioni, an under-
cook ; Girolamo Mejani, employed at the Villa d'Este as head-
gardener ; Luigi Galdini, Alessandro Finetti, Domenico Brusa,
Giovanni Lucini, workmen employed at the Villa d'Este ; Carlo
Rancatti and Giuseppe Restelli, respectively confectioner and groom
in the princess's service ; Giuseppe Sacchi, a courier.
Other witnesses for the Bill were Barbara Kress (or Krantz),
chambermaid of the post inn at Carlsruhe, and Louise Demont, a
Swiss maid in the service of the princess.
The only English witnesses examined for the Bill were Captain
Pechell, R.N., who commanded the Clorinde> which conveyed the
princess from Civita Vecchia to Genoa, and Captain Briggs, R.N.,
of the Leviathan. Neither witness gave any evidence directly in
support of the case against the queen.
8o THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
831. — To John Murray.
Sept' 28"? 1820.
MR. J. MURRAY, — Can you keep a Secret? not you :
you would rather keep a w e, I believe, of the two,
although a moral man and "all that, Egad," as Bayes
says.
However, I request and recommend to you to keep
the enclosed one,1 viz. to give no copies^ to permit no
publication — else you and I will be two. It was written
nearly three years ago upon the doublefaced fellow : its
argument — in consequence of a letter exposing some of
his usual practices. You may show it to Gifford,
Hobhouse, D. Kinnaird, and any two or three of your
own Admiralty favourites; but don't betray // or me;
else you are the worst of men.
Is it like ? if not, it has no merit. Does he deserve
it? if not, burn it. He wrote to M. (so M. says) the
other day, saying on some occasion, " what a fortunate
" fellow you are ! surely you were born with a rose in
" your lips, and a Nightingale singing on the bed-top." 2
M. sent me this extract as an instance of the old Serpent's
sentimental twaddle. I replied, that I believed that
"he (the twaddler) was born with a Nettle in his *,
" and a Carrion Crow croaking on the bolster," a parody
somewhat wwdelicate; but such trash puts one stupid,
besides the Cant of it in a fellow who hates every body.
Is this good ? tell me, and I will send you one still
better of that blackguard Brougham ; there is a batch of
them.
1. The lines enclosed were those on Rogers —
"Nose and chin would shame a knocker," etc., etc.,
— first published in Fraser's Magazine for January, 1833, p. 82. See
Letters, vol. iv. p. 202, note 4.
2. Moore, in his Diary for August 6, 1820, has noted this sentence
(Memoirs, etc., etc., vol. iii. p. 136).
1820.] EQUAL TO MANFRED. 8 1
832. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, Sept. 28, 1820.
D? MY,— I thought that I had told you long ago,
that it never was intended nor written with any view to
the Stage.1 I have said so in the preface too. It is too
long and too regular for your stage. The persons
too few, and the unity too much observed. It is more
like a play of Alfieri's than of your stage (I say this
humbly in speaking of that great Man); but there is
poetry, and it is equal to Manfred, though I know not
what esteem is held of Manfred.
I have now been nearly as long out of England as I
was there during the time when I saw you frequently.
I came home July i4th, 1811, and left again April 25th,
1816 : so that Sept- 28th, 1820, brings me within a very
few months of the same duration of time of my stay and
my absence. In course, I can know nothing of the
public taste and feelings, but from what I glean from
letters, etc. Both seem to be as bad as possible.
I thought Anastasius excellent: did I not say so?
Matthews's Diary 2 most excellent : it, and Forsyth,3 and
parts of Hobhouse, are all we have of truth or sense upon
Italy. The letter to Julia4 very good indeed. I do not
1. Mrs. Piozzi heard at Penzance of Byron's forthcoming play.
Writing to Dr. Gray, September I, 1820, she says, " Lord Byron
" is said to be bringing out a tragedy ; unlucky, if Mr. Kean is
"leaving England for America. They seem to be kindred souls,
"delighting in distortion, and mistaking it for pathos" (Autobio-
graphy, Letters, etc., of Mrs. Piozzi, vol. ii. p. 275).
2. The Diary of an Invalid, by Henry Matthews, brother of
Byron's friend, C. S. Matthews. A second edition was published
in 1820.
3. Remarks on Antiquities, Arts, and Letters, during an excursion
in Italy, in the years 1802 and 1803, by Joseph Forsyth, was pub-
lished in 1813.
4. Henry Luttrell (17657-1851), a natural son of the second
Lord Carhampton, and always a poor man, made himself a remark-
able position m society by his brilliant wit. " Mr. Luttrell," wrote
VOL. V. G
82 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
despise Mrs. Heman; but if she knit blue stockings
instead of wearing them, it would be better. You are
taken in by that false stilted trashy style, which is a
mixture of all the styles of the day, which are all bom-
bastic (I don't except my own — no one has done more
through negligence to corrupt the language); but it is
neither English nor poetry. Time will show.
I am sorry Gifford has made no further remarks
beyond the first act : does he think all the English
equally sterling, as he thought the first ? You did right
to send the proofs : I was a fool ; but I do really detest
the sight of proofs : it is an absurdity, but comes from
laziness.
You can steal the two Juans into the world quietly,
tagged to the others. The play as you will — the Dante
Lady Granville {Letters, vol. i. p. 26), in October, 1811, "I like
" better every hour. He has that don du del of never being de trap,
" and I never met with so independent a person." "It is hardly
"possible," says Greville (Memoirs, vol. i. p. 9), "to live with a
"more agreeable man than Luttrell." Both, however, thought
that, in general society, he reserved himself for epigrammatic say-
ings, and did not shine in unlaboured talk (see also Greville
Memoirs, vol. jvi. pp. 433, 434). His Advice to Julia, a Letter in
Rhyme, appeared in 1820. Of his Crockford House, and A Rhymer
in Rome (1826), a brother-wit, Joseph Jekyll (Letters, p. 171), says,
" My friend Luttrell, who is too good-natured for a satirist, has
"published a poem on the modern Greeks of Crockford's gambling
"club, and another on the modern Romans, // e'er it les vers de
" socittt assez joliment ; but neither of these is so good as his Letters
" to Julia."
"Of course," said Byron to Lady Blessington (Conversations,
p. I2l), "you know Luttrell. He is a most agreeable member of
"society, the best sayer of good things, and the most epigrammatic
"conversationist I ever met ; there is a terseness, and wit, mingled
"with fancy, in his observations, that no one else possesses, and no
" one so peculiarly understands the apropos. His Advice to Julia is
"pointed, witty, and full of observation, showing in every line a
"knowledge of society, and a tact rarely met with. Then, unlike
"all, or most other wits, Luttrell is never obtrusive, even the
" choicest bans mots are only brought forth when perfectly applic-
" able, and then are given in a tone of good breeding which enhances
"their value."
1 820.] A VOLUME OF NONSENSE. 83
too ; but the Puld I am proud of : it is superb ; you
have no such translation. It is the best thing I ever did
in my life. I wrote the play, from beginning to end,
and not a single scene without interruption, and being
obliged to break off in the middle ; for I had my hands
full, and my head, too, just then ; so it can be no great
shakes — I mean the play, and the head too, if you like.
Yours.
P.S. — Send me proofs of " the Hints : " get them from
Hobhouse.
P.S. — Politics here still savage and uncertain: how-
ever, we are all in our " bandaliers," to join the " High-
" landers if they cross the Forth," i.e. to crush the Austrians
if they pass the Po. The rascals ! — and that Dog Liver-
pool, to say their subjects were happy ! what a liar ! If
ever I come back, I'll work some of these ministers.
DEAR MURRAY, — x
You ask for a " Volume of Nonsense "
Have all of your authors exhausted their store ?
I thought you had published a good deal not long since
And doubtless the Squadron are ready with more.
But on looking again, I perceive that the Species
Of " Nonsense " you want must be purely "facetious ; "
And, as that is the case, you had best put to press
Mr. Sotheby's tragedies now in M.S.S.
Some Syrian Sally
From common-place Gaily,
Or, if you prefer the bookmaking of women,
Take a spick and Span "Sketch" of your feminine He-Man.
Yours,
B.
I. This note is scribbled on the back of the preceding.
84 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
Why do you ask me for opinions of your ragamuffins ?
You see what you get by it ; but recollect, I never give
opinions till required.
Sept. 29*
I open my letter to say, that on reading more of the
4 volumes on Italy,1 where the Author says " declined an
"introduction," I perceive (horresco referens) that it is
written by a WOMAN ! ! ! In that case you must sup-
press my note and answer, and all I have said about the
book and the writer. I never dreamed of it till now, in
my extreme wrath at that precious note. I can only say
that I am sorry that a Lady should say anything of the
kind. What I would have said to [one of the other
sex] you know already. Her book too (as a She book)
is not a bad one ; but she evidently don't know the
Italians, or rather don't like them, and forgets the causes
of their misery and profligacy (Matthews and Forsyth
are your men for truth and tact), and has gone over
Italy in company — always a bad plan. You must be
alone with people to know them well. Ask her, who was
the "descendant of Lady M. W. Montague" and by
whom ? By Algarotti ?
I suspect that, in Marino Faliero, you and yours
won't like the politics ; which are perilous to you in these
times ; but recollect that it is not a political play, and
that I was obliged to put into the mouths of the Cha-
racters the sentiments upon which they acted. I hate
all things written like Pizarro? to represent France,
1. Sketches descriptive of Italy, in the Years 1816, 1817, with a
brief Account of Travels in various Parts of France and Switzerland^
by Miss Jane Waldie (afterwards Mrs. Watts), 4 vols. 1820.
2. Sheridan's Pizarro was produced at Drury Lane, May 24,
1 799. The scene is laid in Peru ; but the motive of the play, which
is founded on Kotzebue's Spaniards in Peru, is the prospect of a
French invasion of England.
1820.] WILD JUSTICE. 85
England, and so forth : all I have done is meant to be
purely Venetian, even to the very prophecy of its present
state.
Your Angles in general know little of the Italians,
who detest them for their numbers and their GENOA
treachery. Besides, the English travellers have not been
composed of the best Company : how could they ? — out
of ioo,ooo; how many gentlemen were there, or honest
men?
Mitchell's Aristophaftes is excellent : send me the rest
of it.1
I think very small beer of Mr. Goliffe, and his dull
book. Here and there some good things though, which
might have been better.
These fools will force me to write a book about Italy
myself, to give them " the loud lie." They prate about
assassination : what is it but the origin of duelling — and
" a wild Justice? as Lord Bacon calls it ? 2 It is the
fount of the modern point of honour, in what the laws
can't or won't reach. Every man is liable to it more or
less, according to circumstances or place. For instance,
I am living here exposed to it daily, for I have happened
to make a powerful and unprincipled man my enemy ;
and I never sleep the worse for it, or ride in less solitary
places, because precaution is useless, and one thinks of
it as of a disease which may or may not strike. It is
1. Thomas Mitchell (1783-1845) published the first volume of his
translation of The Comedies of Aristophanes in 1820 ; the second
volume appeared in 1822. Frere's review of vol. i. in the Quarterly
Review (vol. xxiii. pp. 474-505) is published in his Works, vol. ii.
pp. 178-214). Mitchell dined with Hunt at Horsemonger Gaol, in
company with Byron and Moore, in June, 1813. "Poor Lord
'Byron ! " he wrote to Murray, in 1824 (Memoir of John Murray,
vol. i. p. 449). "No person's death has ever yet had the effect
"upon me which his had."
2. " Revenge is a kind of wild justice." Bacon's Essays, Essay
iv. "Of Revenge."
86 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
true that there are those here, who, if he did, would
"live to think on't;" but that would not awake my
bones : I should be sorry if it would, were they once at
rest.
833. — To Richard Belgrave Hoppner.
Ravenna, 8bre- i°- 1820.
MY DEAR HOPPNER, — Your letters and papers came
very safely, though slowly, missing one post.
The Shiloh story is true no doubt, though Elise is but
a sort of Queen's evidence. You remember how eager
she was to return to them, and then she goes away and
abuses them. Of the facts, however, there can be little
doubt; it is just like them. You may be sure that I
keep your counsel.
I have not remitted the 30 Napoleons (or what was
it?), till I hear that Missiaglia has received his safely,
when I shall do so by the like channel.
What you say of the Queen's affair is very just and
true ; but the event seems not very easy to anticipate.
I enclose an epistle from Shiloh.1
Yours ever and truly,
BYRON.
834. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, 8bre 6°, 1820.
DEAR MY, — You will have now received all the acts,
corrected, of the M\anno\ F\alierd\. What you say of the
"Bet of 100 guineas," made by some one who says that
he saw me last week, reminds me of what happened in
1810. You can easily ascertain the fact, and it is an
odd one.
I. Probably the letter from Shelley printed in Appendix I.
1 820.] SHADOWS OF THE DEAD AND ABSENT. 87
In the latter end of 1811, I met one evening at the
Alfred my old School and form-fellow, (for we were
within two of each other — he the higher, though both
very near the top of our remove,) Peel, the Irish Secre-
tary. He told me that, in 1810, he met me, as he
thought, in St. James's Street, but we passed without
speaking. He mentioned this, and it was denied as
impossible, I being then in Turkey. A day or two after,
he pointed out to his brother a person on the opposite
side of the way ; " there," said he, " is the man whom
" I took for Byron : " his brother instantly answered,
" why, it is Byron, and no one else." But this is not
all : I was seen by somebody to write down my name
amongst the Enquirers after the King's health, then
attacked by insanity. Now, at this very period, as nearly
as I could make out, I was ill of a strong fever at Patras,
caught in the marshes near Olympia, from the Malaria.
If I had died there, this would have been a new Ghost
Story for you. You can easily make out the accuracy of
this from Peel himself, who told it in detail. I suppose
you will be of the opinion of Lucretius,1 who (denies the
immortality of the Soul, but) asserts that from the " flying
" off of the Surfaces of bodies perpetually, these surfaces
" or cases, like the Coats of an onion, are sometimes
" seen entire when they are separated from it, so that the
" shapes and shadows of both the dead and absent are
" frequently beheld."
I. "Quse, quasi membranae summo de corpore rerum
Dereptse, volitant ultro, citroque, per auras :
Atque eadem, nobis vigilantibus obvia, mentes
Terrificant, atque in somnis, quum saepe figuras
Contuimur miras, simulacraque luce carentum,
Quse nos horrifice languentes saepe sopore
Excierunt : ne forte animas Acheronte reamur
Effugere, aut umbras inter vivos volitare," etc.
Lucretius, De Rerum Aratun1, lib. iv. 35, seqq.
88 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
But if they are, are their coats and waistcoats also
seen ? I do not disbelieve that we may be two by some
unconscious process, to a certain sign ; but which of these
two I happen at present to be, I leave you to decide. I
only hope that father me behaves like a Gemman.
I wish you would get Peel asked how far I am
accurate in my recollection of what he told me ; for I
don't like to say such things without authority.
I am not sure that I was not spoken with ; but this
also you can ascertain. I have written to you such lots
that I stop.
Yours,
B.
P.S. — Send me the proofs of the " Hints from ff., etc"
P.S. — Last year (in June, 1819), I met at Count
Mosti's, at Ferrara, an Italian who asked me " if I knew
" Lord Byron ? " I told him no (no one knows himself,
you know) : " then," says he, "I do ; I met him at
"Naples the other day." I pulled out my card and
asked him if that was the way he spelt his name : and he
answered, yes. I suspect that it was a blackguard Navy
Surgeon, named Bury or Berry, who attended a young
travelling Madman about, named Graham, and passed
himself for a Lord at the Posthouses : he was a vulgar
dog — quite of the Cockpit order — and a precious repre-
sentative I must have had of him, if it was even so ; but
I don't know. He passed himself off as' a Gentleman,
and squired about a Countess Zinnani (of this place),
then at Venice, an ugly battered woman, of bad morals
even for Italy.
1 820.] GENUINE ENGLISH, RIGHT VENETIAN. 89
835. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, 8bre 8°, 1820.
DEAR MORAY, — Foscolo's letter is exactly the thing
wanted; ist, because he is a man of Genius; and, next,
because he is an Italian, and therefore the best Judge of
Italics. Besides,
" He's more an antique Roman than a Dane ; " *
that is, he has more of the antient Greek than of the
modern Italian. Though, "somewhat," as Dugald
Dalgetty says, " too wild and salvage " (like " Ronald of
"the Mist"),2 'tis a wonderful man; and my friends
Hobhouse and Rose both swear by him — and they are
good Judges of men and of Italian humanity.
" Here are in all two worthy voices gained." 3
Gifford says it is good " sterling genuine English," and
Foscolo says that the characters are right Venetian.
Shakespeare and Otway had a million of advantages
over me, besides the incalculable one of being dead from
one to two centuries, and having been both born black-
guards (which ARE such attractions to the Gentle living
reader) : let me then preserve the only one which I
could possibly have — that of having been at Venice, and
entered more into the local Spirit of it. I claim no
more.
I know what F. means about Calendaro's spitting
at Bertram : 4 that 's national — the objection, I mean.
1. " Horatio. Never believe it :
I am more an antique Roman than a Dane."
Hamlet, act v. sc. 2.
2. Legend of Montrose, chap. xiii.
3. " Coriolanus. A match, sir. — There is in all two worthy
"voices begged ; I have your alms : adieu." — Coriolanus, act ii. sc. 3.
4. " Calendaro (spitting at him). I die and scorn thee!"-
Marino Faliero, act v. sc. I.
QO THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
The Italians and French, with those " flags of Abomina-
" tion," their pocket handkerchiefs, spit there, and here,
and every where else — in your face almost, and therefore
object to it on the Stage as too familiar. But we who
spit nowhere — but in a man's face when we grow savage
— are not likely to feel this. Remember Massinger, and
Kean's Sir Giles Overreach —
" Lord ! thus I spit at thee and thy Counsel ! " *
Besides, Calendaro does not spit in Bertram's face : he
spits at him, as I have seen the Mussulmans do upon the
ground when they are in a rage. Again, he does not in
fact despise Bertram, though he affects it — as we all do,
when angry with one we think our inferior : he is angry
at not being allowed to die in his own way (although not
afraid of death); and recollect, that he suspected and
hated Bertram from the first. Israel Bertuccio, on the
other hand, is a cooler and more concentrated fellow :
he acts upon principle and impulse; Calendaro upon
impulse and example.
So there's argument for you.
The Doge repeats ; — true, but it is from engrossing
passion, and because he sees different persons, and is
always obliged to recur to the cause uppermost in his
mind. His speeches are long; — true, but I wrote for
the Closet^ and on the French and Italian model rather
than yours, which I think not very highly of, for all your
old dramatists, who are long enough too, God knows :
look into any of them.
I wish you, too, to recollect one thing which is
nothing to the reader. I never wrote nor copied an
entire Scene of that play , without being obliged to break oft
I. "Sir Giles Overreach " says to " Lord Lovel," in A New Way
to pay Old Debts, act v. sc. I, " Lord ! thus I spit at thee, and at thy
" counsel."
l820.] THREE FRIENDS IN NEED. QI
— to break a commandment, to obey a woman's, and to
forget God's. Remember the drain of this upon a man's
heart and brain, to say nothing of his immortal soul.
Fact, I assure you. The Lady always apologized for the
interruption ; but you know the answer a man must make
when and while he can. It happened to be the only
hour I had in the four and twenty for composition, or
reading, and I was obliged to divide even it. Such are
the denned duties of a Cavalier* Servente or Cavalier'
Schiavo.
I return you F[oscolo]'s letter, because it alludes also
to his private affairs. I am sorry to see such a man in
straits, because I know what they are, or what they were.
I never met but three men who would have held out a
finger to me : one was yourself, the other W™ Bankes,
and the third a Nobleman long ago dead. But of these the
first was the only one who offered it while I really wanted
it; the second from good will — but I was not in need of
Bankes' s aid, and would not have accepted it if I had
(though I love and esteem him) ; and the third x
So you see that I have seen some strange things in
my time. As for your own offer, it was in 1815, when I
was in actual uncertainty of five pounds. I rejected it ;
but I have not forgotten it, although you probably
have.
You are to publish when and how you please ; but I
thought you and Mr. Hobhouse had decided not to print
the whole of " Blackwood" as being partly unproducible :
do as ye please after consulting Hobhouse about it.
P.S. — Foscolo's Ricdarda was lent, with the leaves
uncut, to some Italians now in Villeggiatura, so that I
I. The paragraph is left thus imperfect in the original, Byron
having carefully erased three lines of writing.
92 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
have had no opportunity of hearing their opinion, or of
reading it. They seized on it as Foscolo's, and on
account of the beauty of the paper and printing, directly.
If I find it takes, I will reprint it here. The Italians
think as highly of Foscolo as they can of any man,
divided and miserable as they are, and with neither
leisure at present to read, nor head nor heart to judge of
anything but extracts from French newspapers and the
Lugano Gazette.
We are all looking at one another, like wolves on
their prey in pursuit, only waiting for the first faller on,
to do unutterable things. They are a great world in
Chaos, or Angels in Hell, which you please ; but out of
Chaos came Paradise, and out of hell — I don't know
what ; but the Devil went in there, and he was a fine
fellow once, you know.
You need never favour me with any periodical pub-
lications, excepting the Edinburgh, Quarterly, and an
occasional Blackwood, or now and then a Monthly
Review ; for the rest I do not feel curiosity enough to
look beyond their covers.
To be sure I took in the British Roberts finely ; he
fell precisely into the glaring trap laid for him : it was
inconceivable how he could be so absurd as to think us
serious with him.
Recollect, that if you put my name to Don yuan in
these canting days, any lawyer might oppose my Guardian
right of my daughter in Chancery, on the plea of its
containing the parody ; such are the perils of a foolish
jest. I was not aware of this at the time, but you will
find it correct, I believe ; and you may be sure that the
Noels would not let it slip. Now I prefer my child to
a poem at any time, and so should you, as having half
a dozen. Let me know your notions.
1820.] HIS DAUGHTER'S NAME. 93
If you turn over the earlier pages of the Huntingdon] l
peerage story, you will see how common a name Ada
was in the early Plantagenet days. I found it in my
own pedigree in the reign of John and Henry, and gave
it to my daughter. It was also the name of Charlemagne's
sister. It is in an early chapter of Genesis, as the name
of the wife of Lameth (sic) : and I suppose Ada is the
feminine of Adam. It is short, ancient, vocalic, and
had been in my family ; for which reason I gave it to
my daughter.
836. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, 8bre 12°, 1820.
D? MURRAY, — By land and Sea Carriage a consider-
able quantity of books have arrived ; and I am obliged
and grateful. But Media de fonte leporum surgit amari
aliqTiid, etc., etc. ; which, being interpreted, means,
I'm thankful for your books, dear Murray ;
But why not send Scott's Monastery ?
the only book in four living volumes I would give a
baiocco to see — abating the rest by the same author,
and an occasional Edinburgh and Quarterly, as brief
Chroniclers of the times. Instead of this, here are
Johnny Keats's p — ss a bed poetry,2 and three novels by
God knows whom, except that there is Peg Holford's
name 3 to one of them — a Spinster whom I thought we
1. Henry Nugent Bell published his Huntingdon Peerage in 1820
— an account of the family, and of the revival of the title in Hans
Francis Hastings, eleventh Earl of Huntingdon. Two ancestresses
(p. 4) of the name of Ada are mentioned in the thirteenth century.
2. John Keats published Poems (1817), Endymion (1818), and in
1820 Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and other Poems.
3. Miss Margaret Holford (1778-1852) published, in 1820, War-
beck of Wolfenstein.
94 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
had sent back to her spinning. Crayon 1 is very good ;
Hogg's Tales rough,2 but RACY, and welcome.
Lord Huntingdon's blackguard portrait may serve
for a sign to his " Ashby de la Zouche " Alehouse : 3 is it
to such a drunken, half-pay looking raff that the Chival-
rous Moira is to yield a portion of his titles ? into what
a puddle has stagnated the noble blood of the Hastings' ?
And the bog-trotting barrister's advertisement of himself
and causes ! ! Upon my word, the house and the courts
have made a pair of precious acquisitions ? I have
seen worse peers than this fellow, but then they were
made, not begotten (these Lords are opposites to the Lord
in all respects) ; but, however stupid, however idle and
profligate, all the peers by inheritance had something of
the gentleman look about them : only the lawyers and
the bankers "promoted into Silver fish" looked like
ragamuffins till this new foundling came amongst them.
Books of travels are expensive, and I don't want
them, having travelled already ; besides, they lie. Thank
the Author of the Profligate f a comedy, for his (or her)
present. Pray send me no more poetry but what is rare
and decidedly good. There is such a trash of Keats and
the like upon my tables, that I am ashamed to look at
them. I say nothing against your parsons, your Smedleys 5
1. Washington Irving published, in 1820, under the nom de plume
of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent1.1 , vol. i. of The Sketch-Book. Later in the
same year Murray brought out the book in two volumes, vol. i.
being a second edition, and vol. ii. a new volume.
2. Probably Hogg's Winter Evening Tales (1820). For James
Hogg, see Lettei-s, vol. iii. p. 115, note I.
3. The Huntingdon Arms, at Ashby-de-la-Zouche, was within a
few paces of the Castle {Huntingdon Peerage, Investigation of the
Claim, p. 263).
4. The Profligate, a Comedy (1820, 410) was by George Watson,
afterwards Taylor, the author of England Preserved, an Historical
Play (in verse), 1795, and Equanimity in Death (a poem), 1813.
5. The Rev. Edward Smedley (1788-1836), editor from 1822 of
the Encyclopedia Metropolitana, was a voluminous writer of prose
1 820.] BURIAL-PLACES OF THE DOGES. 95
and your Crolys : 1 it is all very fine ; but pray dispense me
from the pleasure, as also from Mrs. Hemans. Instead
of poetry if you will favour me with a few Soda powders,
I shall be delighted; but all prose (bating travels and
novels NOT by Scott) is welcome, especially Scott's tales
of my Landlord^ and so on.
In the notes to Marino Faliero, it may be as well to
say that " Benintende" was not really of the ten, but
merely Grand Chancellor, a separate office (although
important) : it was an arbitrary alteration of mine. The
Doges too were all buried in St. Mark's before Faliero :
it is singular that when his immediate predecessor, Andrea
Dandolo, died, the ten made a law that all the future
doges should be buried with their families, in their own
chtirches, — one would think by a kind of presentiment. So
that all that is said of his Ancestral Doges, as buried at
Saint John's and Paul's, is altered from the fact, they
being in Saint Mark's. Make a Note of this, and put
Editor as the subscription to it.
As I make such pretensions to accuracy, I should not
and poetry. He had recently published two volumes of verse,
Religio Clerici, a Churchman's Epistle (1818), and A Churchman's
Second Epistle (1819). The poem was published anonymously.
In a letter to Byron, dated March 9 (1819), Lord Holland says,
' The poem of Religio Clerici, falsely said to be Crabbe's, is the
' work of a Mr. Smedley. The despair produced by Methodists
' on a dying man, and the picture of the parish priest walking to
' church, are like Crabbe ; but everything else is much inferior, and
' the principles are so narrow and intolerant that one would have
' been sorry to have found that such a man as Crabbe was capable
'either of holding or assuming them."
I. The Rev. George Croly (1780-1860) wrote largely for Black-
woo(fs Magazine and the Literary Gazette, besides publishing poems,
two novels (Salathiel, 1829, and Marston, 1846), theological works,
a play, and the Life and Times of George the Fourth (1830). In his
chief poems he imitated Byron ; Childe Harold is the model of Paris
in 1815 (1817), and Don Juan of The Modern Orlando (1846).
Byron preferred Croly's vigour to the feebleness of many of his con-
temporaries ; and Croly seems, according to Byron, to have held a
still higher opinion of his own merits (see p. 117)-
g6 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
like to be twitted even with such trifles on that score.
Of the play they may say what they please, but not so
of my costume and dram, pers., they having been real
existences.
I omitted Foscolo in my list of living Venetian
-worthies, in the Notes, considering him as an Italian in
general, and not a mere provincial like the rest ; and as
an Italian I have spoken of him in the preface to Canto
4th of Childe Harold.
The French translation of us ! ! ! Oime ! Oime I —
and the German ; but I don't understand the latter nor
his long dissertation at the end about the Fausts.
Excuse haste. Of politics it is not safe to speak, but
nothing is decided as yet.
I should recommend your not publishing the prose:
it is too late for the letter to Roberts, and that to Black-
wood is too egoistical; and Hobhouse don't like it —
except the part about Pope, which is truth and very good.
I am in a very fierce humour at not having Scott's
Monastery.1 You are too liberal in quantity, and some-
what careless of the quality, of your missives. All the
Quarterlies (4 in number) I had had before from you,
and two of the Edinburghs ; but no matter; we shall
have new ones by and bye. No more Keats, I entreat :
— flay him alive ; if some of you don't, I must skin him
myself: there is no bearing the drivelling idiotism of the
Mankin.
I don't feel inclined to care further about Don Juan.
What do you think a very pretty Italian lady said to me
the other day ? She had read it in the French, and paid
me some compliments, with due DRAWBACKS, upon
it. I answered that what she said was true, but that I
I. Ivanhoe, The Monastery, and The Abbot were all published
in 1820.
1820.]
THE TINSEL OF SENTIMENT.
97
suspected it would live longer than Childe Harold. " Ah
" but (said She) / would rather have the fame of Childe
" Harold for THREE YEARS than an IMMORTALITY of Don
"Juan!" The truth is that if is TOO TRUE, and the
women hate every thing which strips off the tinsel of
Sentiment; and they are right, as it would rob them
of their weapons. I never knew a woman who did not
hate De Grammont's memoirs for the same reason.
Even Lady Oxford used to abuse them.
Thorwaldsen is in Poland, I believe: the bust is at
Rome still, as it has been paid for these 4 years. It
should have been sent, but I have no remedy till he
returns.
Rose's work1 I never received: it was seized at
Venice. Such is the liberality of the Huns, with their
two hundred thousand men, that they dare not let such a
volume as his circulate.
837. — To John Hanson.
Ravenna, 8br.e 12? 1820.
D? SIR, — I can enter into no appeal without Counsel's
opinion : this was promised and has not been sent.
I would still much rather sell the Manor, at any price,
than enter into a new and hopeless litigation.
Your delay (which seems a purposed and unwarrant-
able one) in completing the Irish Mortgage surprizes and
distresses me; you will finish by causing me to lose
many thousand pounds. You may delay as you please,
but the mortgage must be completed ; for I would rather
sell out at any loss than trust to the infamous bubble of
the British funds, into which (had I been upon the spot)
I could never have entered.
I. William Stewart Rose's Letters from the North of Italy (1819).
VOL. V. H
98 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
It is also surprizing that you have never sent in your
account to Mr. Kinnaird : if it is not sent, how can we
ever come to any final settlement ?
In expectation of an answer on these points,
I remain, yours very truly,
BYRON.
838. — To Richard Belgrave Hoppner.1
Ravenna, 8b.re 13* 1820.
MY DEAR HOPPNER, — By the boat of a certain
Bonaldo, bound for Venice, I forward to you certain
Novels of Mrs. Opie and others, for Mrs. Hoppner and
you as you desired. Amongst the rest there is a German
translation of Manfred^ with a plaguy long dissertation
at the end of it ; it would be out of all measure and
conscience to ask you to translate the whole ; but, if you
could give me a short sketch of it, I should thank you,
or if you would make somebody do the whole into
Italian^ it would do as well ; and I would willingly pay
some poor Italian German Scholar for his trouble. My
own papers are at last come from Galignani. With
many thanks for yours,
I am, yours very truly,
BYRON.
P.S. — I remit by Missiaglia 30 Napoleons, is that
the sum ?
839.— To John Murray.
Ravenna, 8bre 16°, 1820.
DEAR MORAY, — The Abbot has just arrived : many
thanks ; as also for the Monastery — when you send it! / !
I. From The Archivist, April, 1889, where the letter is printed
in facsimile to face p. 12.
l820.j SCOTTISH ANCESTRY. 99
The Abbot will have a more than ordinary interest for
me ; for an ancestor of mine by the mother's side, Sir
J. Gordon of Gight, the handsomest of his day, died on
a Scaffold at Aberdeen for his loyalty to Mary, of whom
he was an imputed paramour as well as her relation.1 His
fate was much commented on in the Chronicles of the
times. If I mistake not, he had something to do with
her escape from Loch Leven, or with her captivity there.
But this you will know better than I.
I recollect Loch Leven as it were but yesterday: I
saw it in my way to England in 1798, being then ten
years of age. My Mother (who was as haughty as
Lucifer with her descent from the Stuarts, and her right
line, from the old Gordons, not the Seyton Gordons, as
she disdainfully termed the Ducal branch,) told me the
Story, always reminding me how superior her Gordons
were to the Southron Byrons, notwithstanding our Nor-
man, and always direct masculine descent,2 which has
never lapsed into a female, as my mother's Gordons had
done in her own person.
I have written to you so often lately, that the brevity
of this will be welcome.
Yours ever and truly,
BYRON.
1. For Sir J. Gordon, see p. 106, note I.
2. It is possible that Mrs. Byron may have known the blot on the
Byron pedigree, and the illegitimacy of the family through which
her son claimed Norman descent. Sir John Byron "with the great
" beard," grandfather of the first Lord Byron, and grantee of the
Priory of Newstead, had no legitimate heir. His natural son, John
Byron, who succeeded to the property by deed of gift, was therefore
the real founder of Byron's family. Whether Byron knew this
illegitimacy or not is uncertain.
100 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
840. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, 8bre 17°, 1820.
D? MY, — Enclosed is the dedication of Marino
Faliero to Goethe. Query ? is his title Baron or not ? *
I think yes. Let me know your opinion, and so forth.
Yours,
B.
P.S. — Let me know what Mr. Hobhouse and you
have decided about the two prose letters and their pub-
lication.
I enclose you an Italian abstract of the German
translator of Manfred's appendix, in which you will per-
ceive quoted what Goethe says of the whole body of
English poetry (and not of one in particular). On this
the dedication is founded, as you will perceive, though
I had thought of it before, for I look upon him as a
Great Man.
FOR MARINO FALIERO.
DEDICATION TO BARON GOETHE, ETC., ETC., ETC.
SIR, — In the Appendix to an English work lately
translated into German and published at Leipsic, a
judgment of yours upon English poetry is quoted as
follows : " That in English poetry, great genius, universal
" power, a feeling of profundity, with sufficient tenderness
" and force, are to be found ; but that altogether tJiese do
" not constitute poets? etc., etc.
I regret to see a great man falling into a great
mistake. This opinion of yours only proves that the
I. Goethe was ennobled, having the Von prefixed to his name,
but never received the title of Baron.
1 820.] A DEDICATION. IOI
" Dictionary of Ten Thousand living English Authors " x
has not been translated into German. You will have
read, in your friend Schlegel's version, the dialogue in
Macbeth —
" There are ten thousand!
Macbeth. Geese, villain?
Answer. Authors, sir." 2
Now, of these " ten thousand authors," there are actually
nineteen hundred and eighty-seven poets, all alive at
this moment, whatever their works may be, as their
booksellers well know ; and amongst these there are
several who possess a far greater reputation than mine,
although considerably less than yours. It is owing to
this neglect on the part of your German translators that
you are not aware of the works of William Wordsworth,
who has a baronet in London 3 who draws him frontis-
pieces and leads him about to dinners and to the play ;
and a Lord in the country,4 who gave him a place in the
Excise — and a cover at his table. You do not know
perhaps that this Gentleman is the greatest of all poets
past — present and to come — besides which he has written
an " Opus Magnum " in prose — during the late election
for Westmoreland.5 His principal publication is entitled
" Peter Bell" which he had withheld from the public for
" one and twenty years " — to the irreparable loss of all those
who died in the interim, and will have no opportunity of
1. A Biographical Dictionary of Living Authors of Great Britain
and Ireland^ etc., London, 1816, 8vo.
2. " Macbeth. Where gott'st thou that goose look ?
Servant. There is ten thousand —
Macbeth. Geese, villain ?
Servant. Soldiers, sir."
Macbeth, act v. sc. 3.
3. Sir George Beaumont. See Professor W. Knight, Life of
Wordsworth, vol. ii. (Works, vol. x.) p. 56.
4. Lord Lonsdale (ibid., p. 209).
5. Two Addresses to the Freeholders of Westmoreland, 1818.
IO2 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
reading it before the resurrection. There is also another
named Southey, who is more than a poet, being actually
poet Laureate, — a post which corresponds with what we
call in Italy Poeta Cessareo, and which you call in German
— I know not what; but as you have a " Caesar" — pro-
bably you have a name for it. In England there is no
Caesar — only the Poet.
I mention these poets by way of sample to enlighten
you. They form but two bricks of our Babel, (WINDSOR
bricks, by the way,) but may serve for a specimen of the
building.
It is, moreover, asserted that " the predominant
"character of the whole body of the present English
" poetry is a disgust and contempt for life." But I rather
suspect that by one single work of prose, you yourself,
have excited a greater contempt for life than all the
English volumes of poesy that ever were written.
Madame de Stael says, that "Werther has occasioned
" more suicides than the most beautiful woman ; " and I
really believe that he has put more individuals out of
this world than Napoleon himself, except in the way of
his profession. Perhaps, Illustrious Sir, the acrimonious
judgment passed by a celebrated northern journal l upon
you in particular, and the Germans in general, has rather
indisposed you towards English poetry as well as criti-
cism. But you must not regard our critics, who are at
bottom good-natured fellows, considering their two pro-
fessions— taking up the law in court, and laying it down
out of it. No one can more lament their hasty and
unfair judgment, in your particular, than I do ; and
I so expressed myself to your friend Schlegel, in 1816,
at Coppet.
I. See an article on Goethe's Aus Meinem Leben, etc., in the
Edinburgh Review for June, 1816, vol. xxvi. pp. 304-337.
1820.] THE GREAT GOETHE. 103
In behalf of my " ten thousand " living brethren, and
of myself, I have thus far taken notice of an opinion
expressed with regard to "English poetry" in general,
and which merited notice, because it was YOURS.
My principal object in addressing you was to testify
my sincere respect and admiration of a man, who, f"~
half a century, has led the literature of a great nation,
and will go down to posterity as the first literary Character
of his Age.
You have been fortunate, Sir, not only in the writings
which have illustrated your name, but in the name itself,
as being sufficiently musical for the articulation of pos-
terity. In this you have the advantage of some of your
countrymen, whose names would perhaps be immortal
also — if any body could pronounce them.
It may, perhaps, be supposed, by this apparent tone
of levity, that I am wanting in intentional respect towards
you ; but this will be a mistake : I am always flippant in
prose. Considering you, as I really and warmly do, in
common with all your own, and with most other nations,
to be by far the first literary Character which has existed
in Europe since the death of Voltaire, I felt, and feel,
desirous to inscribe to you the following work, — not as
being either a tragedy or a poem, (for I cannot pronounce
upon its pretensions to be either one or the other, or both,
or neither,) but as a mark of esteem and admiration from
a foreigner to the man who has been hailed in Germany
" THE GREAT GOETHE."
I have the honour to be,
With the truest respect,
Your most obedient and
Very humble servant,
BYRON.
104 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
Ravenna, 8bre 14°, 1820.
P.S. — I perceive that in Germany, as well as in Italy,
there is a great struggle about what they call " Classical"
and " Romantic" — terms which were not subjects of
classification in England, at least when I left it four or
five years ago. Some of the English Scribblers, it is
true, abused Pope and Swift, but the reason was that
they themselves did not know how to write either prose
or verse ; but nobody thought them worth making a sect
of. Perhaps there may be something of the kind sprung
up lately, but I have not heard much about it, and it
would be such bad taste that I shall be very sorry to
believe it.
841. — To Thomas Moore.
Ravenna, October 17, 1820.
You owe me two letters — pay them. I want to know
what you are about. The summer is over, and you will
be back to Paris. Apropos of Paris, it was not Sophia
Gat/, but Sophia Gay — the English word Gay — who was
my correspondent.1 Can you tell who she is, as you did
of the defunct * * ?
Have you gone on with your poem? I have
I. "I had mistaken the name of the lady he inquired after, and
" reported her to him as dead. But, on the receipt of the above
"letter, I discovered that his correspondent was Madame Sophie
"Gay, mother of the celebrated poetess and beauty, Mademoiselle
"Delphine Gay" (Moore).
Sophie Nichault de la Valette (1776-1852), novelist, dramatist,
musician, and verse-writer, married, in 1799, as her second husband,
M. Gay. Her salon was the resort of all that was most brilliant in
French society under the Empire. Among her novels, which began
with Laure tPEstell (1802), the most successful was Leonie de Mont-
braise (1813). But, of all her numerous works, it was said that her
daughter Delphine, afterwards Madame de Girardin (1804-1855),
was the most brilliant.
1 820.] A SUSPECT. 105
received the French of mine. Only think of being tra-
duced into a foreign language in such an abominable
travesty ! It is useless to rail, but one can't help it.
Have you got my Memoir copied ? l I have begun a
continuation. Shall I send it you, as far as it is gone ?
I can't say any thing to you about Italy, for the
Government here look upon me with a suspicious eye,
as I am well informed. Pretty fellows ! — as if I, a
solitary stranger, could do any mischief. It is because I
am fond of rifle and pistol shooting, I believe ; for they
took the alarm at the quantity of cartridges I consumed,
— the wiseacres !
You don't deserve a long letter — nor a letter at all —
for your silence. You have got a new Bourbon,2 it
seems, whom they have christened Dieu-donn'e ; — perhaps
the honour of the present may be disputed. Did you
write the good lines on , the Laker ? * * * *
The Queen has made a pretty theme for the journals.
Was there ever such evidence published ? Why it is
worse than Littles Poems or Don Juan. If you don't
write soon, I will " make you a speech."
Yours, etc.
1. Moore, in his Diary for May 7, 1820, writes, " Williams dined
" with us ; he has begun copying out Lord B.'s 'Memoirs' for me,
" as I fear the original papers may become worn out by passing
" through so many hands " (Memoirs, etc., of Thomas Moore, vol.
iit. p. 1 1 6).
2. Henri Charles Marie Ferdinand Dieudonne d'Artois, Due de
Bordeaux and Comte de Chambord (1820-1883), was the posthumous
son of the Due de Berri assassinated by Louvel. In 1830, when his
grandfather Charles X. abdicated in his favour, he went into exile.
In 1843 he claimed the throne of France, assuming the title of
Henri V. After his marriage (1846) with Marie Therese Beatrix,
daughter of the Duke of Modena, by whom he had no children, he
settled at Frohsdorf, near Vienna. In 1873 the Comte de Paris
recognized his right to the French crown, and thus united the
legitimists. But his refusal to accept the tricolor in place of the
white standard of the Bourbons destroyed the hopes of the royalist
party.
106 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
842. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, 8bre 25°, 1820.
D? MORAY, — Pray forward the enclosed to Lady
Byron : it is on business.
In thanking you for the Abbot, I made four grand
mistakes. Sir John Gordon l was not of Gight, but of
Bogagicht, and a Son of Huntley's. He suffered, not for
his loyalty, but in an insurrection. He had nothing to
do with Loch Leven, having been dead some time at the
period of the Queen's confinement. And 4th.ly I am
not sure that he was the Queen's paramour or no ; for
Robertson does not allude to this, though Walter Scott
does, in the list she gives of her admirers (as unfortunate)
at the close of the Abbot.
I. In The Abbot (chap, xxxvii.), Mary, standing by the dying
George Douglas at the battle of Langside, says, " Look — look at
' him well, thus has it been with all who loved Mary Stuart ! — The
' royalty of Francis, the wit of Chastelar, the power and gallantry
'of the gay Gordon, the melody of Rizzio, the portly form and
' youthful grace of Darnley, the bold address and courtly manners
' of Bothwell — and now the deep-devoted passion of the noble
' Douglas — nought could save them — they looked on the wretched
' Mary, and to have loved her was crime enough to deserve early
'death!" In 1562, one year after Mary landed in Scotland, Sir
John Gordon, a younger son of the Earl of Huntly, killed Lord
Ogilvie in a fray. Mary refused to pardon Gordon, and her refusal
caused Lord Huntly to march on Aberdeen. The Gordons were
defeated ; Lord Huntly was killed ; Sir John Gordon beheaded ;
and two of his brothers, condemned to death, were eventually
pardoned. The younger, Adam, became the famous " Edom o'
" Gordon." There is no reason to suppose that Mary ever saw Sir
John Gordon, much less that he was her favoured lover.
The Gordons of Gight, though descended from the Earl of
Huntly, were then in the third generation from the founder of
their branch of the family. John Gordon, second son of the fourth
Laird of Gight, and great-grandson of Huntly, was hanged in
February, 1592, for the murder of the Earl of Moray ; but his
brother William, Laird of Gight from 1576 to 1605 (J. M. Bullock,
Tragic Adventures of Byron's Ancestors, in the Aberdeen Free Press,
November n, 18, 25, 1898), though responsible for "at least five
" murders," died in his bed.
1820.] A LONG LINE OF ANCESTORS. 107
I must have made all these mistakes in recollecting
my Mother's account of the matter, although she was
more accurate than I am, being precise upon points of
genealogy, like all the Aristocratical Scotch. She had
a long list of ancestors, like Sir Lucius OTrigger's,1
most of whom are to be found in the old Scotch Chro-
nicles, Spalding, etc., in arms and doing mischief. I
remember well passing Loch Leven, as well as the
Queen's Ferry : we were on our way to England in 1798.
Why do the papers call Hobhouse young ? he is a
year and a half older than I am ; and I was thirty-two
last January.
Of Italy I can say nothing by the post : we are in
instant expectation of the Barbarians passing the Po;
and then there will be a war of fury and extermination.
Pray write sometimes ; the communications will not
long be open.
Yours,
B.
P.S. — Send me the Monastery and some Soda powders.
You had better not publish Blackwood and the
Roberts prose, except what regards Pope ; — you have let
the time slip by.
843. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, 9bre 4°, 1820.
I have received from Mr. Galignani the enclosed
letters, duplicates and receipts, which will explain them-
selves.2 As the poems are your property by purchase,
1. In The Rivals, act iii. sc. 4, Sir Lucius OTrigger says, "Ah,
" my little friend ! If I had Blunderbuss Hall here, I could show
"you a range of ancestry, in the O'Trigger line, that would furnish
" the new room ; every one of whom had killed his man ! "
2. Galignani had asked Byron to grant him such legal right over
I08 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
right, and justice, all matters of publication, etc., etc.,
are for you to decide upon. I know not how far my
compliance with Mr. G.'s request might be legal, and
I doubt that it would not be honest. In case you choose
to arrange with him, I enclose the permits to you, and
in so doing I wash my hands of the business altogether.
I sign them merely to enable you to exert the power
you justly possess more properly. I will have nothing
to do with it further, except, in my answer to Mr.
Galignani, to state that the letters, etc., etc., are sent
to you, and the causes thereof.
If you can check those foreign Pirates, do ; if not,
put the permissive papers in the fire : / can have no
view nor object whatever, but to secure to you your
property.
Yours,
BYRON.
P.S.— There will be shortly "the Devil to pay" Jure;
and, as there is no saying that I may not form an Item
in his bill, I shall not now write at greater length : you
have not answered my late letters ; and you have acted
foolishly, as you will find out some day.
P.S. — I have read part of the Quarterly just arrived :
Mr. Bowles * shall be answered ; he is not quite correct
in his statement about E\tiglis/i\ JB\ards\ and S\eotc/i\
those poems of which he had hitherto been the sole publisher in
France, as would prevent piracy.
I. Byron refers to Disraeli's article on Pope, suggested by Spence's
Anecdotes of Books and Men, which appeared in the Quarterly Review
for July, 1820 (pp. 400-434). The reviewer quotes on p. 425 a
passage from Bowles's Invariable Principles of Poetry (1819), in
which Bowles describes his correction of Byron's mistake in English
Bards, and Scotch Reviewers, line 360 —
" When first Madeira trembled to a kiss."
(See Poems, vol. i. p. 325, and Byron's note. See also Appendix
III. for Byron's controversy with Bowles.)
l8zO.] POETICAL MOUNTEBANKS. 109
R\evicwers\. They support Pope, I see, in the Quarterly J-
Let them continue to do so : it is a Sin, and a Shame,
and a damnation to think that Pope ! I should require
it — but he does. Those miserable mountebanks of the
day, the poets, disgrace themselves and deny God, in
running down Pope, the most faultless of Poets, and
almost of men.
The Edinburgh praises Jack Keats or Ketch, or
whatever his names are : why, his is the * of Poetry —
something like the pleasure an Italian fiddler extracted
out of being suspended daily by a Street Walker in
Drury Lane. This went on for some weeks : at last
the Girl went to get a pint of Gin — met another,
chatted too long, and Cornelli was hanged outright before
she returned. Such like is the trash they praise, and
such will be the end of the * * poesy of this miser-
able Self-polluter of the human Mind.
W. Scott's Monastery just arrived : many thanks for
that Grand Desideratum of the last Six Months.
P.S. — You have cut up old Edgeworth,2 it seems,
amongst you. You are right : he was a bore. I met
the whole batch — Mr., Mrs., and Miss — at a blue break-
fast of Lady Davy's in Blue Square ; and he proved
but bad, in taste and tact and decent breeding. He
began by saying that Parr (Dr. Parr) had attacked him,
t. "It is with pain we have so long witnessed the attacks on the
' moral and poetical character of this great poet by the last two of his
' editors. Warton, who first entered the list, though not unwilling
' to wound, exhibits occasionally some of the courtesy of the ancient
' chivalry ; but his successor, the Rev. Mr. Bowles, pushes the con-
' test <J Foutrance, with the appearance, though not with the reality,
' of personal hostility. It had been more honourable in this gentle-
' man, with his known prejudices against this class of poetry, in
{ which Pope will always remain unrivalled, to have declined the
' office of editor, than to attempt to spread among new generations of
' readers the most unfavourable and the most unjust impressions of
' the Poet and of the Man." — Quarterly Review, vol. xxiii. p. 407.
2. In the Quarterly Review for July, 1820, pp. 510-549.
110 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
and that he (the father of Miss E.) had cut him up in
his answer. Now, Parr would have annihilated him;
and if he had not, why tell us (a long story) ivho wanted
to breakfast? I saw them different times in different
parties, and I thought him a very tiresome coarse old
Irish half-and-half Gentleman, and her a pleasant reserved
old woman— ************
844. — To Thomas Moore.
Ravenna, November 5, 1820.
Thanks for your letter, which hath come somewhat
costively ; but better late than never. Of it anon.
Mr. Galignani, of the Press, hath, it seems, been sup-
planted and sub-pirated by another Parisian publisher,
who has audaciously printed an edition of L. B.'s works,
at the ultra-liberal price of ten francs and (as Galignani
piteously observes) eight francs only for booksellers !
horresco referens. Think of a man's whole works pro-
ducing so little !
Galignani sends me, post haste, a permission for him,
from me, to publish, etc., etc., which permit I have signed
and sent to Mr. Murray of Albemarle Street. Will you
explain to G. that I have no right to dispose of Murray's
works without his leave ? and therefore I must refer him
to M. to get the permit out of his claws — no easy matter,
I suspect. I have written to G. to say as much ; but a
word of mouth from a "great brother author" would
convince him that I could not honestly have complied
with his wish, though I might legally. What I could do
I have done, viz. signed the warrant and sent it to
Murray. Let the dogs divide the carcass, if it is killed
to their liking.
I am glad of your epigram. It is odd that we should
1 820.] SPREAD OF THE SPANISH REVOLUTION. Ill
both let our wits run away with our sentiments; for I
am sure that we are both Queen's men at bottom.1 But
there is no resisting a clinch — it is so clever ! Apropos
of that — we have a " diphthong " also in this part of the
world — not a Greek^ but a Spanish one — do you under-
stand me ? — which is about to blow up the whole alpha-
bet. It was first pronounced at Naples, and is spreading ;
but we are nearer the barbarians, who are in great force
on the Po, and will pass it, with the first legitimate
pretext.
There will be the devil to pay, and there is no saying
who will or who will not be set down in his bill. If
" honour should come unlooked for " 2 to any of your
acquaintance, make a Melody of it, that his ghost, like
poor Yorick's, may have the satisfaction of being plain-
tively pitied — or still more nobly commemorated, like
" Oh breathe not his name." 3 In case you should not
think him worth it, here is a Chant for you instead —
When a man hath no freedom to fight for at home,
Let him combat for that of his neighbours ;
Let him think of the glories of Greece and of Rome,
And get knock'd on the head for his labours.
1. Moore was a supporter of the Queen. In his Diary for
November n, 1820 (Memoirs, etc., vol. iii. p. 168), he writes,
" The decision of the House of Lords against the Queen occupying
"every one's mind and tongue. What a barefaced defiance of all
" law and justice, and what precious scoundrels there are in the
" high places of the world ! "
2. Henry IV., Part I. act v. sc. 3. Compare Pope's Temple of
Fame, line $13.
3. Moore's song, of which the first stanza runs as follows : —
" O breathe not his name, let it sleep in the shade,
Where cold and unhonour'd his relics are laid ;
Sad, silent, and dark be the tears that we shed,
As the night-dew that falls on the grass o'er his head ; "
appeared in No. i. of the Irish Melodies,
112 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
To do good to mankind is the chivalrous plan,
And is always as nobly requited ;
Then battle for freedom wherever you can,
And, if not shot or hang'd, you'll get knighted.
So you have gotten the letter of " Epigrams " — I am
glad of it. You will not be so, for I shall send you more.
Here is one I wrote for the endorsement of " the Deed
" of Separation " in 1816; but the lawyers objected to it,
as superfluous. It was written as we were getting up the
signing and sealing. * * has the original.
Endorsement to tJie Deed of Separation^ in tJie April
of 1816.
A year ago you swore, fond she !
" To love, to honour," and so forth :
Such was the vow you pledged to me,
And here's exactly what 'tis worth.
For the anniversary of January 2, 1821, I have a
small grateful anticipation, which, in case of accident, I
add—
To Penelope ; January 2, 1821.
This day, of all our days, has done
The worst for me and you : —
'Tis just six years since we were one,
And Jive since we were two.
Pray excuse all this nonsense ; for I must talk non-
sense just now, for fear of wandering to more serious
topics, which, in the present state of things, is not safe
by a foreign post.
I told you in my last, that I had been going on with
GOETHE'S HUSBAND-KILLING STORY. 113
the "Memoirs," and have got as far as twelve more
sheets. But I suspect they will be interrupted. In that
case I will send them on by post, though I feel remorse
at making a friend pay so much for postage, for we can't
frank here beyond the frontier.
I shall be glad to hear of the event of the Queen's
concern. As to the ultimate effect, the most inevitable
one to you and me (if they and we live so long) will be
that the Miss Moores and Miss Byrons will present us
with a great variety of grandchildren by different fathers.
Pray, where did you get hold of Goethe's Florentine
husband-killing story ? Upon such matters, in general, I
may say, with Beau Clincher, in reply to Errand's wife —
" Oh the villain, he hath murdered my poor Timothy !
" Clincher. Damn your Timothy ! — I tell you, woman,
"your husband has mitrdei-ed me — he has carried away
" my fine jubilee clothes." 1
So Bowles has been telling a story, too ('t is in the
Quarterly), about the woods of " Madeira," and so forth.
I shall be at Bowles again, if he is not quiet. He mis-
states, or mistakes, in a point or two. The paper is
finished, and so is the letter.
Yours, etc.
845. — To John Murray.
R[avenn]a, gbre 9°, 1820.
DEAR MORAY, — The talent you approve of is an
amiable one, and as you say might prove "a national
" Service," but unfortunately I must be angry with a man
before I draw his real portrait; and I can't deal in
"generals" so that I trust never to have provocation
I . Farquhar's Constant Couple, or a Trip to the Jubilee, act iv.
sc. I. (For Goethe's story, see his review of Manfred, Appendix II.
p. 504.)
VOL. V. I
114 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
enough to make a Gallery, If " the person " had not by
many little dirty sneaking traits provoked it, I should
have been silent, though I had observed him. Here
follows an alteration. Put —
Devil with such delight in damning,
That if at the resurrection
Unto him the free selection
Of his future could be given,
'Twould be rather Hell than Heaven.
That is to say, if these two new lines do not too much
lengthen out and weaken the amiability of the original
thought and expression. You have a discretionary power
about showing : I should think that Croker and D' Israeli
would not disrelish a sight of these light little humorous
things, and may be indulged now and then.
D' Israeli wrote the article on Spence : I know him
by the mark in his mouth. I am glad that the Quarterly
has had so much Classical honesty as to insert it : it is
good and true.
Hobhouse writes me a facetious letter about my
indolence and love of Slumber. It becomes him : he is
in active life ; he writes pamphlets against Canning, to
which he does not put his name ; he gets into Newgate
and into Parliament — both honourable places of refuge ;
and he " greatly daring dines " at all the taverns (why
don't he set up a tap room at once), and then writes to
quiz my laziness.
Why, I do like one or two vices, to be sure ; but I
can back a horse and fire a pistol " without winking or
" blinking " like Major Sturgeon ; l I have fed at times for
I . In Foote's Mayor of Garratt, act i. sc. I, Major Sturgeon says,
" In a week I could shoulder, and rest, and poise, and turn to the
" right, and wheel to the left ; and in less than a month I could fire
" without winking or blinking."
1820.] A QUARREL BETWEEN FRIENDS. 115
two months together on sheer biscuit and water (without
metaphor) ; I can get over seventy or eighty miles a day
riding post, and swim five at a Stretch, taking apiece before
and after, as at Venice, in 1818, or at least I could do,
and have done it ONCE, and I never was ten minutes in
my life over a solitary dinner.
Now, my friend Hobhouse, when we were wayfaring
men, used to complain grievously of hard beds and sharp
insects, while I slept like a top, and to awaken me with
his swearing at them : he used to damn his dinners daily,
both quality and cookery and quantity, and reproach
me for a sort of " brutal " indifference, as he called it,
to these particulars; and now he writes me facetious
sneerings because I do not get up early in a morning,
when there is no occasion — if there were, he knows that
I was always out of bed before him, though it is true
that my ablutions detained me longer in dressing than
his noble contempt of that " oriental scrupulosity "
permitted.
Then he is still sore about " the ballad" — he ! ! why,
he lampooned me at Brighton, in 1808, about Jackson
the boxer and bold Webster, etc. : in 1809, he turned
the death of my friend E? Long into ridicule and rhyme,
because his name was susceptible of a. pun ; and, although
he saw that I was distressed at it, before I left England
in 1816, he wrote rhymes upon D. Kinnaird, you, and
myself; and at Venice he parodied the lines " Though
" the day of my destiny's over " 1 in a comfortable quizzing
way : and now he harps on my ballad about his election !
Pray tell him all this, for I will have no underhand work
with my " old Cronies." If he can deny the facts, let
him. I maintain that he is more carnivorously and
carnally sensual than I am, though I am bad enough too
I. See Letters, vol. iv. p. 73, note I.
Il6 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
for that matter ; but not in eating and haranguing at the
Crown and Anchor, where I never was but twice — and
those were at " Whore's Hops " when I was a younker in
my teens ; and, Egad, I think them the most respectable
meetings of the two. But he is a little wroth that I
would not come over to the Queetis trial : lazy, quotha !
it is so true that he should be ashamed of asserting it.
He counsels me not to " get into a Scrape ; " but, as
Beau Clincher says, "How melancholy are Newgate
" reflections ! " * To be sure, his advice is worth following ;
for experience teacheth : he has been in a dozen within
these last two years. / pronounce me tJie more temperate
of the two.
Have you gotten The Hints yet ?
I know Henry Matthews : he is the image, to the
very voice, of his brother Charles, only darker : his laugh
his in particular. The first time I ever met him was in
Scrope Davies's rooms after his brother's death, and I
nearly dropped, thinking that it was his Ghost. I have
also dined with him in his rooms at King's College.
Hobhouse once purposed a similar memoir; but I am
afraid that the letters of Charles's correspondence with me
(which are at Whitton with my other papers) would hardly
do for the public : for our lives were not over strict, and
our letters somewhat lax upon most subjects.
His Superiority over all his cotemporaries was quite
indisputable and acknowledged : none of us ever thought
of being at all near Matthews; and yet there were
some high men of his standing — Bankes, Bob Milnes,
Hobhouse, Bailey, and many others — without numbering
the mere Academical men, of whom we hear little out
of the University, and whom he beat hollow on their
own Ground.
I. The Constant Ccnipk, act v. sc. 2.
1820.] THE POETRY OF KEATS. Iiy
His gaining the Downing Fellowship was the com-
pletest thing of the kind ever known. He carried off
both declamation prizes : in short, he did whatever he
chose. He was three or four years my Senior, but I
lived a good deal with him latterly, and with his friends.
He wrote to me the very day of his death (I believe), or
at least a day before, if not the very day. He meant
to have stood for the University Membership. He was
a very odd and humourous fellow besides, and spared
nobody : for instance, walking out in Newstead Garden,
he stopped at Boatswain's monument inscribed " Here
" lies Boatswain, a Dog," etc., and then observing a blank
marble tablet on the other side, " So (says he) there is
" room for another friend, and I propose that the Inscrip-
" tion be ' Here lies H — bh — se, a Pig,' " etc. You may as
well not let this transpire to the worthy member, lest he
regard neither his dead friend nor his living one, with
his wonted Suavity.
Rose's lines must be at his own option : /can have no
objection to their publication. Pray salute him from me.
Mr. Keats, whose poetry you enquire after, appears
to me what I have already said : such writing is a sort of
mental * * * * — * ******* his Imagination. I don't
mean he is indecent^ but viciously soliciting his own ideas
into a state, which is neither poetry' nor any thing else
but a Bedlam vision produced by raw pork and opium.
Barry Cornwall would write well, if he would let himself.
Croly is superior to many, but seems to think himself
inferior to Nobody.
Last week I sent you a correspondence with Galig-
nani, and some documents on your property. You have
now, I think, an opportunity of cfiecking, or at least
limiting, those French re-publications. You may let all
your authors publish what they please against me or
Il8 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
mine ; a publisher is not, and cannot be, responsible for
all the works that issue from his printer's.
The " White Lady of Avenel " is not quite so good
as a real well-aiithenticated ^ Donna bianca") White Lady
of Colalto? or spectre in the Marca Trivigiana, who has
been repeatedly seen : there is a man (a huntsman) now
alive who saw her also. Hoppner could tell you all
about her, and so can Rose perhaps. I myself have no
doubt of the fact, historical and spectral. She always
appeared on particular occasions, before the deaths of
the family, etc., etc. I heard M? Benzoni say, that she
knew a Gentleman who had seen her cross his room at
Colalto Castle. Hoppner saw and spoke with the
Huntsman who met her at the Chase, and never hunted
afterwards. She was a Girl attendant, who, one day
dressing the hair of a Countess Colalto, was seen by her
mistress to smile upon her husband in the Glass. The
Countess had her shut up in the wall at the Castle, like
Constance de Beverley. Ever after, she haunted them
and all the Colaltos. She is described as very beautiful
and fair. It is well authenticated.
Yours,
B.
846. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, Qbre 1 8°, 1820.
DEAR MORAY,— The death of Waite 2 is a shock to
the — teeth, as well as to the feelings of all who knew
I. The White Lady of Avenel, in Scott's Monastery ; mixed much
and capriciously in the affairs of the world. The "fair Christine,"
the victim of a jealous mistress, whose story Rogers told in his Italy
("Coll'alto "), seems a more legitimate ghost. Like Constance de
Beverley in Marmion (Canto II. stanzas xx.-xxxiii.), she was
immured alive in the wall.
2. The fashionable dentist of 2, Old Burlington Street. " Went,"
says Lord Byron, " to Waite's. Teeth are all right and white ; but
1820.] DENTISTS, BARBERS, AND WELLINGTON. 119
him. Good God, he and Blake l both gone ! I left them
both in the most robust health, and little thought of the
national loss in so short a time as five years. They were
both as much superior to Wellington in rational great-
ness, as he who preserves the hair and the teeth is
preferable to the " bloody blustering booby " who gains
a name by breaking heads and knocking out grinders.
Who succeeds him ? where is tooth powder ? mild and
yet efficacious — where is tincture? where are cleansing
roots and brushes now to be obtained? Pray obtain
what information you can upon these " Tusculan ques-
" tions : " my jaws ache to think on't. Poor fellows ! I
anticipated seeing both again ; and yet they are gone to
that place where both teeth and hair last longer than
they do in this life. I have seen a thousand graves
opened, and always perceived, that, whatever was gone,
the teeth and hair remained of those who had died with
them. Is not this odd ? they go the very first things in
youth, and yet last the longest in the dust, if people will
but die to preserve them ! It is a queer life, and a queer
death, that of mortals.
I knew that Waite had married, but little thought
that the other decease was so soon to overtake him.
Then he was such a delight, such a Coxcomb, such a
Jewel of a Man ! There is a taylor at Bologna so like him,
and also at the top of his profession. Do not neglect
this commission : who or what can replace him ? what
says the public ?
"he says that I grind them in my sleep, and chip the edges." —
Journal, February 19, 1814 (Letters, vol. ii. p. 387).
I. " Write but like Wordsworth — live beside a lake,
And keep your bushy locks a year from Blake."
"As famous a tonsor as Licinus himself, and better paid, and
"may, like him, be one day a senator, having a better qualifica-
" tion than one half of the heads he crops, viz. — Independence." —
Hints from Horace, 1. 476, Byron's note ; see Poems, vol. i. p. 422.
120 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
I remand you the preface. Don't forget that the
Italian extract from the Chronicle must be translated.
With regard to what you say of retouching the Juans and
the Hints , it is all very well ; but I can't furbish. I am
like the tyger (in poesy), if I miss my first Spring, I go
growling back to my Jungle. There is no second. I
can't correct; I can't, and I won't. Nobody ever
succeeds in it, great or small. Tasso remade the whole
of his Jerusalem ; but who ever reads that version ? All
the world goes to the first Pope added to tlie " Rape of
" the Lock" but did not reduce it. You must take my
things as they happen to be : if they are not likely to
suit, reduce their estimate then accordingly. I would
rather give them away than hack and hew them. I don't
say that you are not right : I merely assert that I cannot
better them. I must either " make a spoon, or spoil a
" horn." And there's an end.
The parcel of the second of June, with the late Edge-
worth and so forth, has never arrived : parcels of a later
date have, of which I have given you my opinions in
late letters. I remit you what I think a Catholic curi-
osity— the Pope's brief, authenticating the body of Saint
Francis of Assisi, a town on the road to Rome.
Yours ever,
B.
P.S. — Of the praises of that little dirty blackguard
Keates in the Edinburgh, I shall observe as Johnson did
when Sheridan the actor got a pension : " What ! has he
" got a pension ? Then it is time that I should give up
" mine ! " * Nobody could be prouder of the praises of the
I. "Johnson, who thought slightingly of Sheridan's art, upon
"hearing that he was also pensioned, exclaimed, 'What! have
"they given him a pension? Then it is time for me to give up
"mine!' Whether this proceeded from a momentary indignation,
1 820.] A CRICKET MATCH WITH BOWLES. 121
Edinburgh than I was, or more alive to their censure, as I
showed in E\tiglish~\ B\ards\ andS(cotcJi\ R\eviewers\. At
present all the men they have ever praised are degraded
by that insane article. Why don't they review and
praise " Solomon's Guide to Health " ? x it is better sense
and as much poetry as Johnny Keates.
Bowles must be bowled down : 'tis a sad match at
Cricket, if that fellow can get any Notches at Pope's
expence. If he once gets into " Lord's ground," (to con-
tinue the pun, because it is foolish,) I think I could beat
him in one Innings. You did not know, perhaps, that I
was once (not metaphorically, but really) a good Cricketer,
particularly in batting, and I played in the Harrow match
against the Etonians in 1805, gaining more notches (as
one of our chosen Eleven) than any, except L? Ipswich
and Brookman, on our side.2
847. — To John Murray.3
Ravenna, 9bre 19, 1820.
DEAR MURRAY, — What you said of the late Charles
Skinner Matthews has set me to my recollections ; but I
have not been able to turn up any thing which would do
for the purposed Memoir of his brother, — even if he had
previously done enough during his life to sanction the
introduction of anecdotes so merely personal. He was,
" as if it were an affront to his exalted merit that a player should be
" rewarded in the same manner with him, or was the sudden effect
" of a fit of peevishness, it was unluckily said, and, indeed, can-
"not be justified."— BoswelFs Johnson, 1763, ed. G. B. Hill, vol. i.
PP- 385. 386.
1. Samuel Solomon was notorious for his "Cordial Balm of
" Gilead." His Guide to Health, or advice to both sexes, in twenty-
two years (1795-1817) passed into its sixty -sixth edition.
2. See Letters, vol. i. p. 70.
3. This letter was, by an error of judgment, printed in Letters,
vol. i. pp. 150-160. It is now reprinted in its chronological place ;
but the notes there given have not been repeated.
122 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
however, a very extraordinary man, and would have been
a great one. No one ever succeeded in a more surpassing
degree than he did as far as he went. He was indolent,
too; but whenever he stripped, he overthrew all an-
tagonists. His conquests will be found registered at
Cambridge, particularly his Downing one, which was hotly
and highly contested, and yet easily won. Hobhouse was
his most intimate friend, and can tell you more of him
than any man. William Bankes also a great deal. I my-
self recollect more of his oddities than of his academical
qualities, for we lived most together at a very idle period
of my life. When I went up to Trinity, in 1805, at the
age of seventeen and a half, I was miserable and untoward
to a degree. I was wretched at leaving Harrow, to which
I had become attached during the two last years of my
stay there ; wretched at going to Cambridge instead of
Oxford (there were no rooms vacant at Christchurch) ;
wretched from some private domestic circumstances of
different kinds, and consequently about as unsocial as a
wolf taken from the troop. So that, although I knew
Matthews, and met him often then at Bankes's, (who was
my collegiate pastor, and master, and patron,) and at
Rhode's, Milnes's, Price's, Dick's, Macnamara's, Farrell's,
Gaily Knight's, and others of that set of contemporaries,
yet I was neither intimate with him nor with any one
else, except my old schoolfellow Edward Long (with
whom I used to pass the day in riding and swimming),
and William Bankes, who was good-naturedly tolerant of
my ferocities.
It was not till 1807, after I had been upwards of a
year away from Cambridge, to which I had returned
again to reside for my degree, that I became one of
Matthews's familiars, by means of Hobhouse, who, after
hating me for two years, because I wore a white hat, and
1820.] MATTHEWS AT NEWSTEAD. 123
a grey coat, and rode a grey horse (as he says himself),
took me into his good graces because I had written some
poetry. I had always lived a good deal, and got drunk
occasionally, in their company — but now we became
really friends in a morning. Matthews, however, was
not at this period resident in College. I met him chiefly
in London, and at uncertain periods at Cambridge.
Hobhouse, in the mean time, did great things : he
founded the Cambridge " Whig Club " (which he seems
to have forgotten), and the "Amicable Society," which
was dissolved in consequence of the members constantly
quarrelling, and made himself very popular with " us
" youth," and no less formidable to all tutors, professors,
and heads of Colleges. William Bankes was gone ; while
he stayed, he ruled the roast — or rather the roasting —
and was father of all mischiefs.
Matthews and I, meeting in London, and elsewhere,
became great cronies. He was not good tempered — nor
am I — but with a little tact his temper was manageable,
and I thought him so superior a man, that I was willing
to sacrifice something to his humours, which were often,
at the same time, amusing and provoking. What became
of his papers (and he certainly had many), at the time of
his death, was never known. I mention this by the way,
fearing to skip it over, and as he wrote remarkably well,
both in Latin and English. We went down to Newstead
together, where I had got a famous cellar, and Monks'
dresses from a masquerade warehouse. We were a com-
pany of some seven or eight, with an occasional neighbour
or so for visiters, and used to sit up late in our friars'
dresses, drinking burgundy, claret, champagne, and what
not, out of the skull-crip, and all sorts of glasses, and
buffooning all round the house, in our conventual gar-
ments. Matthews always denominated me " the Abbot,"
124 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
and never called me by any other name in his good
humours, to the day of his death. The harmony of
these our symposia was somewhat interrupted, a few
days after our assembling, by Matthews's threatening to
throw Hobhouse out of a window, in consequence of I
know not what commerce of jokes ending in this epigram.
Hobhouse came to me and said, that " his respect and
" regard for me as host would not permit him to call out
" any of my guests, and that he should go to town next
" morning." He did. It was in vain that I represented
to him that the window was not high, and that the turf
under it was particularly soft. Away he went.
Matthews and myself had travelled down from London
together, talking all the way incessantly upon one single
topic. When we got to Loughborough, I know not what
chasm had made us diverge for a moment to some other
subject, at which he was indignant. " Come," said he,
" don't let us break through — let us go on as we began, to
" our journey's end ; " and so he continued, and was as
entertaining as ever to the very end. He had previously
occupied, during my year's absence from Cambridge, my
rooms in Trinity, with the furniture ; and Jones, the
tutor, in his odd way, had said, on putting him in, " Mr.
" Matthews, I recommend to your attention not to damage
" any of the moveables, for Lord Byron, Sir, is a young man
" of tumultuous passions" Matthews was delighted with
this ; and whenever anybody came to visit him, begged
them to handle the very door with caution ; and used to
repeat Jones's admonition in his tone and manner.
There was a large mirror in the room, on which he
remarked, " that he thought his friends were grown un-
" commonly assiduous in coming to see him, but he soon
" discovered that they only came to see themselves" Jones's
phrase of <c tumultuous passions" and the whole scene,
1 820.] MATTHEWS AND HOBHOUSE. 125
had put him into such good humour, that I verily believe
that I owed to it a portion of his good graces.
When at Newstead, somebody by accident rubbed
against one of his white silk stockings, one day before
dinner ; of course the gentleman apologised. " Sir,"
answered Matthews, "it may be all very well for you,
" who have a great many silk stockings, to dirty other
" people's ; but to me, who have only this one pair •, which I
" have put on in honour of the Abbot here, no apology can
" compensate for such carelessness; besides, the expense of
" washing." He had the same sort of droll sardonic way
about every thing. A wild Irishman, named Farrell, one
evening began to say something at a large supper at
Cambridge, Matthews roared out " Silence ! " and then,
pointing to Farrell, cried out, in the words of the oracle,
" Orson is endowed with reason" You may easily suppose
that Orson lost what reason he had acquired, on hearing
this compliment. When Hobhouse published his volume
of poems, the Miscellany (which Matthews would call the
" Miss-sell-any"}, all that could be drawn from him was,
that the preface was "extremely like Walsh" Hob-
house thought this at first a compliment ; but we never
could make out what it was, for all we know of Walsh
is his Ode to King William, and Pope's epithet of
'•'•knowing Walsh" When the Newstead party broke
up for London, Hobhouse and Matthews, who were the
greatest friends possible, agreed, for a whim, to walk
together to town. They quarrelled by the way, and
actually walked the latter half of the journey, occasionally
passing and repassing, without speaking. When Matthews
had got to Highgate, he had spent all his money but
three-pence halfpenny, and determined to spend that also
in a pint of beer, which I believe he was drinking before
a public-house, as Hobhouse passed him (still without
126 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
speaking) for the last time on their route. They were
reconciled in London again.
One of Matthews's passions was " the fancy ; " and he
sparred uncommonly well. But he always got beaten in
rows, or combats with the bare fist. In swimming, too,
he swam well ; but with effort and labotirt and too high
out of the water ; so that Scrope Davies and myself, of
whom he was therein somewhat emulous, always told him
that he would be drowned if ever he came to a difficult
pass in the water. He was so ; but surely Scrope and
myself would have been most heartily glad that
"the Dean had lived,
And our prediction proved a lie. "
His head was uncommonly handsome, very like what
Pope's was in his youth.
His voice, and laugh, and features, are strongly re-
sembled by his brother Henry's, if Henry be he of King's
College. His passion for boxing was so great, that he
actually wanted me to match him with Dogherty (whom
I had backed and made the match for against Tom
Belcher), and I saw them spar together at my own
lodgings with the gloves on. As he was bent upon it, I
would have backed Dogherty to please him, but the match
went off. It was of course to have been a private fight,
in a private room.
On one occasion, being too late to go home and
dress, he was equipped by a friend (Mr. Baillie, I believe,)
in a magnificently fashionable and somewhat exaggerated
shirt and neckcloth. He proceeded to the Opera, and
took his station in Fop's Alley. During the interval
between the opera and the ballet, an acquaintance took
his station by him and saluted him : " Come round," said
Matthews, " come round." — " Why should I come
" round ? " said the other ; " you have only to turn your
1 820.] MATTHEWS AT CAMBRIDGE. 127
" head — I am close by you." — " That is exactly what I
" cannot do," said Matthews ; " don't you see the state I am
" in ? " pointing to his buckram shirt collar and inflexible
cravat, — and there he stood with his head always in the
same perpendicular position during the whole spectacle.
One evening, after dining together, as we were going
to the Opera, I happened to have a spare Opera ticket
(as subscriber to a box), and presented it to Matthews.
" Now, sir," said he to Hobhouse afterwards, " this I call
" courteoiis in the Abbot — another man would never have
" thought that I might do better with half a guinea than
" throw it to a door-keeper ; — but here is a man not only
" asks me to dinner, but gives me a ticket for the theatre."
These were only his oddities, for no man was more liberal,
or more honourable in all his doings and dealings, than
Matthews. He gave Hobhouse and me, before we set
out for Constantinople, a most splendid entertainment, to
which we did ample justice. One of his fancies was
dining at all sorts of out-of-the-way places. Somebody
popped upon him in I know not what coffee-house in
the Strand — and what do you think was the attraction ?
Why, that he paid a shilling (I think) to dine -with his hat
on. This he called his " hat house," and used to boast
of the comfort of being covered at meal times.
When Sir Henry Smith was expelled from Cam-
bridge for a row with a tradesman named "Hiron,"
Matthews solaced himself with shouting under Hiron's
windows every evening,
" Ah me ! what perils do environ
The man who meddles with hot Hiron"
He was also of that band of profane scoffers who,
under the auspices of * * * *, used to rouse Lort Mansel
(late Bishop of Bristol) from his slumbers in the lodge of
Trinity ; and when he appeared at the window foaming
128 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
with wrath, and crying out, " I know you, gentlemen, I
" know you ! " were wont to reply, " We beseech thee to
" hear us, good Lort ! " — " Good Lort deliver us ! " (Lort
was his Christian name.) As he was very free in his
speculations upon all kinds of subjects, although by no
means either dissolute or intemperate in his conduct, and
as I was no less independent, our conversation and cor-
respondence used to alarm our friend Hobhouse to a
considerable degree.
You must be almost tired of my packets, which will
have cost a mint of postage.
Salute Gifford and all my friends.
Yours,
B.
?. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, gbre 23°, 1820.
DEAR MORAY, — There have arrived the preface, the
translation — the first sixteen pages, also from page sixty-
five to ninety-six; but no intermediate sheets from ye. six-
teenth to sixty-fifth page. I apprize you of this, in case
any such should have been sent.
I hope that the printer will perfectly understand
where to insert some three or four additional lines, which
Mr. Gifford has had the goodness to copy out in his own
hand.
The translation is extremely well done, and I beg to
present my thanks and respects to Mr. Cohen for his
time and trouble. The old Chronicle Style is far better
done than I could have done it : some of the old words
are past the understanding even of the present Italians.
Perhaps if Foscolo was to cast a glance over it, he could
rectify such, or confirm them.
Your two volume won't do : the first is very well, but
1 8 20.]
NOT WORTH A CHANCERY SUIT.
129
the second must be anonymous, and the first with the
name, which would make a confusion or an identity, both
of which ought to be avoided. You had better put the
Doge, Dante, etc., into one volume, and bring out the
other soon afterwards, but not on the same day.
The Hints, Hobhouse says, will require a good deal
of slashing, to suit the times, which will be a work of
time, for I don't feel at all laborious just now. What-
ever effect they are to have would perhaps be greater in
a separate form, and they also must have my name to
them. Now, if you publish them in the same volume
with "Don jfuan" they identify Don yuan as mine,
which I don't think worth a Chancery Suit about my
daughter's guardianship ; as in your present code a face-
tious poem is sufficient to take away a man's rights over
his family.
I regret to hear that the Queen has been so treated
on the second reading of her bill.
Of the state of things here it would be difficult and
not very prudent to speak at large, the Huns opening all
letters : I wonder if they can read them when they have
opened them ? if so, they may see, in my most legible
hand, that I think them damned scoundrels and bar-
barians, their emperor a fool, and themselves more fools
than he ; all which they may send to Vienna, for anything
I care. They have got themselves masters of the Papal
police, and are bullying away j but some day or other
they will pay for it all. It may not be very soon, because
these unhappy Italians have no union nor consistency
among themselves ; but I suppose Providence will get
tired of them at last, and show that God is not an
Austrian.
Ever yours truly,
B.
VOL. V. K
130 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
P.S. — I enclosed a letter to you for Lady B. on
business some time ago : did you receive and forward it ?
Adopt Mr. Gifford's alterations in the proofs.
849. — To John Hanson.
Ravenna, 9ble 30°. 1820.
DEAR SIR, — I have received your letter with Coun-
sel's opinion upon the Appeal.1 You had better then
enter the Appeal immediately not to lose further time.
Mr. Kinnaird acted by my directions about Col.
Leigh's bond.2
Let me hope that the Blessington Mortgage will
proceed without further delays.
You have my full directions to proceed in making
Mr. Claughton fulfil his payments.
I do not know whether it will be best to send a
Courier to Ravenna with the deeds, or to send them by
the post. Consult weight and security, and adopt the
mode which will be most speedy.
The Scotch deeds directions I do not understand, not-
withstanding all the pencil marks ; but I will try to sign
them correctly.
My "rough rebukes," as you call them, have been
excited by the not very smooth delays, which have inter-
vened. What can a man say at such a distance to you
gentlemen of the law ? You best know how far they are
deserved.
I shall be very glad to hear any good news, and, with
respects and remembrances to Charles and all your family,
I am, yours very truly and faithfully,
BYRON.
1. I.e. in the Rochdale lawsuit. (See p. 62, note 2.)
2. Byron had advanced money to Colonel Leigh, and now made
the loan a gift by directing the bond to be cancelled.
l820.] DISCRETIONARY POWER. 131
850. — To Thomas Moore.
Ravenna, Dec. 9, 1820.
Besides this letter, you will receive three packets,
containing, in all, 18 more sheets of Memoranda, which,
I fear, will cost you more in postage l than they will ever
produce by being printed in the next century. Instead
of waiting so long, if you could make any thing of them
now in the way of reversion, (that is, after my death,) I
should be very glad, — as, with all due regard to your
progeny, I prefer you to your grandchildren. Would not
Longman or Murray advance you a certain sum Jtow,
pledging themselves not to have them published till after
my decease, think you ? — and what say you ?
Over these latter sheets I would leave you a dis-
cretionary power ; 2 because they contain, perhaps, a
thing or two which is too sincere for the public. If I
consent to your disposing of their reversion now, where
would be the harm ? Tastes may change. I would, in
your case, make my essay to dispose of them, not publish,
now ; and if you (as is most likely) survive me, add what
you please from your own knowledge; and, above a//,
contradict any thing, if I have wu-stated ; for my first
object is the truth, even at my own expense.
I have some knowledge of your countryman Muley
Moloch,3 the lecturer. He wrote to me several letters
1. " Forty-six francs and a half," according to Moore's Diary for
December 22, 1820 (Memoirs, etc., vol. iii. p. 182).
2. " The power here meant is that of omitting passages that might
" be thought objectionable. He afterwards gave me this, as well as
" every other right, over the whole of the manuscript " (Moore).
3. See Letters, vol. iv. p. 416, note \. Mulock was at this time
lecturing on English literature in Paris. Moore attended three of
the lectures. November 6, 1820 : " Took Bessy in to attend
" Mulock's first lecture on English literature ; flumen verborum
" guttula mentis" (Memoirs, etc., vol. iii. p. 166). November 17,
1820: "Went in with Bessy to Mulock's lecture. Absurd and
" false from beginning to end. Dryden was no poet ; Butler had
132 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
upon Christianity, to convert me ; and, if I had not been
a Christian already, I should probably have been now,
in consequence. I thought there was something of wild
talent in him, mixed with a due leaven of absurdity, — as
there must be in all talent, let loose upon the world,
without a martingale.
The ministers seem still to persecute the Queen
* * * . b^ they won>f gO out} the sons of b — es> Damn
Reform — I want a place — what say you ? You must
applaud the honesty of the declaration, whatever you
may think of the intention.
I have quantities of paper in England, original and
translated — tragedy, etc., etc., and am now copying out a
fifth canto of Don Juan, 149 stanzas. So that there will
be near three thin Albemarle, or two thick volumes of all
sorts of my Muses. I mean to plunge thick, too, into
the contest upon Pope, and to lay about me like a dragon
till I make manure of Bowles for the top of Parnassus.
These rogues are right — we do laugh at fathers — eh ?
— don't we ? l You shall see — you shall see what things
" no originality ; and Locke was ' of the school of the devil,1 both
"in his philosophy, politics, and Christianity" (ibid., p. 169).
December n, 1820 : " Went into town to Mulock's lecture. Find
" that he praised me in his discourse on the living poets, the other
"day, exceedingly; set me at the head of them all, near Lord
" Byron, who, he says, is the only person in the world who seems
" to have any proper notion of religion ! In alluding to Lalla
" Rookh, he said, 'As for his Persian poem (I forget the name of
"it), I really never could read it.' The lecture to-day upon evan-
" gelical literature and religion in general ; mere verbiage " (ibid.,
p. 1 78). Mulock's faith in Byron's religious feeling was not shaken
by Cain. His letter to the Morning Post and " Lines to Lord
" Byron " therefore seem worth quoting. See Appendix IV.
I. " He here alludes to a humorous article, of which I had told
" him, in Blackwood's Magazine, where the poets of the day were all
" grouped together in a variety of fantastic shapes, with ' Lord Byron
" and little Moore laughing behind, as if they would split,' at the
"rest of the fraternity " (Moore). The quotation is from " Shuffle-
" botham's Dream " (Blackwood's Edinburgh. Magazine for October,
1820, pp. 3-7).
1820.] MURDER OF DEL PINTO. 133
I'll say, an' it pleases Providence to leave us leisure.
But in these parts they are all going to war ; and there is
to be liberty, and a row, and a constitution — when they
can get them. But I won't talk politics — it is low. Let
us talk of the Queen, and her bath, and her bottle — that's
the only motley nowadays.
If there are any acquaintances of mine, salute them.
The priests here are trying to persecute me, — but no
matter.
Yours, etc.
851. — To Thomas Moore.
Ravenna, Dec. 9, 1820.
I open my letter to tell you a fact,1 which will show
the state of this country better than I can. The com-
mandant of the troops is now lying dead in my house.
He was shot at a little past eight o'clock, about two
hundred paces from my door.2 I was putting on my
great-coat to visit Madame la Contessa G. when I heard
the shot. On coming into the hall, I found all my
servants on the balcony, exclaiming that a man was
murdered. I immediately ran down, calling on Tita
(the bravest of them) to follow me. The rest wanted to
1. " The other evening ('twas on Friday last) —
This is a fact, and no poetic fable —
Just as my great coat was about me cast,
My hat and gloves still lying on the table,
I heard a shot — 'twas eight o'clock scarce past —
And running out as fast as I was able,
I found the military commandant
Stretch'd in the street, and able scarce to pant."
Don yuan, Canto V. stanza xxxiii.
The commandant's name was Del Pinto (Moore's Life, p. 472).
2. From information given to Mr. Richard Edgcumbe by Sante
Savini, who was living at Ravenna at the time, the murder took
place at the corner of the street leading out of the present Via
Cavour to the Church of San Vitale.
134 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
hinder us from going, as it is the custom for every body
here, it seems, to nm away from " the stricken deer."
However, down we ran, and found him lying on his
back, almost, if not quite, dead, with five wounds ; one
in the heart, two in the stomach, one in the finger, and
the other in the arm. Some soldiers cocked their guns,
and wanted to hinder me from passing. However, we
passed, and I found Diego, the adjutant, crying over him
like a child — a surgeon, who said nothing of his pro-
fession— a priest, sobbing a frightened prayer — and the
commandant, all this time, on his back, on the hard, cold
pavement, without light or assistance, or any thing around
him but confusion and dismay.
As nobody could, or would, do any thing but howl
and pray, and as no one would stir a finger to move him,
for fear of consequences, I lost my patience — made my
servant and a couple of the mob take up the body — sent
off two soldiers to the guard — despatched Diego to the
Cardinal with the news, and had the commandant carried
upstairs into my own quarter.1 But it was too late, he
was gone — not at all disfigured — bled inwardly — not
above an ounce or two came out.
I had him partly stripped — made the surgeon examine
him, and examined him myself. He had been shot by
cut balls or slugs. I felt one of the slugs, which had
gone through him, all but the skin. Everybody con-
jectures why he was killed, but no one knows how. The
gun was found close by him — an old gun, half filed down.
He only said, 0 Dio ! and Gesu ! two or three times,
I. " Poor fellow ! for some reason, surely bad,
They had slain him with five slugs, and left him there
To perish on the pavement : so I had
Him borne into the house, and up the stair,
And stripp'd and look'd to," etc.
Don Juan, Canto V. stanza xxxiv.
1 820.] A QUEER PEOPLE. 135
and appeared to have suffered very little. Poor fellow !
he was a brave officer, but had made himself much dis-
liked by the people. I knew him personally, and had
met with him often at conversazioni and elsewhere. My
house is full of soldiers, dragoons, doctors, priests, and
all kinds of persons, — though I have now cleared it,
and clapt sentinels at the doors. To-morrow the body
is to be moved. The town is in the greatest confusion,
as you may suppose.
You are to know that, if I had not had the body
moved, they would have left him there till morning in
the street, for fear of consequences. I would not choose
to let even a dog die in such a manner, without succour : —
and, as for consequences, I care for none in a duty.
Yours, etc.
P.S. — The lieutenant on duty by the body is smoking
his pipe with great composure. — A queer people this.
852. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, D"? 9^ 1820.
DEAR MURRAY, — I intended to have written to you
at some length by this post, but as the Military Com-
mandant is now lying dead in my house, on Fletcher's
bed, I have other things to think of.
He was shot at 8 o'Clock this evening about two
hundred paces from our door. I was putting on my
great Coat to pay a visit to the Countess G., when I
heard a shot, and on going into the hall, found all my
servants on the balcony exclaiming that "a Man was
"murdered." As it is the custom here to let people
fight it through, they wanted to hinder me from going
out ; but I ran down into the Street : Tita, the bravest
of them, followed me ; and we made our way to the
136 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
Commandant, who was lying on his back, with five wounds,
of which three in the body — one in the heart. There
were about him Diego, his Adjutant, crying like a Child ;
a priest howling ; a Surgeon who dared not touch him ;
two or three confused and frightened Soldiers; one or
two of the boldest of the mob ; and the Street dark as
pitch, with the people flying in all directions. As Diego
could only cry and wring his hands, and the Priest could
only pray, and nobody seemed able or willing to do any-
thing except exclaim, shake and stare, I made my Servant
and one of the mob take up the body ; sent off Diego
crying to the Cardinal, the Soldiers for the Guard ; and
had the Commandant conveyed up Stairs to my own
quarters. But he was quite gone. I made the Surgeon
examine him, and examined him myself. He had bled
inwardly, and very little external blood was apparent.
One of the Slugs had gone quite through — all but the
Skin : I felt it myself. Two more shots in the body, one
in a finger, and another in the arm. His face not at all
disfigured : he seems asleep, but is growing livid. The
Assassin has not been taken ; but the gun was found — a
gun filed down to half the barrel.
He said nothing but O Dio I and 0 Gesu two or
three times.
The house was filled at last with Soldiers, officers,
police, and military ; but they are clearing away — all but
the Sentinels, and the body is to be removed tomorrow.
It seems that, if I had not had him taken into my house,
he might have lain in the Streets till morning ; as here
nobody meddles with such things, for fear of the con-
sequences— either of public suspicion, or private revenge
on the part of the Slayers. They may do as they please :
I shall never be deterred from a duty of humanity by all
the assassins of Italy, and that is a wide word.
1820.] A LETTER FROM ROGERS. 137
He was a brave officer, but an unpopular man. The
whole town is in confusion.
You may judge better of things here by this detail,
than by anything which I could add on the Subject:
communicate this letter to Hobhouse and Douglas K?,
and believe me
Yours ever truly,
B.
P.S. — The poor Man's wife is not yet aware of his
death : they are to break it to her in the morning.
The Lieutenant, who is watching the body, is smoak-
ing with the greatest Sangfroid: a strange people.
853. — To John Murray.
Ra iQbre ,o? ig2o>
D? M., — I wrote to you by last post. Acknow-
ledge that and this letter, which you are requested to
forward immediately.
Yours truly,
B.
P.S.— I have finished fifth Canto of D. J. ; l 143
Stanzas. So prepare.
854. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, lobrf 14? 1820.
DEAR MORAY, — As it is a month since I have had
any packets of proofs, I suppose some must have mis-
carried. Today I had a letter from Rogers?
1. Canto V. of Don Juan, begun October 1 6, 1820, was published
with Cantos III., IV., at the end of 1821, anonymously.
2. The following is the letter from Rogers. By his allusion to
an " Eastern Tale," he refers to an unpublished portion of Vathfk,
138 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
The fifth Canto of D. J. is now under copy : it con-
sists of 151 Stanzas. I want to know what the devil you
mean to do ?
which Beckford had read to him at Fonthill, and the loan of which
Byron asked in his letter to Rogers of March 3, 1818 (Letters,
vol. iv. p. 209, note l). "Kalilah and his sister" are among the
persons whom Vathek and Nouronihar meet in the Halls of Eblis,
and the history of Kalilah and Zulkais, as Beckford told Redding,
was among the episodes written for insertion in Vathek (see Dr.
Garnett's Introduction to Vathek, ed. 1893, p. v.) : —
" London, NoV 23, 1820.
" MY DEAR BYRON, — In the 78th year of the Hegyra — 1120 years
' and some odd months ago — I received a very delightful letter from
' Venice to which I have written at least fifty answers, — answers
' regularly consigned with a Psha ! to that element to which Virgil
' and Tasso condemned things of a little more value. I am now
' however (under the influence of a yellow fog) resolved to inflict
"upon you whatever comes first. Moore might have told you of
"still more serious designs against your peace last year. I had
' ' taken out my pass-book and said goodbye to my friends, when the
"sea suddenly struck me as unnavigable, the Alps as impassable,
"and a bilious fit came on that nothing could remove but calomel
'and nitrous acid. Next year however I am determined to find
' you out, co&te gue cozite, and pour into your ear a thousand things
' I cannot write. Your commission with regard to certain un-
' imaginable fancies in the shape of an Eastern Tale, the Loves of
' Kalilah and Zulkais, I executed most faithfully — would I could
' say successfully ; he hesitated, half consented and concluded with
' saying that he hoped they would induce you to venture within the
' walls of his Abbey — the place of their birth, and from which they
'had never wandered. His daughter is now on her way to the
' Rospigliosi Palace at Rome, and I have half promised to eat my
' Christmas dinner with her there in the hall of the Aurora — but
' alas ! Last night I had a long conversation on a sofa with a
"person you must remember well — Lady W" Russell. It was at
" the eleventh hour. How were you employed at that moment, for
"she was speaking of you? London saw all the Poets this year —
"but two, — Moore and another. Campbell is just now at Bonn on
"the Rhine. Wordsworth returned last week from a journey up
"that noble river to Switzerland and the Italian Lakes. Southey
" is printing a Poem and a Life ; Scott, his Kcnilworth Castle.
" What Moore is about you may know better than I do ; I hope he
" will soon be as free as air. Frere is gone by sea to Malta with a
'sick wife. An article in the last Quarterly on Mitchell's Aristo-
1 phanes is his. Lord Holland is again on his crutches, but as gay
'as ever. He desires to be most kindly remembered to you.
' What is to become of Naples ? of England ? Of the last you know
' at least as much as we do. Whether the Ministers go out — whether
1 820.] RISK OF A MASSACRE. 139
By last post I wrote to you, detailing the murder of
the Commandant here. I picked him up shot in the
Street at 8 in the Evening; and perceiving that his
adjutant and the Soldiers about him had lost their heads
completely with rage and alarm, I carried him to my
house, where he lay a corpse till next day, when they
removed him. Did you receive this my letter? They
thought a row was coming — and indeed it was likely — in
which the Soldiers would have been massacred. As I
am well with the Liberals of the Country, it was another
reason for me to succour them; for I thought that, in
case of a tumult, I could, by my personal influence with
some of the popular Chiefs, protect these surrounded
soldiers, who are but five or six hundred against five and
twenty thousand : and you see, few as they are, that they
keep picking them off daily. It is as dangerous for that,
as ever it was in the middle ages. They are a fierce
people, and at present roused ; and the end no one can
tell.
As you don't deserve a longer letter, nor any letter at
all, I conclude.
Yours,
B.
' the Queen is to have a palace or a vote of censure — whether the
' King is ill or well — comfortable or miserable, dying or love-sick — I
' know no more than old Ali blockaded in his tower. Farewell,
' my dear Byron ; very soon I shall write again, for I have no more
' right to a letter from you than to the crown of Persia. Farewell,
' and believe me to be
" Ever yours very affectionately,
"SAMV ROGERS.
"The report of your being seen in a curricle in Parliament Street
' produced as great a sensation as her Majesty's first appearance,
' and I am very sure you would have been as warmly welcomed.
' The world is on tiptoe to see you in any shape. In the mean
' time a forgery or two is issuing from the press to gratify the most
' impatient."
140 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
P.S. — The Officers came in a body to thank me, etc.,
etc. ; but they might as well have let it alone ; for, in the
first place, it was but for a common act of decency, and,
in the next, their coming may put me in odium with the
liberals ; and, in that case, it would do them no good,
nor me either.
The other night (since the assassination), Fletcher was
stopped three times in the Street ; but, on perceiving who
he was, they apologized and bade him pass on: the
querists were probably on the look out for Somebody ;
they are very indefatigable in such researches.
Send me proofs of tJie Hints ; that I may correct them
or alter. You are losing (like a Goose) the best time
for publishing the Dante and the Tragedy : now is the
moment for Italian subjects.
855. — To Francis Hodgson.
Ravenna, iob.re 22, 1820.
MY DEAR HODGSON, — My sister tells me that you
desire to hear from me. I have not written to you since
I left England, nearly five years ago. I have no excuse
for this silence except laziness, which is none. Where I
am my date will tell you ; what I have been doing would
but little interest you, as it regards another country
and another people, and would be almost speaking
another language, for my own is not quite so familiar to
me as it used to be.
We have here the sepulchre of Dante and the forest
of Dryden and Boccaccio, all in very poetical preserva-
tion. I ride and write, and have here some Italian
friends and connections of both sexes, horses and dogs,
and the usual means and appliances of life, which passes
chequered as usual (and with all) with good and evil.
1820.] St)ME OLD FRIENDS. 141
Few English pass by this place, and none remain, which
renders it a much more eligible residence for a man who
would rather see them in England than out of it ; they
are best at home ; for out of it they but raise the price of
the necessaries and vices of other countries, and carry
little back to their own, except such things as you have
lately seen and heard of in the Queen's trial.
Your friend Denman * is making a figure. I am glad
of it ; he had all the auguries of a superior man about
him before I left the country. Hobhouse is a Radical,
and is doing great things in that somewhat violent line of
politics. His intellect will bear him out ; but, though I
do not disapprove of his cause, I by no means envy him
his company. Our friend Scrope 2 is dished, diddled, and
done up ; what he is our mutual friends have written to
me somewhat more coldly than I think our former con-
nections with him warrant : but where he is I know not,
for neither they nor he have informed me. Remember
me to Harry Drury. He wrote to me a year ago to
subscribe to the Harrow New School erection ; 3 but
my name has not now value enough to be placed among
1. Thomas Denman (1779-1854), created (1834) first Lord Denman,
and Lord Chief Justice (1832), defended the queen as her solicitor-
general, though his unfortunate peroration, alluding to the story of
the woman taken in adultery, gave rise to the epigram —
" Most gracious queen, we thee implore
To go away and sin no more ;
Or, if that effort be too great,
To go away at any rate."
A brilliant scholar, Denman had been a member of a "social club
"or circle," to which Hodgson, Drury, Bland, Merivale, and others
belonged.
2. For Scrope Davies, see Letters, vol. i. p. 165, note 2. Ruined
at play, he had escaped to the Continent.
3. In 1819 and 1820, at a cost of upwards of ^5000, a new wing,
containing speech-room, class-rooms, and library, was added to the
old School.— Harrow School (1898), edited by E. W. Howson
and G. T. Warner, p. 33.
142 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
my old schoolfellows, and as to the trifle which can come
from a solitary subscriber, that is not worth mentioning.
Some zealous politicians wrote to me to come over to
the Queen's trial ; it was a business with which I should
have been sorry to have had anything to do ; in which
they who voted her guilty cut but a dirty figure. . . .
Such a coroner's inquest upon criminal conversation has
nothing very alluring in it, and I was obliged to her for
personal civilities (when in England), and would there-
fore rather avoid sitting in judgment upon her, either for
guilt or innocence, as it is an ungracious office.
Murray sent me your Friends, which I thought
very good and classical. The scoundrels of scribblers
are trying to run down Pope, but I hope in vain. It is
my intention to take up the cudgels in that controversy,
and to do my best to keep the Swan of Thames in his
true place. This comes of Southey and Wordsworth and
such renegade rascals with their systems. I hope you
will not be silent ; it is the common concern of all men
of common sense, imagination, and a musical ear. I
have already written somewhat thereto and shall do
more, and will not strike soft blows in a battle. You
will have seen that the Quarterly has had the sense and
spirit to support Pope in an article upon Bowles; it
is a good beginning. I do not know the author of that
article, but I suspect Israeli, an indefatigable and an able
writer. What are you about — poetry? I direct to
Bakewell, but I do not know for certain. To save you
a double letter, I close this with the present sheet.
Yours ever,
B.
1820.] A PROJECTED NEWSPAPER. 143
856. — To Thomas Moore.
Ravenna, Dec. 25, 1820.
You will or ought to have received the packet and
letters which I remitted to your address a fortnight ago
(or it may be more days), and I shall be glad of an
answer, as, in these times and places, packets per post
are in some risk of not reaching their destination.
I have been thinking of a project for you and me, in
case we both get to London again, which (if a Neapolitan
war don't suscitate) may be calculated as possible for one
of us about the spring of 1821. I presume that you, too,
will be back by that time, or never ; but on that you will
give me some index. The project, then, is for you and
me to set up jointly a newspaper^ — nothing more nor less
— weekly, or so, with some improvement or modifications
upon the plan of the present scoundrels, who degrade
that department,— but a newspaper, which we will edite in
due form, and, nevertheless, with some attention.
There must always be in it a piece of poesy from one
or other of us two, leaving room, however, for such
dilettanti rhymers as may be deemed worthy of appearing
in the same column : but this must be a sine q^^a non ;
and also as much prose as we can compass. We will
take an office — our names not announced, but suspected —
and, by the blessing of Providence, give the age some
new lights upon policy, poesy, biography, criticism,
morality, theology, and all other ism, ality, and ology
whatsoever.
I. Moore, in his Diary, January 12, 1821, says, "A letter from
' ' Lord Byron yesterday ; in which he tells me of his intention to
" visit England next spring, and proposes (as a means of paying my
"debts) that he and I should set up a newspaper together on his
"arrival there" (Memoirs, etc., vol. iii. p. 189; see also ibid., p.
285). In 1812 Moore had made the same proposal to Byron.
144 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
Why, man, if we were to take to this in good
earnest, your debts would be paid off in a twelvemonth,
and, by dint of a little diligence and practice, I doubt
not that we could distance the common-place black-
guards who have so long disgraced common sense and
the common reader. They have no merit but practice
and impudence, both of which we may acquire ; and, as
for talent and culture, the devil's in't if such proofs as
we have given of both can't furnish out something better
than the "funeral baked meats" which have coldly set
forth the breakfast table of all Great Britain for so many
years. Now, what think you? Let me know; and
recollect that, if we take to such an enterprise, we must
do so in good earnest. Here is a hint, — do you make it
a plan. We will modify it into as literary and classical a
concern as you please, only let us put out our powers
upon it, and it will most likely succeed. But you must
live in London, and I also, to bring it to bear, and we
must keep it a secret.
As for the living in London, I would make that not
difficult to you (if you would allow me), until we could
see whether one means or other (the success of the plan,
for instance) would not make it quite easy for you, as
well as your family; and, in any case, we should have
some fun, composing, correcting, supposing, inspecting,
and supping together over our lucubrations. If you
think this worth a thought, let me know, and I will begin
to lay in a small literary capital of composition for the
occasion.
Yours ever affectionately,
B.
P.S. — If you thought of a middle plan between a Spec-
tator and a newspaper, why not ? — only not on a Sunday.
1820.]
DON JUAN) CANTO V.
Not that Sunday is not an excellent day, but it is engaged
already. We will call it the " Tenda Rossa," * the name
Tassoni gave an answer of his in a controversy, in allusion
to the delicate hint of Timour the Lame, to his enemies,
by a " Tenda " of that colour, before he gave battle. Or
we will call it Git, or / Carbonari, if it so please you
— or any other name full of " pastime and prodigality,"
which you may prefer. * * Let me have an
answer. I conclude poetically, with the bellman, "A
" merry Christmas to you ! "
857. — To John Murray.
R? i0i>re 28° 1820.
D* M., — I have had no communication from you
of any kind since the second reading of the Queen's bill.
I write merely to apprize you that, by this Post, I have
transmitted to Mr. Douglas Kinnaird the fifth Canto of
Don Juan ; and you will apply (if so disposed) to him
for it. It consists of 155 Octave Stanzas, with a few
notes.
I wrote to you several times, and told you of the
I . Alessandro Tassoni ( 1 565-1635), a native of Modena, published,
in 1622, La Secchia Rapita, a mock-heroic poem, which was the
forerunner of Boileau's Lutrin and Pope's Rape of tlie Lock. The
allusion is explained by the following extract from the Vita di
Alessandro Tassoni (p. xxiv. ) of Muratori : —
" Al veder questo nuovo assalto comincie il Tassoni a perder la
' pazienza, e montogli la senape al naso. II perche preso 1'esempio
' di Tamerlano, che nelle sue guerre, ed assedi esponeva prima una
' Tenda bianca in segno di general perdono ; nell' altro dl una
' Tenda rossa per indizio di morte a chi avesse preso 1'armi contra
' di lui, e nel terzo dl una Tenda ncra per segno di un totale ester-
'minio d' ogni sesso, ed eta : pubblico anch' egli nell1 anno 1613
' un Libro in Modena (benche nel Frontispizio si legga in Fran-
' cofort) con questo titolo : Tenda Rossa, risposta di Girolamo
Nomisenti a i Dialoghi di Falcidio Melampodio."
VOL. V. L
146 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XX.
various events, assassinations, etc., which have occurred
here. War is certain. If you write, write soon.
Yours,
B.
P.S. — Did you receive two letters, etc., from Galig-
nani to me, which I enclosed to you long ago ? I sup-
pose your answer must have been intercepted, as they
were of importance to you, and you would naturally have
acknowledged their arrival.
A SUDDEN THOUGHT.
CHAPTER XXI.
EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY, JANUARY 4 —
FEBRUARY 27, 1 82 1.
Ravenna, January 4, 1821.
" A SUDDEN thought strikes me." Let me begin a Journal
once more. The last I kept was in Switzerland, in
record of a tour made in the Bernese Alps, which I
made to send to my sister in 1816, and I suppose that
she has it still, for she wrote to me that she was pleased
with it. Another, and longer, I kept in 1813-1814,
which I gave to Thomas Moore in the same year.
This morning I gat me up late, as usual — weather
bad — bad as England — worse. The snow of last week
melting to the sirocco of to-day, so that there were two
damned things at once. Could not even get to ride on
horseback in the forest. Stayed at home all the morning
— looked at the fire — wondered when the post would
come. Post came at the Ave Maria, instead of half-past
one o'clock, as it ought. Galignani's Messengers, six in
number — a letter from Faenza, but none from England.
Very sulky in consequence (for there ought to have been
letters), and ate in consequence a copious dinner; for
when I am vexed, it makes me swallow quicker — but
drank very little.
I was out of spirits — read the papers — thought what
fame was, on reading, in a case of murder, that "Mr,
148
EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY. [CHAP. XXI.
" Wych, grocer, at Tunb ridge, sold some bacon, flour,
" cheese, and, it is believed, some plums, to some gipsy
" woman accused. He had on his counter (I quote faith-
" fully) a book, the Life of Pamela, which he was tearing
" for waste paper, etc., etc. In the cheese was found, etc.,
" and a leaf of Pamela wrapt round tfic bacon" What
would Richardson,1 the vainest and luckiest of living
I. Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) used to say of Fielding that
"had he not known who Fielding was, he should have believed he
"was an ostler " (Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill, vol. ii.
p. 174). In his Correspondence (vol. vi. p. 154) he says, " Poor
"Fielding! I could not help telling his sister that I was equally
"surprised at and concerned for his continued lowness." Again,
writing to Mrs. Donnellan, February 22, 1752, Richardson says
(ibid,, vol. iv. p. 59), " Mr. Fielding has over-written himself, or
"rather under-written ; and in his own journal seems ashamed of
"his last piece; and has promised that the same Muse shall write
" no more for him. The piece, in short, is as dead as if it had
" been published forty years ago, as to sale."
Speaking of Richardson's vanity, Dr. Johnson told Mrs. Piozzi
(Atitobiography of Mrs. Piozzi, ed. Hay ward, vol. i. p. 311) that
Richardson ' ' died merely from want of change among his flatterers ;
"he perished for want of more, like a man obliged to breathe the
"same air till it is exhausted."
Boswell illustrates the same feature in Richardson's character in
the following note (Life of Dr. Johnson, vol. iv. pp. 28, 29, note 7) :
" One day at his country house at Northend, where a large company
" was assembled at dinner, a gentleman who was just returned from
" Paris, willing to please Mr. Richardson, mentioned to him a
" very flattering circumstance, — that he had seen his Clarissa lying on
" the King's brother's table. Richardson, observing that part of the
"company were engaged in talking to each other, affected then not
" to attend to it. But by and by, when there was a general silence,
" and he thought that the flattery might be fully heard, he addressed
" himself to the gentleman, ' I think, sir, you were saying something
"about ' pausing in a high flutter of expectation. The gentle-
" man, provoked at his inordinate vanity, resolved not to indulge it,
"and with an exquisitely sly air of indifference, answered, 'A mere
"trifle, sir, not worth repeating.' "
Among Richardson's flatterers was Aaron Hill (1685-1750),
whose correspondence with Pope is published in Pope's Works, ed.
Courthope, vol. x. pp. 1-78. He gratified Richardson, as well as his
own feelings, by abusing Pope. Thus, writing, September 10, 1 744, to
Richardson, he says, "Mr. Pope, as you with equal keenness and
" propriety express it, is gone out. I told a friend of his, who sent
" me the first news of it, that I was very sorry for his death, because
" I doubted whether he would live to recover the accident. Indeed,
1 82 1.] THE SEXTON OF AUTHORSHIP. 149
authors (i.e. while alive) — he who, with Aaron Hill, used
to prophesy and chuckle over the presumed fall of
Fielding l (the prose Homer of human nature) and of
Pope (the most beautiful of poets) — what would he have
said, could he have traced his pages from their place on
the French prince's toilets (see Boswell's Johnson) to the
grocer's counter and the gipsy-murderess's bacon ! ! !
What would he have said ? What can any body say,
save what Solomon said long before us ? After all, it is
but passing from one counter to another, from the book-
seller's to the other tradesman's — grocer or pastry-cook.
For my part, I have met with most poetry upon trunks ;
so that I am apt to consider the trunk-maker as the
sexton of authorship.
Wrote five letters in about half an hour, short and
savage, to all my rascally correspondents. Carriage
came. Heard the news of three murders at Faenza and
Forli — a carabinier, a smuggler, and an attorney — all
last night. The two first in a quarrel, the latter by
premeditation.
Three weeks ago — almost a month — the 7th it was —
I picked up the commandant, mortally wounded, out of
" it gives me no surprise, to find you thinking he was in the wane of
"his popularity. It arose, originally, but from meditated little per-
"sonal assiduities, and a certain bladdery swell of management."
I. Byron admired Fielding's democratic spirit. See Detached
Thoughts, No. 116. Johnson (Boswell's Life, ed. G. B. Hill, vol. ii.
p. 48), comparing Fielding with Richardson, says, " There is all
' the difference in the world between characters of nature and
' characters of manners ; and there is the difference between the
' characters of Fielding and those of Richardson." He disparaged
Melding as much as he admired Richardson.
On the other hand, S. T. Coleridge exclaims, "What a
'master of composition Fielding was ! Upon my word, I think
' the CEdipus Tyrannus, the Alchemist, and Tom Jones, the three
' most perfect plots ever planned. And how charming, how whole-
'some, Fielding always is! To take him up after Richardson is
'like emerging from a sick-room, heated by stoves, into an open
'lawn, on a breezy day in May." — Table Talk (July 5, 1834).
150 EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY. [CHAP. XXI.
the street ; he died in my house ; assassins unknown, but
presumed political. His brethren wrote from Rome last
night to thank me for having assisted him in his last
moments. Poor fellow ! it was a pity ; he was a good
soldier, but imprudent. It was eight in the evening
when they killed him. We heard the shot ; my servants
and I ran out, and found him expiring, with five wounds,
two whereof mortal — by slugs they seemed. I examined
him, but did not go to the dissection next morning.
Carriage at 8 or so — went to visit La Contessa G. —
found her playing on the piano-forte — talked till ten,
when the Count, her father, and the no less Count, her
brother, came in from the theatre. Play, they said,
Alfieri's Fileppo x — well received.
Two days ago the King of Naples passed through
Bologna on his way to congress.2 My servant Luigi
1. Alfieri's 'Fileppo appeared in 1783. The scene is laid at Madrid,
in 1568. Philip II., Don Carlos, and Elizabeth daughter of
Henry II. of France, once betrothed to Don Carlos, but afterwards
the third wife of Philip II., are the principal characters. Ranieri
de' Calsabigi, writing to Alfieri, August 20, 1783, calls Philip
"the Spanish Tiberius," and quotes Tacitus's description of the
emperor, Alfieri, in his reply, September 6, 1783, accepts the
parallel and the model. Possibly this correspondence may have
suggested to Byron the choice of Tiberius (see p. 189) as a subject for
a play.
2. That is, to the Congress at Laybach. After the outbreak of the
Spanish Revolution of March, 1820, the Czar (April 18) proposed
that the sovereigns of Europe should jointly intervene to uphold
monarchical principles. The opposition of England prevented inter-
vention ; but the project was revived after the Neapolitan Revolution
in July, 1820. Though England again protested, a meeting of
sovereigns was arranged at Troppau, in Bohemia, in October.
There the Czar, the Emperor of Austria, and the Prince of Prussia
sanctioned the principle of joint intervention by the three allied
sovereigns to resist, and, if necessary, suppress, all popular changes.
This principle was to be at once applied in the case of Naples. On
the invitation of the allied sovereigns, King Ferdinand of Naples
met them at Laybach, in Carniola, in January, 1821. By a letter,
which reached Naples February q, the Duke of Calabria, as viceroy,
was informed that these Powers would not tolerate a constitution
sprung from revolution, and that, as a pledge of order, the country
1 82 1.] ADDITION TO FAMILY OF VICES. 151
brought the news. I had sent him to Bologna for a lamp.
How will it end ? Time will show.
Came home at eleven, or rather before. If the road
and weather are comfortable, mean to ride to-morrow.
High time — almost a week at this work — snow, sirocco,
one day — frost and snow the other — sad climate for Italy.
But the two seasons, last and present, are extraordinary.
Read a Life of Leonardo da Vinci by Rossi l — ruminated
— wrote this much, and will go to bed.
January 5, 1821.
Rose late — dull and drooping — the weather dripping
and dense. Snow on the ground, and sirocco above in
the sky, like yesterday. Roads up to the horse's belly,
so that riding (at least for pleasure) is not very feasible.
Added a postscript to my letter to Murray. Read the
conclusion, for the fiftieth time (I have read all W. Scott's
novels at least fifty times), of the third series of Tales of
my Landlord — grand work — Scotch Fielding, as well as
great English poet — wonderful man ! I long to get
drunk with him.
Dined versus six o' the clock. Forgot that there was
a plum-pudding, (I have added, lately, eating to my
" family of vices,") and had dined before I knew it.
Drank half a bottle of some sort of spirits — probably
spirits of wine; for what they call brandy, rum, etc., etc.,
here is nothing but spirits of wine, coloured accordingly.
Did not eat two apples, which were placed by way of
would be occupied by an Austrian army. Three days before the
arrival of the letter, the Austrians had crossed the Po (February 6).
For Byron's address to the Neapolitan insurgents, see Appendix V.
I. Possibly Bossi should be read for Rossi. There are two
books by Giuseppe Bossi, the painter, on Leonardo da Vinci : (i)
Del Cetiacolo di Leonardo da Vinci, Libri quattro, Milano, 1 8 IO, fol.
(2) Delle Opinioni di Leonardo da Vinci intorno alia simmelria de'
corpiumani, discorso, Milano, i8n,/0/.
152 EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY. [CHAP. XXI.
dessert. Fed the two cats, the hawk, and the tame (but
not tamed) crow. Read Mitford's History of Greece 1 —
Xenophon's Retreat of the Ten Thousand. Up to this
present moment writing, 6 minutes before eight o' the
clock — French hours, not Italian.
Hear the carriage — order pistols and great coat, as
usual — necessary articles. Weather cold — carriage open,
and inhabitants somewhat savage — rather treacherous
and highly inflamed by politics.2 Fine fellows, though,
— good materials for a nation. Out of chaos God made
a world, and out of high passions comes a people.
Clock strikes — going out to make love. Somewhat
perilous, but not disagreeable. Memorandum — a new
screen put up to-day. It is rather antique, but will do
with a little repair.
Thaw continues — hopeful that riding may be prac-
ticable to-morrow. Sent the papers to All1. — grand events
coming.
no' the clock and nine minutes. Visited La Con-
tessa G[uiccioli] nata G[hisleri] G[amba]. Found her
beginning my letter of answer to the thanks of Alessio
del Pinto of Rome for assisting his brother the late
Commandant in his last moments, as I had begged her
to pen my reply for the purer Italian, I being an ultra-
montane, little skilled in the set phrase of Tuscany. Cut
short the letter — finish it another day. Talked of Italy,
1. William Mitford (1744-1827) published \\isflistoiy of Greece
in 1784-1810. For Byron's opinion of the book, see Don Jitan,
Canto XII. stanza xix. note. " His great pleasure consists in praising
" tyrants, abusing Plutarch, spelling oddly, and writing quaintly :
"and, what is strange, after all, his is the best modern history of
" Greece in any language, and he is the best, perhaps, of all modern
"historians whatsoever," etc., etc.
2. Antonio Canonico Tarlazzi (1801-1891), a native of Ravenna,
who remembered Byron well, told Mr. Richard Edgcumbe that
Byron used to meet the " Young Italy" party at night at the Osttria
i now pulled down, outside the Porta San Mamante.
1821.] BACON'S APOPHTHEGMS. 153
patriotism, Alfieri, Madame Albany,1 and other branches
of learning. Also Sallust's Conspiracy of Catiline, and
the War of Jugurtha. At 9 came in her brother, II
Conte Pietro — at 10, her father, Conte Ruggiero.
Talked of various modes of warfare — of the Hun-
garian and Highland modes of broad-sword exercise, in
both whereof I was once a moderate " master of fence."
Settled that the R. will break out on the yth or 8th of
March, in which appointment I should trust, had it not
been settled that it was to have broken out in October,
1820. But those Bolognese shirked the Romagnuoles.
" It is all one to Ranger." 2 One must not be par-
ticular, but take rebellion when it lies in the way. Come
home — read the Ten Thousand again, and will go to bed.
Mem. — Ordered Fletcher (at four o'clock this after-
noon) to copy out seven or eight apophthegms of Bacon,3
in which I have detected such blunders as a schoolboy
might detect rather than commit. Such are the sages !
What must they be, when such as I can stumble on their
mistakes or misstatements ? I will go to bed, for I find
that I grow cynical.
1. The Comtesse d'Albany, tde Stolberg (1753-1824), married in
1772 the Young Pretender, Charles Edward Stuart, whom she left
in 1780. She lived with Alfieri from about 1780, in Rome, at
Paris, and, after the outbreak of the French Revolution, at Florence.
It has been said that, on the death of Charles Edward, in 1788, she
was married to Alfieri ; but of this there is little or no evidence.
On the other hand, her influence on his literary work as a clever
well-read woman, half French, half German, was undoubtedly great.
After Alfieri's death, in 1803, she attached herself to Frar^ois
Fabre, a French painter, to whom she left the library and manu-
scripts of Alfieri. Of her salon at Florence an account is given in
the Life of George Ticknor, vol. i. pp. 183, 184.
2. In The Suspicious Husband (17 47) by Benjamin Hoadly, act v.
sc. 2, "Ranger" says, "Up mounted I; and up I should have
" gone, if it had been in the garret — it's all one to Ranger."
3. See Appendix VI.
154 EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY. [CHAP. XXI.
January 6, 1821.
Mist — thaw — slop — rain. No stirring out on horse-
back. Read Spence's Anecdotes. Pope a fine fellow —
always thought him so. Corrected blunders in nine
apophthegms of Bacon — all historical — and read Mitford's
Greece. Wrote an epigram. Turned to a passage in
Guinguene'1 — ditto in Lord Holland's Lope de Vega?
Wrote a note on Don Juan.
At eight went out to visit. Heard a little music —
like music. Talked with Count Pietro G. of the Italian
comedian Vestris, who is now at Rome — have seen him
often act in Venice — a good actor — very. Somewhat of
a mannerist ; but excellent in broad comedy, as well as
in the sentimental pathetic. He has made me frequently
1. Pierre Louis Ginguene (1748-1816), who under the Republic
was French ambassador at Turin, began to publish his Histoire
Litteraire de Cltalie, in i8li. The work, completed by Salfi,
occupies 14 volumes, 1811-35.
2. "Till Voltaire appeared, there was no nation more ignorant of
1 its neighbours' literature than the French. He first exposed, and
' then corrected, this neglect in his countrymen. There is no writer
' to whom the authors of other nations, especially of England, are
' so indebted for the extension of their fame in France, and, through
' France, in Europe. There is no critic who has employed more
' time, wit, ingenuity, and diligence in promoting the literary inter-
1 course between country and country, and in celebrating in one
' language the triumphs of another. Yet, by a strange fatality, he
'is constantly represented as the enemy of all literature but his
' own ; and Spaniards, Englishmen, and Italians vie with each
' other in inveighing against his occasional exaggeration of faulty
' passages ; the authors of which, till he pointed out their beauties,
' were hardly known beyond the country in which their language
' was spoken. Those who feel such indignation at his misrepre-
' sentations and oversights would find it difficult to produce a critic
' in any modern language, who, in speaking of foreign literature, is
' better informed or more candid than Voltaire ; and they certainly
' never would be able to discover one who to those qualities unites
'so much sagacity and liveliness." — Some Account of the Life and
Writings of Lope Felix de Vega Carpio, ed. 1817 (published with
Lord Holland's name), vol. i. p. 216. (See Appendix VI. for
Byron's use of this passage at the end of his correction of Bacon's
Apophthegms.)
l82I.] CHRONIC ENNUI. 155
laugh and cry, neither of which is now a very easy matter
— at least, for a player to produce in me.
Thought of the state of women under the ancient
Greeks — convenient enough. Present state a remnant of
the barbarism of the chivalric and feudal ages — artificial
and unnatural. They ought to mind home — and be well
fed and clothed — but not mixed in society. Well educated,
too, in religion — but to read neither poetry nor politics —
nothing but books of piety and cookery. Music — draw-
ing— dancing — also a little gardening and ploughing now
and then. I have seen them mending the roads in Epirus
with good success. Why not, as well as haymaking and
milking ?
Came home, and read Mitford again, and played with
my mastiff — gave him his supper. Made another reading
to the epigram, but the turn the same. To-night at the
theatre, there being a prince on his throne in the last
scene of the comedy, — the audience laughed, and asked
him for a Constitution. This shows the state of the public
mind here, as well as the assassinations. It won't do.
There must be an universal republic, — and there ought
to be.
The crow is lame of a leg — wonder how it happened
— some fool trod upon his toe, I suppose. The falcon
pretty brisk — the cats large and noisy — the monkeys I
have not looked to since the cold weather, as they suffer
by being brought up. Horses must be gay — get a ride
as soon as weather serves. Deuced muggy still — an
Italian winter is a sad thing, but all the other seasons
are charming.
What is the reason that I have been, all my lifetime,
more or less enmty'e ? and that, if any thing, I am rather
less so now than I was at twenty, as far as my recollection
serves ? I do not know how to answer this, but presume
156 EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY. [CHAP. XXI.
that it is constitutional, — as well as the waking in low
spirits, which I have invariably done for many years.
Temperance and exercise, which I have practised at
times, and for a long time together vigorously and
violently, made little or no difference. Violent passions
did; — when under their immediate influence — it is odd,
but — I was in agitated, but not in depressed, spirits.
A dose of salts has the effect of a temporary inebria-
tion, like light champagne, upon me. But wine and
spirits make me sullen and savage to ferocity — silent,
however, and retiring, and not quarrelsome, if not spoken
to. Swimming also raises my spirits, — but in general
they are low, and get daily lower. That is hopeless ; for
I do not think I am so much enmiy'e as I was at nineteen.
The proof is, that then I must game, or drink, or be in
motion of some kind, or I was miserable. At present,
I can mope in quietness; and like being alone better
than any company — except the lady's whom I serve.
But I feel a something, which makes me think that, if I
ever reach near to old age, like Swift, " I shall die at
" top " first.1 Only I do not dread idiotism or madness
so much as he did. On the contrary, I think some
quieter stages of both must be preferable to much of
what men think the possession of their senses.
January 7, 1821, Sunday.
Still rain — mist — snow — drizzle — and all the incal-
culable combinations of a climate where heat and cold
struggle for mastery. Read Spence, and turned over
I. "I remember as I and others were taking with Swift an even-
' ing walk, about a mile out of Dublin, he stopped short : we passed
' on ; but perceiving he did not follow us, I went back and found
' him fixed as a statue, and earnestly gazing upwards at a noble elm,
' which, in its uppermost branches, was much withered and decayed.
' Pointing at it, he said, ' I shall be like that tree, I shall die at
' top.' " — Dr. Young, in his Letter to Richardson.
l82l.] CONSPIRACY AND COUNTER-STROKE. 157
Roscoe,1 to find a passage I have not found. Read the
fourth vol. of W. Scott's second series of Tales of my
Landlord. Dined. Read the Lugano Gazette. Read —
I forget what. At eight went to conversazione. Found
there the Countess Geltrude,2 Betti V. and her husband,
and others. Pretty black-eyed woman that — only nine-
teen— same age as Teresa, who is prettier, though.
The Count Pietro G[amba] took me aside to say that
the Patriots have had notice from Forli (twenty miles off)
that to-night the government and its party mean to strike
a stroke — that the Cardinal here has had orders to make
several arrests immediately, and that, in consequence, the
Liberals are arming, and have posted patroles in the
streets, to sound the alarm and give notice to fight for it.
He asked me " what should be done ? " I answered,
" Fight for it, rather than be taken in detail ; " and offered,
if any of them are in immediate apprehension of arrest,
to receive them in my house (which is defensible), and to
defend them, with my servants and themselves (we have
arms and ammunition), as long as we can, — or to try to
get them away under cloud of night. On going home,
I offered him the pistols which I had about me — but he
refused, but said he would come off to me in case of
accidents.
It wants half an hour of midnight, and rains; — as
Gibbet says, " a fine night for their enterprise — dark as
"hell, and blows like the devil."3 If the row don't
happen now, it must soon. I thought that their system
of shooting people would soon produce a re-action — and
now it seems coming. I will do what I can in the way
1. William Roscoe (1753-1831) had already published his two
historical works : The Life of Lorenzo dt? Medici, called the Magtiificent
(1796), and The Life and Pontificate of Leo the Tenth (1805).
2. Sic in Moore.
3. Beaux' Stratagem, act iv. sc. 2.
158 EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY. [CHAP. XXI.
of combat, though a little out of exercise. The cause is
a good one.
Turned over and over half a score of books for the
passage in question, and can't find it. Expect to hear
the drum and the musquetry momently (for they swear to
resist, and are right,) — but I hear nothing, as yet, save
the plash of the rain and the gusts of the wind at intervals.
Don't like to go to bed, because I hate to be waked, and
would rather sit up for the row, if there is to be one.
Mended the fire — have got the arms — and a book or
two, which I shall turn over. I know little of their
numbers, but think the Carbonari l strong enough to beat
the troops, even here. With twenty men this house
might be defended for twenty-four hours against any force
to be brought against it, now in this place, for the same
time ; and, in such a time, the country would have notice,
and would rise, — if ever they will rise, of which there is
some doubt. In the mean time, I may as well read as
do any thing else, being alone.
I. The Italian Carbonari owed their origin, statutes, and ritual to
the Freemasons (Saint-Edme, Constitution, etc., des Carbonari, pp.
7, 8). Much of their secret phraseology was, on the other hand,
taken from the charcoal-burners ; thus a Carbonari lodge was a
barraca (hut), and a meeting a veiidita (sale). Founded as a political
society by the "republican refugees, who fled from Joseph Buona-
"parte's rule to the Abruzzi and Calabria" (Bolton King, History
of Italian Unity, vol. i. p. 19), they spread over Italy, though
Naples remained the centre of their organization. In the society
were included royalists and republicans, papalists and anti-papalists,
soldiers, men of letters, priests, and officials. It linked together
Neapolitan Carbonari and Murattists, detesting Bourbon rule ; Pied-
montese Adelfi, cherishing ideals of a free and united Italy ; Lombard
federali, inspired by the romantic movement to social and literary
revolt ; and the " American hunters" of the Romagna, whose Capo
was Byron. But the bond was one of disaffection, not of principle.
In want of cohesion and in diversity of political aims lay the fatal
weakness of the society. The movement which it helped to prepare,
neither popular nor national, collapsed (see p. 8, note i), and
Mazzini and the later Italian patriots set their faces against the
association.
1 82 1.] THE CARBONARI. 159
JanuaryS, 1821, Monday.
Rose, and found Count P. G. in my apartments.
Sent away the servant. Told me that, according to the
best information, the Government had not issued orders
for the arrests apprehended ; that the attack in Forli had
not taken place (as expected) by the Sanfedisti — the
opponents of the Carbonari or Liberals — and that, as
yet, they are still in apprehension only. Asked me for
some arms of a better sort, which I gave him. Settled
that, in case of a row, the Liberals were to assemble here
(with me), and that he had given the word to Vincenzo
G. and others of the Chiefs for that purpose. He himself
and father are going to the chase in the forest ; but V. G.
is to come to me, and an express to be sent off to him,
P. G., if any thing occurs. Concerted operations. They
are to seize — but no matter.
I advised them to attack in detail, and in different
parties, in different places (though at the same time), so
as to divide the attention of the troops, who, though
few, yet being disciplined, would beat any body of
people (not trained) in a regular fight — unless dispersed
in small parties, and distracted with different assaults.
Offered to let them assemble here if they choose. It
is a strongish post — narrow street, commanded from
within — and tenable walls.
Dined. Tried on a new coat. Letter to Murray,
with corrections of Bacon's Apophthegms and an epigram
— the latter not for publication. At eight went to Teresa,
Countess G. At nine and a half came in II Conte P.
and Count P. G. Talked of a certain proclamation
lately issued. Count R. G. had been with * * (the * *),
to sound him about the arrests. He, * *, is a trimmer^
and deals, at present, his cards with both hands. If he
don't mind, they'll be full. * * pretends (/ doubt him
l6o EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY. [CHAP. XXI.
— tluy don't, — we shall see) that there is no such order,
and seems staggered by the immense exertions of the
Neapolitans, and the fierce spirit of the Liberals here.
The truth is, that * * cares for little but his place (which
is a good one), and wishes to play pretty with both
parties. He has changed his mind thirty times these
last three moons, to my knowledge, for he corresponds
with me. But he is not a bloody fellow — only an
avaricious one.
It seems that, just at this moment (as Lydia Languish *
says), " there will be no elopement after all." I wish
that I had known as much last night — or, rather, this
morning — I should have gone to bed two hours earlier.
And yet I ought not to complain ; for, though it is a
sirocco, and heavy rain, I have not yawned for these two
days.
Came home — read History of Greece — before dinner
had read Walter Scott's Rob Roy. Wrote address to the
letter in answer to Alessio del Pinto, who has thanked
me for helping his brother (the late Commandant,
murdered here last month) in his last moments. Have
told him I only did a duty of humanity — as is true. The
brother lives at Rome.
Mended the fire with some sgobole (a Romagnuole
word), and gave the falcon some water. Drank some
Seltzer-water. Mem. — received to-day a print, or etching,
of the story of Ugolino, by an Italian painter — different,
of course, from Sir Joshua Reynolds's, and I think (as
far as recollection goes) no worse, for Reynolds's is not
good in history.2 Tore a button in my new coat.
1. " Lydia Languish" in The Rivals, act iv. sc. 2 —
" So ! — there will be no elopement after all ! " (sullenly)
2. Medwin (Angler in Wales, vol. ii. pp. 178, 179), speaking of
Byron's palace at Pisa, says, " I found him in his sanctum. The
I82I.J
VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES.
161
I wonder what figure these Italians will make in a
regular row. I sometimes think that, like the Irishman's
gun (somebody had sold him a crooked one), they will
only do for " shooting round a corner ; " at least, this
sort of shooting has been the late tenor of their exploits.
And yet there are materials in this people, and a noble
energy, if well directed. But who is to direct them?
No matter. Out of such times heroes spring. Diffi-
culties are the hotbeds of high spirits, and Freedom the
mother of the few virtues incident to human nature.
Tuesday, January 9, 1821.
Rose — the day fine. Ordered the horses; but Lega
(my secretary, an Italianism for steward or chief servant)
coming to tell me that the painter had finished the work
in fresco for the room he has been employed on lately,
I went to see it before I set out. The painter has not
copied badly the prints from Titian, etc., considering
all things.
Dined. Read Johnson's Vanity of ffiiman Wishes,
— all the examples and mode of giving them sublime,
as well as the latter part, with the exception of an
occasional couplet. I do not so much admire the
opening. I remember an observation of Sharpe's, (the
Conversationist, as he was called in London, and a very
clever man,) that the first line of this poem was super-
fluous, and that Pope (the best of poets, /think,) would
have begun at once, only changing the punctuation —
" Survey mankind from China to Peru." *
" walls of it were stained, and against them hung a picture of
" Ugolino, in the Torre Delia fame, the work of one of the Guiccioli's
" sisters, and a miniature of Ada."
I. For Richard Sharp, see Letters, vol. ii. p. 341, note 2. He
had been a wholesale hatter, and was of a peculiarly dark com-
plexion. " Somebody said that he had transferred the colour of his
VOL. V. M
1 62 EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY. [CHAP. XXI.
The former line, "Let observation," etc., is certainly
heavy and useless. But 'tis a grand poem — and so true 1
— true as the loth of Juvenal himself. The lapse of
ages changes all things — time — language — the earth — the
bounds of the sea — the stars of the sky, and every thing
" about, around, and underneath " man, except man himself >
who has always been, and always will be, an unlucky
rascal. The infinite variety of lives conduct but to death,
and the infinity of wishes lead but to disappointment.1
"hats to his face, when Luttrell said that 'it was darkness which
"might be felt' " (Greville Memoirs, vol. i. p. 249).
Byron refers to the following passage : —
' ' There is another offence against simplicity which should be
" shunned ; though it occurs often in Johnson, and though the
" abstract terms, affected by him, give a kind of false pomp to the
"style, assuming the air of personification. He thus commences
" his imitation of the tenth satire of Juvenal —
" ' Let observation, with extensive view,
Survey mankind from China to Peru.'
" Dryden and Pope would have been satisfied with the second line,
" and would have avoided both the tautology and pomposity of the
" first." — Sharp's Letters and Essays in Prose and Verse, pp. 35, 36,
ed. 1834.
Johnson (Boswell's Life, vol. i. p. 403) himself discussed this
question of abrupt openings. Speaking of Gray, he says, "His
" Ode, which begins —
" ' Ruin seize thee, ruthless King,
Confusion on thy banners wait ! '
' has been celebrated for its abruptness, and plunging into the
' subject all at once. But such arts as these have no merit, unless
' when they are original. We admire them only once ; and this
' abruptness has nothing new in it. We have had it often before.
' Nay, we have it in the old song of Johnny Armstrong —
" ' Is there ever a man in all Scotland
From the highest estate to the lowest degree,' etc.
" And then, sir,
" ' Yes, there is a man in Westmoreland,
And Johnny Armstrong they do him call.' "
I. " Time hovers o'er, impatient to destroy,
And shuts up all the passages of joy :
In vain their gifts the bounteous seasons pour,
The fruit autumnal, and the vernal flow'r ;
With listless eyes the dotard views the store,
He views, and wonders that they please no more."
Vanity of Human Wishes.
1 82 I.] WAR, OR RUMOURS OF WAR. 163
All the discoveries which have yet been made have
multiplied little but existence. An extirpated disease is
succeeded by some new pestilence; and a discovered
world has brought little to the old one, except the p —
first and freedom afterwards — the latter a fine thing,
particularly as they gave it to Europe in exchange for
slavery. But it is doubtful whether "the Sovereigns"
would not think the first the best present of the two to
their subjects.
At eight went out — heard some news. They say the
King of Naples has declared by couriers from Florence,
to the Powers (as they call now those wretches with
crowns), that his Constitution was compulsive, etc., etc.,
and that the Austrian barbarians are placed again on
war pay, and will march. Let them — " they come like
" sacrifices in their trim," x the hounds of hell ! Let it
still be a hope to see their bones piled like those of the
human dogs at Morat, in Switzerland, which I have seen.
Heard some music. At nine the usual visitors —
news, war, or rumours of war. Consulted with P. G., etc.,
etc. They mean to insurrect here, and are to honour
me with a call thereupon. I shall not fall back ; though
I don't think them in force or heart sufficient to make
much of it. But, onward! — it is now the time to act,
and what signifies self> if a single spark of that which
would be worthy of the past can be bequeathed un-
quenchedly to the future? It is not one man, nor a
million, but the spirit of liberty which must be spread.
The waves which dash upon the shore are, one by one,
broken, but yet the ocean conquers, nevertheless. It
I. " Let them come j
They come like sacrifices in their trim,
And to the fire-ey'd maid of smoky war,
All hot, and bleeding, will we offer them."
King Henry IV., Part I. act iv. sc. I.
164 EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY. [CHAP. XXI.
overwhelms the Armada, it wears the rock, and, if the
Neptunians are to be believed, it has not only destroyed,
but made a world. In like manner, whatever the sacrifice
of individuals, the great cause will gather strength, sweep
down what is rugged, and fertilise (for sea-weed is manure)
what is cultivable. And so, the mere selfish calculation
ought never to be made on such occasions; and, at
present, it shall not be computed by me. I was never
a good arithmetician of chances, and shall not commence
now.
January 10, 1821.
Day fine — rained only in the morning. Looked over
accounts. Read Campbell's Poets — marked errors of
Tom (the author) for correction. Dined — went out —
music — Tyrolese air, with variations. Sustained the
cause of the original simple air against the variations of
the Italian school.
Politics somewhat tempestuous, and cloudier daily.
To-morrow being foreign post-day, probably something
more will be known.
Came home — read. Corrected Tom Campbell's slips
of the pen. A good work, though — style affected — but
his defence of Pope is glorious.1 To be sure, it is his
own cause too, — but no matter, it is very good, and does
him great credit.
Midnight.
I have been turning over different Lives of the Poets.
I rarely read their works, unless an occasional flight over
I. To Campbell's Specimens of the British, Poets (9 vols., 1819) is
prefixed an Essay on English Poetry ', which concludes with a defence
of Pope. The Essay, and the Lives prefixed to the Specimens, were
republished separately in 1848, edited by Peter Cunningham. In
this edition the defence of Pope occupies pp. 108-117.
1 82 1.] THE TALE OF TROY. 165
the classical ones, Pope, Dryden, Johnson, Gray, and
those who approach them nearest (I leave the rant of the
rest to the cant of the day), and — I had made several
reflections, but I feel sleepy, and may as well go to bed.
January n, 1821.
Read the letters. Corrected the tragedy and the
Hints from Horace. Dined, and got into better spirits.
Went out — returned — finished letters, five in number.
Read Poets, and an anecdote in Spence.
All1, writes to me that the Pope, and Duke of Tuscany,
and King of Sardinia, have also been called to Congress ;
but the Pope will only deal there by proxy. So the
interests of millions are in the hands of about twenty
coxcombs, at a place called Leibach ! l
I should almost regret that my own affairs went well,
when those of .nations are in peril. If the interests of
mankind could be essentially bettered (particularly of
these oppressed Italians), I should not so much mind my
own " sma peculiar." God grant us all better times, or
more philosophy !
In reading, I have just chanced upon an expression
of Tom Campbell's ; — speaking of Collins, he says that
" no reader cares any more about the characteristic
" manners of his Eclogues than about the authenticity of
" the tale of Troy." 2 'Tis false— we do care about " the
" authenticity of the tale of Troy." I have stood upon that
plain daily, for more than a month in 1810; and if any
thing diminished my pleasure, it was that the blackguard
1. See p. 8, note i.
2. In Campbell's life of William Collins (Essay on English
Poetry, ed. 1848, p. 270), he says, speaking of Collins's pastoral
eclogues, " It seems that he himself ultimately undervalued those
"eclogues, as deficient in characteristic manners ; but surely no just
" reader of them cares any more about this circumstance than about
" the authenticity of the tale of Troy."
1 66 EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY. [CHAP. XXI.
Bryant1 had impugned its veracity. It is true I read
Homer Travestied"*- (the first twelve books), because Hob-
house and others bored me with their learned localities,
and I love quizzing. But I still venerated the grand
original as the truth of history (in the material facts] and
of place. Otherwise, it would have given me no delight.
Who will persuade me, when I reclined upon a mighty
tomb, that it did not contain a hero ? — its very magnitude
proved this. Men do not labour over the ignoble and
petty dead — and why should not the dead be Homer's
dead ? The secret of Tom Campbell's defence of inaccu-
racy in costume and description is, that his Gertrude,3 etc.,
has no more locality in common with Pennsylvania than
with Penmanmaur. It is notoriously full of grossly false
scenery, as all Americans declare, though they praise
parts of the poem. It is thus that self-love for ever
creeps out, like a snake, to sting anything which happens,
even accidentally, to stumble upon it.
January 12, 1821.
The weather still so humid and impracticable, that
London, in its most oppressive fogs, were a summer-
bower to this mist and sirocco, which has now lasted
1. " I've stood upon Achilles' tomb,
And heard Troy doubted ; — time will doubt of Rome."
Don yuan, Canto IV. stanza ci.
The first edition of Jacob Bryant's Dissertation concerning the war
of Troy, and the expedition of the Grecians, as described by Homer ;
showing that no such expedition was ever undertaken, and that no
such city of Phrygia existed, appeared in 1796.
2. Homer Travestie ; Being a new translation of that great poet,
appeared anonymously in 1720. It contained a translation of three
books. A second edition, with four books translated by Cotton,
junior, was printed in 1762. The third edition of this work, greatly
enlarged, was published in 1770, under the title of A Burlesque
Translation of Homer (i.e. of Books I.-XI1. of the Iliad), with the
real name of the author, T. Bridges.
3. Gertrude of Wyoming appeared in 1809.
1 82 1.] A PLAY FOR THE STUDY. 167
(but with one day's interval), chequered with snow or
heavy rain only, since the 3oth of December, 1820. It
is so far lucky that I have a literary turn ; — but it is very
tiresome not to be able to stir out, in comfort, on any
horse but Pegasus, for so many days. The roads are
even worse than the weather, by the long splashing, and
the heavy soil, and the growth of the waters.
Read the Poets — English, that is to say — out of
Campbell's edition. There is a good deal of taffeta in
some of Tom's prefatory phrases, but his work is good as
a whole. I like him best, though, in his own poetry.
Murray writes that they want to act the Tragedy of
Marino Faliero — more fools they, it was written for the
closet. I have protested against this piece of usurpation,
(which, it seems, is legal for managers over any printed
work, against the author's will) and I hope they will not
attempt it. Why don't they bring out some of the num-
berless aspirants for theatrical celebrity, now encumbering
their shelves, instead of lugging me out of the library ?
I have written a fierce protest against any such attempt ;
but I still would hope that it will not be necessary, and
that they will see, at once, that it is not intended for the
stage. It is too regular — the time, twenty-four hours —
the change of place not frequent — nothing *w/(7-dramatic
— no surprises, no starts, nor trap-doors, nor opportunities
" for tossing their heads and kicking their heels " — and
no love — the grand ingredient of a modern play.
I have found out the seal cut on Murray's letter. It
is meant for Walter Scott — or Sir Walter — he is the first
poet knighted since Sir Richard Blackmore. But it does
not do him justice. Scott's — particularly when he recites
— is a very intelligent countenance, and this seal says
nothing.
Scott is certainly the most wonderful writer of the
1 68 EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY. [CHAP. XXI.
day. His novels are a new literature in themselves, and
his poetry as good as any — if not better (only on an
erroneous system) — and only ceased to be so popular, be-
cause the vulgar learned were tired of hearing " Aristides
" called the Just," and Scott the Best, and ostracised him.
I like him, too, for his manliness of character, for the
extreme pleasantness of his conversation, and his good-
nature towards myself, personally. May he prosper ! —
for he deserves it. I know no reading to which I fall
with such alacrity as a work of W. Scott's. I shall give
the seal, with his bust on it, to Madame la Comtesse G.
this evening, who will be curious to have the effigies of a
man so celebrated.
How strange are my thoughts ! — The reading of the
song of Milton, " Sabrina fair " l has brought back upon
me — I know not how or why — the happiest, perhaps,
days of my life (always excepting, here and there, a
Harrow holiday in the two latter summers of my stay
there) when living at Cambridge with Edward Noel
Long,2 afterwards of the Guards, — who, after having
served honourably in the expedition to Copenhagen (of
which two or three thousand scoundrels yet survive in
plight and pay), was drowned early in 1809, on his passage
to Lisbon with his regiment in the St. George transport,
which was run foul of in the night by another trans-
port. We were rival swimmers — fond of riding — reading
— and of conviviality. We had been at Harrow together ;
but — there, at least — his was a less boisterous spirit than
I. " Sabrina fair,
Listen where thou art sitting
Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave,
In twisted braids of lilies knitting
The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair," etc.
Comus, line 859, et seqq.
z. For Long, the "Cleon" of Childish Recollections, see Letters,
vol. i. p. 73, note 2, and vol. ii. p. 19, note.
1 82 1.] BYRON'S POOL. 169
mine. I was always cricketing — rebelling — fighting —
rowing (from row, not &?#/-rowing, a different practice),
and in all manner of mischiefs ; while he was more sedate
and polished. At Cambridge — both of Trinity — my
spirit rather softened, or his roughened, for we became
very great friends. The description of Sabrina's seat
reminds me of our rival feats in diving. Though Cam's
is not a very translucent wave, it was fourteen feet deep,
where we used to dive for, and pick up — having thrown
them in on purpose — plates, eggs, and even shillings. I
remember, in particular, there was the stump of a tree
(at least ten or twelve feet deep) in the bed of the river,
in a spot where we bathed most commonly, round which I
used to cling, and " wonder how the devil I came there."
Our evenings we passed in music (he was musical,
and played on more than one instrument, flute and
violoncello), in which I was audience ; and I think that
our chief beverage was soda-water. In the day we rode,
bathed, and lounged, reading occasionally. I remember
our buying, with vast alacrity, Moore's new quarto 1 (in
1806), and reading it together in the evenings.
We only passed the summer together; — Long had
gone into the Guards during the year I passed in Notts,
away from college. His friendship, and a violent, though
pure, love and passion — which held me at the same
period — were the then romance of the most romantic
period of my life.
*****
I remember that, in the spring of 1809, Hobhouse
laughed at my being distressed at Long's death, and
amused himself with making epigrams upon his name,
which was susceptible of a pun — Long, short, etc. But
three years after, he had ample leisure to repent it, when
I. Epistles, Odes, and other Poems (1806).
I7O EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY. [CHAP. XXI.
our mutual friend, and his, Hobhouse's, particular friend,
Charles Matthews, was drowned also, and he himself was
as much affected by a similar calamity. But /did not
pay him back in puns and epigrams, for I valued Matthews
too much myself to do so ; and, even if I had not, I should
have respected his griefs.
Long's father wrote to me to write his son's epitaph.
I promised — but I had not the heart to complete it. He
was such a good amiable being as rarely remains long in
this world ; with talent and accomplishments, too, to
make him the more regretted. Yet, although a cheerful
companion, he had strange melancholy thoughts some-
times. I remember once that we were going to his uncle's,
I think — I went to accompany him to the door merely,
in some Upper or Lower Grosvenor or Brook Street, I
forget which, but it was in a street leading out of some
square, — he told me that, the night before, he " had taken
" up a pistol — not knowing or examining whether it was
" loaded or no — and had snapped it at his head, leaving
"it to chance whether it might not be charged." The
letter, too, which he wrote me on leaving college to join the
Guards, was as melancholy in its tenour as it could well
be on such an occasion. But he showed nothing of this
in his deportment, being mild and gentle ; — and yet with
much turn for the ludicrous in his disposition. We were
both much attached to Harrow, and sometimes made
excursions there together from London to revive our
schoolboy recollections.1
I. "... ere yon silver lamp of night . . .
Has thrice retraced her path of light, . . .
I trust, that we, my gentle Friend,
Shall see her rolling orbit wend,
Above the dear-loved peaceful seat,
Which once contained our youth's retreat ;
And, then, with those our childhood knew,
We'll mingle in the festive crew."
Lines to Edward Noel Long, Esq., see Poems,
1898, vol. i. p. 188.
i82i.] GRILLPARZER'S SAPPHO. 171
Midnight.
Read the Italian translation by Guide Sorelli of the
German Grillparzer l — a devil of a name, to be sure, for
posterity ; but they must learn to pronounce it. With all
the allowance for a translation, and above all, an Italian
translation (they are the very worst of translators, except
from the Classics — Annibale Caro,2 for instance — and
there, the bastardy of their language helps them, as, by
way of looking legitimate, they ape their father's tongue) ;
— but with every allowance for such a disadvantage, the
tragedy of Sappho is superb and sublime ! There is no
denying it. The man has done a great thing in writing
that play. And -who is he? I know him not ; but ages
will. 'Tis a high intellect.
I must premise, however, that I have read nothing of
Adolph Milliner's (the author of Guilt*), and much less
of Goethe, and Schiller, and Wieland, than I could wish.
I only know them through the medium of English, French,
1. Franz Grillparzer (1791-1872) was born at Vienna, where his
originality was crushed by rigorous press-censorship. He began his
literary career with Die Ahnjrau (1817), which was followed by
Sappho (1819). His Konig Ottokars Gltick und Ende (1825) was
kept for two years in the censor's office, and only discovered by
accident, when the poet had given it up for lost (see Laube's edition
of Grillparzer's Sdmtl. Werke, vol. i. p. xxiv.). The passage from
Byron's Journal is prefixed to a translation of Sappho, into English
blank verse, by L. C. C. (1855). Guido Sorelli's versione italiana
of Saffo was published in 1819. Perhaps Byron's curious ana-
chronism, where he makes Sardanapalus (act iii. sc. l) say —
" Sing me a song of Sappho, her, thou know'st,
Who in thy country threw "
is due to the impression made on his mind by Grillparzer's Sappho.
2. Annibale Caro 1(1507-1566) translated the Aineid into blank
verse (printed at Venice in 1581), and sang the praises alternately of
Francis I. and the Emperor Charles V.
3. Adolf Mullner (1774-1829) published his Die Schuld (1812).
It belongs to the Schicksalsdrama, or " Fate Tragedies," in which
some of the romantic school, e.g. Zacharias Werner, Houwald, etc.,
found expression for the new thoughts and feelings which invaded
the rationalistic world of the eighteenth century.
172 EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY. [CHAP. XXI.
and Italian translations. Of the real language I know
absolutely nothing, — except oaths learned from postillions
and officers in a squabble ! I can swear in German
potently, when I like — " Sacrament — Verfluchter — Hunds-
"foft" — and so forth;1 but I have little less of their
energetic conversation.
I like, however, their women, (I was once so desperately
in love with a German woman, Constance,) and all that I
have read, translated, of their writings, and all that I have
seen on the Rhine of their country and people — all, except
the Austrians, whom I abhor, loathe, and — I cannot find
words for my hate of them, and should be sorry to find
deeds correspondent to my hate; for I abhor cruelty
more than I abhor the Austrians — except on an impulse,
and then I am savage — but not deliberately so.
Grillparzer is grand — antique — not so simple as the
ancients, but very simple for a modern — too Madame de
StaehV/z, now and then — but altogether a great and goodly
writer.
January 13, 1821, Saturday.
Sketched the outline and Drams. Pers. of an intended
tragedy of Sardanapalus, which I have for some time
meditated. Took the names from Diodorus Siculus,
(I know the history of Sardanapalus, and have known it
since I was twelve years old,) and read over a passage in
I. " On with the horses ; off to Canterbury !
Tramp, tramp o'er pebble, and splash, splash through
puddle ;
Hurrah ! how swiftly speeds the post so merry !
Not like slow Germany, wherein they muddle
Along the road, as if they went to bury
Their fare ; and also pause besides, to fuddle
With ' schnapps ' — sad dogs ! whom ' Hundsfott ' or ' Ver-
fluchter,'
Affect no more than lightning a conductor."
Don Juan, Canto X. stanza Ixxi.
I82I.J SARDANAPALUS BEGUN. 173
the ninth vol. octavo, of Mitford's Greece, where he rather
vindicates the memory of this last of the Assyrians.1
Dined — news come — the Powers mean to war with
the peoples. The intelligence seems positive — let it be
so — they will be beaten in the end. The king-times are
fast finishing. There will be blood shed like water, and
tears like mist ; but the peoples will conquer in the end.
I shall not live to see it, but I foresee it.
I carried Teresa the Italian translation of Grillparzer's
Sappho, which she promises to read. She quarrelled with
me, because I said that love was not tfie loftiest theme for
true tragedy; and, having the advantage of her native
language, and natural female eloquence, she overcame
my fewer arguments. I believe she was right. I must
put more love into Sardanapalus than I intended. I
speak, of course, if the times will allow me leisure. That
// will hardly be a peace-maker.
January 14, 1821.
Turned over Seneca's tragedies. Wrote the opening
lines of the intended tragedy of Sardanapalus. Rode out
some miles into the forest. Misty and rainy. Returned —
dined — wrote some more of my tragedy.
Read Diodorus Siculus — turned over Seneca, and
some other books. Wrote some more of the tragedy.
Took a glass of grog. After having ridden hard in rainy
weather, and scribbled, and scribbled again, the spirits
I. The passage from Mitford's History of Greece (vol. ix. pp. 311-
313) is quoted in Sardanapalus, as a note to act i. sc. 2 —
" Sardanapalus
The king, and son of Anacyndaraxes,
In one day built Anchialus and Tarsus.
Eat, drink, and love ; the rest's not worth a fillip."
Sardanapalus, a Tragedy, was published with The Two Foscari,
and Cain, a Mystery, in December, 1821. Murray paid for the
three tragedies .£2710.
174 EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY. [CHAP. XXI.
(at least mine) need a little exhilaration, and I don't like
laudanum now as I used to do. So I have mixed a glass
of strong waters and single waters, which I shall now
proceed to empty. Therefore and thereunto I conclude
this day's diary.
The effect of all wines and spirits upon me is, however,
strange. It settles , but it makes me gloomy — gloomy at
the very moment of their effect, and not gay hardly ever.
But it composes for a time, though sullenly.
January 15, 1821.
Weather fine. Received visit. Rode out into the
forest — fired pistols. Returned home — dined — dipped
into a volume of Mitford's Greece — wrote part of a scene
of Sardanapalus. Went out — heard some music — heard
some politics. More ministers from the other Italian
powers gone to Congress. War seems certain — in that
case, it will be a savage one. Talked over various im-
portant matters with one of the initiated. At ten and
half returned home.
I have just thought of something odd. In the year
1814, Moore ("the poet," par excellence^ and he deserves
it) and I were going together, in the same carriage, to
dine with Earl Grey,1 the Capo Politico of the remaining
i. Charles Grey (1764-1845) succeeded his father as second Earl
Grey in 1807. As M.P. for Northumberland and Appleby (1786-
1807), he was prominent in opposition to Pitt, and support of Fox,
a member of the Society of the Friends of the People, and a con-
sistent advocate of parliamentary reform. In the Fox and Grenville
administration of 1 806 he was First Lord of the Admiralty, and on
the death of Fox, in September of that year, he became Secretary of
State for Foreign Affairs, leader of the House of Commons and of
the Whig party. After the fall of the Government in March, 1807,
Lord Grey was excluded from office till 1830, when he formed the
Reform Bill administration of 1830-34. He married, November
1 8, 1794, a daughter of the first Lord Ponsonby, by whom he had
fifteen children. Byron probably refers to Lady Louisa Elizabeth
Grey, born April 7, 1797, who married (1816) the first Earl of
Durham.
1 82 1.] FAME AT SIX-AND-TWENTY. 1 75
Whigs. Murray, the magnificent (the illustrious publisher
of that name), had just sent me a Java gazette — I know
not why, or wherefore. Pulling it out, by way of curiosity,
we found it to contain a dispute (the said Java gazette)
on Moore's merits and mine. I think, if I had been
there, that I could have saved them the trouble of dis-
puting on the subject. But, there is fame for you at six
and twenty! Alexander had conquered India at the
same age; but I doubt if he was disputed about, or his
conquests compared with those of Indian Bacchus, at
Java.
It was a great fame to be named with Moore ; greater
to be compared with him; greatest— pleasure, at least —
to be with him ; and, surely, an odd coincidence, that we
should be dining together while they were quarrelling
about us beyond the equinoctial line.
Well, the same evening, I met Lawrence x the painter,
I. Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830), the son of an innkeeper,
was knighted in 1815, and became President of the Royal Academy
in 1820. An infant prodigy, he drew, from the age of six, portraits
of his father's guests at the Black Bear Inn, Devizes. His prices
rose as he grew in fame. " A. Ellis," writes Jekyll, in December,
1828 (Letters, p. 189), " gives Lawrence five hundred guineas for a
"portrait of Lady G. and child. I have a picture he painted for
"half a guinea." Though he made a large income, he was always
in money difficulties, mainly through his passion for collecting works
of art. Rogers lent him money (Rogers and his Contemporaries,
vol. i. p. 426), and, when Lawrence came to his door at night
towards Christmas, 1825, " in a state of alarming agitation," asking
for a few thousand pounds, it was through Rogers that Lord Dudley
saved him from ruin (ibid., pp. 423-425). He died in debt. " Poor
''Sir T. Lawrence," writes Jekyll, January, 1830 (Letters, p. 220),
' is the subject of universal regret, terribly in debt, ^6000 they say
' to Lord Dudley, and God knows how much to others. ... It is
' false that he ever played. The riches of his portfolio very great,
' for so he spent all he had. They talk of a value of ^60,000 in
'sketches, studies, etc., of the great masters, an irreparable blow to
' the Academy. No such successor can be found." His good looks
and good manners, combined with his artistic genius and intellectual
gifts, made him popular in society. Greville (Memoirs, vol. i. p.
263) speaks of him, at the age of sixty, as " very like Canning in
176 EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY. [CHAP. XXI.
and heard one of Lord Grey's daughters (a fine, tall,
spirit-looking girl, with much of the patrician thorough-
bred look of her father, which I dote upon) play on the
harp, so modestly and ingenuously, that she looked music,
Well, I would rather have had my talk with Lawrence
(who talked delightfully) and heard the girl, than have
had all the fame of Moore and me put together.
The only pleasure of fame is that it paves the way to
pleasure; and the more intellectual our pleasure, the
better for the pleasure and for us too. It was, however,
agreeable to have heard our fame before dinner, and a
girl's harp after.
January 16, 1821.
Read — rode — fired pistols — returned — dined — wrote
— visited — heard music — talked nonsense — and went
home.
Wrote part of a Tragedy — advanced in Act ist with
" all deliberate speed." Bought a blanket. The weather
is still muggy as a London May — mist, mizzle, the air
replete with Scotticisms, which, though fine in the descrip-
tions of Ossian, are somewhat tiresome in real, prosaic
perspective. Politics still mysterious.
' appearance, remarkably gentlemanlike, with very mild manners,
' though rather too doucereux, agreeable in society, unassuming, and
' not a great talker j his mind was highly cultivated ; he had a taste
' for every kind of literature, and was enthusiastically devoted to his
' art. . . . He was ... a generous patron of young artists of merit
' and talent." His subjects were always painted, to say the least, at
their best. His portrait of George IV., which Moore (Memoirs, etc.,
vol. iii. p. 349) described as " disgraceful both to the king and the
"painter: a lie upon canvas," is an exaggerated example of his
flattery. At the time when Byron wrote (1821), Lawrence was at
Rome, where Lady Morgan saw him and one of his finest pictures,
the portrait of Pope Pius VII., which, she says (Memoirs, vol. ii. p.
123), " left all the Italian painters in despair."
1 82 1.] PLAN FOR ALLEGRA'S STUDIES. 177
January 17, 1821.
Rode i' the forest — fired pistols — dined. Arrived a
packet of books from England and Lombardy — English,
Italian, French, and Latin. Read till eight — went out.
January 18, 1821.
To-day, the post arriving late, did not ride. Read
letters — only two gazettes instead of twelve now due.
Made Lega write to that negligent Galignani, and added
a postscript. Dined.
At eight proposed to go out. Lega came in with a
letter about a bill rinpaid at Venice, which I thought paid
months ago. I flew into a paroxysm of rage, which
almost made me faint. I have not been well ever since.
I deserve it for being such a fool — but it was provoking
— a set of scoundrels ! It is, however, but five and twenty
pounds.
January 19, 1821.
Rode. Winter's wind somewhat more unkind than
ingratitude itself, though Shakspeare says otherwise.
At least, I am so much more accustomed to meet with
ingratitude than the north wind, that I thought the latter
the sharper of the two. I had met with both in the
course of the twenty-four hours, so could judge.
Thought of a plan of education for my daughter
Allegra, who ought to begin soon with her studies.
Wrote a letter — afterwards a postscript. Rather in low
spirits — certainly hippish — liver touched — will take a dose
of salts.
I have been reading the Life, by himself and
daughter, of Mr. R. L. Edgeworth, the father of the
Miss Edgeworth. It is altogether a great name. In
1813, I recollect to have met them in the fashionable
VOL. v. N
178 EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY. [CHAP. XXI.
world of London (of which I then formed an item, a
fraction, the segment of a circle, the unit of a million, the
nothing of something) in the assemblies of the hour, and
at a breakfast of Sir Humphry and Lady Davy's, to
which I was invited for the nonce. I had been the lion
of 1812 : Miss Edgeworth and Madame de Stael, with
" the Cossack," towards the end of 1813, were the exhi-
bitions of the succeeding year.1
I thought Edgeworth a fine old fellow, of a clarety,
elderly, red complexion, but active, brisk, and endless.
He was seventy, but did not look fifty — no, nor forty-
eight even. I had seen poor Fitzpatrick not very long
before — a man of pleasure, wit, eloquence, all things.2
He tottered — but still talked like a gentleman, though
feebly. Edgeworth bounced about, and talked loud and
long ; but he seemed neither weakly nor decrepit, and
hardly old.
He began by telling " that he had given Dr. Parr a
" dressing, who had taken him for an Irish bogtrotter," etc.,
etc. Now I, who know Dr. Parr, and who know (not by
1. Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1744-1817), father of Maria Edge-
worth (1767-1849), was in London in 1813, with his fourth wife (nee
Beaufort). His Memoirs, completed by Maria, were published in
1820.
" May II, 1813. Mr., Mrs., and Miss Edgeworth are just come
' over from Ireland, and are the general objects of curiosity and
' attention. . . . Miss Edgeworth is a most agreeable person, very
' natural, clever, and well-informed, without the least pretensions
1 of authorship. She had never been in a large society before, and
' she was followed and courted by all the persons of distinction in
' London, with an avidity almost without example." — Sir J. Mack-
intosh, Life, vol. ii. p. 267. See also Letters, vol. ii. p. 391, note l.
2. General Richard Fitzpatrick (1747-1813), second son of the
first Earl of Ossory, was for forty years the intimate friend of Fox.
He was Secretary at War to the coalition ministry of 1783 ; and
again in 1806, during the Fox and Grenville administration. He
wrote various poetical trifles ; among others, The Bath Picture (1772),
Dorinda (1775). To The Rolliad he contributed "The Lyars," a
political eclogue between Prettyman (sic) and Banks.
1 82 1.] MARIA EDGEWORTH'S FATHER. 179
experience — for I never should have presumed so far as to
contend with him — but by hearing him with others, and
Bothers) that it is not so easy a matter to "dress him,"
thought Mr. Edgeworth an assertor of what was not true.
He could not have stood before Parr for an instant. For
the rest, he seemed intelligent, vehement, vivacious, and
full of life. He bids fair for a hundred years.
He was not much admired in London, and I re-
member a " ryghte merrie " and conceited jest which was
rife among the gallants of the day, — viz. a paper had
been presented for the recall of Mrs. Siddons to the stage,
(she having lately taken leave, to the loss of ages, — for
nothing ever was, or can be, like her,) to which all men
had been called to subscribe. Whereupon Thomas
Moore, of profane and poetical memory, did propose that
a similar paper should be Ascribed and transcribed
" for the recall of Mr. Edgeworth to Ireland." *
The fact was — every body cared more about her. She
was a nice little unassuming " Jeanie Deans-looking body,"
as we Scotch say — and, if not handsome, certainly not
ill-looking. Her conversation was as quiet as herself.
One would never have guessed she could write her name;
whereas her father talked, not as if he could write nothing
else, but as if nothing else was worth writing.
As for Mrs. Edgeworth, I forget' — except that I think
she was the youngest of the party. Altogether, they were
an excellent cage of the kind; and succeeded for two
months, till the landing of Madame de Stael.
To turn from them to their works, I admire them ;
but they excite no feeling, and they leave no love — except
for some Irish steward or postillion. However, the
I. "In this I rather think Byron was misinformed ; whatever
" merit there may be in the jest, I have not, as far as I can recollect,
" the slightest claim to it" (Moore).
l8o EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY. [CHAP. XXI.
impression of intellect and prudence is profound — and
may be useful.1
January 21, 1821.
Rode — fired pistols. Read from Grimm's Corre-
spondence. Dined — went out — heard music — returned —
wrote a letter to the Lord Chamberlain to request him to
prevent the theatres from representing the Doge, which
the Italian papers say that they are going to act. This is
pretty work — what ! without asking my consent, and even
in opposition to it !
January 21, 1821.
Fine, clear, frosty day — that is to say, an Italian frost,
for their winters hardly get beyond snow; for which
reason nobody knows how to skate (or skait) — a Dutch
and English accomplishment. Rode out, as usual, and
fired pistols. Good shooting — broke four common, and
rather small, bottles, in four shots, at fourteen paces, with
a common pair of pistols and indifferent powder. Almost
as good wafering or shooting — considering the difference
of powder and pistol, — as when, in 1809, 1810, 1811,
1812, 1813, 1814, it was my luck to split walking-sticks,
wafers, half-crowns, shillings, and even the eye of a
I. "In my first enthusiasm of admiration, I thought that [Miss
' Edgeworth] had first made fiction useful ; but every fiction since
' Homer has taught friendship, patriotism, generosity, contempt of
4 death. These are the highest virtues ; and the fictions which
4 taught them were therefore of the highest, though not of unmixed
' utility. Miss Edgeworth inculcates prudence, and the many
' virtues of that family. Are these excellent virtues higher or more
' useful than those of fortitude and benevolence ? Certainly not.
' Where, then, is Miss Edgeworth's merit ? Her merit — her
' extraordinary merit, both as a moralist and as a woman of genius
' — consists in her having selected a class of virtues far more difficult
' to treat as the subject of fiction than others, and which had there-
' fore been left by former writers to her." — Sir James Mackintosh,
Life, vol. ii. p. 42.
l82I.] THIRTY AND THREE YEARS OF AGE. l8l
walking-stick, at twelve paces, with a single bullet — and all
by eye and calculation ; for my hand is not steady,1 and
apt to change with the very weather. To the prowess
which I here note, Joe Manton and others can bear
testimony ; for the former taught, and the latter has seen
me do, these feats.
Dined — visited — came home — read. Remarked on
an anecdote in Grimm's Correspondence^ which says that
" Regnard et la plupart des poe'tes comiques dtaient gens
"bilieux et melancoliques ; et que M. de Voltaire, qui
" est tres gai, n'a jamais fait que des tragedies — et que la
" come'die gaie est le seul genre ou il n'ait point re'ussi.
" C'est que celui qui rit et celui qui fait rire sont deux
" hommes fort diffe'rens."— Vol. VI.
At this moment I feel as bilious as the best comic
writer of them all, (even as Regnard 2 himself, the next
to Moliere, who has written some of the best comedies
in any language, and who is supposed to have committed
suicide,) and am not in spirits to continue my proposed
tragedy of Sardanapahis^ which I have, for some days,
ceased to compose.
To-morrow is my birth-day — that is to say, at twelve
o' the clock, midnight, i.e. in twelve minutes, I shall have
completed thirty and three years of age ! ! ! — and I go to
my bed with a heaviness of heart at having lived so long,
and to so little purpose.
1. Medwin (The Angler in Wales, vol. ii. p. 183) says, " It was
" always a matter of wonder to me how Byron ever struck the mark.
"His aim was long and his hand trembled as though he had St.
" Vitus's dance."
2. To Jean Fra^ois Regnard (1655-1709) is generally assigned,
as Byron says, the next place after Moliere as a writer of comedies.
He wrote both for the Theatre Italien and the Theatre Fran£ais ;
but his best pieces were written for the latter (1694-1708). Among
them are Lejoueur (1696) ; Le Distrait (1697) ; Les Folies Amoureuses
(1704) ; Le Ltgataire Universel (1708). There seems no foundation
for the charge of suicide.
1 82 EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY. [CHAP. XXI.
It is three minutes past twelve. — " 'Tis the middle of
" the night by the castle clock," l and I am now thirty-three !
"Eheu, fugaces, Posthume, Posthume,
Labuntur anni ; " * —
but I don't regret them so much for what I have done, as
for what I might have done.
Through life's road, so dim and dirty,
I have dragged to three-and-thirty.
What have these years left to me ?
Nothing — except thirty-three.
January 22, 1821.
1821.
Here lies
interred in the Eternity
of the Past,
from whence there is no
Resurrection
for the Days — Whatever there may be
for the Dust —
the Thirty-Third Year
of an ill-spent Life,
Which, after
a lingering disease of many months
sunk into a lethargy,
and expired,
January 22d, 1821, A. D.
Leaving a successor
Inconsolable
for the very loss which
occasioned its
Existence.
1. Coleridge's Christabel, Part I. line I.
2. Horace, Carm. II. xiv. 1-2.
1821.] NOTHING BUT WAR. 183
January 23, 1821.
Fine day. Read — rode — fired pistols, and returned.
Dined — read. Went out at eight — made the usual visit.
Heard of nothing but war, — " the cry is still, They
" come." 1 The Carbonari seem to have no plan — nothing
fixed among themselves, how, when, or what to do. In
that case, they will make nothing of this project, so often
postponed, and never put in action.
Came home, and gave some necessary orders, in case
of circumstances requiring a change of place. I shall
act according to what may seem proper, when I hear
decidedly what the Barbarians mean to do. At present,
they are building a bridge of boats over the Po, which
looks very warlike. A few days will probably show. I
think of retiring towards Ancona, nearer the northern
frontier; that is to say, if Teresa and her father are
obliged to retire, which is most likely, as all the family
are Liberals. If not, I shall stay. But my movements
will depend upon the lady's wishes — for myself, it is much
the same.
I am somewhat puzzled what to do with my little
daughter, and my effects, which are of some quantity and
value, — and neither of them do in the seat of war, where
I think of going. But there is an elderly lady who will
take charge of her, and T. says that the Marchese C. will
undertake to hold the chattels in safe keeping. Half the
city are getting their affairs in marching trim. A pretty
Carnival ! The blackguards might as well have waited
till Lent.
January 24, 1821.
Returned — met some masques in the Corso — Vive la
bagatelle ! — the Germans are on the Po, the Barbarians at
I. Macbeth^ act v. sc. 5.
184 EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY. [CHAP. XXI.
the gate, and their masters in council at Leybach (or
whatever the eructation of the sound may syllable into
a human pronunciation), and lo ! they dance and sing
and make merry, " for to-morrow they may die." Who
can say that the Arlequins are not right ? Like the Lady
Baussiere, and my old friend Burton — I " rode on." J
Dined — (damn this pen !) — beef tough — there is no
beef in Italy worth a curse ; unless a man could eat an
old ox with the hide on, singed in the sun.
The principal persons in the events which may occur
in a few days are gone out on a shooting party. If it
were like a " highland hunting," a pretext of the chase
for a grand re-union of counsellors and chiefs, it would
be all very well. But it is nothing more or less than a
real snivelling, popping, small-shot, water-hen waste of
powder, ammunition, and shot, for their own special
amusement : a rare set of fellows for " a man to risk his
"neck with," as "Marishall Wells" says in the Black
Dwarf?
If they gather, — " whilk is to be doubted," — they will
not muster a thousand men. The reason of this is, that
the populace are not interested, — only the higher and
middle orders. I wish that the peasantry were ; they are
1. "The Lady Baussiere had got into a wilderness of conceits,
' with moralizing too intricately upon La Fosseus^s text She
• mounted her palfrey, her page followed her — the host passed by —
' the Lady Baussiere rode on.
'"One denier,' cried the Order of Mercy — ' one single denier, in
1 behalf of a thousand patient captives, whose eyes look towards
• heaven and you for their redemption.'
" The Lady Baussiere rode on." — Tristram Shandy, bk. v.
chap. i.
Byron was a devoted admirer of Burton's Anatomy of Melancfioly,
and, like him in his part of " Democritus Junior," and like the
Italians, laughed at misfortunes.
2. " ' For my part, I won't enter my horse for such a plate,' said
' ' Mareschal ; and added, betwixt his teeth, ' A pretty pair of fellows
" to trust a man's neck with.' " — The Black Dwarf, chap. xiii.
l82I.] AN UNFORTUNATE YEAR. 185
a fine savage race of two-legged leopards. But the
Bolognese won't — the Romagnuoles can't without them.
Or, if they try — what then ? They will try, and man can
do no more — and, if he would but try his utmost, much
might be done. The Dutch, for instance, against the
Spaniards — then the tyrants of Europe, since, the slaves,
and, lately, the freedmen.
The year 1820 was not a fortunate one for the indi-
vidual me, whatever it may be for the nations. I lost a
lawsuit, after two decisions in my favour. The project
of lending money on an Irish mortgage was finally rejected
by my wife's trustee after a year's hope and trouble. The
Rochdale lawsuit had endured fifteen years, and always
prospered till I married; since which, every thing has
gone wrong — with me at least.
In the same year, 1820, the Countess T. G. nata
G!. G1., in despite of all I said and did to prevent it,
woiild separate from her husband, II Cavalier Commen-
datore G'., etc., etc., etc., and all on the account of " P. P.
" clerk of this parish." 1 The other little petty vexations
of the year — overturns in carriages — the murder of people
before one's door, and dying in one's beds — the cramp
in swimming — colics — indigestions and bilious attacks,
etc., etc., etc. —
" Many small articles make up a sum,
And hey ho for Caleb Quotem, oh ! " *
1. Alluding to Pope's Memoirs of P.P. Clerk of this Parish,
which were probably intended, though Pope denied it in his Prole-
gomena to the Dunciad, as a skit on Bishop Burnet's History of my
own Times. See Papers Works, ed. Elwin and Courthope, vol. x.
P- 435-
2. " Many small articles make up a sum ;
I dabble in all — I'm merry and rum ;
And 'tis heigho ! for Caleb Quotem, O ! "
— The Review, or the Wags of Windsor (by George Colman the
Younger), sc. 4.
1 86 EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY. [CHAP. XXI.
January 25, 1821.
Received a letter from Lord S. O.,1 state secretary of
the Seven Islands — a fine fellow — clever — dished in Eng-
land five years ago, and came abroad to retrench and
to renew. He wrote from Ancona, in his way back to
Corfu, on some matters of our own. He is son of the
late Duke of L[eeds] by a second marriage. He wants
me to go to Corfu. Why not? — perhaps I may, next
spring.
Answered Murray's letter — read — lounged. Scrawled
this additional page of life's log-book. One day more is
over of it and of me : — but " which is best, life or death,
" the gods only know," as Socrates said to his judges, on
the breaking up of the tribunal.2 Two thousand years
since that sage's declaration of ignorance have not en-
lightened us more upon this important point ; for, accord-
ing to the Christian dispensation, no one can know
whether he is sure of salvation — even the most righteous
— since a single slip of faith may throw him on his back,
like a skaiter, while gliding smoothly to his paradise.
Now, therefore, whatever the certainty of faith in the
facts may be, the certainty of the individual as to his
happiness or misery is no greater than it was under
Jupiter.
It has been said that the immortality of the soul is a
1. Sidney Godolphin Osborne (1789-1861), son of Francis
Godolphin, fifth Duke of Leeds, by his second wife, Catherine,
daughter of Thomas Anguish. He was therefore stepson to Lady
Amelia d'Arcy, afterwards Baroness Conyers in her own right, who
married (l) the Marquis of Carmarthen, afterwards fifth Duke of
Leeds, from whom she was divorced in 1779 ; and (2) Captain Byron,
father of the poet, by whom she was the mother of Augusta Leigh.
2. " Sed tempus est," inquit, "jam hinc abire, me ut moriar, vos
" ut vitam agatis. Utrum autem sit melius, Dii immortales sciunt :
"hominem quidem scire arbitror neminem." — Cicero, Tusc. Quast.,
1.41.
1 82 1.] TRE CROC/. 187
grand peut-etre — but still it is a grand one. Every body
clings to it — the stupidest, and dullest, and wickedest of
human bipeds is still persuaded that he is immortal.
January 26, 1821.
Fine day — a few mares' tails portending change, but
the sky clear, upon the whole. Rode — fired pistols —
good shooting. Coming back, met an old man. Charity
— purchased a shilling's worth of salvation. If that was
to be bought, I have given more to my fellow-creatures
in this life — sometimes for vice, but, if not more often, at
least more considerably, for virtue — than I now possess.
I never in my life gave a mistress so much as I have
sometimes given a poor man in honest distress ; but no
matter. The scoundrels who have all along persecuted
me (with the help of * * who has crowned their efforts)
will triumph ; — and, when justice is done to me, it will be
when this hand that writes is as cold as the hearts which
have stung me.
Returning, on the bridge near the mill, met an old
woman. I asked her age — she said " Tre croci" * I asked
my groom (though myself a decent Italian) what the devil
her three crosses meant. He said, ninety years, and that
she had five years more to boot ! ! I repeated the same
three times — not to mistake — ninety-five years ! ! ! — and
she was yet rather active — heard my question, for she
answered it — saw me, for she advanced towards me ; and
did not appear at all decrepit, though certainly touched
with years. Told her to come to-morrow, and will
examine her myself. I love phenomena. If she is
I. A croce = ten years; therefore tre croci = thirty years (i.e.
XXX.). " Probably," said Signer Sabastiani Fusconi (himself
exiled with the Gambas in 1821) to Mr. Richard Edgcumbe, "the
"old woman replied, Tre Ire croci," i.e. ninety years. Byron gave
her a pension during the rest of her life.
1 88 EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY. [CHAP. XXI.
ninety-five years old, she must recollect the Cardinal
Alberoni,1 who was legate here.
On dismounting, found Lieutenant E. just arrived
from Faenza. Invited him to dine with me to-morrow.
Did not invite him for to-day, because there was a small
turbotj (Friday, fast regularly and religiously,2) which I
wanted to eat all myself. Ate it.
Went out — found T. as usual — music. The gentle-
men, who make revolutions and are gone on a shooting,
are not yet returned. They don't return till Sunday —
that is to say, they have been out for five days, buffoon-
ing, while the interests of a whole country are at stake,
and even they themselves compromised.
It is a difficult part to play amongst such a set of
assassins and blockheads — but, when the scum is skimmed
off, or has boiled over, good may come of it. If this
country could but be freed, what would be too great for
the accomplishment of that desire? for the extinction
of that Sigh of Ages ? Let us hope. They have hoped
these thousand years. The very revolvement of the
chances may bring it — it is upon the dice.
If the Neapolitans have but a single Massaniello 3
1. Alberoni (1664-1752), the son of a gardener of Placentia,
through the Duke of Parma and his niece, Elizabeth Farnese, Queen
of Spain, rose to be the ruler of Spain from 1715 to I7i9,under Philip
V. After his downfall he returned to Italy, his native country,
suffered, at the hands of Pope Innocent III., a sort of imprisonment
which lasted four years, was restored to his rights as cardinal in
1723, and made legate to the Romagna (1734-39). As legate,
in 1739, he endeavoured to unite the republic of San Marino to the
Papal dominions, representing to Clement XII. that it was a second
Geneva. The attempt failed, and in 1740 Alberoni was removed
by Benedict XIV. from the Romagna to Bologna. The story is told
in Lady Morgan's Italy (vol. iii. pp. 236, 237), where it was possibly
read by Byron.
2. "Byron," says Medwin (The Angler in Wales, vol. i. p. 118),
' ' who was a ' virtuous man ' in FalstafFs sense of the word, had great
'' faith in abstinence, for on Friday he would not touch beccaficas."
3. Tommaso Aniello (1623-1647), a fisherman of Amalfi, headed a
1821.] SUBJECTS OF FOUR TRAGEDIES. 189
amongst them, they will beat the bloody butchers of the
crown and sabre. Holland, in worse circumstances, beat
the Spains and Philips ; America beat the English ;
Greece beat Xerxes; and France beat Europe, till she
took a tyrant ; South America beats her old vultures out
of their nest ; and, if these men are but firm in them-
selves, there is nothing to shake them from without.
January 28, 1821.
Lugano Gazette did not come. Letters from Venice.
It appears that the Austrian brutes have seized my three
or four pounds of English powder. The scoundrels ! — I
hope to pay them in ball for that powder. Rode out
till twilight.
Pondered the subjects of four tragedies to be written
(life and circumstances permitting), to wit, Sardanapalus,
already begun; Cain, a metaphysical subject, something
in the style of Manfred, but in five acts, perhaps, with the
chorus ; Francesca of Rimini, in five acts ; and I am not
sure that I would not try Tiberius. I think that I could
extract a something, of my tragic, at least, out of the
gloomy sequestration and old age of the tyrant — and
even out of his sojourn at Caprea — by softening the
details, and exhibiting the despair which must have led
to those very vicious pleasures. For none but a powerful
and gloomy mind overthrown would have had recourse
to such solitary horrors, — being also, at the same time,
o Id, and the master of the world.
Memoranda.
What is Poetry ? — The feeling of a Former world and
Future.
rising of the Neapolitans in 1647, and compelled the Spanish Viceroy,
Arcos, to abolish unpopular taxes, and to proclaim an amnesty. But
his cruelty alienated his followers, and, after being master of Naples
for seven days, he was assassinated by order of the viceroy.
I go EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY. [CHAP. XXI.
Thoiight Second.
Why, at the very height of desire and human pleasure,
— worldly, social, amorous, ambitious, or even avaricious,
— does there mingle a certain sense of doubt and sorrow —
a fear of what is to come — a doubt of what is — a retro-
spect to the past, leading to a prognostication of the
future ? (The best of Prophets of the future is the Past.)
Why is this, or these? — I know not, except that on a
pinnacle we are most susceptible of giddiness, and that
we never fear falling except from a precipice — the higher,
the more awful, and the more sublime ; and, therefore, I
am not sure that Fear is not a pleasurable sensation ; at
least, Hope is; and what Hope is there without a deep
leaven of Fear? and what sensation is so delightful as
Hope? and, if it were not for Hope, where would the
Future be? — in hell. It is useless to say where the
Present is, for most of us know ; and as for the Past,
what predominates in memory? — Hope baffled. Ergo,
in all human affairs, it is Hope — Hope — Hope. I allow
sixteen minutes, though I never counted them, to any
given or supposed possession. From whatever place we
commence,, we know where it all must end. And yet,
what good is there in knowing it? It does not make
men better or wiser. During the greatest horrors of the
greatest plagues, (Athens and Florence, for example —
see Thucydides and Machiavelli,) men were more cruel
and profligate than ever. It is all a mystery. I feel
most things, but I know nothing, except
i. " Thus marked, with impatient strokes of the pen, by himself
" in the original " (Moore).
1 82 1.] SCHLEGEL'S HISTORY OF LITERATURE. 191
Thought for a Speech of Lucifer, in the Tragedy of Cain: —
Were Death an evil, would / let thee live ?
Fool ! live as I live — as thy father lives,
And thy son's sons shall live for evermore.
Past Midnight. One o' the clock.
I have been reading Frederick Schlegel1 (brother to
the other of the name) till now, and I can make out
nothing. He evidently shows a great power of words,
but there is nothing to be taken hold of. He is like
Hazlitt, in English, who talks pimpks — a red and white
corruption rising up (in little imitation of mountains upon
maps), but containing nothing, and discharging nothing,
except their own humours.
I dislike him the worse, (that is, Schlegel,) because he
always seems upon the verge of meaning; and, lo, he
goes down like sunset, or melts like a rainbow, leaving a
rather rich confusion, — to which, however, the above
comparisons do too much honour.
Continuing to read Mr. Frederick Schlegel. He is
not such a fool as I took him for, that is to say, when he
speaks of the North. But still he speaks of things all
over the world with a kind of authority that a philosopher
would disdain, and a man of common sense, feeling, and
knowledge of his own ignorance, would be ashamed of.
The man is evidently wanting to make an impression,
like his brother, — or like George in the Vicar of Wake-
field, who found out that all the good things had been
said already on the right side, and therefore " dressed up
I. Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772-1829) began his lite-
rary career with his novel Z.ucmde(i'jgg). His Sprache und Weisheit
der Indier (1808), chiefly composed in Paris, introduced Sanskrit to
Europe. Byron was probably reading his History of Literature,
lectures delivered at Vienna (1814) and translated at Edinburgh in
1818.
IQ2 EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY. [CHAP. XXI.
" some paradoxes " upon the wrong side — ingenious, but
false, as he himself says — to which " the learned world
"said nothing, nothing at all, sir."1 The "learned
" world," however, has said something to the brothers
Schlegel.
It is high time to think of something else. What
they say of the antiquities of the North is best.
January 29, 1821.
Yesterday, the woman of ninety-five years of age was
with me. She said her eldest son (if now alive) would
have been seventy. She is thin — short, but active — hears,
and sees, and talks incessantly. Several teeth left — all in
the lower jaw, and single front teeth. She is very deeply
wrinkled, and has a sort of scattered grey beard over her
chin, at least as long as my mustachios. Her head, in
fact, resembles the drawing in crayons of Pope the poet's
mother, which is in some editions of his works.
I forgot to ask her if she remembered Alberoni
(legate here), but will ask her next time. Gave her a
louis — ordered her a new suit of clothes, and put her
upon a weekly pension. Till now, she had worked at
gathering wood and pine-nuts in the forest — pretty work
at ninety-five years old ! She had a dozen children, of
whom some are alive. Her name is Maria Montanari.
Met a company of the sect (a kind of Liberal Club)
called the Americani in the forest, all armed, and singing,
with all their might, in Romagnuole — " Sem tutti soldat'
" per la liberta " (" we are all soldiers for liberty "). They
I . " ' Finding that the best things remained to be said on the wrong
' side, I resolved to write a book that should be wholly new. I
' therefore dressed up three paradoxes with ingenuity. They were
' false indeed, but they were new.' — ' Well said, my boy,' cried I,
' ' and what did the learned world say to your paradoxes ? ' — ' Sir,'
' replied my son, ' the learned world said nothing to my paradoxes ;
' nothing at all, Sir.' " — Vicar of Wakefield, chap. xx.
1 82 1.] ENTHUSIASM FOR DANTE. 193
cheered me as I passed — I returned their salute, and
rode on. This may show the spirit of Italy at present.
My to-day's journal consists of what I omitted yester-
day. To-day was much as usual. Have rather a better
opinion of the writings of the Schlegels than I had four-
and-twenty hours ago ; and will amend it still further, if
possible.
They say that the Piedmontese have at length arisen
— fa ira !
Read Schlegel. Of Dante he says, " that at no time
" has the greatest and most national of all Italian poets
" ever been much the favourite of his countrymen." 'Tis
false ! There have been more editors and commentators
(and imitators, ultimately) of Dante than of all their
poets put together. Not a favourite ! Why, they talk
Dante — write Dante — and think and dream Dante at
this moment (1821) to an excess, which would be ridicu-
lous, but that he deserves it.1
In the same style this German talks of gondolas on
the Arno 2 — a precious fellow to dare to speak of Italy !
He says also that Dante's chief defect is a want, in
1. In lecture ix. (Lectures on the History of Literature, ed. 1841,
p. 237) Schlegel says of Dante, "The truth is, that at no time has
" the greatest and most national of all Italian poets ever been much
" the favourite of his countrymen." Again (ibid., p. 238), he says,
" His chief defect is, in a word, a want of gentle feelings."
" I don't wonder," said Byron, " at the enthusiasm of the Italians
" about Dante. He is the poet of liberty. Persecution, exile, the
" dread of a foreign grave, could not shake his principles. There is
" no Italian gentleman, scarcely any well-educated girl, that has not
"all the finer passages of Dante at the fingers' ends ; particularly
" the Ravennese. The Guiccioli, for instance, could almost repeat
" any part of the Divine Comedy ; and, I dare say, is well read in
" the VitaNuova, that prayer-book of love." — Medwin, Convtrsations
of Lord Byron, p. 242.
2. In lecture xi. (Lectures on the History of Literature, p. 297),
speaking of Tasso, Schlegel says, " Individual parts and episodes of
" his poem are frequently sung in the gondolas of the Arno and the
" Po."
VOL. V. O
194 EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY. [CHAP. XXI.
a word, of gentle feelings. Of gentle feelings ! — and
Francesca of Rimini — and the father's feelings in Ugolino
— and Beatrice — and " La Pia ! " Why, there is gentle-
ness in Dante beyond all gentleness, when he is tender.
It is true that, treating of the Christian Hades, or Hell,
there is not much scope or site for gentleness — but who
but Dante could have introduced any "gentleness" at all
into Hell? Is there any in Milton's? No — and Dante's
Heaven is all love, and glory and majesty.
One o'clock.
I have found out, however, where the German is right
— it is about the Vicar of Wakefield. " Of all romances
"in miniature (and, perhaps, this is the best shape in
" which Romance can appear) the Vicar of Wakefield is, I
" think, the most exquisite." * He thinks ! — he might be
sure. But it is very well for a Schlegel. I feel sleepy,
and may as well get me to bed. To-morrow there will be
fine weather.
" Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay." *
January 30, 1821.
The Count P. G. this evening (by commission from
the Ci.) transmitted to me the new words for the next
six months. * * * and * * *. The new sacred word is
* * * — the reply * * * — the rejoinder * * *. The former
word (now changed) was * * * — there is also * * * — * * *.3
Things seem fast coming to a crisis — fa ira !
1. History of Literature^ lecture xiv. p. 367.
2. " When I consider life, 'tis all a cheat.
Yet fool'd with hope, men favour the deceit ;
Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay ;
To-morrow's falser than the former day."
Dryden's Aureitgzebe, act iv. sc. I.
3. "In the original MS. these watchwords are blotted over so as
" to be illegible" (Moore).
l82I.] DIFFICULTY IN WRITING. IQ5
We talked over various matters of moment and move-
ment. These I omit; — if they come to any thing, they
will speak for themselves. After these, we spoke of
Kosciusko.1 Count R. G. told me that he has seen the
Polish officers in the Italian war burst into tears on
hearing his name.
Something must be up in Piedmont — all the letteis
and papers are stopped. Nobody knows anything, and
the Germans are concentrating near Mantua. Of the
decision of Leybach nothing is known. This state of
things cannot last long. The ferment in men's minds at
present cannot be conceived without seeing it.
January 31, 1821.
For several days I have not written any thing except
a few answers to letters. In momentary expectation of
an explosion of some kind, it is not easy to settle down
to the desk for the higher kinds of composition. I could
do it, to be sure, for, last summer, I wrote my drama in
the very bustle of Madame la Contessa G.'s divorce, and
all its process of accompaniments. At the same time, I
also had the news of the loss of an important lawsuit in
England. But these were only private and personal
business ; the present is of a different nature.
I suppose it is this, but have some suspicion that it
may be laziness, which prevents me from writing ;
especially as Rochefoucalt says that " laziness often
" masters them all " 2 — speaking of the passions. If this
1. Thaddeus Kosciusko (1746-1817) commanded the national
forces of Poland against Russia in 1794. Defeated and taken
prisoner at Maciejowice, October 10, 1794, he died in 1817 at Soleure,
in Switzerland.
2. " C'est se tromper que de croire qu'il n'y ait que les violentes
" passions, comme 1'ambition et 1'amour, qui puissent triompher des
" autres. La paresse, toute languissante qu'elle est, ne laisse pas d'en
"etre souvent la maltresse ; elle usurpe sur tous les desseins et sur
196 EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY. [CHAP. XXI.
were true, it could hardly be said that " idleness is the
" root of all evil," since this is supposed to spring from
the passions only : ergo, that which masters all the passions
(laziness, to wit) would in so much be a good. Who
knows ?
Midnight.
I have been reading Grimm's Cowespondence.1 He
repeats frequently, in speaking of a poet, or a man of
genius in any department, even in music, (Gre'try, for
instance,) that he must have une ame qui se tourmente, tin
esprit violent. How far this may be true, I know not;
but if it were, I should be a poet "per excellenza ; " for I
have always had tine ante, which not only tormented itself
but every body else in contact with it; and an esprit
•violent, which has almost left me without any esprit at all.
As to defining what a poet should be, it is not worth
while, for what are they worth ? what have they done ?
Grimm, however, is an excellent critic and literary
historian. His Correspondence forms the annals of the
literary part of that age of France, with much of her
" toutes les actions de la vie ; elle y detruit et y consume insensible-
" ment les passions et les vertus " (Reflections Morales, cclxxiv.).
I. Friedrich Melchior Grimm (1723-1807) served as reader to the
Duke of Saxe Coburg, then acted as secretary to the Due d'Orleans
at Paris, where he made the acquaintance of Diderot, Raynal, Suard,
and other literary men of the day. He was appointed Plenipotentiary
at the court of France and the Duke of Saxe Coburg, who also
raised him to the rank of baron. His correspondence with the
duke, the Empress Catherine, Frederick the Great, and other
potentates, is a lively chronicle of scandal, politics, and literature in
France from 1753 to 1793.
Speaking of St. Lambert (Correspondence, ed. Tourneux, vol. viii.
p. 289, note), he says, " Que lui manque-t-il done pour etre un
"poete? Ce qui lui manque, c'est une ame qui se tourmente, un
"esprit violent, une imagination forte et brillante, etc., etc."
So again, speaking of Gre'try, he says (ibid., September, 1768),
" M. Gretri est de Liege ; il est jeune, il a 1'air pale, bleme, souffrant,
" tourmente, tous les symptomes d'un homme de genie."
i82i.] ST. LAMBERT'S SAJSO&S. 197
politics, and still more of her " way of life." He is as
valuable, and far more entertaining than Muratori1 or
Tiraboschi 2— I had almost said, than Ginguend 3 — but
there we should pause. However, 't is a great man in its
line.
Monsieur St. Lambert * has,
" Et lorsqu' a ses regards la lumiere est ravie,
II n'a plus, en mourant, a perdre que la vie."
This is, word for word, Thomson's
" And dying, all we can resign is breath,"
without the smallest acknowledgment from the Lorrainer
of a poet. M. St. Lambert is dead as a man, and (for
any thing I know to the contrary) damned, as a poet, by
this time. However, his Seasons have good things, and,
it may be, some of his own.
1. Ludovico Antonio Muratori (1672-1750) published, among
other learned works, his Rerum Italicarum Scriptores pracipui ab
Anno 500 ad Annum 1500, 29 vols., fol., 1723-51, at Milan.
2. Geronimo Tiraboschi (1731-1794) published his Storia della
Letteratura Italiana, 13 vols., 410, 1772-82, at Modena.
3. See p. 154, note I.
4. Fran9ois, Marquis de St. Lambert (1716-1803), born at Vezelise
in Lorraine, began life as a soldier and a courtier in the service of
Stanislas II., of Poland and Lorraine. In 1756 he devoted himself
to a literary career, associated himself with Helvetius and the French
philosophical school of the day, contributed to the Encyclopedic^
published several volumes of poetry, tales, memoirs, and philosophy,
and spent the last years of his life at Eaubonne, near Montmorency,
in the society of Madame d'Houdetot. His Saisons appeared in
1769. The passage to which Byron refers occurs in " L'Automne"
(Chant troisieme) —
' ' II voit autour de lui tout perir, tout changer,
A la race nouvelle il se trouve etranger ;
Et lorsqu' a ses regards la lumiere est ravie,
II n'a plus en mourant a perdre que la vie."
In Thomson's " verses occasioned by the death of Mr. Aikman "
occurs the line to which Byron refers —
' ' Unhappy he who latest feels the blow,
Whose eyes have wept o'er every friend laid low,
Dragg'd lingering on from partial death to death,
Till, dying, all he can resign is breath."
1 98 EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY. [CHAP. XXI.
February 2, 1821.
I have been considering what can be the reason why
I always wake, at a certain hour in the morning, and
always in very bad spirits — I may say, in actual despair
and despondency, in all respects — even of that which
pleased me over night. In about an hour or two, this
goes off, and I compose either to sleep again, or, at least,
to quiet. In England, five years ago, I had the same
kind of hypochondria, but accompanied with so violent a
thirst that I have drank as many as fifteen bottles of soda-
water in one night, after going to bed, and been still
thirsty — calculating, however, some lost from the bursting
out and effervescence and overflowing of the soda-water,
in drawing the corks, or striking off the necks of the
bottles from mere thirsty impatience. At present, I have
not the thirst ; but the depression of spirits is no less
violent.
I read in Edgeworth's Memoirs of something similar
(except that his thirst expended itself on small beer) in
the case of Sir F. B. Delaval ; * — but then he was, at
least, twenty years older. What is it ? — liver ? In Eng-
land, Le Man (the apothecary) cured me of the thirst in
three days, and it had lasted as many years. I suppose
that it is all hypochondria.
What I feel most growing upon me are laziness, and
a disrelish more powerful than indifference. If I rouse,
I. " His friends, perhaps to obviate any suspicion of his having
' destroyed himself, had his body opened, and the physician who
' attended informed me that his death was probably occasioned by
' an unnatural distension of his stomach, which seemed to have lost
' the power of collapsing. This they attributed to his drinking
' immoderate quantities of water and small beer. He always had a
' large jug of beer left by his bedside at night, which was usually
' empty before morning. . . . Whether this was cause or effect still
' remains uncertain." — Memoirs of R. L. Edgeworth, ed. 1844, p.
97, note.
1821.] THE KILN IN A LOW. 199
it is into fury. I presume that I shall end (if not earlier
by accident, or some such termination), like Swift —
"dying at top." I confess I do not contemplate this
with so much horror as he apparently did for some years
before it happened. But Swift had hardly begun life at
the very period (thirty-three) when I feel quite an old sort
of feel.
Oh ! there is an organ playing in the street — a waltz,
too ! I must leave off to listen. They are playing a
waltz which I have heard ten thousand times at the balls
in London, between 1812 and 1815. Music is a strange
thing.
February 5, 1821.
At last, " the kiln's in a low." 1 The Germans are
ordered to march, and Italy is, for the ten thousandth
time to become a field of battle. Last night the news
came.
This afternoon — Count P. G. came to me to consult
upon divers matters. We rode out together. They have
sent off to the C. for orders. To-morrow the decision
ought to arrive, and then something will be done. Re-
turned— dined — read — went out — talked over matters.
Made a purchase of some arms for the new enrolled
Americani, who are all on tiptoe to march. Gave order
for some harness and portmanteaus necessary for the
horses.
Read some of Bowles's dispute about Pope, with all
the replies and rejoinders. Perceive that my name has
I. When the Highland clans broke out in revolt in 1715, Andrew
Fairservice bounced into Francis Osbaldistone's room " like a mad-
" man, jumping up and down, and singing, with more vehemence
" than tune —
" ' The kiln's on fire— the kiln's on fire—
The kiln's on fire — she's a' in a lowe.' "
Rob Roy, ed. 1836, vol. ii. chap. xx.
200 EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY. [CHAP. XXI.
been lugged into the controversy, but have not time to
state what I know of the subject. On some " piping day
" of peace " * it is probable that I may resume it.
February 9, 1821.
Before dinner wrote a little ; also, before I rode out,
Count P. G. called upon me, to let me know the result of
the meeting of the Ci. at F. and at B. * * returned late
last night. Every thing was combined under the idea
that the Barbarians would pass the Po on the i5th inst.
Instead of this, from some previous information or other-
wise, they have hastened their march and actually passed
two days ago ; so that all that can be done at present in
Romagna is, to stand on the alert and wait for the
advance of the Neapolitans. Every thing was ready,
and the Neapolitans had sent on their own instructions
and intentions, all calculated for the tenth and eleventh,
on which days a general rising was to take place, under
the supposition that the Barbarians could not advance
before the isth.
As it is, they have but fifty or sixty thousand troops,
a number with which they might as well attempt to
conquer the world as secure Italy in its present state.
The artillery marches last, and alone, and there is an
idea of an attempt to cut part of them off. All this will
much depend upon the first steps of the Neapolitans.
Here, the public spirit is excellent, provided it be kept
up. This will be seen by the event.
It is probable that Italy will be delivered from the
Barbarians if the Neapolitans will but stand firm, and
are united among themselves. Here they appear so.
i. " This weak piping time of peace."
Richard III., act i. sc. I.
l82I.] BYRON VERSUS BOWLES. 2OI
February 10, 1821.
Day passed as usual — nothing new. Barbarians still
in march — not well equipped, and, of course, not well
received on their route. There is some talk of a commo-
tion at Paris.
Rode out between four and six — finished my letter to
Murray on Bowles's pamphlets1 — added postscript. Passed
the evening as usual — out till eleven — and subsequently
at home.
February ir, 1821.
Wrote — had a copy taken of an extract from Petrarch's
Letters,2 with reference to the conspiracy of the Doge,
Marino Faliero, containing the poet's opinion of the
matter. Heard a heavy firing of cannon towards Co-
macchio — the Barbarians rejoicing for their principal pig's
birthday, which is to-morrow — or Saint day — I forget
which. Received a ticket for the first ball to-morrow.
Shall not go to the first, but intend going to the second,
as also to the Veglioni.
February 13, 1821.
To-day read a little in Louis B.'s Hollande? but have
written nothing since the completion of the letter on the
Pope controversy. Politics are quite misty for the present.
The Barbarians still upon their march. It is not easy to
divine what the Italians will now do.
Was elected yesterday Socio of the Carnival Ball
Society. This is the fifth carnival that I have passed.
1. See Appendix III. for Byron's Letter in reply to Bowles's
strictures on Pope.
2. An Italian version of the extract from Petrarch's Letters is
quoted in the notes to Marino Faliero, Appendix, Note B.
3. Documents Historiques^ et Reflexions sur le Gouverneinent de la
Hollande (3 vols. 8vo), by Louis Buonaparte, ex-King of Holland,
was published at Paris in 1820.
202 EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY. [CHAP. XXI.
In the four former, I racketed a good deal. In the
present, I have been as sober as Lady Grace herself.
February 14, 1821.
Much as usual. Wrote, before riding out, part of a
scene of Sardanapalus. The first act nearly finished.
The rest of the day and evening as before — partly with-
out, in conversazione — partly at home.
Heard the particulars of the late fray at Russi, a town
not far from this. It is exactly the fact of Romeo and
Giulietta — not Romeo, as the Barbarian writes it. Two
families of Contadini (peasants) are at feud. At a ball,
the younger part of the families forget their quarrel, and
dance together. An old man of one of them enters,
and reproves the young men for dancing with the females
of the opposite family. The male relatives of the latter
resent this. Both parties rush home and arm themselves.
They meet directly, by moonlight, in the public way, and
fight it out. Three are killed on the spot, and six
wounded, most of them dangerously, — pretty well for two
families, methinks — and all /art", of the last week. Another
assassination has taken place at Cesenna — in all about
forty in Romagna within the last three months. These
people retain much of the middle ages.
February 15, 1821.
Last night finished the first act of Sardanapalns.
To-night, or to-morrow, I ought to answer letters.
February 16, 1821.
Last night II Conte P. G. sent a man with a bag full
of bayonets, some muskets, and some hundreds of cart-
ridges to my house, without apprizing me, though I had
1 82 1.] FIRST BLOOD. 203
seen him not half an hour before. About ten days ago,
when there was to be a rising here, the Liberals and my
brethren C'. asked me to purchase some arms for a certain
few of our ragamuffins. I did so immediately, and ordered
ammunition, etc., and they were armed accordingly.
Well — the rising is prevented by the Barbarians marching
a week sooner than appointed; and an order is issued,
and in force, by the Government, " that all persons having
" arms concealed, etc., etc., shall be liable to, etc., etc."—
and what do my friends, the patriots, do two days after-
wards ? Why, they throw back upon my hands, and into
my house, these very arms (without a word of warning
previously) with which I had furnished them at their own
request, and at my own peril and expense.
It was lucky that Lega was at home to receive them.
If any of the servants had (except Tita and F. and Lega)
they would have betrayed it immediately. In the mean
time, if they are denounced or discovered, I shall be in a
scrape.
At nine went out — at eleven returned. Beat the
crow for stealing the falcon's victuals. Read Tales of
my Landlord — wrote a letter — and mixed a moderate
beaker of water with other ingredients.
February 18, 1821.
The news are that the Neapolitans have broken a
bridge, and slain four pontifical carabiniers, whilk cara-
biniers wished to oppose. Besides the disrespect to
neutrality, it is a pity that the first blood shed in this
German quarrel should be Italian. However, the war
seems begun in good earnest : for, if the Neapolitans kill
the Pope's carabiniers, they will not be more delicate to-
wards the Barbarians. If it be even so, in a short time
" there will be news o' thae craws," as Mrs. Alison Wilson
204 EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY. [CHAP. XXI.
says of Jenny Blane's " unco cockernony " in the Tales of
my Landlord.1
In turning over Grimm's Correspondence to-day, I
found a thought of Tom Moore's in a song of Maupertuis 2
to a female Laplander
" Et tous les lieux
Ou sont ses yeux,
Font la zone brulante."
This is Moore's,
" And those eyes make my climate, wherever I roam."
But I am sure that Moore never saw it; for this was
published in Grimm's Correspondence, in 1813, and I knew
Moore's by heart in 1812. There is also another, but an
antithetical coincidence —
" Le soleil luit,
Des jours sans nuit
Bientot il nous destine ;
1. " But I doubt the daughter's a silly thing — an unco cockernony
" she had busked on her head at the kirk last Sunday." — Mrs. Alison
Wilson, in Old Mortality, chap. v.
2. Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698-1759) " pretendait
" avoir congu une passion violente pour une jeune Laponne qu'il
" avait amenee en France, et qui y est morte. II aimait a chanter
"des couplets qu'il avait fails pour elle sous le p&le, et qu'il faut
' ' conserver ici —
" Pour fuir 1'amour,
En vain Ton court
Jusqu'au cercle polaire ;
Dieux ! qui croiroit
Qu'en cet endroit
On cut trouv£ Cythere !
' ' Dans les frimas
De ces climats,
Christine nous enchante ;
Et tous les lieux
Oil sont ses yeux
Font la zone brulante."
Etc., etc. Grimm's Correspondance, ed. Tourneux, vol. vii. pp.
180, 181.
l82I.] THE POETRY OF POLITICS. 205
Mais ces longs jours
Seront trop courts,
Passes pres de Christine."
This is the thought reversed, of the last stanza of the ballad
on Charlotte Lynes, given in Miss Seward's Memoirs of
Darwin^ which is pretty — I quote from memory of these
last fifteen years.
" For my first night I'd go
To those regions of snow,
Where the sun for six months never shines ;
And think, even then,
He too soon came again,
To disturb me with fair Charlotte Lynes." '
To-day I have had no communication with my
Carbonari cronies; but, in the mean time, my lower
apartments are full of their bayonets, fusils, cartridges,
and what not. I suppose that they consider me as a
depot, to be sacrificed, in case of accidents. It is no
great matter, supposing that Italy could be liberated, who
or what is sacrificed. It is a grand object — the very poetry
of politics. Only think — a free Italy ! ! ! Why, there has
been nothing like it since the days of Augustus. I reckon
the times of Caesar (Julius) free ; because the commotions
left every body a side to take, and the parties were pretty
equal at the set out. But, afterwards, it was all praetorian
and legionary business — and since ! — we shall see, or, at
least, some will see, what card will turn up. It is best to
hope, even of the hopeless. The Dutch did more than
these fellows have to do, in the Seventy Years' War.
I. "At a convivial meeting of Lichfield gentlemen, most of
"whom could make agreeable verses, it was proposed that every
" person in company should give a ballad or epigram on the lady
" whose health he drank. Mr. Vyse toasted Miss Lynes, and, taking
"out his pencil, wrote the stanzas extempore" (Seward's Memoirs
of Dr. Darwin, pp. 72-74). Of the stanzas, which are nine in
number, that quoted by Byron is the last.
206 EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY. [CHAP. XXI.
February 19, 1821.
Came home solus — very high wind — lightning — moon-
shine— solitary stragglers muffled in cloaks — women in
masks — white houses — clouds hurrying over the sky, like
spilt milk blown out of the pail — altogether very poetical.
It is still blowing hard — the tiles flying, and the house
rocking — rain splashing — lightning flashing — quite a fine
Swiss Alpine evening, and the sea roaring in the distance.
Visited — conversazione. All the women frightened
by the squall : they won't go to the masquerade because
it lightens — the pious reason !
Still blowing away. A. has sent me some news to-
day. The war approaches nearer and nearer. Oh those
scoundrel sovereigns ! Let us but see them beaten — let
the Neapolitans but have the pluck of the Dutch of old,
or the Spaniards of now, or of the German Protestants,
the Scotch Presbyterians, the Swiss under Tell, or the
Greeks under Themistocles — all small and solitary nations
(except the Spaniards and German Lutherans), and there
is yet a resurrection for Italy, and a hope for the world.
February 20, 1821.
The news of the day are, that the Neapolitans are
full of energy. The public spirit here is certainly well
kept up. The Americani (a patriotic society here, an
under branch of the Carbonari) give a dinner in the Forest
in a few days, and have invited me, as one of the C'. It
is to be in the Forest of Boccacio's and Dryden's " Hunts-
" man's Ghost ; " and, even if I had not the same political
feelings, (to say nothing of my old convivial turn, which
every now and then revives,) I would go as a poet, or, at
least, as a lover of poetry. I shall expect to see the
spectre of " Ostasio degli Onesti " * (Dryden has turned
i. The story of Nastagio degli Onesti, and his love for the
1 82 1.] THE POPE'S PROCLAMATION. 2O7
him into Guido Cavalcanti — an essentially different person,
as may be found in Dante) come " thundering for his
" prey in the midst of the festival." At any rate, whether
he does or no, I will get as tipsy and patriotic as possible.
Within these few days I have read, but not written.
February 21, 1821.
As usual, rode — visited, etc. Business begins to
thicken. The Pope has printed a declaration against the
patriots, who, he says, meditate a rising. The consequence
of all this will be, that, in a fortnight, the whole country
will be up. The proclamation is not yet published, but
printed, ready for distribution. * * sent me a copy
privately — a sign that he does not know what to think.
When he wants to be well with the patriots, he sends to
me some civil message or other.
For my own part, it seems to me, that nothing but
the most decided success of the Barbarians can prevent a
general and immediate rise of the whole nation.
February 23, 1821.
Almost ditto with yesterday — rode, etc. — visited —
wrote nothing — read Roman History.
Had a curious letter from a fellow, who informs me
that the Barbarians are ill-disposed towards me. He is
daughter of Messer Paolo Traversari, is the eighth story of the fifth
day in Boccaccio. But the spectral horseman in the story is Guido
degli Anastagi.
" The knight came thundering on, but, from afar,
Thus in imperious tone forebade the war ;
' Cease, Theodore, to proffer vain relief,
Nor stop the vengeance of so just a grief ;
But give me leave to seize my destin'd prey,
And let eternal justice take the way :
I but revenge my fate, disdain'd, betray'd,
And suffering death for this ungrateful maid.' "
Dryden ("Theodore and Honoria").
208 EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY. [CHAP. XXI.
probably a spy, or an impostor. But be it so, even as he
says. They cannot bestow their hostility on one who
loathes and execrates them more than I do, or who will
oppose their views with more zeal, when the opportunity
offers.
February 24, 1821.
Rode, etc., as usual. The secret intelligence arrived
this morning from the frontier to the C'. is as bad as
possible. The plan has missed — the Chiefs are betrayed,
military, as well as civil — and the Neapolitans not only
have not moved, but have declared to the P. government,
and to the Barbarians, that they know nothing of the
matter ! ! !
Thus the world goes ; and thus the Italians are always
lost for lack of union among themselves. What is to be
done here, between the two fires, and cut off from the
Nn. frontier, is not decided. My opinion was, — better
to rise than be taken in detail ; but how it will be settled
now, I cannot tell. Messengers are despatched to the
delegates of the other cities to learn their resolutions.
I always had an idea that it would be bungled; but
was willing to hope, and am so still. Whatever I can do
by money, means, or person, I will venture freely for
their freedom ; and have so repeated to them (some of
the Chiefs here) half an hour ago. I have two thousand
five hundred scudi, better than five hundred pounds, in
the house, which I offered to begin with.
February 25, 1821.
Came home — my head aches — plenty of news, but
too tiresome to set down. I have neither read nor
written, nor thought, but led a purely animal life all day.
I mean to try to write a page or two before I go to bed.
l82I.] PRIESTLY INSOLENCE. 2OQ
But, as Squire Sullen says, " My head aches consumedly :
" Scrub, bring me a dram ! " * Drank some Imola wine,
and some punch !
Log-book contimied?
February 27, 1821.
I have been a day without continuing the log, because
I could not find a blank book. At length I recollected
this.
Rode, etc. — wrote down an additional stanza for the
5th canto of D\on\ J\itari\ which I had composed in bed
this morning.3 Visited F Arnica. We are invited, on the
night of the Veglione (next Dominica) with the Marchesa
Clelia Cavalli and the Countess Spinelli Rasponi. I
promised to go. Last night there was a row at the ball,
of which I am a socio. The Vice-legate had the impru-
dent insolence to introduce three of his servants in masque
— without tickets^ too ! and in spite of remonstrances.
The consequence was, that the young men of the ball
took it up, and were near throwing the Vice-legate out of
the window. His servants, seeing the scene, withdrew,
and he after them. His reverence Monsignore ought to
know, that these are not times for the predominance of
priests over decorum. Two minutes more, two steps
further, and the whole city would have been in arms, and
the government driven out of it.
1. In Farquhar's Beatix1 Stratagem, act v. sc. 4, Sullen says,
' How, my writings ! My head aches consumedly — Well, gentle-
' men, you shall have her Fortune, but I can't talk. If you have a
' mind, Sir Charles, to be merry, and celebrate my sister's wedding,
' and my Divorce, you may command my house — but my head
' aches consumedly — Scrub, bring me a dram."
2. " In another paper-book" (Moore).
3. Stanza clviii. —
" Thus in the East they are extremely strict,
And wedlock and a padlock mean the same," etc.
VOL. V. P
210 EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY. [CHAP. XXI.
Such is the spirit of the day, and these fellows appear
not to perceive it. As far as the simple fact went, the
young men were right, servants being prohibited always
at these festivals.
Yesterday wrote two notes on the " Bowles and Pope "
controversy, and sent them off to Murray by the post.
The old woman whom I relieved in the forest (she is
ninety-four years of age) brought me two bunches of
violets. Nam vita gaudet mortua floribus} I was much
pleased with the present. An English woman would
have presented a pair of worsted stockings, at least, in
the month of February. Both excellent things ; but the
former are more elegant. The present, at this season,
reminds one of Gray's stanza, omitted from his elegy : —
" Here scatter'd oft, the earliest of the year,
By hands unseen, are showers of violets found ;
The red-breast loves to build and warble here,
And little footsteps lightly print the ground."
As fine a stanza as any in his elegy. I wonder that he
could have the heart to omit it.2
Last night I suffered horribly — from an indigestion, I
believe. I never sup — that is, never at home. But, last
1. Byron quotes from Abraham Cowley's Epitaphium vivi
Auctoris ; the last stanza runs as follows : —
" Hie sparge flores, sparge breves rosas,
Nam vita gaudet mortua floribus,
Herbisque odoratis corona
Vatis adhuc cinerem calentem."
2. The stanza originally preceded the " Epitaph," and followed
the lines —
" Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay
Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn."
This stanza " was printed in some of the first editions, but after-
" wards omitted, because he [Gray] thought (and in my own opinion
" very justly) that it was too long a parenthesis in this place. The
"lines, however, are in themselves exquisitely fine, and demand
"preservation" (The Works of Thomas Gray, 1814, ed. Mason and
Mathias, vol. 5. p. 127).
1 82 1.] THE SOUL AND BODY. 211
night, I was prevailed upon by the Countess Gamba's
persuasion, and the strenuous example of her brother, to
swallow, at supper, a quantity of boiled cockles, and to
dilute them, not reluctantly, with some Imola wine.
When I came home, apprehensive of the consequences, I
swallowed three or four glasses of spirits, which men (the
venders) call brandy, rum, or hollands, but which gods
would entitle spirits of wine, coloured or sugared. All
was pretty well till I got to bed, when I became some-
what swollen, and considerably vertiginous. I got out,
and mixing some soda-powders, drank them off. This
brought on temporary relief. I returned to bed; but
grew sick and sorry once and again. Took more soda-
water. At last I fell into a dreary sleep. Woke, and
was ill all day, till I had galloped a few miles. Query —
was it the cockles, or what I took to correct them, that
caused the commotion ? I think both. I remarked in
my illness the complete inertion, inaction, and destruction
of my chief mental faculties. I tried to rouse them, and
yet could not — and this is the Soul I ! ! I should believe
that it was married to the body, if they did not sympa-
thise so much with each other. If the one rose, when
the other fell, it would be a sign that they longed for
the natural state of divorce. But as it is, they seem to
draw together like post-horses.
Let us hope the best — it is the grand possession.
212 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA, JANUARY —
OCTOBER, 1821.
REPRESENTATION OF MARINO FALIERO — COLLAPSE OF
REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT IN ITALY — LETTERS
AGAINST BOWLES'S CRITICISM OF POPE — EXILE OF
THE GAMBAS — DEATH OF KEATS — SARDANAPALUS,
THE TWO FOSCARI, AND CAIN — SHELLEY'S VISIT TO
BYRON AT RAVENNA — " THE IRISH AVATAR " — THE
VISION OF JUDGMENT,
858. — To Thomas Moore..
Ravenna, January 2, 1821.
YOUR entering into my project for the Memoir, is
pleasant to me. But I doubt (contrary to me my dear
Made Mac F * V whom I always loved, and always
shall — not only because I really did feel attached to her
personally, but because she and about a dozen others of
that sex were all who stuck by me in the grand conflict
of 1815) — but I doubt, I say, whether the Memoir could
appear in my lifetime ; — and, indeed, I had rather it did
not; for a man always looks dead after his Life has
appeared, and I should certes not survive the appearance
of mine. The first part I cannot consent to alter, even
I. Probably Madame de Flahault, nee Mercer (see Letters, vol.
iii. p. 253, note i).
1 82 I.] MADAME DE STAEL. 213
although Madame de S[tael]'s opinion of B. C. and my
remarks upon Lady C.'s beauty (which is surely great,
and I suppose that I have said so — at least, I ought)
should go down to our grandchildren in unsophisticated
nakedness.
As to Madame de S[tael], I am by no means bound to
be her beadsman — she was always more civil to me in
person than during my absence. Our dear defunct friend,
Monk Lewis, who was too great a bore ever to lie,
assured me upon his tiresome word of honour, that at
Florence, the said Madame de S[tael] was open-moutfod
against me; and when asked, in Switzerland^ why she
had changed her opinion, replied, with laudable sincerity,
that I had named her in a sonnet with Voltaire, Rous-
seau, etc. * and that she could not help it through decency.
Now, I have not forgotten this, but I have been generous,
— as mine acquaintance, the late Captain Whitby, of the
navy, used to say to his seamen (when " married to the
" gunner's daughter ") — " two dozen and let you off easy."
The "two dozen" were with the cat-o'-nine tails; — the
" let you off easy " was rather his own opinion than that
of the patient.
My acquaintance with these terms and practices arises
from my having been much conversant with ships of war
and naval heroes in the year of my voyages in the
Mediterranean. Whitby was in the gallant action off
Lissa2 in 1811. He was brave, but a disciplinarian.
1. " Rousseau — Voltaire — our Gibbon — and De Stael,
Leman ! these names are worthy of thy shore," etc.
Sonnet to Lake Leman, written at Diodati, July, 1816.
2. The combined French and Italian squadron, under Dubourdieu,
consisting of six frigates and five smaller armed vessels, sailed from
Ancona, with 500 troops on board, to fortify and garrison the island
of Lissa on the Dalmatian Coast. On March 13, 1811, they were
defeated off Lissa by an English squadron of three frigates and one
214 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
When he left his frigate, he left a parrot, which was
taught by the crew the following sounds — (it must be
remarked that Captain Whitby was the image of Fawcett l
the actor, in voice, face, and figure, and that he squinted).
The Parrot loquitur.
" Whitby ! Whitby ! funny eye ! funny eye ! two
" dozen, and let you off easy. Oh you ! "
Now, if Madame de B. has a parrot, it had better be
taught a French parody of the same sounds.
With regard to our purposed Journal, I will call it
what you please, but it should be a newspaper, to make
it pay. We can call it " The Harp," if you like — or any
thing.
I feel exactly as you do about our " art," * but it
corvette, under Commodore Hoste (Yonge's History of the British
Navy, vol. ii. p. 476).
Byron alludes to the battle in Marino Faliero, ftote 5. Enumerat-
ing the exceptions to the degeneracy of Venice, he says: "There
' is Pasqualigo, the last, and alas ! posthumous son of the marriage
' of the Doges with the Adriatic, who fought his frigate with far
1 greater gallantry than any of his French coadjutors in the memor-
' able action off Lissa. I came home in the squadron with the
'prizes in i8ir, and recollect to have heard Sir William Hoste,
1 and the other officers engaged in that glorious conflict, speak in
' the highest terms of Pasqualigo's behaviour."
1. John Fawcett (1768-1837), after acting at York in Tate Wil-
kinson's company, made his first appearance in London at Covent
Garden, as "Caleb" in He would be a Soldier, September 21, 1791.
In low comedy he was excellent. Leigh Hunt, in his " Synopses "
(Dramatic Essays, edited by William Archer and Robert W. Lowe,
pp. xliv.-v.), speaks of him as one of the " actors whom modern
" writers have spoiled." The meaning of the remark probably is
that Colman wrote pieces specially designed to suit his peculiarities.
Fawcett made his last appearance on the stage May 30, 1830, as
" Captain Copp " in Howard Payne's Charles the Second. A list of
his principal characters is given in Genest's English Stage, vol. ix.
pp. 521-525.
2. The following passage from Moore's letter, to which the above
was an answer, will best explain what follows : " With respect to
" the newspaper, it is odd enough that Lord [John Russell ?] and
" myself had been (about a week or two before I received your letter)
l82I.] THE JOURNAL SCHEME. 215
comes over me in a kind of rage every now and then,
like * * * *, and then, if I don't write to empty my
mind, I go mad. As to that regular, uninterrupted love
of writing, which you describe in your friend, I do not
understand it. I feel it as a torture, which I must get
rid of, but never as a pleasure. On the contrary, I think
composition a great pain.
I wish you to think seriously of the Journal scheme —
for I am as serious as one can be, in this world, about
any thing. As to matters here, they are high and mighty
— but not for paper. It is much about the state of things
betwixt Cain and Abel. There is, in fact, no law or
government at all ; and it is wonderful how well things
go on without them. Excepting a few occasional murders,
(every body killing whomsoever he pleases, and being
killed, in turn, by a friend, or relative, of the defunct,)
there is as quiet a society and as merry a Carnival as can
be met with in a tour through Europe. There is nothing
like habit in these things.
I shall remain here till May or June, and, unless
" honour comes unlocked for," l we may perhaps meet, in
France or England, within the year.
Yours, etc.
Of course, I cannot explain to you existing circum-
stances, as they open all letters.
' speculating upon your assistance in a plan somewhat similar, but
' more literary and less regularly periodical in its appearance. Lord
' [John], as you will see by his volume of Essays, if it reaches you, has
' a very sly, dry, and pithy way of putting sound truths upon politics
' and manners ; and whatever scheme we adopt, he will be a very
' useful and active ally in it, as he has a pleasure in writing quite
' inconceivable to a poor hack scribe like me, who always feel, about
' my art, as the French husband did when he found a man making
' love to his (the Frenchman's) wife : ' Comment, Monsieur, — sans
' y etre oblige! ' When I say this, however, I mean it only of the
' executive part of writing ; for the imagining, the shadowing out
'of the future work, is, I own, a delicious fool's paradise."
I. ffenry /P., Part I. act v. sc. 3.
2l6 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
Will you set me right about your curst Champs
Elysees? — are they "es" or "ees" for the adjective?
I know nothing of French, being all Italian. Though
I can read and understand French, I never attempt to
speak it; for I hate it. From the second part of the
Memoirs cut what you please.
859. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, JY 4<h, 1821.
D? M?, — I write to you in considerable surprise, that,
since the first days of November, I have never had a line
from you. It is so incomprehensible, that I can only
account for it by supposing some accident. I have
written to you at least ten letters, to none of which I
have had a word of answer : one of them was on your
own affairs — a proposal of Galignani, relative to your
publications, which I referred to you (as was proper), for
your own decision.
Last week I sent (addressed to Mr. D. Kinnaird) two
packets containing the 5th Canto of D.J? I wish to
know what you mean to do ? anything or nothing.
Of the State of this country I can only say, that,
besides the assassination of the Commandant of the 71!1
(of which I gave you an account, as I took him
up, and he died in my house) that there have been
I . Murray hesitated whether or not he should continue the publi-
cation as an anonymous work, and without his own name as publisher.
Croker (Murray Memoirs, vol. i. pp. 413-416) had written to him,
March 26, 1820, saying that Murray had done the poem "great
'injustice." "If you print and sell Tom Jones and Peregrine
' Pickle, why did you start at Don Juan ? Why smuggle it into the
' world, and, as it were, pronounce it illegitimate in its birth, and
' induce so many of the learned rabble, when they could find so
' little specific offence in it, to refer to its supposed original state as
' one of original sin."
1821.] BARRY CORNWALL. 217
six murders committed within twenty miles — three last
night.
Yours very truly,
B.
P.S. — Have you gotten the Hints, that I may alter
parts and portions ?
I just see, by the papers of Galignani, that there is
a new tragedy of great expectation, by Barry Cornwall : l
of what I have read of his works I liked the Dramatic
Sketclies, but thought his Sicilian Story and Mardan
Colonna, in rhyme, quite spoilt by I know not what
affectation of Wordsworth, and Hunt, and Moore, and
Myself, all mixed up into a kind of Chaos. I think him
very likely to produce a good tragedy, if he keep to a
natural style, and not play tricks to form Harlequinades
for an audience. As he (B. C. is not his true name) was
a school-fellow of mine, I take more than common
interest in his success, and shall be glad to hear of it
speedily. If I had been aware that he was in that line,
I should have spoken of him in the preface to M\arino\
F\aliero\ : he will do a World's wonder if he produce a
great tragedy. I am, however, persuaded, that this is not
to be done by following the old dramatists, who are full
of gross faults, pardoned only for the beauty of their
language; but by writing naturally and regularly, and
producing regular tragedies, like the Greeks ; but not in
imitation, — merely the outline of their conduct, adapted
I. " I told Lord Byron," says Medwin (Convei-sations, ed. 1825,
vol. i. p. 174), " that I had had a letter from Procter, and that he
' had been jeered on the Duke of Mirandola not having been in-
' eluded in his (Lord B.'s) enumeration of the dramatic pieces of the
' day, and that he had added, he had been at Harrow with him.
' ' Ay,' said Lord Byron, ' I remember the name : he was in the
' lower school, in such a class. They stood Farrer, Procter,
' Jocelyn ! ' " (see p. 37, note 2).
2l8 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
to our own times and circumstances, and of course no
chorus.
You will laugh, and say, " why don't you do so ? " I
have, you see, tried a Sketch in Marino Faliero ; but
many people think my talent "essentially undramatic"
and I am not at all clear that they are not right. If
Marino Faliero don't fall, in the perusal, I shall, perhaps,
try again (but not for the Stage) ; and, as I think that
love is not the principal passion for tragedy (and yet
most of ours turn upon it), you will not find me a
popular writer. Unless it is Love, furious, criminal,
and hapless, it ought not to make a tragic subject :
when it is melting and maudlin, it does, but it ought
not to do ; it is then for the Gallery and second price
boxes.
If you want to have a notion of what I am trying,
take up a translation of any of the Greek tragedians. If
I said the original, it would be an impudent presumption
of mine ; but the translations are so inferior to the
originals, that I think I may risk it. Then judge of the
" simplicity of plot, etc.," and do not judge me by your
mad old dramatists, which is like drinking Usquebaugh
and then proving a fountain : yet after all, I suppose that
you do not mean that spirits is a nobler element than a
clear spring bubbling in the sun; and this I take to
be the difference between the Greeks and those turbid
mountebanks — always excepting B. Jonson, who was a
Scholar and a Classic. Or, take up a translation of
Alfieri, and try the interest, etc., of these my new attempts
in the old line, by him in English. And then tell me
fairly your opinion. But don't measure me by YOUR
OWN old or new tailor's yards. Nothing so easy as
intricate confusion of plot, and rant. Mrs. Centlivre, in
comedy, has ten times tJie bustle of Congreve ; but are they
1 82 1.] THE BRAZIERS' ADDRESS. 219
to be compared ? and yet she drove Congreve from the
theatre.1
860. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, January 6'.h 1821.
On the "Braziers' Address to be presented in
" Armour by the Company,2 etc., etc.," as stated in the
Newspapers : —
1 . See Letters, vol. iv. p. 426, note 2.
2. The allusion is explained in Rivington's Annual Register,
under the date October 30, 1820 (vol. Ixii. pp. 114*, 115*).
"ADDRESSES TO THE QUEEN. — The Queen's Chamberlain, Sir
' William Cell, and the Hon. Keppel Craven, having notified to
' the public that her Majesty had resolved . . . not to receive any
' addresses by deputation after Monday, several of the most nume-
' rous and respectable trades of the metropolis and its vicinity . . .
' determined to take advantage of the implied permission, and to
' convey to her Majesty, on Monday, the assurance of their loyalty
' and esteem. The first procession that passed along the Strand
' was that of the Youths of the Metropolis ... the next . . . was
' the Coopers ... the third ... the Spanish Leather-dressers . . .
'the fourth . . . the Fellmongers . . . Then came the Sealskin
' Curriers. But the most splendid exhibition of the day was that of
' the brass-founders and braziers. The procession was headed by a
' man dressed in a suit of burnished plate armour of brass, and
' mounted on a handsome black horse, the reins being held by
' persons acting as pages, but wearing brass helmets. This figure
' was followed immediately by a large party, bearing beautiful
' pieces of fancy work in brass and copper, supported on brass
' wands. The brilliancy, number, and variety of these works
' excited much admiration. At regular intervals flags were borne,
' with various devices and mottoes, ' The Queen and her Rights, '
' ' Caroline, God and my Right,' ' Wood and Independence,'
' ' Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour,' ' Lying
' lips are an abomination to the Lord,' ' As a roaring lion and a
'raging bear; so is a wicked ruler over a poor people.' Then
' came a man clothed in complete steel armour, followed by various
' flags, on one of which were the crowns of the King and Queen,
' with this motto, ' As it should be,' ' The Queen's Guard are men
'of metal.' A man in a complete suite of brass armour, mounted
' and attended as the former, appeared, and was followed by two
' persons, bearing on a cushion a most magnificent imitation of the
' imperial Crown of England. A small number of the deputation
' of brass-founders were admitted to the presence of her Majesty,
220 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
It seems that the Braziers propose soon to pass
An Address and to bear it themselves all in brass ;
A Superfluous Pageant, for by the Lord Harry !
They'll find, where they're going, much more than they
carry.
Or,
The Braziers it seems are determined to pass
An Address and present it themselves All in brass,
A superfluous {j^^H for by the Lord Harry !
They'll find, where they're going, much more than they
carry.
R? Jy 8'.h 1821.
ILLUSTRIOUS SIR, — I enclose you a long note x for the
5'-h Canto of Don Juan ; you will find where it should
be placed on referring to the MS., which I sent to Mr.
Kinnaird. I had subscribed the authorities — Arrian,
Plutarch, Hume, etc. — for the corrections of Bacon, but,
thinking it pedantic to do so, have since erased them.
I have had no letter from you since one dated the
3r.d of Novf You are a pretty fellow, but I will be even
with you some day.
Yours, etc., etc.,
BYRON.
P.S. — The enclosed epigram is not for publication,
recollect.
" and one of the persons in armour advanced to the throne, and
" bending on one knee, presented the address, which was enclosed
"in a brass case of excellent workmanship. A youth in the pro-
" cession afterwards presented to her Majesty an elegant gilt vase,
" which she seemed much to admire. Other deputations followed."
I. See Appendix VI. The note was intended for stanza cxlvii.,
to illustrate Byron's existing note on Bacon's inaccuracy.
l82I.] HINTS FROM HORACE. 221
86 1. — To John Murray.
R? ]y iiV 1821.
D* M\, — Put this : — " I am obliged for this excellent
" translation of the old Chronicle to Mr. Cohen, to whom
" the reader will find himself indebted for a version
" which I could not myself (though after so many years
" intercourse with Italians) have given by any means so
" purely and so faithfully." 1
I have looked over The Hints (of which, by the
way, you have not sent the whole), and see little to alter ;
I do not see yet any name which would be offended, at
least of my friends. As an advertisement, a short preface,
say, as follows : (Let me have the rest though first.)
" However little this poem may resemble the annexed
" Latin, it has been submitted to one of the great rules
" of Horace, having been kept in the desk for more than
" nine years. It was composed at Athens in the Spring
"of 1811, and received some additions after the author's
" return to England in the same year."
I protest, and desire you to protest stoutly and publicly
(if it be necessary), against any attempt to bring the
tragedy on any stage. It was written solely for the
reader. It is too regular, and too simple, and of too
remote an interest, for the Stage. I will not be exposed
to the insolences of an audience, without a remonstrance.
As thus, —
" The Author, having heard that, notwithstanding his
" request and remonstrance, it is the intention of one of
" the London Managers to attempt the introduction of
" the tragedy of M.F. upon the Stage, does hereby protest
I . This note, with three trifling alterations, is added to Appendix
II. to Marino Faliei'o, after Cohen's translation of the Cronica di
Sa-nuto.
222 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
" publicly that such a proceeding is as totally against his
"wishes, as it will prove against the interests of the
" theatre. That Composition was intended for the Closet
" only, as the reader will readily perceive. By no kind
" of adaptation can it be made fit for the present English
" Stage. If the Courtesy of the Manager is not sufficient
"to withhold him from exercising his power over a
" published drama, which the Law has not sufficiently
" protected from such usurpation " 1
862. — To John Murray.
R? Jx n'.h 1821.
DEAR MURRAY, — I have read with attention the
enclosed, of which you have not sent me, however, the
whole (which pray send), and have made the few correc-
tions I shall make — in what I have seen at least. I will
omit nothing and alter little : the fact is (as I perceive),
that I wrote a great deal better in 1811, than I have ever
done since. I care not a sixpence whether the work is
popular or not — that is your concern ; and, as I neither
name price, nor care about terms, it can concern you
little either, so that it pays its expence of printing. I
leave all those matters to your magnanimity (which is some-
thing like Lady Byron's), which will decide for itself.
You have about — I know not what quantity of my stuff
on hand just now (a 5th Canto of Don Juan also by this
time), and must cut according to your cloth.
Is not one of the Seals meant for my Cranium ? and
the other — who or what is he ?
Yours ever truly,
BYRON.
I. The rest of the letter is missing.
1 82 1.] NOT AN ACTING PLAY. 223
P.S. — What have you decided about Galignani ? I
think you might at least have acknowledged my letter,
which would have been civil ; also a letter on the late
murders here : also, pray do not omit to protest and
impede (as far as possible) any Stage-playing with the
tragedy. I hope that the Histrions will see their own
interest too well to attempt it See my other letter.
P.S. — You say, speaking of acting, " let me know
" your pleasure in this." I reply that there is no pleasure
in it ; the play is not for acting: Kemble or Kean x could
read it, but where are they ? Do not let me be sacrificed
in such a manner : depend upon it, it is some party-work
to run down you and your favourite horse. I know some-
thing of Harris and Elliston personally ; and, if they are
not Critics enough to see that it would not do, I think
them Gentlemen enough to desist at my request. Why
don't they bring out some of the thousands of meritorious
and neglected men, who cumber their shelves, instead of
dragging me out of the library ?
Will you excuse the severe postage, with which my
late letters will have taxed you ?
" I had taken such strong resolutions against anything
" of that kind, from seeing how much every body that
" did write for the Stage, was obliged to subject them-
" selves to the players and the town." — Spence's
Anecdotes •, page 22.
I. "Lord Byron," writes Mrs. Piozzi to Dr. Gray, September I,
1820 {Autobiography, etc., vol. ii. p. 275), "is said to be bringing
"out a tragedy; unlucky, if Mr. Kean is leaving England for
"America. They seem to be kindred souls, delighting in distortion,
"and mistaking it for pathos."
224 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
863. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, January 19, 1821.
DEAR MORAY, — Yours of y? 2gth UltT hath arrived.
I must really and seriously request that you will beg of
Messrs. Harris or Elliston to let the Doge alone : it is
not an acting play ; it will not serve their purpose ; it will
destroy yours (the Sale) ; and it will distress me. It
is not courteous, it is hardly even gentlemanly, to persist
in this appropriation of a man's writings to their
Mountebanks.
I have already sent you by last post a short protest
to the Public (against this proceeding) ; in case that they
persist, which I trust that they will not, you must then
publish it in the Newspapers. I shall not let them off
with that only, if they go on ; but make a longer appeal
on that subject, and state what I think the injustice of
their mode of behaviour. It is hard that I should have
all the buffoons in Britain to deal with — -pirates who will
publish, and players who will act — when there are thou-
sands of worthy and able men who can get neither
bookseller nor manager for love nor money.
You never answered me a word about Galignani : if
you mean to use the two documents, do ; if not, burn them.
I do not choose to leave them in any one's possession :
suppose some one found them without the letters, what
would they think ? why, that /had been doing the opposite
of what I have done, to wit, referred the whole thing to
you — an act of civility at least, which required saying,
" I have received your letter." I thought that you might
have some hold upon those publications by this means :
to me it can be no interest one way or the other.
The third canto of Don Juan is diill, but you must
really put up with it : if the two first and the two following
1 82 1.] A CONFLICT OF CRITICS. 225
are tolerable, what do you expect ? particularly as I
neither dispute with you on it as a matter of criticism,
or a matter of business.
Besides, what am I to understand ? you and D? Kin-
naird, and others, write to me, that the two first published
Cantos are among the best that I ever wrote, and are
reckoned so : Mrs. Leigh writes that they are thought
" execrable" (bitter word that for an author — Eh, Murray !)
as a composition even, and that she had heard so much
against them that she would never read them, and never
has. Be that as it may, I can't alter. That is not my
forte. If you publish the three new ones without osten-
tation, they may perhaps succeed.
Pray publish the Dante and the Pulci (the Prophecy
of Dante , I mean) : I look upon the Pulci as my grand
performance. The remainder of The Hints, where be
they? Now bring them all out about the same time,
otherwise " the variety " you wot of will be less obvious.
I am in bad humour : some obstructions in business
with the damned trustees, who object to an advantageous
loan which I was to furnish to a Nobleman on Mortgage,
because his property is in Ireland, have shown me how
a man is treated in his absence. Oh, if I do come back,
I will make some of those, who little dream of it, spin —
or they or I shall go down.
The news here is, that Col. Brown1 (the Witness-
buyer) has been stabbed at Milan, but not mortally. I
wonder that anybody should dirty' their daggers in him.
They should have beaten him with Sandbags — an old
Spanish fashion.
I. Colonel Brown was employed to prepare the case against
Queen Caroline in Italy. He was attacked at Milan, December 9,
1820, by two persons as he was returning alone from the Opera.
He received four wounds in the head and one in the chest, but
recovered.
VOL. V. Q
226 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
I sent you a line or two on the Braziers' Company
last week, not for publication.
Yours ever,
B.
The lines were even worthy
Of — dsworth, the great Metaquizzical poet,
A man of great merit amongst those who know it,
Of whose works, as I told Moore last autumn at *Mestri
I owe all I know to my passion for Pastry.
* Mestri and Fusina are the ferry trajects to Venice :
I believe, however, that it was at Fusina that Moore and
I embarked in 1819, when Thomas came to Venice, like
Coleridge's Spring " slowly up this way." l
Omit the dedication to Goethe.
864. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, January 20, 1821.
DEAR MURRAY, — If Harris or Elliston persist,2 after
the remonstrance which I requested you and Mr.
1. Christabel, Part I. lines 20-22—
"The night is chill, the cloud is gray :
'Tis a month before the month of May,
And the Spring comes slowly up this way."
2. On Saturday, April 21, 1821, Murray published Marino Faliero.
On Wednesday, April 25, the play was represented by Elliston,
at Drury Lane. The drama, sheet by sheet from the compositors'
hands, was taken from the printing-office to the theatre, and the
whole play, in fact, studied before publication.
On Wednesday, April 25, Elliston received the formal licence
from the Lord Chamberlain. Half an hour later he was served with a
notice from Murray's solicitor, announcing that the Lord Chancellor
had granted an injunction against the acting of Marino Faliero, and
that the play must be immediately withdrawn.
" Elliston was now in his element — namely, a perplexity ; and,
"with his wonted activity in such cases, he sprang into a hackney-
" coach, with the view of driving to Hamilton Place, that he might
1 82 1.] REPRESENTATION OF MARINO FALIERO. 22-J
Kinnaird to make on my behalf, and which I hope will
be sufficient — but if, I say, they do persist, then I pray you
to present in person the enclosed letter to the Lord
Chamberlain : I have said in person ; otherwise I shall
have neither answer nor knowledge that it has reached
its address, owing to " the insolence of office."
I wish you would speak to Lord Holland, and to all
my friends and yours, to interest themselves in prevent-
ing this cursed attempt at representation.
God help me ! at this distance, I am treated like a
"see Lord Eldon himself on the subject. He arrived in very time
" to catch his lordship by the skirts of his clothing as he was mount-
' ' ing the steps of his own door. Here the defendant at once entered
"on the merits of his case, and his lordship declared the court
" sitting — Lord Eldon on the upper step, and Elliston on the pave-
" ment — the one all patience, the other all animation. The chan-
" cellor hesitated as to his previous order — Lord Eldon doubted —
" and Elliston redoubled the force of his argument. At length he
" so far succeeded, that the judge suspended the injunction granted
" against the acting of the play for that night ; but, ' mind,' observed
"he, 'you appear before me in the morning of to-morrow.' The
"manager hereupon took his respectful leave, quitting the chan-
" cellor, after an interview more extraordinary than any, perhaps,
"recorded in Mr. Twiss's admirable Life of his lordship" (Memoirs
of Robert W. Elliston (1845), pp. 268, 269).
Elliston's success with Lord Eldon was met by the following hand-
bill issued by Murray : —
" The Public are respectfully informed that the representation of
' Lord Byron's tragedy, The Doge of Venice (Marino Faliero), this
'evening, takes place in defiance of an injunction of the Lord
' Chancellor, which was not applied for until the remonstrance of
' the publisher, at the earnest desire of the noble author, had failed
' in protecting this drama from its intrusion on the stage, for which
" it was never intended" (ibid., p. 270).
The play was acted on April 25, but it excited no enthusiasm,
and the receipts amounted to only ,£147.
Subsequently several hearings took place before the Chancellor,
"and it was settled that the case should be sent to the Court of
"King's Bench, to see whether an action could be maintained.
' The argument was to come on in the November following, when,
'no counsel appearing on the part of the plaintiff, the case was
' struck out. Marino Faliero was acted a second time on the 3Oth
' of April, under the authority of the lord chancellor, to which all
' parties had assented. The play was represented, on the whole,
'seven times, the greatest receipt being ^"160 " (ibid., pp. 270, 271).
228 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
corpse or a fool by the few people whom I thought that
I could rely upon ; and I was a fool to think any better
of them than of the rest of mankind.
Pray write.
Yours ever,
BYRON.
P.S. — I have nothing more at heart (that is, in
literature) than to prevent this drama from going upon
the Stage : in short, rather than permit it, it must be
suppressed altoget/ier, and only forty copies struck off
privately for presents to my friends. What damned fools
those speculating buffoons must be not to see that it is
unfit for their Fair, or their booth !
865. — To John Murray.
January 20, 1821.
D* MY, — I did not think to have troubled you with
the plague and postage of a double letter this time, but I
have just read in an Italian paper, " That I/! B. has a
" tragedy coming out," etc., etc., etc. ; and that the Courier
and Morning Chronicle, etc., etc., are pulling one another
to pieces about it and him, etc.
Now I do reiterate and desire, that every thing may
be done to prevent it from coming out on any theatre,
for which it never was designed, and on which (in the
present state of the stage of London) it could never
succeed. I have sent you my appeal by last post, which
you must publish in case of need ; and I require you even
in your own name (if my honour is dear to you) to
declare that such representation would be contrary to my
wish and my judgement. If you do not wish to drive me
1821.] NOTHING EXCEPT THIRTY-THREE. 22Q
mad altogether, you will hit upon some way to prevent
this.
Yours,
B.
P.S. — I cannot conceive how Harris or Elliston
should be so insane as to think of acting Marino Faliero ;
they might as well act the Prometheus of yEschylus. I
speak of course humbly, and with the greatest sense of
the distance of time and merit between the two per-
formances ; but merely to show the absurdity of the
attempt.
The Italian paper speaks of a " party against it ; " to
be sure there would be a party : can you imagine, that
after having never flattered man, nor beast, nor opinion,
nor politics, there would not be a party against a man,
who is also a popular writer — at least a successful ? why,
all parties would be a party against.
866. — To Thomas Moore.
Ravenna, January 22, 1821.
Pray get well. I do not like your complaint. So,
let me have a line to say you are up and doing again.
To-day I am thirty-three years of age.
Through life's road, so dim and dirty,
I have dragged to three-and-thirty.
What have these years left to me ?
Nothing — except thirty-three.
Have you heard that the " Braziers' Company " have,
or mean to present an address at Brandenburgh House,1
I. Brandenburgh House, Fulham, formerly called Crabtree Hall,
was built by Captain Crispe, slave-trader and merchant-adventurer
in the reign of Charles I. It passed through various hands — Prince
230 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
" in armour," and with all possible variety and splendour
of brazen apparel ?
The Braziers, it seems, are preparing to pass
An address, and present it themselves all in brass —
A superfluous pageant — for, by the Lord Harry,
They'll find where they're going much more than they
carry.
There's an Ode for you, is it not ? — worthy
Of Wordsworth, the grand metaquizzical poet,
A man of vast merit, though few people know it ;
The perusal of whom (as I told you at Mestri)
I owe, in great part, to my passion for pastry.
Mestri and Fusina are the "trajects, or common
" ferries," to Venice ; but it was from Fusina that you and
I embayed, though " the wicked necessity of rhyming "
has made me press Mestri into the voyage.
So, you have had a book dedicated to you ? I am
glad of it, and shall be very happy to see the volume.
I am in a peck of troubles about a tragedy of mine,
which is fit only for the (****) closet, and which it
seems that the managers, assuming a right over published
poetry, are determined to enact, whether I will or no,
with their own alterations by Mr. Dibdin,1 I presume.
I have written to Murray, to the Lord Chamberlain, and
to others, to interfere and preserve me from such an
exhibition. I want neither the impertinence of their
Rupert, Margaret Hughes, and Bubb Doddington, who changed the
name to La Trappe. From Doddington it eventually passed to
the Margrave of Brandenburgh. After Queen Caroline's death, the
house was pulled down, and the site is now occupied by a distillery.
I. Dibdin (Autobiography, vol. ii. p. 199), in opening the Surrey
Theatre for Easter, 1821, announced "a new melodrame founded
" on Lord Byron's recent play of Marifto Faliero, Doge of Venice"
He did not, however, bring out the piece.
1 82 1.] THE PROPHECY OF DANTE. 231
hisses, nor the insolence of their applause. I write only
for the reader, and care for nothing but the silent appro-
bation of those who close one's book with good humour
and quiet contentment.
Now, if you would also write to our friend Perry, to
beg of him to mediate with Harris and Elliston to forbear
this intent, you will greatly oblige me. The play is quite
unfit for the stage, as a single glance will show them,
and, I hope, has shown them ; and, if it were ever so fit,
I will never have any thing to do willingly with the
theatres.
Yours ever, in haste, etc.
867. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, J? 27, 1821.
DEAR MORAY, — I have mentioned Mr. Cohen in a
letter to you last week, from which the passage should
be extracted and prefixed to his translation. You will
also have received two or three letters upon the subject
of the Managers: in one I enclosed an epistle for the
Lord Chamberlain (in case of the worst), and I even
prohibited the publication of the Tragedy, limiting it to
a few copies for my private friends. But this would be
useless, after going so far ; so you may publish as we
intended — only, (if the Managers attempt to act), pray
present my letter to the \2. Chamberlain, and publish my
appeal in the papers, adding that it has all along been
against my wishes that it should be represented.
I differ from you about the Dante? which I think
should be published with the tragedy. But do as you
please : you must be the best judge of your own craft.
I agree with you about the title. The play may be good
I. The Prophecy of Dante was published with Marino Faliero,
Doge of Venice^ in April, 1821.
232 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
or bad, but I flatter myself that it is original as a picture
of that kind of passion, which to my mind is so natural,
that I am convinced that I should have done precisely
what the Doge did on those provocations.
I am glad of Foscolo's approbation.
I wish you would send me the remainder of The
Hints — you only sent about half of them. As to the
other volume, you should publish them about the same
period, or else what becomes of the " -variety " which you
talk so much of?
Excuse haste. I believe I mentioned to you that
I forget what it was ; but no matter.
Thanks for your compliments of the year : I hope
that it will be pleasanter than the last. I speak with
reference to England only, as far as regards myself,
where I had every kind of disappointment — lost an
important lawsuit — and the trustees of that evil Genius of
a woman, Ly. Byron (who was born for my desolation),
refusing to allow of an advantageous loan to be made
from my property to Lord Blessington, etc., etc., by way
of closing the four seasons. These, and a hundred other
such things, made a year of bitter business for me in
England : luckily, things were a little pleasanter for me
Jiere^ else I should have taken the liberty of Hannibal's
ring.1
Pray thank Gifford for all his goodnesses : the winter
is as cold here as Parry's polarities.2 I must now take a
canter in the forest ; my horses are waiting.
Yours ever and truly,
B.
1. " Non gladii, non saxa dabunt, nee tela ; sed ille
Cannarum vindex, ac tanti sanguinis ultor,
Annulus."
Juvenal, Sat. x. 164.
2. Captain Parry (1790-1855) published, in 1821, his Journal of a
1 82 1.] ENGLISH GUNPOWDER. 233
P.S. — It is exceedingly strange that you have never
acknowledged the receipt of Galiguants letters, which I
enclosed to you three months ago : what the devil does
that mean?
868. — To Richard Belgrave Hoppner.
Ravenna, January 28^ 1821.
MY DEAR HOPPNER, — I have not heard from you for
a long time, and now I must trouble you — as usual.
Messrs. Siri and Wilhalm have given up business. They
had three cases of mine. I desired them to consign
these cases to Missiaglia. There were 4 Telescopes, a
case of Watches and a tin case of English gunpowder,
containing about five pounds of the same, which I have
had for five years. Messrs. Siri and Wilhalm own to all
three, and the telescopes and watches they have consigned
to M., of the others (though they mention it in a letter of
last week) they now say nothing — and M. pretends that
it is not to be found.
Will you make enquiry ? It is of importance to me,
because I can find no other such in these countries, and
can be of none to the Government because it is so small
a quantity. If it has in fact been seized by these fellows,
I will present a slight memorial to the Governor of
Venice ; which (though it may not get me back my three
or four pounds of powder) will at least tell him some
truths upon things in general, as I shall use pretty strong
terms in expressing myself.
I shall feel very much obliged by your making this
enquiry.
Voyage for the Discovery of a North- West Passage from the Atlantic
to the Pacific, performed in tJu Years 1819-20, in H.M. Ships Hecla
and Griper.
234 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
Of course upon other topics I can say nothing at
present, except that your Dutch friends will have their
hands full one of these days probably.
Pray let me know how you are.
I am, yours very truly,
BYRON.
My best respects to Madame Hoppner. Could not
you and I contrive to meet somewhere this spring ? I
should be solus.
P.S. — I sent you all the romances and light reading
which Murray has furnished — except the Monastery ', which
you told me that you had already seen. I wish the
things which were at Siri and W.'s to remain with
Missiaglia, and not to be sent here, at least for the
present. Pray do what you can about the p r ; it is
hard those rascals should seize the poor little miserable
canister, after the many I shot in relieving their wretched
population at Venice. I did not trouble you with the
things, because I thought that they would bore you. I
never got the translation of the German translation^ but
it don't signify as you said it was not worth while. They
are printing some things of mine in England, and if any
parcel comes from London addressed to me at Venice,
pray take any work of mine out you like — and keep it, as
well as any other books you choose.
They are always addressed to Missiaglia.
869. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, Febr? 2, 1821.
D1? MORAY, — Your letter of excuses has arrived. I
receive the letter, but do not admit the excuses, except
l82I.j A MINISTER OF STATE. 235
in courtesy ; as when a man treads on your toes and begs
your pardon, the pardon is granted, but the joint aches,
especially if there be a corn upon it. However, I shall
scold you presently.
In the last speech of The Doge,1 there occurs (I think,
from memory) the phrase
" And Thou who makest and unmakest Suns ; "
Change this to
" And Thou who kindlest and who quenchest Suns ; "
that is to say, if the verse runs equally well, and Mr.
Gifford thinks the expression improved. Pray have the
bounty to attend to this. You are grown quite a minister
of State : mind if some of these days you are not thrown
out. God will not be always a Tory, though Johnson
says the first Whig was the Devil.
You have learnt one secret from Mr. Galignani's
(somewhat tardily acknowledged) correspondence. This
is, that an English Author may dispose of his exclusive
copyright in France — a fact of some consequence (in
time of peace), in the case of a popular writer. Now I
will tell you what you shall do, and take no advantage of
you, though you were scurvy enough never to acknow-
ledge my letter for three months. Offer Galignani the
refusal of the copyright in France ; if he refuses, appoint
any bookseller in France you please, and I will sign any
assignment you please, and it shall never cost you a Sou
on my account.
Recollect that / will have nothing to do with it,
except as far as it may secure the copyright to yourself.
I will have no bargain but with English publishers, and I
desire no interest out of that country.
I. Marino Faliero, act v. sc. 3.
236 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
Now, that's fair and open, and a little handsomer
than your dodging silence, to see what would come of it.
You are an excellent fellow, mio Caro Moray, but there
is still a little leaven of Fleet-street about you now and
then — a crumb of the old loaf. You have no right to act
suspiciously with me, for I have given you no reasons.
I shall always be frank with you; as, for instance,
whenever you talk with the votaries of Apollo arithme-
tically, it should be in guineas, not pounds — to poets as
well as physicians, and bidders at Auctions.
I shall say no more at this present, save that I am,
Yours very truly,
BYRON.
P.S. — If you venture, as you say, to Ravenna this
year, through guns, which (like the Irishman's), " shoot
" round a corner," I will exercise the rites of hospitality
while you live, and bury you handsomely (though not in
holy ground), if you get " shot or slashed in a creagh or
" splore," l which are rather frequent here of late among
the native parties. But perhaps your visit may be anti-
cipated ; for Lady Medea's trustees and my Attorneo do
so thwart all business of mine, in despite of Mr. K1! and
myself, that I may probably come to your country ; in
which case write to her Ladyship the duplicate of the
epistle the King of France wrote to Prince John.2 She
and her Scoundrels shall find it so.
I. Evan Dhu Maccombich wished nothing better for his friend
Donald Bean than to be hung on the " kind gallows of Crieff . . .
" if he's not shot, or slashed, in a creagh " ( IVaverley, chap, xviii.).
z. " So soon as Philip heard of the King's delivery from captivity,
"he wrote to his confederate John, in these terms : ' Take care of
"yourself: the Devil is broke loose' " (Hume's History of England,
ed. 1770, vol. ii. p. 32).
1821.] ELIZABETH, DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE. 237
870. — To John Murray.
R? F? 12? 1821.
D? SR, — You are requested to take particular care
that the enclosed note is printed with the drama. Fos-
colo or Hobhouse will correct the Italian; but do not
you delay : every one of your cursed proofs is a two
months' delay, which you only employ to gain time,
because you think it a bad speculation.
Yours,
BYRON.
P.S. — If the thing fails in the publication, you are
NOT pinned even to your own terms : merely print and
publish what I desire you, and if you don't succeed, I
will abate whatever you please. I care nothing about
that ; but I wish what I desire to be printed, to be so.
I have never had the remaining sheet of the Hints
from H\prace\.
In the letter on Bowles,1 after the words " the long
" walls of Palestrina and Malamocco," add " / Murazzi"
which is their Venetian title.
Mr. M. is requested to acknowledge receipt of this
by return of post.
871. — To Elizabeth, Duchess of Devonshire.2
Ravenna, February 15, 1821.
MADAM, — I am about to request a favor of your
Grace without the smallest personal pretensions to obtain
1 . For Byron's controversy with Bowles, and his two Letters ; see
Appendix III.
2. For the Duchess of Devonshire, see Letters, vol. iv. p. 178,
note I . Byron's two letters are printed from copies in the possession
of Mr. Murray. The first letter missed the .duchess, who had left
238 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
it. It is not however for myself, and yet I err — for
surely what we solicit for our friends is, or ought to be,
Rome for Spa. Byron's second letter and the duchess's answer are
given below : —
"To Elizabeth, Duchess of Devonshire.
" Ravenna, July 30, 1821.
"MADAM, — The inclosed letter (of Feb. 15, 1821) which I had
" the honour of addressing to your Grace, unfortunately for the
" subject of it and for the writer, — arrived after your Grace's de-
" parture. I venture to forward it to Spa in the hope that you may
" be perhaps tempted to interest yourself in favor of the persons
" to whom it refers by writing a few lines to any of your Roman
" acquaintances in power. Two words from your Grace I cannot
" help thinking would be sufficient — even if the request were still
" more presumptuous.
" I have the honour to be, with the greatest respect,
" Your most obed^ very humble servant,
"BYRON."
"To Lord Byron.
" Spa, August 17, 1821.
" I regret very much that the letter which your Lordship directed
' ' to Rome did not arrive before I left it, for it is always easier to
" explain the subject which one is anxious about in conversation
" than by writing — unless, indeed, the pen is held by the author of
" Childe Harold. I will, however, certainly write to Rome about
" the persons who interest you so much, and shall be happy if I
" can be of any use to them. I recollect Madame Martinetti's
"introducing to me a gentleman of the name of Gamba ; but it is
" the warm interest which you express, my Lord, that will make me
"particularly anxious to succeed for them. Lady Melbourne had,
" I know, the greatest regard and friendship for you ; and I had
"ever the sincerest affection for her. Whatever regrets subsequent
" occurrences might have occasioned her, I believe her friendship
" for you was unvaried. I have found no difficulty in decyphering
" your letter, without ever being indebted to Lady Bessborough's
" letters for that advantage ; and I have only to wish that I may be
" successful in my application, and be able to realize the hopes you
"have formed from any influence I may possess at Rome. I always
' ' wish to do any good I can, and in that poor Gibbon and my other
" friends have but done me justice ; but believe me also, that there
" is a character of justice, goodness, and benevolence in the present
"Government of Rome, which, if they are convinced of the just
" claim of the Comtes de Gamba, will make them grant their request.
" Of Cardinal Gonsalve it is truly said, ' II a etabli une nouvelle
"politique formee sur la verite et la franchise; 1'estime de toute
" 1'Europe le paye de ses fatigues ; ' pray do not judge of the holy
1 82 1.] AN APPEAL FOR THE GAMBAS. 239
nearest to ourselves. If I fail in this application, my
intrusion will be its own reward; if I succeed, your
Grace's reward will consist in having done a good action,
and mine in your pardon for my presumption. My
reason for appealing to you is this — your Grace has been
long in Rome, and could not be long any where without
the influence and the inclination to do good.
Among the list of exiles on account of the late
suspicions — and the intrigues of the Austrian Govern-
ment (the most infamous in history) there are many of
my acquaintances in Romagna and some of my friends ;
of these more particularly are the two Counts Gamba
(father and son) of a noble and respected family in this
city. In common with thirty or more of all ranks they
have been hurried from their home without process —
without hearing — without accusation. The father is
universally respected and liked, his family is numerous
and mostly young — and these are now left without pro-
tection : the son is a very fine young man, with very little
of the vices of his age or climate ; he has I believe the
honor of an acquaintance with your Grace — having been
presented by Madame Martinetti. He is but one and
twenty and lately returned from his studies at Rome.
Could your Grace, or would you — ask the repeal of both,
or at least of one of these from those in power in the holy
' City from the reports of others ; your own observation would tell
' you more than all the reports of others, and, as no one has
' described its monuments with such beauty of poetry as yourself, so
' no one, I am sure, would do more justice to the merits of its
' inhabitants if you staid long enough to know them. I beg of you,
' my Lord, once more to be assured of the pleasure with which I
' shall undertake, and the satisfaction which I shall feel, if I obtain
; the recall of your friends to their native country.
"E. DEVONSHIRE.
" I give up the Austrian Government to all you chuse to say of
" them."
240 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
City ? They are not aware of my solicitation in their
behalfs — but I will take it upon me to say that they shall
neither dishonour your goodness nor my request. If
only one can be obtained — let it be the father on account
of his family. I can assure your Grace and the very
pious Government in question that there can be no danger
in this act of — clemency shall I call it ? It would be but
justice with us — but here ! let them call it what they will.
... I cannot express the obligation which I should /<?£/
— I say feel only — because I do not see how I could
repay it to your Grace — I have not the slightest claim
upon you, unless perhaps through the memory of our
late friend, Lady Melbourne — I say friend only — for
my relationship with her family has not been fortunate
for them, nor for me. If therefore you should be
disposed to grant my request I shall set it down to your
tenderness for her who is gone, and who was to me the
best and kindest of friends. The persons for whom I
solicit will (in case of success) neither be in ignorance of
their protectress, nor indisposed to acknowledge their
sense of her kindness by a strict observance of such con-
duct as may justify her interference. If my acquaintance
with your Grace's character were even slighter than it is
through the medium of some of our English friends, I
had only to turn to the letters of Gibbon (now on my
table) for a full testimony to its high and amiable
qualities.
I have the honor to be, with great respect,
Your Grace's most obedient very humble Servant,
BYRON.
P.S. — Pray excuse my scrawl which perhaps you
may be enabled to decypher from a long acquaintance
with the handwriting of Lady Bessborough. I omitted
1 82 1.] TWO FRIENDS FROM ITALY. 241
to mention that the measures taken here have been as
blind as impolitic — this I happen to know. Out of the
list in Ravenna — there are at least ten not only innocent,
but even opposite in principles to the liberals. It has
been the work of some blundering Austrian spy or angry
priest to gratify his private hatreds. Once more your
pardon.
872. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, February 16, 1821.
DEAR MORAY, — In the month of March will arrive
from Barcelona Signer Curioni,1 engaged for the Opera.
He is an acquaintance of mine, and a gentlemanly young
man, high in his profession. I must request your personal
kindness and patronage in his favour. Pray introduce
him to such of the theatrical people, Editors of Papers,
and others, as may be useful to him in his profession,
publicly and privately.
He is accompanied by the Signora Arpalice Taruscelli,
a Venetian lady of great beauty and celebrity, and a
particular friend of mine : your natural gallantry will I
am sure induce you to pay her proper attention. Tell
Israeli that, as he is fond of literary anecdotes, she can
tell him some of your acquaintance abroad. I presume
that he speaks Italian. Do not neglect this request, but
do them and me this favour in their behalf. I shall
write to some others to aid you in assisting them with
your countenance.
I agree to your request of leaving in abeyance the
terms for the three D. f.s, till you can ascertain the effect
I. Alberico Curioni, born 1790, a tenor singer, sang in London
1821-32. In the Literary Gazette for May 5, 1821 (p. 285), he is
described as "a handsome man," with "a voice flexible, but not
"fine." See also Grove's Dictionary of Music, vol. i. pp. 423, 424.
VOL. V. R
242 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
of publication. If I refuse to alter, you have a claim to
so much courtesy in return. I had let you off your
proposal about the price of the Cantos, last year (the
3r.d and 4'!' always to reckon as one only), and I do not
call upon you to renew it. You have therefore no
occasion to fight so shy of such subjects, as I am not
conscious of having given you occasion.
The 5* is so far from being the last of D. /., that it
is hardly the beginning. I meant to take him the tour
of Europe, with a proper mixture of siege, battle, and
adventure, and to make him finish as Anacharsis Cloots *
in the French revolution. To how many cantos this
may extend, I know not, nor whether (even if I live) I
shall complete it ; but this was my notion : I meant to
have made him a Cavalier Servente in Italy, and a cause
for a divorce in England, and a Sentimental " Werther-
" faced man " 2 in Germany, so as to show the different
ridicules of the society in each of those countries, and to
have displayed him gradually gate and blas'e as he grew
older, as is natural. But I had not quite fixed whether
to make him end in Hell, or in an unhappy marriage, not
knowing which would be the severest. The Spanish
1. Jean Baptiste Clootz (better known by the name of Anacharsis),
a Prussian baron, born at Cleves, in 1755, was the nephew of
Cornelius de Pauw, author of Recherches Philosophiqties sur les
Amerkains, etc. In 1790, at the bar of the National Convention,
he described himself as Forateur du genre kumain. Falling under
the suspicion of Robespierre, he was, in March, 1 794, condemned to
death. On the scaffold, he begged the executioner to decapitate him
the last, alleging that he wished to make some observations essential
to the establishment of certain principles, while the heads of his
companions were falling. The request was complied with.
2. In Moore's Fudge Family in Paris (1818), Letter v., occur the
lines —
" Then there came up — imagine, dear Doll, if you can —
A fine, sallow, sublime, sort of Werther-faced man,
With mustachios that gave (what we read of so oft)
The dear Corsair expression, half savage, half soft."
1 82 1.] f A PLAY WITHOUT LOVE. 243
tradition says Hell : but it is probably only an Allegory
of the other state.1 You are now in possession of my
notions on the subject.
You say The Doge will not be popular: did I ever
write tut popularity ? I defy you to show a work of mine
(except a tale or two) of a popular style or complexion.
It appears to me that there is room for a different style
of the drama; neither a servile following of the old
drama, which is a grossly erroneous one, nor yet too
French^ like those who succeeded the older writers. It
appears to me, that good English, and a severer approach
to the rules, might combine something not dishonorable
to our literature. I have also attempted to make a play
without love. And there are neither rings, nor mistakes,
nor starts, nor outrageous ranting villains, nor melodrame,
in it. All this will prevent it's popularity, but does not
persuade me that it is therefore faulty. Whatever faults
I. Don Juan Tenorio of Seville was the hero of the Spanish
mystery-play, the Atheista Fulminato (see Coleridge's Biographia
Literaria, vol. ii. pp. 262, seqq.). The mystery was dramatized by
Gabriel Tellez, i.e. Tirso de Molina (1585-1648), as El Burlador
de Sevilla y Combidado de Piedra (1626). Moliere's Don Juan; ou
le Festin de Pierre (1665), versified by Thomas Corneille in 1677,
was imitated from the Spanish play. In England Shadwell took
Moliere's version as the model of his Libertine, in 1676. Don Juan
was the subject of a musical ballet by Gliick, and of Mozart's famous
opera Don Giovanni (1787).
In Moliere's Don Juan (acti. sc. i) Sganarelle says of his master,
' Par precaution je t'apprends, inter nos, que tu vois en don Juan,
' mon maitre, le plus grand scelerat que la terre ait jamais porte, un
' chien, un demon, un Turc, un heretique qui ne croit ni ciel, ni
' Saint, ni Dieu, ni loup-garou, qui passe cette vie en veritable bete
' brute, un pourceau cl'Epicure, un vrai Sardanapale, qui ferme
' 1'oreille a toutes les remontrances Chretiennes qu'on lui peut faire,
' et traite de billevesees tout ce que nous croyons." In the old
Spanish version of the story, Don Juan seduces the daughter of the
governor, Don Gonsalvo de Ulloa, and then kills the father. Forcing
his way into the family vault of the Ulloas, in the Church of St.
Francis, he finds a marble statue raised to the memory of the
murdered man. He invites the statue to a banquet. His invitation
is accepted ; the guest delivers Don Juan to the devils to be tormented,
and he is swallowed up in a cloud of fire.
244 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
it has will arise from deficiency in the conduct, rather
than in the conception, which is simple and severe.
So you epigrammatize upon my epigram f I will pay
you for tha^ mind if I don't, some day. I never let any
one off in the long run (who first begins) : remember
Sam, and see if I don't do you as good a turn. You
unnatural publisher ! what ! quiz your own authors ! You
are a paper Cannibal.
In the letter on Bowles (which I sent by Tuesday's
post) after the words " attempts had been made " (alluding
to the republication of English Bards), add the words
" in Ireland; " for I believe that Cawthorn did not begin
his attempts till after I had left England the second time.
Pray attend to this. Let me know what you and your
Squad think of the letter on Bowles.1
I did not think the second Seal so bad : surely it is
far better than the Saracen's head with which you have
sealed your last letter ; the larger, in profile, was surely
much better than that.
So Foscolo says he will get you a seal cut better in
Italy : he means a throat — that is the only thing they do
dexterously. The Arts — all but Canova's, and Mor-
ghen's,2 and Ovid's 3 (I don't mean poetry), — are as low
as need be : look at the Seal which I gave to W1? Bankes,
and own it. How came George Bankes to quote English
1. Gifford's opinion of the letter in defence of Pope is quoted
in the Memoir of John Murray, vol. i. p. 420: "It will be unsafe
' to publish it as it stands. The letter is not very refined, but it is
' vigorous and to the purpose. Bowles requires checking. I hope,
' however, that Lord B. will not continue to squander himself thus.
' When will he resume his majestic march, and shake the earth
'again?"
2. Raphael Morghen (1758-1835), born at Portici, near Naples,
was the famous engraver. He settled at Florence in 1 793, on the
invitation of the Grand-Duke Ferdinand III., and lived there the
rest of his life.
3. The Ars Amatoria.
1 82 1.] BELZONI. 245
Bards in the House of Commons ? l All the World keep
flinging that poem in my face.
Belzoni is a grand traveller, and his English is very
prettily broken.2
As for News, the Barbarians are marching on Naples,
and if they lose a single battle, all Italy will be up. It
will be like the Spanish war, if they have any bottom.
Letters opened! — to be sure they are, and that's the
reason why I always put in my opinion of the German
Austrian Scoundrels : there is not an Italian who loathes
them more than I do; and whatever I could do to
scour Italy and the earth of their infamous oppression,
would be done con amore.
Yours, ever and truly,
B.
Recollect that the Hints must be printed with the
Latin^ otherwise there is no sense.
1. In moving the address at the opening of Parliament (January
23, 1821), speaking of the way in which "the new springs of know-
" ledge were endeavoured to be poisoned at their source," Bankes
says that he was " reminded of the lines of the poet, when he ex-
" pressed the keen pangs of the bird, wounded by the arrow feathered
" from his own wing —
" ' Keen was the pang — but keener far to feel
He nurs'd the feather which had winged the steel ! ' "
So The Traveller (January 24, 1821) gives the quotation from
English Bards, etc., lines 845, 846, which should have run thus —
" Keen were his pangs, but keener far to feel
He nursed the pinion which impelled the steel."
According to Hansard (New Series, vol. iv. p. 39), the quotation
was correctly made.
2. Giovanni Battista Belzoni (1778-1823) died of dysentery at
Gato, in Benin, on his way to Timbuctoo. Murray published, in
1820, Belzoni's Narrative of the Operations and Recent Discoveries
within the Pyramids, Temples, Tombs, and Excavations in Egypt
and Nubia. The book was written without any literary assistance
beyond that of the individual employed to copy out his manuscript
and correct the press. " As I made my discoveries alone," Belzoni
(Preface, p. i.) says, "I have been anxious to write my book by
246 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
873. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, February 21, 1821.
DEAR SIR, — In the 44l.h page, vol. i?, of Turner's
travels1 (which you lately sent me), it is stated that
" Lord Byron, when he expressed such confidence of it's
" practicability, seems to have forgotten that Leander
" swam both ways, with and against the tide ; whereas he
" (L/? B.) only performed the easiest part of the task by
" swimming with it from Europe to Asia." 2 I certainly
could not have forgotten, what is known to every School-
boy, that Leander crossed in the Night and returned
towards the morning. My object was, to ascertain that
the Hellespont could be crossed at all by swimming, and
in this Mr. Ekenhead and myself both succeeded, the
one in an hour and ten minutes, and the other in one
hour and five minutes. The tide was not in our favour :
on the contrary, the great difficulty was to bear up
against the current, which, so far from helping us to the
Asiatic side, set us down right towards the Archipelago.
Neither Mr. Ekenhead, myself, nor, I will venture to
add, any person on board the frigate, from Captain (now
Admiral) Bathurst downwards, had any notion of a
difference of the current on the Asiatic side, of which
Mr. Turner speaks. I never heard of it till this moment,
' myself, though in so doing the reader will consider me, and with
' great propriety, guilty of temerity ; but the public will perhaps
' gain in the fidelity of my narrative what it loses in elegance. I
' am not an Englishman, but I prefer that my readers should receive
' from myself, as well as I am able to describe them, an account of
' my proceedings in Egypt, in Nubia, on the coast of the Red Sea,
' and in the Oasis ; rather than run the risk of having my meaning
' misrepresented by another. If I am intelligible, it is all that I
' can expect."
1. Journal of a Tour in the Levant ', by William Turner, 3 vols.,
1820. The book was published by Murray.
2. See Letters, vol. i. p. 263, note I.
1 82 1.] MODERN LEANDERS. 247
or I would have taken the other course. Lieutenant
Ekenhead's sole motive, and mine also, for setting out
from the European side was, that the little Cape above
Sestos was a more prominent starting place, and the
frigate, which lay below, close under the Asiatic castle,
formed a better point of view for us to swim towards ;
and, in fact, we landed immediately below it.
Mr. Turner says, "Whatever is thrown into the
" Stream on this part of the European bank must arrive
"at the Asiatic shore." This is so far from being the
case, that it imist arrive in the Archipelago, if left to the
Current, although a strong wind in the Asiatic direction
might have such an effect occasionally.
Mr. Turner attempted the passage from the Asiatic
side, and failed. "After five and twenty minutes, in
" which he did not advance a hundred yards, he gave
" it up from complete exhaustion." This is very pos-
sible, and might have occurred to him just as readily
on the European side. He should have set out a
couple of miles higher, and could then have come
out below the European castle. I particularly stated,
and Mr. Hobhouse has done so also, that we were
obliged to make the real passage of one mile extend to
between three and /our, owing to the force of the stream.
I can assure Mr. Turner, that his Success would have
given me great pleasure, as it would have added one
more instance to the proofs of the practicability. It is
not quite fair in him to infer, that because he failed,
Leander could not succeed. There are still four in-
stances on record : a Neapolitan, a young Jew, Mr.
Ekenhead, and myself; the two last done in the presence
of hundreds of English Witnesses.
With regard to the difference of the current, I per-
ceived none : it is favourable to the Swimmer on neither
248 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
side, but may be stemmed by plunging into the Sea,
a considerable way above the opposite point of the coast
which the Swimmer wishes to make, but still bearing up
against it : it is strong, but if you calculate well, you may
reach land. My own experience and that of others bids
me pronounce the passage of Leander perfectly practi-
cable : any young man, in good health and tolerable
skill in swimming, might succeed in it from either side.
I was three hours in swimming across the Tagus, which
is much more hazardous, being two hours longer than
the passage of the Hellespont. Of what may be done
in swimming, I will mention one more instance. In
iSiS,1 the Chevalier Mengaldo (a Gentleman of Bas-
sano), a good Swimmer, wished to swim with my friend
Mr. Alexander Scott and myself. As he seemed par-
ticularly anxious on the subject, we indulged him. We
all three started from the Island of the Lido and swam
to Venice. At the entrance of the Grand Canal, Scott
and I were a good way ahead, and we saw no more
of our foreign friend, which, however, was of no con-
sequence, as there was a Gondola to hold his cloathes
and pick him up. Scott swum on till past the Rialto,
where he got out, less from fatigue than from chill,
having been four hours in the water, without rest or
stay, except what is to be obtained by floating on
one's back — this being the condition of our performance.
I continued my course on to Santa Chiara, comprizing
the whole of the Grand Canal (besides the distance from
the Lido), and got out where the Laguna once more
opens to Fusina. I had been in the water, by my watch,
without help or rest, and never touching ground or boat,
four hours and twenty minutes. To this Match, and
during the greater part of it's performance, Mr. Hoppner,
I. This was in June, 1818.
1 82 1.] LEANDER'S EXPLOIT DISPUTED. 249
the Consul General, was witness ; and it is well known
to many others. Mr. Turner can easily verify the fact,
if he thinks it worth while, by referring to Mr. Hoppner.
The distance we could not accurately ascertain; it was
of course considerable.
I crossed the Hellespont in one hour and ten minutes
only. I am now ten years older in time, and twenty in
constitution, than I was when I passed the Dardanelles ;
and yet two years ago I was capable of swimming four
hours and twenty minutes ; and I am sure that I could
have continued two hours longer, though I had on a pair
of trowsers, an accoutrement which by no means assists
the performance. My two companions were also four
hours in the water. Mengaldo might be about thirty
years of age ; Scott about six and twenty.
With this experience in swimming at different periods
of life, not only upon the SPOT, but elsewhere, of various
persons, what is there to make me doubt that Leander's
exploit was perfectly practicable? If three individuals
did more than the passage of the Hellespont, why should
he have done less ? But Mr. Turner failed, and, naturally
seeking a plausible reason for his failure, lays the blame
on the Asiatic side of the Strait. To me the cause is
evident. He tried to swim directly across, instead of
going higher up to take the vantage. He might as well
have tried \afly over Mount Athos.
That a young Greek of the heroic times, in love, and
with his limbs in full vigour, might have succeeded in such
an attempt is neither wonderful nor doubtful.1 Whether
I. Turner says (Tour in the Levant^ vol. i. pp. 44, 45), " Having
" been accustomed to swimming from my childhood, I have no
" hesitation in asserting that no man could have strength to swim a
" mile and a half (the breadth of the Strait in the narrowest spot,
' ' a little northerly of the castles) against such a current ; and higher
"up or lower down, the Strait widens so considerably, that he
250 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
he attempted it or not is another question, because he
might have had a small boat to save him the trouble.
I am yours very truly,
BYRON.
P.S. — Mr. Turner says that the swimming from
Europe to Asia was " the easiest part of the task." I
doubt whether Leander found it so, as it was the return :
however, he had several hours between the intervals.
The argument of Mr. T., " that higher up or lower down,
" the strait widens so considerably that he would save
" little labour by his starting," is only good for indifferent
swimmers : a man of any practice or skill will always
consider the distance less than the strength of the stream.
If Ekenhead and myself had thought of crossing at the
narrowest point, instead of going up to the Cape above it,
we should have been swept down to Tenedos. The
Strait is, however, not extremely wide, even where it
broadens above and below the forts. As the frigate was
stationed some time in the Dardanelles waiting for the
firman, I bathed often in the strait subsequently to our
traject, and generally on the Asiatic side, without perceiv-
ing the greater Strength of the opposing Stream by which
the diplomatic traveller palliates his own failure. An
amusement in the small bay which opens immediately
below the Asiatic fort was to dive for the LAND tortoises,
which we flung in on purpose, as they amphibiously
crawled along the bottom. This does not argue any
vaster violence of current than on the European shore.
With regard to the modest insinuation that we chose the
European side as "easier," I appeal to Mr. Hobhouse
"would save little labour by changing his place of starting. I
"therefore treat the tale of Leander's swimming across both ways
" as one of those fables to which the Greeks were so ready to give
" the name of history. Quidquid Grczcia meiidax audet in historid."
1 82 1.] SWIMMING AGAINST THE STREAM. 251
and Admiral Bathurst if it be true or no ? (poor Ekenhead
being since dead) : had we been aware of any such
difference of Current as is asserted, we would at least
have proved it, and were not likely to have given it up in
the twenty five minutes of Mr. T.'s own experiment.
The secret of all this is, that Mr. Turner failed, and that
we succeeded ; and he is consequently disappointed, and
seems not unwilling to overshadow whatever little merit
there might be in our Success. Why did he not try the
European side ? If he had succeeded there, after failing
on the Asiatic, his plea would have been more graceful
and gracious. Mr. T. may find what fault he pleases
with my poetry, or my politics ; but I recommend him
to leave aquatic reflections, till he is able to swim " five
" and twenty minutes " without being " exhausted" though
I believe he is the first modern Tory who ever swam
" against the Stream " for half the time.1
874. — To Thomas Moore.
Ravenna, February 22, 1821.
As I wish the soul of the late Antoine Galignani to
rest in peace, (you will have read his death, published by
himself, in his own newspaper,) you are requested parti-
cularly to inform his children and heirs, that of their
" Literary Gazette" to which I subscribed more than two
months ago, I have only received one number^ notwith-
standing I have written to them repeatedly. If they have
no regard for me, a subscriber, they ought to have some
for their deceased parent, who is undoubtedly no better
off in his present residence for this total want of attention.
I. The above letter was published in the Monthly Magazine
for April, 1821 (pp. 363-365), and in the Traveller for April 3,
1821. Turner's reply, published by Moore, in the Life, is given in
Appendix VII.
252 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
If not, let me have my francs. They were paid by
Missiaglia, the Venetian bookseller. You may also hint
to them that when a gentleman writes a letter, it is usual
to send an answer. If not, I shall make them "a
" speech," which will comprise an eulogy on the deceased.
We are here full of war, and within two days of the
seat of it, expecting intelligence momently. We shall
now see if our Italian friends are good for any thing but
"shooting round a corner," like the Irishman's gun.
Excuse haste, — I write with my spurs putting on. My
horses are at the door, and an Italian Count waiting to
accompany me in my ride.
Yours, etc.
P.S. — Pray, amongst my letters, did you get one
detailing the death of the commandant here? He was
killed near my door, and died in my house.
BOWLES AND CAMPBELL.
To the air of " How now, Madame Flirt" in the
Beggars' Opera.1
BOWLES. Why, how now, saucy Tom,
If you thus must ramble,
I will publish some
Remarks on Mr. Campbell.
I. The Beggar's Opera, act ii. sc. 2—
Air, "Good morrow, Gossip Joan."
" POLLY. Why, how now, Madam Flirt 1
If you thus must chattel ;
And are for flinging dirt,
Lefs try who best can spatter,
Madam Flirt!
" LUCY. Why, 7iow now, saucy jade ?
Sure the wench is tipsy !
How can you see me made [To him.
The scoff of such a gipsy ?
Saucy jatie ! " [To her,
1 82 1.] BOWLES AND CAMPBELL. 253
Answer.
CAMPBELL. Why, how now, Billy Bowles ?
Sure the priest is maudlin !
(To the public) How can you, damn your souls !
Listen to his twaddling ?
875.— To John Murray.
Ravenna, February 26'.h 1821.
DEAR MORAY, — Over the second Note,1 viz. the one on
Lady M. Montague, I leave you a complete discretionary
power of omission altogether, or curtailment, as you please,
since it may be scarcely chaste enough for the Canting
prudery of the day. The ./Err/ note on a different subject
you had better append to the letter.
Let me know what your Utican Senate say, and
acknowledge all the packets.
Yours ever,
BYRON.
Write to Moore, and ask him for my lines to him
beginning with
" My Boat is at the shore : " 2
they have been published incorrectly : you may publish
them.
I have written twice to Thorwalsen without any
answer ! ! Tell Hobhouse so ; he -was paid four years ago :
you must address some English at Rome upon the subject
— I know none there myself.
1. The second note is now for the first time printed at the end of
Byron's First Letter to John Murray, in Appendix III.
2. The lines were published in the Traveller for January 8, 1821.
Moore, in his Diary for January 15, 1821 (Memoirs, etc., vol. iii. p.
190), notes: "Had seen, Saturday (13), Lord B.'s verses to me
" (' My Boat is on the Shore '), very incorrectly given in the Times ;
" sent off a correct copy of them to-day to Perry."
254 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
On the 2"d January
Upon this day I married and full sore
Repent that marriage, but my father's more.
Or
Upon this day I married, and deplore
That Marriage deeply, but my father's more.
On the same day to
MEDEA.
This day of all our days has done
The most for me and you :
'Tis just six years since We were One
And Jive since we were two.
876. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, March 15' 1821.
DEAR MORAY, — After the Stanza,2 near the close of
Canto 5'h, which ends with
" Has quite the contrary effect on Vice,"
Insert the following : —
Thus in the East they are extremely strict
And Wedlock and a Padlock mean the same,
Excepting only when the former's picked
It ne'er can be replaced in proper frame,
Spoilt, as a pipe of Claret is when pricked —
But then their own Polygamy's to blame :
Why don't they knead two virtuous souls for life,
Into that moral Centaur, Man and Wife ?
I have received the remainder of the Hints without
the Latin^ and without the Note upon Pope from the
1. The following lines are written on the back of the above letter.
2. Don Juan, Canto V. stanza clvii.
1 82 1.] HINTS FROM HORACE. 255
Letter to the Edinburgh] B\lackwood 's] M\agazine\
Instead of this you send the lines on Jeffrey? though you
know so positively that they were to be omitted, that I
left the. direction, that they should be cancelled, appended to
my power of Attorney to you previously to my leaving
England, and in case of my demise before the publica-
tion of the Hints. Of course they must be omitted, and
I feel vexed that they were sent.
Has the whole English text been sent regularly
continued from the part broken off in the first proofs ?
And, pray request Mr. Hobhouse to adjust the Latin to
the English : the imitation is so close, that I am un-
willing to deprive it of its principal merit — its closeness.
I look upon it and my Pulci 2 as by far the best things of
my doing : you will not think so, and get frightened for
fear I should charge accordingly ; but I know that they
will not be popular, so don't be afraid — publish them
together.
The enclosed letter will make you laugh. Pray
answer it for me and secretly, not to mortify him.
Tell Mr. Balfour that I never wrote for a prize in my
life, and that the very thought of it would make me write
worse than the very worst Scribbler. As for the twenty
pounds he wants to gain, you may send them to him for
me, and deduct them in reckoning with Mr. Kinnaird.
Deduct also your own bill for books and powders, etc., etc.,
which must be considerable.
Give my love to Sir W. Scott, and tell him to write
more novels : pray send out Waverley and the Guy M.,
and the Antiquary. It is five years since I have had a
copy. I have read all the others forty times.
1. See Poems, vol. i. pp. 430-433.
2. I.e. his translation of Canto I. of Luigi Pulci's Morgante
Maggiore.
256 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
Have you received all my packets, on Pope, letters,
etc., etc., etc. ? I write in great haste.
Yours ever,
B.
P.S. — I have had a letter from Hodgson, who, it
seems, has also taken up Pope, and adds " the liberties
" I have taken with your poetry in this pamphlet are no
" more than I might have ventured in those delightful
" days, etc. : " that may very well be ; but if he has said
any thing that I don't like, I'll Archbishop of Grenada
him. I am in a polemical humour.
877. — To John Murray.
March 2, 1821.
D" MURRAY, — This was the beginning of a letter
which I meant for Perry,1 but stopt short, hoping you
would be able to prevent the theatres. Of course you
need not send it ; but it explains to you my feelings on
the subject. You say that " there is nothing to fear, let
" them do what they please ; " that is to say, that you
would see me damned with great tranquillity. You are a
fine fellow.
Ravenna, January 22, 1821.
DEAR SIR, — I have received a strange piece of news,
which cannot be more disagreeable to your Public than
it is to me. Letters and the Gazettes do me the honour
to say that it is the intention of some of the London
Managers to bring forward on their Stage the poem of
Marino Faliero, etc.t which was never intended for such
an exhibition, and I trust will never undergo it. It is
I. Editor of the Morning Chronicle.
1 82 1.] AN APPEAL TO THE PRESS. 257
certainly unfit for it. I have never written but for the
solitary reader, and require no experiments for applause
beyond his silent approbation. Since such an attempt to
drag me forth as a Gladiator in the Theatrical Arena is a
violation of all the courtesies of Literature : I trust that
the impartial part of the Press will step between me and
this pollution. I say pollution, because every violation
of a right is such, and I claim my right as an author to
prevent what I have written from being turned into a
Stage-play. I have too much respect for the Public to
permit this of my own free will. Had I sought their
favour, it would have been by a Pantomime.
I have said that I write only for the reader. Beyond
this I cannot consent to any publication, or to the abuse
of any publication of mine to the purposes of Histrionism.
The applauses of an audience would give me no pleasure ;
their disapprobation might, however, give me pain. The
wager is therefore not equal. You may, perhaps, say,
"how can this be? if their disapprobation gives pain,
"their praise might afford pleasure?" By no means.
The kick of an Ass or the Sting of a Wasp may be painful
to those who would find nothing agreeable in the Braying
of the one or in the Buzzing of the other.
This may not seem a courteous comparison, but I
have no other ready ; and it occurs naturally.
878.— To John Murray.
R? March 9^h 1821.
ILLUSTRIOUS MORAY, — You are requested with the
' : advice of friends " to continue to patch the enclosed
" Addenda " into my letter to you on the Subject of Bill
Bowles's Pope, etc. I think that it may be inoculated
into the body of the letter with a little care. Consult,
and engraft it.
VOL. v. s
258 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
I enclose you the proposition of a Mr. Fearman,1 one
of your brethren : there is a civil gentleman for you.
Yours truly,
B.
879. — To John Murray.
Ra M° 12° l82I.
DR MY-, — Insert, where they may seem apt, the
inclosed addenda to the Lettei- on Bowles^ etc. : they
will come into the body of the letter, if you consult any
of your Utica where to place them. If there is too much,
or too harsh, or not intelligible, etc., let me know, and I
will alter or omit the portion pointed out.
Yours,
B.
P.S. — Please to acknowledge all packets containing
matters of print by return of post : letters of mere con-
•venance may wait your bibliopolar pleasure and leisure.
880.— To John Murray.
Ravenna, Marzo, 1821.
DEAR MORAY, — In my packet of the i2th Instant, in
the last sheet (not the half sheet), last page, omit the
sentence which (denning, or attempting to define, what
and who are gentlemanly) begins, " I should say at least in
" life, that most military men have it, and few naval ; that
" several men of rank have it, and few lawyers," 2 etc., etc.
1. Fearman, a publisher, of 170 New Bond Street, had offered
to publish Cantos III., IV., V. of Don yuan, about which Murray
was hesitating.
2. The passage defining "what and who are gentlemanly," and
the "digression on the vulgar poets," will be found at the end of
Byron's second Letter to John Murray, (See Appendix III. p. 591.)
l82I.] VERY TRACTABLE — IN PROSE. 259
I say, omit the whole of that Sentence, because, like the
" Cosmogony, or Creation of the World," in the Vicar of
IVakefield) it is not much to the purpose.
In the Sentence above, too, almost at the top of the
same page, after the words " that there ever was, or can
" be, an Aristocracy of poets," add and insert these words
— " I do not mean that they should write in the Style of
" the Song by a person of Quality, or park Euphuism ;
" but there is a Nobility of thought and expression to be
" found no less in Shakespeare, Pope, and Burns, than in
" Dante, Alfieri, etc., etc.," and so on. Or, if you please,
perhaps you had better omit the whole of the latter
digression on the -vulgar poets, and insert only as far as
the end of the Sentence upon Pope's Homer, where I
prefer it to Cowper's, and quote Dr. Clarke in favour of
its accuracy.
Upon all these points, take an opinion — take the
Sense (or nonsense) of your learned visitants, and act
thereby. I am very tractable — in PROSE.
Whether I have made out the case for Pope, I know
not ; but I am very sure that I have been zealous in the
attempt. If it comes to the proofs, we shall beat the
Blackguards. I will show more imagery in twenty lines
of Pope than in any equal length of quotation in English
poesy, and that in places where they least expect it : for
instance, in his lines on Sporus^ — now, do just read them
over — the subject is of no consequence (whether it be
Satire or Epic) — we are talking of poetry and imagery
from Nature and Art. Now, mark the images separately
and arithmetically : —
1. The thing of Silk.
2. Curd of Ass's milk.
3. The Butterfly.
4. The Wheel.
260 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
5. Bug with gilded wings.
6. Painted Child of dirt.
7. Whose Buzz.
8. Well-bred Spaniels.
9. Shallow streams run dimpling.
10. Florid impotence.
n. Prompter. Puppet squeaks .
12. The Ear of Eve.
13. Familiar toad.
14. Half -frotht half-venom, spits himself abroad.
15. Fop a&tiae toilet.
16. Flatterer at the board.
17. Amphibious thing.
18. Now tfry)j a /dk/p.
19. Now struts a Lord.
20. A Cherub's face.
21 . A tt^A7<? all the rest.
22. The Rabbins.
23. Pride that /rV/fcj the dust.
" Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust,
Wit that can creep, and Pride that licks the dust."
Now, is there a line of all the passage without the
most forcible imagery (for his purpose) ? Look at the
variety ', at the poetry p, of the passage — at the imagination ;
there is hardly a line from which a painting might not be
made, and is. But this is nothing in comparison with his
higher passages in the Essay on Man, and many of his
other poems, serious and comic. There never was such
an unjust outcry in this world as that which these
Scoundrels are trying against Pope.
In the letter to you upon Bowles, etc., insert tliese
which follow (under the place, as a Note, where I am
speaking of Dyer's " Grongar Hill," and the use of arti-
ficial imagery in illustrating Nature} : — " Corneille's cele-
" brated lines on Fortune —
11 c Et comme elle a 1'eclat du Verre,
Elle en a la fragilite" ' '—
I
I. Polyeucte, acte iv. sc. 2.
l82I.] ADDITION TO MARINO FALIERO. 261
"are a further instance of the noble use which may be
" made of artificial imagery, and quite equal to any taken
" from Nature." l
Ask Mr. Gifford if, in the 5*." act of The Doge? you
could not contrive (where the Sentence of the Veil is
past) to insert the following lines in Marino Faliero's
answer : —
But let it be so. It will be in vain :
The Veil which blackens o'er this blighted name,
And hides, or seems to hide, these lineaments,
Shall draw more Gazers than the thousand portraits
Which glitter round it in their painted trappings,
Your delegated Slaves — the people's tyrants.3
Which will be best ? " painted trappings," or " pictured
" purple," or " pictured trappings," or " painted purple " ?
Perpend, and let me know.
I have not had any letter from you, which I am
anxious for, to know whether you have received my
letters and packets, the letter on Bowles's Pope, etc., etc.
Let me hear from you.
Yours truly,
B.
P.S. — Upon public matters here I say little : You will
all hear soon enough of a general row throughout Italy.
There never was a more foolish step than the Expedition
to N. by these fellows.
1. The note was not added. (See Appendix III. p. 551.)
2. Marino Faliero, a Tragedy, finished July, 1820, was published
at the end of the year, together with the Prophecy of Dante (Memoir
of John Murray, vol. i. p. 412). Murray paid ^1000 for the tragedy
and the poem .
3. "These lines— perhaps from some difficulty in introducing
" them — were never inserted in the Tragedy " (Moore). But in the
first edition of Marino Faliero (act v. sc. I, ad fin.} the lines will be
found. The reading " pictured trappings " was adopted.
262 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
I wish you to propose to Holmes* the miniature
painter, to come out to me this spring. I will pay his
expences, and any sum in reason. I wish him to take
my daughter's picture (who is in a convent) and the
Countess G.'s, and the head of a peasant Girl, which
latter would make a study for Raphael. It is a complete
peasant face, but an Italian peasant's, and quite in the
Raphael Fornarina style. Her figure is tall, but rather
large, and not at all comparable to her face, which is
really superb. She is not seventeen, and I am anxious
to have her likeness while it lasts. Madame G. is also
very handsome, but it is quite in a different style — com-
pletely blonde and fair — very uncommon in Italy : yet
not an English fairness, but more like a Swede or a
Norwegian. Her figure, too, particularly the bust, is
uncommonly good. It must be Holmes ; I like him
because he takes such inveterate likenesses. There is
a war here ; but a solitary traveller, with little baggage,
and nothing to do with politics, has nothing to fear.
Pack him up in the diligence. Don't forget.
88 1. — To Richard Belgrave Hoppner.
Ravenna, April 3, 1821.
Thanks for the translation. I have sent you some
books, which I do not know whether you have read or
no — you need not return them, in any case. I enclose
you also a letter from Pisa. I have neither spared
trouble nor expense in the care of the child ; 2 and as
1. James Holmes (1777-1860), who had already painted minia-
tures of Byron, declined to leave England. " Don't be offended
" with Holmes," writes Murray to Byron (Memoir of John Murray,
vol. i. p. 424) ; " you were of great essential service in putting him
" in the way to make a livelihood ; but it is very long before, in his
" profession, he can gain one."
2. Allegra had been placed at the Convent of St. Anna, at
1 82 1.] ALLEGRA AT BAGNACAVALLO. 263
she was now four years old complete, and quite above
the control of the servants — and as a man living without
Bagnacavallo, the Roman Tiberiacum, a walled city, once famous
for the strength of its castle, which lies between the rivers Senio and
Lamone, in the plain of Romagna, about ten miles from Ravenna.
Shelley, in a letter to Mary Shelley, August 15, 1821, thus describes
a visit to Allegra at the Convent of Bagnacavallo —
" I went the other day to see Allegra at her convent, and stayed
" with her about three hours. She is grown tall and slight for her
" age, and her face is somewhat altered. The traits have become
' ' more delicate, and she is much paler, probably from the effect of
" improper food. She yet retains the beauty of her deep blue eyes
" and of her mouth, but she has a contemplative seriousness, which,
" mixed with her excessive vivacity, which has not yet deserted her,
"has a very peculiar effect in a child. She is under very strict
' ' discipline, as may be observed from the immediate obedience she
" accords to the will of her attendants. This seems contrary to her
' ' nature, but I do not think it has been obtained at the expense of
"much severity. Her hair, scarcely darker than it was, is beauti-
' fully profuse, and hangs in large curls on her neck. She was
' prettily dressed in white muslin, and an apron of black silk, with
' trousers. Her light and airy figure and her graceful motions were
' a striking contrast to the other children there. She seemed a
'thing of a finer and a higher order. At first she was very shy,
' but after a little caressing, and especially after I had given her a
' gold chain which I had bought at Ravenna for her, she grew
' more familiar, and led me all over the garden, and all over the
" convent, running and skipping so fast that I could hardly keep up
'with her. She showed me her little bed, and the chair where she
' sat at dinner, and the carozzina in which she and her favorite
' companions drew each other along a walk in the garden. I had
'brought her a basket of sweetmeats, and, before eating any of
' them, she gave her companions and all the nuns a portion. This
' is not much like the old Allegra. I asked her what I should say
' from her to her mamma, and she said —
" ' Che mi manda un bacio e un bel vestituro.'
" ' E come vuoi il vestituro sia fatto ? '
" ' Tutti di seta e d' oro,' was her reply.
" Her predominant foible seems the love of distinction and vanity,
' ' and this is a plant which produces good or evil, according to the
"gardener's skill. I then asked her what I should say to papa?
" 'Che venga farmi un visitino e che porta seco la mamminaj a
" message which you may conjecture that I was too discreet to
" deliver. Before I went away she made me run all over the convent
" like a mad thing. The nuns, who were half in bed, were ordered
"to hide themselves, and on returning Allegra began ringing the
" bell which calls the nuns to assemble. The tocsin of the convent
"sounded, and it required all the efforts of the prioress to prevent
" the spouses of God to render themselves, dressed or undressed, to
264 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
any woman at the head of his house cannot much attend
to a nursery — I had no resource but to place her for a
time (at a high pension too) in the convent of Bagna-
Cavalli (twelve miles off), where the air is good, and
where she will, at least, have her learning advanced, and
her morals and religion inculcated. I had also another
reason ; — things were and are in such a state here, that
I had no reason to look upon my own personal safety as
particularly insurable ; and I thought the infant best out
of harm's way, for the present.
It is also fit that I should add that I by no means
intended, nor intend, to give a natural child an English
education, because with the disadvantages of her birth,
her after settlement would be doubly difficult. Abroad,
with a fair foreign education and a portion of five or six
thousand pounds, she might and may marry very
respectably. In England such a dowry would be a
pittance, while elsewhere it is a fortune. It is, besides,
my wish that she should be a Roman Catholic, which
I look upon as the best religion, as it is assuredly the
oldest of the various branches of Christianity. I have
now explained my notions as to the place where she now
is — it is the best I could find for the present ; but I have
no prejudices in its favour.
I do not speak of politics, because it seems a hopeless
subject, as long as those scoundrels are to be permitted
to bully states out of their independence. Believe me,
Yours ever and truly.
' the accustomed signal . Nobody scolded her for these scafpature,
' so I suppose that she is well treated as far as temper is concerned.
' Her intellect is not much cultivated. She knows certain orazioni
' by heart, and talks and dreams of Paradise and angels and all
' sorts of things, and has a prodigious list of saints, and is always
' talking of the Bambino. This will do her no harm, but the idea
' of bringing up so sweet a creature in the midst of such trash till
'sixteen ! " — Dowden's Life of Shelley, vol. ii. pp. 435, 436.
l82I.] SECOND LETTER ON BOWLES. 265
P.S. — There is a report here of a change in France ; l
but with what truth is not yet known.
P.S. — My respects to Mrs. H. I have the "best
"opinion" of her countrywomen; and at my time of
life, (three and thirty, 22d January, 1821,) that is to say,
after the life I have led, a good opinion is the only
rational one which a man should entertain of the whole
sex — up to thirty, the worst possible opinion a man can
have of them in general^ the better for himself. After-
wards, it is a matter of no importance to them, nor to
him either, what opinion he entertains — his day is over,
or, at least, should be.
You see how sober I am become.
882.— To John Murray.
Ravenna, April 21^ 1821.
ILLUSTRIOUS MORAY, — I enclose you another letter
on "Bowles? But I premise that it is not like the
former, and that I am not at all sure how much, if any,
of it should be published.2 Upon this point you can
consult with Mr. Gifford, and think twice before you
publish it at all. Pray send me some more pounds
weight of Soda powders : I drink them in Summer by
dozens.
Yours truly,
B.
P.S. — You may make my subscription for Mr. Scott's
1. After the murder of the Due de Berri (February 13, 1820), the
Due de Richelieu succeeded Decazes as head of a moderate adminis-
tration. The elections of 1821 resulted in a great accession of
strength to the ultra-royalists and the Comte d'Artois. Richelieu
resigned, December, 1821, and the "Ultras" under Villele came
into power.
2. See Appendix III. The second Letter, to which Byron here
refers, was not published till 1835.
266 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
widow,1 etc., thirty instead of the proposed ten pounds ;
but do not put down my name ; put down N. N. only.
The reason is, that, as I have mentioned him in the
enclosed pamphlet,2 it would look indelicate. I would
give more, but my disappointments of last year, about
Rochdale and the transfer from the funds, render me
more economical for the present.
P.S. 2*} — By next post I will send you the threatening
Italian trash alluded to in the enclosed letter ; you can
make a note of it for the page alluding to the subject :
I had not room for it in this cover, nor time.
Mr. M. is requested to acknowledge the receipt of this
packet by return of post, by way of Calais, as quickest.
883.— To Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Ravenna, April 26, 1821.
The child continues doing well, and the accounts are
regular and favourable. It is gratifying to me that you
1. John Scott (1783-1821) had been Byron's schoolfellow at
Aberdeen. He had been successively editor of the Censor, the
Stamford News, Drakard's Newspaper (January 10, 1813). The
name of the last paper was changed, January, 1814, to the Champion,
Scott continuing to be the editor. In the Champion, " Fare thee
" Well " and " The Sketch " were first published, and in the numbers
for April 7, 14, 21, 1816, Byron and his defender, Leigh Hunt,
were vehemently attacked at the time of the separation. Scott lived
abroad from 1815 to 1819, meeting Byron at Venice (see the second
letter on Bowles). In 1819 he became the first editor of the London
Magazine (January, 1820). His attacks on Blacbwood's Magazine,
as the " Mohock Magazine," led to a quarrel with Lockhart, which
ended in a duel between Scott and J. H. Christie. The duel took
place by moonlight at Chalk Farm, February 16, 1821. Christie did
not fire the first time ; but on the second occasion his bullet, striking
Scott above the right hip, inflicted a fatal wound. A subscription
was raised for his widow and children, to which Byron, under the
initials " N. N.," contributed .£30, instead of the £10 suggested by
Murray {Memoir, vol. i. p. 420). The fragment given in Appendix
VIII. may refer to Scott.
2. See Byron's Second Letter on Bowles, Appendix III. p. 576.
1 82 1.] DEATH OF KEATS. 267
and Mrs. Shelley do not disapprove of the step which I
have taken, which is merely temporary.
I am very sorry to hear what you say of Keats l — is
it actually true ? I did not think criticism had been so
killing. Though I differ from you essentially in your
estimate of his performances, I so much abhor all un-
necessary pain, that I would rather he had been seated
on the highest peak of Parnassus than have perished in
such a manner. Poor fellow ! though with such inordi-
nate self-love he would probably have not been very
happy. I read the review of Endymion in the
Quarterly. It was severe, — but surely not so severe as
many reviews in that and other journals upon others.
I recollect the effect on me of the Edinburgh on my
first poem; it was rage, and resistance, and redress —
but not despondency nor despair. I grant that those are
not amiable feelings ; but, in this world of bustle and
broil, and especially in the career of writing, a man
should calculate upon his powers of resistance before he
goes into the arena.
" Expect not life from pain nor danger free,
Nor deem the doom of man reversed for thee." *
You know my opinion of that second-hand school of
1. The Quarterly article on Endymion (1818), written by Croker,
appeared in September, 1818. Two years and a half later, February
23, 1821, John Keats (1795-1821) died at Rome of consumption.
His unfortunate passion for Fanny Brawne, pecuniary troubles, and,
in his enfeebled health, the injustice of the criticism that he had
received, accelerated the progress of a disease which first declared
itself in February, 1820. " A loose, slack, not well-dressed youth
'met me," says Coleridge, " in a lane near Highgate. It was
1 Keats. He was introduced to me, and staid a minute or so.
' After he had left us a little way, he came back, and said, ' Let
' me carry away the memory, Coleridge, of having pressed your
'hand ! ' ' There is death in that hand,' I said, when Keats was
' gone ; yet this was, I believe, before the consumption showed
' itself distinctly '" (Table Talk, vol. ii. pp. 89, 90).
2. Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes, lines 155, 156.
268 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
poetry. You also know my high opinion of your own
poetry, — because it is of no school. I read Cenci J — but,
besides that I think the subject essentially ^//dramatic, I
am not an admirer of our old dramatists as models. I
deny that the English have hitherto had a drama at all.
Your Cenci, however, was a work of power, and poetry.
As to my drama, pray revenge yourself upon it, by being
as free as I have been with yours.
I have not yet got your Prometheus, which I long to
see. I have heard nothing of mine, and do not know
that it is yet published. I have published a pamphlet on
the Pope controversy, which you will not like. Had I
known that Keats was dead — or that he was alive and so
sensitive — I should have omitted some remarks upon his
poetry, to which I was provoked by his attack upon Pope?
and my disapprobation of his own style of writing.
You want me to undertake a great poem — I have not
the inclination nor the power. As I grow older, the
1. The Cenci> a Tragedy in Five Acts was published at Leghorn,
in 1819. Prometheus Unbound, a Lyrical Drama in Four Acts,
was published in 1820, in London.
2. Byron refers to the well-known passage in " Sleep and
" Poetry," of which the following are lines 193-206 —
" But ye were dead
To things ye knew not of, — were closely wed
To musty laws lined out with wretched rule
And compass vile ; so that ye taught a school
Of dolts to smooth, inlay, and clip, and fit,
Till, like the certain wands of Jacob's wit,
Their verses tallied. Easy was the task ;
A thousand handicraftsmen wore the mask
Of Poesy. Ill-fated, impious race !
That blasphemed the bright Lyrist to his face,
And did not know it, — no, they went about,
Holding a poor, decrepit standard out
Marked with most flimsy mottos, and in large
The name of one Boileau ! "
The allusion to Keats occurs at the end of the Second Letter to
John Murray. A passage, formerly suppressed, is now restored in
a note. (See Appendix III., pp. 588-9, note 3.)
1 82 1.] HEMLOCK TO SUCKING AUTHORS. 269
indifference — not to life, for we love it by instinct — but
to the stimuli of life, increases. Besides, this late failure
of the Italians has latterly disappointed me for many
reasons, — some public, some personal. My respects to
Mrs. S.
Yours ever,
B.
P.S. — Could not you and I contrive to meet this
summer ? Could not you take a run here alone 1
884. — To John Murray.
R?, April 26, 1821.
DEAR MORAY, — I sent you by last postis a large
packet, which will not do for publication (I suspect),
being, as the Apprentices say, " damned low" I put off
also for a week or two sending the Italian Scrawl which
will form a Note to it. The reason is that, letters being
opened, I wish to " bide a wee."
Well, have you published the Tragedy ? and does the
Letter x take ?
Is it true, what Shelley writes me, that poor John
Keats died at Rome of the Quarterly Review? I am
very sorry for it, though I think he took the wrong line
as a poet, and was spoilt by Cockneyfying, and Sub-
urbing, and versifying Tooke's Pantheon and Lempriere's
Dictionary. I know, by experience, that a savage review
is Hemlock to a sucking author; and the one on me
I. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine for May, 1821 (pp. 227-
233), condemns the Letter to * * * * ****** iy (fa j?t. Hon.
Lord Byron (London, John Murray, 1821), as " wholly unworthy of
"the illustrious author of Childe Harold." Bowles's Two Letters
to the Right Honourable Lord Byron are characterized " as a most
' ' satisfactory answer to Lord Byron's paradoxes, and as evincing
" throughout the spirit of the scholar and the gentleman.'1
270 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
(which produced the English Bards, etc.} knocked me
down — but I got up again. Instead of bursting a blood-
vessel, I drank three bottles of Claret, and began an
answer, finding that there was nothing in the Article for
which I could lawfully knock Jeffrey on the head, in an
honourable way. However, I would not be the person
who wrote the homicidal article, for all the honour and
glory in the World, though I by no means approve of
that School of Scribbling which it treats upon.
You see the Italians have made a sad business of it.
All owing to treachery and disunion amongst themselves.
It has given me great vexation. The Execrations heaped
upon the Neapolitans by the other Italians are quite in
unison with those of the rest of Europe.
Mrs. Leigh writes that Lady No — /// is getting
well again. See what it is to have luck in this world.
I hear that Rogers is not pleased with being called
" venerable " 1 — a pretty fellow : if I had thought that he
would have been so absurd, I should have spoken of him
as defunct — as he really is. Why, betwixt the years he
really lived, and those he has been dead, Rogers has
lived upon the Earth nearly seventy three years and
upwards, as I have proved in a postscript of my letter, by
this post, to Mr. Kinnaird.
Let me hear from you, and send me some Soda-
powders for the Summer dilution. Write soon.
Yours ever and truly,
B.
P.S. — Your latest packet of books is on its way here,
I . In the First Letter on Bowles, Byron speaks of meeting him " in
" the house of our venerable host" Rogers, "the last Argonaut of
' ' classic English poetry, and the Nestor of our inferior race of
•'living poets." (See Appendix III. p. 537.)
l82I.] COLLAPSE OF ITALIAN REVOLUTION. 271
but not arrived. Kenilworth * excellent. Thanks for the
pocket-books, of whilk I have made presents to those
ladies who like cuts, and landscapes, and all that. I have
got an Italian book or two which I should like to send
you if I had an opportunity.
I am not at present in the very highest health.
Spring probably ; so I have lowered my diet and taken
to Epsom Salts.
As you say my prose is good, why don't you treat
with Moore for the reversion of the Memoirs ? 2 — condi-
tionally ^ recollect ; not to be published before decease.
He has the permission to dispose of them, and I advised
him to do so.
885.— To Thomas Moore.
Ravenna, April 28, 1821.
You cannot have been more disappointed than
myself, nor so much deceived. I have been so at some
personal risk also, which is not yet done away with.
However, no time nor circumstances shall alter my tone
nor my feelings of indignation against tyranny triumphant.
The present business has been as much a work of
treachery as of cowardice, — though both may have done
their part. If ever you and I meet again, I will have a
talk with you upon the subject. At present, for obvious
reasons, I can write but little, as all letters are opened.
1. Kenilworth was published in 1821.
2. Murray (Memoir of John Murray, vol. i. p. 425) writes,
September 6, 1821, "I forgot in my former letter to notice a hint
' in yours respecting an additional sum to Mr. Moore. The purchase
' which I have made of the ' Memoirs ' is perfectly con amore.
' As a matter of mere business, if I placed the ^2000 in the funds
' (supposing they did not break), in fourteen years (the least annuity
' value of the author's life) it would become £4000. Moore should
' not show the ' Memoirs ' to any one now, 1 think."
272 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
In mine they shall always find my sentiments, but nothing
that can lead to the oppression of others.
You will please to recollect that the Neapolitans are
now nowhere more execrated than in Italy, and not
blame a whole people for the vices of a province. That
would be like condemning Great Britain because they
plunder wrecks in Cornwall.
And now let us be literary ; — a sad falling off, but it
is always a consolation. If " Othello's occupation be
" gone," let us take to the next best ; and, if we cannot
contribute to make mankind more free and wise, we may
amuse ourselves and those who like it. What are you
writing ? I have been scribbling at intervals, and Murray
will be publishing about now.
Lady Noel has, as you say, been dangerously ill ; but
it may console you to learn that she is dangerously well
again.
I have written a sheet or two more of Memoranda
for you ; and I kept a little Journal for about a month or
two, till I had filled the paper-book. I then left it off, as
things grew busy, and, afterwards, too gloomy to set
down without a painful feeling. This I should be glad
to send you, if I had an opportunity ; but a volume,
however small, don't go well by such posts as exist in this
Inquisition of a country.
I have no news. As a very pretty woman said to me
a few nights ago, with the tears in her eyes, as she sat at
the harpsichord, " Alas ! the Italians must now return to
" making operas." I fear that and maccaroni are their
forte, and "motley their only wear." However, there
are some high spirits among them still. Pray write.
And believe me, etc.
MOORE'S "LINES." 273
886.— To Thomas Moore.
Ravenna, May 3, 1821.
Though I wrote to you on the 28th ultimo, I must
acknowledge yours of this day, with the lines.1 They are
sublime, as well as beautiful, and in your very best mood
and manner. They are also but too true. However, do
not confound the scoundrels at the heel of the boot with
their betters at the top of it. I assure you that there are
some loftier spirits.
Nothing, however, can be better than your poem, or
more deserved by the Lazzaroni. They are now abhorred
and disclaimed nowhere more than here. We will talk
over these things (if we meet) some day, and I will recount
my own adventures, some of which have been a little
hazardous, perhaps.
So, you have got the Letter on Bowles ? I do not
recollect to have said any thing of yori that could offend,
— certainly, nothing intentionally. As for * * [Rogers?],
I meant him a compliment. I wrote the whole off-hand,
without copy or correction, and expecting then every day
to be called into the field. What have I said of you ? I
am sure I forget. It must be something of regret for
your approbation of Bowles.2 And did you not approve,
1. Moore has the following notes in his Diary (Memoirs ; etc., vol.
iii. p. 214) : —
"March 27, 1821. — Heard of the surrender of the Neapolitans,
" without a blow, to the Austrians. Can this be true ? Then there
"is no virtue in Maccaroni. . . .
" 28th. The news but too true ; curse on the cowards ! . . .
" 3Oth. Wrote a few lines about the rascally Neapolitans."
These were the " Lines written on hearing that the Austrians had
"entered Naples," beginning "Aye, down to the dust with them,
" slaves as they are." They were printed in the Traveller for
April 9, 1821.
2. For the allusion, see the first Letter to John Murray, Esq.,
on the Rev. W. L. Bowles's Strictures on the Life and Writings of
Pope, Appendix III. p. 558. On this passage Moore has the two
following notes : —
VOL. V. T
274 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
as he says ? Would I had known that before ! I would
have given him some more gruel. My intention was to
make fun of all these fellows ; but how I succeeded, I
don't know.
As to Pope, I have always regarded him as the greatest
name in our poetry. Depend upon it, the rest are bar-
barians. He is a Greek Temple, with a Gothic Cathedral
on one hand, and a Turkish Mosque and all sorts of
fantastic pagodas and conventicles about him. You may
call Shakspeare and Milton pyramids, if you please, but
I prefer the Temple of Theseus or the Parthenon to a
mountain of burnt brick-work.
The Murray has written to me but once, the day of
its publication, when it seemed prosperous. But I have
heard of late from England but rarely. Of Murray's
other publications (of mine), I know nothing, — nor
whether he has published. He was to have done so a
month ago. I wish you would do something, — or that
we were together.
Ever yours and affectionately,
B.
" I had not, when I wrote, seen this pamphlet, as he supposes, but
' had merely heard from some friends, that his pen had ' run a-muck '
' in it, and that I myself had not escaped a slight graze in its career. "
" It may be sufficient to say of the use to which both Lord Byron
' and Mr. Bowles thought it worth their while to apply my name in
' this controversy, that, as far as my own knowledge of the subject
' extended, I was disposed to agree with neither of the extreme
' opinions into which, as it appeared to me, my distinguished friends
' had diverged ; — neither with Lord Byron in that spirit of partisan-
' ship which led him to place Pope above Shakspeare and Milton,
' nor with Mr. Bowles in such an application of the ' principles ' of
' poetry as could tend to sink Pope, on the scale of his art, to any
' rank below the very first. Such being the middle state of my
' opinion on the question, it will not be difficult to understand how
' one of my controversial friends should be as mistaken in supposing
' me to differ altogether from his views, as the other was in taking
' for granted that I had ranged myself wholly on his side " (Life.
P- 503).
1 82 1.] ANTI-CHRISTIAN ANTI-POPISTS. 275
887.— To John Murray.
Ravenna, May 8'.'1, 1821.
DEAR MORAY, — Pray publish these additional notes.1
It is of importance to the question in dispute, and even,
if you can, print it on a separate page and distribute it to
the purchasers of the former copies.
I have had no letters from you for this month past.
Acknowledge this by post ; as this note is worth the whole
pamphlet as an example of what we are to prove against
the Anti-christian anti-popists.
Yours,
BYRON.
P.S. — I copy the following postscript from Moore's
latest letter to me of April i4'h " Since I wrote the
" above, Lady E. F. sent me your letter, and I have run
" through it. How the devil could Bowles say that I
" agreed with his twaddling, and (still more strange) how
" could you believe him ?" There ! what do you think of
this ? You may show this to the initiated, but not publish
it in print — yet at least — till I have M.'s permission.
Get and send me, if possible, Tom Tyers's amusing
tracts upon Pope and Addison.2 I had a copy in 1812
which was, I know not how, lost, and I could not obtain
another. It is a scarce book, but has run through three
editions I think. It is in the Boswell style, but more
rapid ; very curious, and indeed necessary if you think
of a new life of Pope. Why don't Gifford undertake a
Life and edition ? It is more necessary than that of Ben
1. These "notes" are now printed as an "additional note" to
Byron's first Letter to John Murray, etc. (See Appendix III., p. 563.)
2. Thomas Tyers (1726-1787), the " Tom Restless" of Johnson's
Idler, wrote, among other pamphlets, An Historical Rhapsodv on
Mr. Pope (1781) and An Historical Essay on Mr. Addison (1782).
276 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
Jonson. Nobody can do it but Gifford, both from his
qualities and turn of mind.
I have not sent you the Italian Scrap promised in my
last letters, but will in a few posts.
Do you recollect the air of " How now, Madame
" Flirt ? " in the Beggar's Of era 1 l
BOWLES.
" Why how now, Saucy Tom,
If you thus must ramble,
I will publish some
Remarks on Thomas Campbell. —
Saucy Tom ! "
CAMPBELL.
" Why how now, Billy Bowles,
Sure the parson's maudlin.
How can you (damn your souls) [To the public
Listen to his twaddling ?
Billy Bowks I"
Thorwaldsen sent off the bust to be shipped from
Leghorn last week. As it is addressed to your house
and care you may be looking out for it, though I know
not the probable time of the voyage in this Season of the
year, which is one of light airs and breezes and calms in
the Mediterranean.
888.— To John Murray.
May 10, 1821, Ravenna.
DEAR MURRAY, — I have just got your packet. I am
obliged to Mr. Bowles, and Mr. B. is obliged to me, for
having restored him to good humour. He is to write,
I. See p. 252, note I.
1 82 1.] OCTAVIUS GILCHRIST. 277
and you to publish, what you please, — motto and subject.
I desire nothing but fair play for all parties. Of course,
after the new tone of Mr. B., you will not publish my
defence of Gilchrist : x it would be brutal to do so after his
urbanity, for it is rather too rough, like his own attack
upon G. You may tell him what I say there of his
Missionary * (it is praised, as it deserves), however; and
if there are any passages not personal to Bowles, and yet
bearing upon the question, you may add them to the
reprint (if it is reprinted) of my ist- letter to you. Upon
this consult Gifford ; and, above all, don't let any thing
be added which can personally affect Mr. B.
In the enclosed notes, of course what I say of the
democracy of poetry cannot apply to Mr. Bowles, but to
the Cockney-and- Water washing-tub Schools.
Now, what are we to think of Bowles's story, and
Moore's ! ! ! they are at issue : is it not odd ? I have
copied M.'s postscript literally in my letter of the 8'.h.
I. I.e. the second Letter to John Murray. (See Appendix III.
P- 567)-
Octavius Graham Gilchrist (1779-1823), a grocer at Stamford,
published, in 1805, a volume of Rhymes, edited (1807) the Poems of
Richard Corbet, and wrote (1811) A Letter to IV. Giffard, Esq., on
Weber's edition of Ford's Plays. He had plunged into the Pope
controversy by reviewing Spencers Anecdotes in the London Magazine
for February, 1820. For further details of his dispute with Bowles,
see Appendix III. pp. 524, 525. Gifford (Introduction to Dramatic
Works of yohn Ford, p. lii. note) says —
"This gentleman, whom with Dr. Roscoe, I lament to call 'the
' late ingenious Mr. Gilchrist,' had not reached the meridian of life
' when he fell a sacrifice to some consumptive complaint, which
' had long oppressed him. His last labour of love was an attempt
' to rescue Pope from the rancorous persecution of his editor, the
' Rev. Mr. Bowles. I know not why this doughty personage gives
' himself such airs of superiority over Mr. Gilchrist ; nor why,
'unless from pure taste, he clothes them in a diction not often
' heard out of the purlieus of St. Giles. Mr. Gilchrist was a man
' of strict integrity ; and in the extent and accuracy of his critical
' knowledge, and the patient industry of his researches, as much
' superior to the Rev. Mr. Bowles, as in good manners."
2. The Missionary of the Andes was published in 1815.
278 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
The anecdote of Mr. B. is as follows, and of course not
for the public: After dinner at L? Lansdowne's, they
were talking, one evening, as Sir Robert Walpole used
to talk always. Bowles said that, after all, love was the
only thing worthy the risk of damnation.
This is " the tale as told to me " by Moore, and at
least as good a story as Gibber's of Pope. You may tell
it again to Mr. B., upon whom it reflects rather credit
than otherwise, for the humour of it.
I hope and trust that Elliston won't be permitted to
act the drama.1 Surely Jie might have the grace to wait
for Kean's return before he attempted it ; though, even
then, I should be as much against the attempt as ever.
I have got a small packet of books, but neither
Waldegrave,2 Orford, nor Scott's Novels among them.
Some Soda powders, pray ? Why don't you republish
Hodgson's C. Harold's Monitor and Latino-Mastix ? 3
1. In opening the Surrey Theatre for Easter, 1821, Thomas
Dibdin "announced a new melo-drame founded on Lord Byron's
"recent play of Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice " {Autobiography
of Thomas Dibdin, vol. ii. p. 199). He was immediately warned
by Mr. Murray's solicitor that an injunction had been obtained
against Robert William Elliston, to restrain " the performance of
" that play or any part thereof," and that similar proceedings would
be taken against him.
2. Memoirs from 1754 to 1758, by James, Earl Waldegrave, K.G.,
and Memoirs of the Last Ten Years of George II., by Horace
Walpole, Lord Orford, were published in 1822 by Murray. Both
were edited by Lord Holland. Byron was indignant that Murray
had given more for them than the £2000 which he offered for Don
Juan (Cantos III., IV., and V.), The Two Foscari, and Sardana-
palus. As a matter of fact, Murray gave ^2500 for the Waldegrave
and Walpole Memoirs (Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 90), and .£2710 (ibid., vol.
i. p. 425) for the three tragedies of Sardanapalus, Foscari, and Cain.
3. Hodgson's Childe Harold's Monitor, or Lines occasioned by the
Last Canto of Childe Harold, including Hints to other Contemporaries,
was published in 1818. His S&culo Mastix, or the Lash of the Age
Vf live in, appeared in the same year.
1821.] THE CONVENT AT BAGNACAVALLO. 279
they are excellent : think of this — they are all for
Pope.
Yours truly,
B.
-To Richard Belgrave Hoppner.
Ravenna, May n, 1821.
If I had but known your notion about Switzerland
before, I should have adopted it at once. As it is, I
shall let the child remain in her convent,1 where she
seems healthy and happy, for the present ; but I shall feel
much obliged if you will enquire, when you are in the
cantons, about the usual and better modes of education
there for females, and let me know the result of your
opinions. It is some consolation that both Mr. and Mrs.
Shelley have written to approve entirely my placing the
child with the nuns for the present. I can refer to my
whole conduct, as having neither spared care, kindness,
I. See p. 262, note 2. From 1336 to 1796 the conventual build-
ings of St. John the Baptist at Bagnacavallo were occupied as a
Camaldolese Monastery. When religious houses were suppressed by
the French Revolutionary armies, the convent passed into the hands
of Count Paolo Gaiani, who, in 1818, made it over to Sister
Marianna delle Vergine Addolorata, known in the world as Cate-
rina Fabbri (died 1849). This lady founded the Capuchin Convent
of St. John as a place of education for girls of noble family.
Allegra was brought to the convent (January 22, 1821), not by
her father, but by a Ravennese named Ghigi (La Figlia di Lord
£yron, Emilio Biondi, Faenza, 1899). It was a fashionable school.
Sig. Biondi writes that Allegra had among her schoolfellows " una
"marchesa Ghislieri di Bologna, una contessa Loreta di Ravenna,
"ed una nostra concittadina, morta da non molti anni in avanzata
" eta, la nobil donna Ippolita Rusconi — nata contessa Biancoli."
During her fatal illness the child was attended by two doctors, and
had every possible care. But popular tradition, probably distorting
medical orders that the invalid should be fed sparingly, asserted
that she was starved to death. Allegra died April 20, 1822. Sig.
Biondi thinks that he has discovered evidence that Byron, under an
assumed name, visited the convent in August, 1823 (p. 26). Pro-
bably the date is a misprint for 1822.
280 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
nor expense, since the child was sent to me. The people
may say what they please, I must content myself with
not deserving (in this instance) that they should speak ill.
The place is a country town in a good air, where there
is a large establishment for education, and many children,
some of considerable rank, placed in it. As a country
town, it is less liable to objections of every kind. It has
always appeared to me, that the moral defect in Italy
does not proceed from a conventual education, — because,
to my certain knowledge, they come out of their convents
innocent even to ignorance of moral evil, — but to the
state of society into which they are directly plunged on
coming out of it. It is like educating an infant on a
mountain-top, and then taking him to the sea and throw-
ing him into it and desiring him to swim. The evil,
however, though still too general, is partly wearing away,
as the women are more permitted to marry from attach-
ment : this is, I believe, the case also in France. And
after all, what is the higher society of England ? Accord-
ing to my own experience, and to all that I have seen and
heard (and I have lived there in the very highest and
what is called the best), no way of life can be more
corrupt. In Italy, however, it is, or rather was, more
systematised ; but now, they themselves are ashamed of
regular Serventism. In England, the only homage which
they pay to virtue is hypocrisy. I speak of course of the
tone of high life ; — the middle ranks may be very virtuous.
I have not got any copy (nor have yet had) of the
letter on Bowles; of course I should be delighted to
send it to you. How is Mrs. H. ? well again, I hope.
Let me know when you set out. I regret that I cannot
meet you in the Bernese Alps this summer, as I once
hoped and intended. With my best respects to madam,
I am ever, etc.
1821.] CH1LDE HAROLD'S MONITOR. 281
P.S. — I gave to a musicians a letter for you some time
ago — has he presented himself? Perhaps you could
introduce him to the Ingrams and other dilettanti. He
is simple and unassuming — two strange things in his pro-
fession— and he fiddles like Orpheus himself or Amphion :
't is a pity that he can't make Venice dance away from
the brutal tyrant who tramples upon it.
890. — To Francis Hodgson.
Ravenna, May 12, 1821.
DEAR HODGSON, — At length your two poems x have
been sent. I have read them over (with the notes) with
great pleasure. I receive your compliments kindly and
your censures temperately, which I suppose is all that
can be expected among poets. Your poem is, however,
excellent,2 and if not popular only proves that there is
1. Probably Childe Harold's Monitor and S&culo Mastix, or the
Lash of the Age we live in,
2. In Hodgson's Childe Harold'' 's Monitor (1818) occurs a passage
in praise of Pope —
" What ! shall the bard majestically sweet,
Who on the pallid walls of Paraclete
Hung an undying wreath of softest green,
While, sadly murmuring through the enchanted scene,
Fell with new charm the solitary floods,
And holier moonlight veiled the sleeping woods, —
Shall he be summoned to the bar of shame,
And slander fix false tinsel on his fame ?
True, that the wealth of wit at times betrays
The balanced numbers to too rich a blaze ;
True that those numbers might, at times, have flown
With Dryden's notes o'er regions scarce their own ;
Dared the contrasted pause, and streamed more free
In soul-o'erflowing tides of harmony :
But shall we vilify the morning star,
Bright as he shines o'er earth's dim clouds afar,
Because unequal to the noonday sun,
And doomed a humbler course in Heaven to run ? "
This praise, and some of the criticism on contemporary poets,
282 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
a fortune in fame as in every thing else in this world.
Much, too, depends upon a publisher, and much upon
luck ; and the number of writers is such, that as the mind
of a reader can only contain a certain quantum of poetry
and poet's glories, he is sometimes saturated, and allows
many good dishes to go away untouched (as happens at
great dinners), and this not from fastidiousness but
fulness.
You will have seen from my pamphlet on Bowles
that our opinions are not very different. Indeed, my
modesty would naturally look at least bashfully on being
termed the " first of living minstrels " 1 (by a brother of
the art) if both our estimates of "living minstrels" in
general did not leaven the praise to a sober compliment.
It is something like the priority in a retreat. There is
but one of your tests which is not infallible : Translation.
There are three or four French translations, and several
German and Italian which I have seen. Moore wrote to
me from Paris months ago that " the French had caught
"the contagion of Byronism to the highest pitch" and
has written since to say that nothing was ever like their
"entusymusy" (you remember Braham) on the subject,
pleased Byron, and made him forgive the severity with which his
own poetry is criticized. In the notes Hodgson says that the third
canto of Childe Harold is disfigured with " violations of the true tone
'of poetic diction," and "rambling metaphysical sentences of
' broken prose borrowed from the most worthless of his contem-
'poraries." "Manfred absolutely teems with them," etc. (p. 69).
' That Harold's occasional images, even in his idlest moments, are
' as brilliant as ever, nobody can deny ; but long indulgence, and
' the unaccountable imitation of inferior writers . . . have, assuredly,
' deteriorated his style to a most lamentable degree. Concerning
' Beppo, the less that is said the better " (p. 74), etc.
I. Hodgson had written, towards the beginning of his Childe
Harolds Monitor —
"Yet, oh ! that, rising at some awful hour,
The warning voice could breathe resistless power ;
And touch at once, in Truth's and Friendship's key,
The first of living minstrels — Harold, thee ! "
l82I.] NEAPOLITAN TREACHERY. 283
even through the " slaver of a prose translation : " these
are his words. The Paris translation is also very inferior
to the Geneva one, which is very fair, although in prose
also, so you see that your test of " translateable or not "
is not so sound as could be wished. It is no pleasure,
however, you may suppose, to be criticised through such
a translation, or indeed through any. I give up Beppo,
though you know that it is no more than an imitation of
Pulci and of a style common and esteemed in Italy. I
have just published a drama, which is at least good
English, I presume, for Gilford lays great stress on the
purity of its diction.
I have been latterly employed a good deal more on
politics than on anything else, for the Neapolitan treachery
and desertion have spoilt all our hopes here, as well as
our preparations. The whole country was ready. Of
course I should not have sate still with my hands in my
breeches' pockets. In fact they were full ; that is to say,
the hands. I cannot explain further now, for obvious
reasons, as all letters of all people are opened. Some
day or other we may have a talk over that and other
matters. In the mean time there did not want a great
deal of my having to finish like Lara.
Are you doing nothing? I have scribbled a good
deal in the early part of last year, most of which scrawls
will now be published, and part is, I believe, actually
printed. Do you mean to sit still about Pope ? If you
do, it will be the first time. I have got such a headache
from a cold and swelled face, that I must take a gallop
into the forest and jumble it into torpor. My horses are
waiting. So good-bye to you.
Yours ever,
BYRON.
284 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
Two hours after the Ave Maria, the Italian date of twilight.
DEAR HODGSON, — I have taken my canter, and am
better of my headache. I have also dined, and turned
over your notes. In answer to your note of page 90 l I
must remark from Aristotle and Rymer, that the hero of
tragedy and (I add meo periculo) a tragic poem must be
guilty, to excite " terror and pity" the end of tragic
poetry. But hear not me, but my betters. "The pity
" which the poet is to labour for is for the criminal. The
" terror is likewise in the punishment of the said criminal,
" who, if he be represented too great an offender, will not
" be pitied ; if altogether innocent his punishment will be
" unjust." 2 In the Greek Tragedy innocence is unhappy
often, and the offender escapes. I must also ask you is
Achilles a good character? or is even JEnesLS anything
but a successful runaway ? It is for Turnus men feel and
not for the Trojan. Who is the hero of Paradise Lost?
Why Satan, — and Macbeth, and Richard, and Othello,
Pierre, and Lothario, and Zanga ? If you talk so, I shall
" cut you up like a gourd," as the Mamelukes say. But
never mind, go on with it.
1. To the line in Childe Harolds Monitor —
" In plundering heroes of the Marmion strain " —
Hodgson adds a note (p. 90), in which he says, " Charles Moor, in
' the Robbers, is the worthy mirror and glass of fashion, in which
' the poetical heroes of the day have dressed themselves. . . . The
' long series of depraved heroes : of profligates adorned with courage,
' and rendered interesting by all the warmth and tenderness of love ;
' who have formed the prominent object in our more popular litera-
' ture for many years, cannot but have had the worst effect on the
' minds of the young," etc., etc.
2. " Dryden's Life " in Johnson's Lives of the Poets, p. 203, etc.
1 82 1.] A FORCED REPRESENTATION. 285
891. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, May 14"? 1821.
DEAR MURRAY, — A Milan paper states that the play
has been represented and universally condemned. As
remonstrance has been vain, complaint would be useless.
I presume, however, for your own sake (if not for mine),
that you and my other friends will have at least published
my different protests against its being brought upon the
stage at all ; and have shown that Elliston (in spite of the
writer) forced it upon the theatre. It would be nonsense
to say that this has not vexed me a good deal ; but I am
not dejected, and I shall not take the usual resource of
blaming the public (which was in the right), or my friends
for not preventing — what they could not help, nor I
neither — a forced representation by a Speculating Man-
ager. It is a pity that you did not show them its unfitness
for yf stage before the play was published^ and exact a
promise from the managers not to act it.1 In case of
their refusal, we would not have published it at all. But
this is too late.
Yours,
B.
P.S. — I enclose Mr. Bowles's letters : thank him in
my name for their candour and kindness. Also a letter
for Hodgson, which pray forward. The Milan paper
states that " / brought forward the play / / / " This is
I . Goethe ( Conversations -with Eckermann and Soret, translated by
John Oxenford, vol. i. pp. 204, 205) said, February 24, 1825,
' If I were still superintendent of the theatre, I would bring out
' Byron's Doge of Venice. The piece is, indeed, long, and would
' require shortening. Nothing, however, should be cut out, but the
' import of each scene should be taken, and expressed more con-
' cisely. The piece would thus be brought closer together, without
' being damaged by alterations, and it would gain a powerful effect,
' without any essential loss of beauty."
286 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
pleasanter still. But don't let yourself be worried about
it ; and if (as is likely) the folly of Elliston checks the
sale, I am ready to make any deduction, or the entire
cancel of your agreement.
You will of course not publish my defence of Gilchrist,
as, after Bowles's good humour upon the subject, it would
be too savage.
Let me hear from you the particulars ; for, as yet, I
have only the simple fact.
If you knew what I have had to go through here, on
account of the failure of these rascally Neapolitans, you
would be amused. But it is now apparently over. They
seemed disposed to throw the whole project and plans of
these parts upon me chiefly.
892. — To Thomas Moore.
May 14, 1821.
If any part of the letter to Bowles has (unintentionally,
as far as I remember the contents) vexed you, you are
fully avenged; for I see by an Italian paper that, not-
withstanding all my remonstrances through all my friends
(and yourself among the rest), the managers persisted in
attempting the tragedy, and that it has been " unani-
" mously hissed ! ! " This is the consolatory phrase of
the Milan paper, (which detests me cordially, and abuses
me, on all occasions, as a Liberal,) with the addition,
that / " brought the play out " of my own good will.
All this is vexatious enough, and seems a sort of
dramatic Calvinism — predestined damnation, without a
sinner's own fault. I took all the pains poor mortal
could to prevent this inevitable catastrophe — partly by
appeals of all kinds, up to the Lord Chamberlain, and
partly to the fellows themselves. But, as remonstrance
l82I.] " EIGHT-AND-TWENTY MISFORTUNES." 287
was vain, complaint is useless. I do not understand it
— for Murray's letter of the 24th, and all his preceding
ones, gave me the strongest hopes that there would be no
representation. As yet, I know nothing but the fact, which
I presume to be true, as the date is Paris, and the 3oth.
They must have been in a hell of a hurry for this damna-
tion, since I did not even know that it was published ;
and, without its being first published, the histrions could
not have got hold of it. Any one might have seen, at
a glance, that it was utterly impracticable for the stage ;
and this little accident will by no means enhance its
merit in the closet.
Well, patience is a virtue, and, I suppose, practice
will make it perfect. Since last year (spring, that is) I
have lost a lawsuit, of great importance, on Rochdale
collieries — have occasioned a divorce — have had my poesy
disparaged by Murray and the critics — my fortune refused
to be placed on an advantageous settlement (in Ireland)
by the trustees ; — my life threatened last month (they put
about a paper here to excite an attempt at my assassina-
tion, on account of politics, and a notion which the
priests disseminated that I was in a league against the
Germans,) — and, finally, my mother-in-law recovered last
fortnight, and my play was damned last week ! These
are like " the eight-and-twenty misfortunes of Harlequin." a
But they must be borne. If I give in, it shall be after
keeping up a spirit at least. I should not have cared so
much about it, if our southern neighbours had not bungled
us all out of freedom for these five hundred years to
come.
Did you know John Keats ? They say that he was
killed by a review of him in the Quarterly — if he be
i. See Le disgratie d1 Arlecchino : viz. Harlequin's Misfortunes.
London, 1726, Svo.
288 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
dead, which I really don't know. I don't understand
that yielding sensitiveness. What I feel (as at this
present) is an immense rage for eight-and-forty hours,
and then, as usual — unless this time it should last longer.
I must get on horseback to quiet me.
Yours, etc.
Francis I. wrote, after the battle of Pavia, "All is
" lost except our honour." * A hissed author may reverse
it — " Nothing is lost, except our honour." But the horses
are waiting, and the paper full. I wrote last week to
you.
893. — To Richard Belgrave Hoppner.
Ravenna, May 17'!* 1821.
MY DEAR HOPPNER, — You will have seen a para-
graph in the Italian papers stating that " L? B. had exposed
" his t[ragedy] of M\arino\ F\aliero\ etc., and that it was
" universally hissed." You will have also seen in Galignani
(what is confirmed by my letters from London), that this
is twice false ; for, in the first place, / opposed the repre-
sentation at all, and in the next, it was not hissed, but is
continued to be acted, in spite of Author, publisher, and
the Lord Chancellor's injunction.
I . The famous note of Francis I. to his mother after the Battle of
Pavia, " Tout est perdu fors Fhonneur" is not historical. The real
letter begins thus—
" MADAME, — Pour vous advertir comment se porte le ressort
" de mon infortune, de toutes choses n' m'est demoure que 1' honneur
" et la vie qui est saulve, et pour ce que en nostre adversite cette
" nouvelle vous fera quelque resconfort, j'ay prie qu'on me laissast
" pour escrire ces lettres, ce qu'on m'a agreablement accorde."
The whole letter is printed by Fournier, L } Esprit dans F Histoire
(ed. 1857, p. 90). Fournier suggests that the phrase may possibly
be traced to the Spanish historian, Antonio de Vera, who translates
the alleged billet : " Madama, toto se ha perdido sino es la honra "
(Viday luchos de Carlos V., p. 123).
l82I.] APPEAL TO THE BRITISH CONSUL. 289
Now I wish you to obtain a statement of this short
and simple truth in the Venetian and Milan papers, as a
contradiction to their former lie. I say you, because
your consular dignity will obtain this justice, which out of
their hatred to me (as a liberal) they would not concede
to an unofficial Individual.
Will you take this trouble ? I think two words from
you to those in power will do it, because I require nothing
but the statement of what we both know to be the fact,
and that a. fact in no way political. Am I presuming too
much upon your good nature ?
I suppose that I have no other resource, and to whom
can an Englishman apply, in a case of ignorant insult like
this (where no personal redress is to be had), but to the
person resident most nearly connected with his own
government ?
I wrote to you last week, and am now, in all haste,
Yours ever and most truly,
BYRON.
P.S. — Humble reverences to Madame. Pray favour
me with a line in answer.
If the play had been condemned, the injunction
would be superfluous against the continuance of the
representation.
894. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, May IQ1,'1 1821.
DEAR MURRAY, — Enclosed is a letter of Valpy's,
which it is for you to answer. I have nothing further
to do with the mode of publication. By the papers of
Thursday, and two letters from Mr. K'1, I perceive that
the Italian Gazette had lied most 7/0/*Vally, and that the
drama had not been hissed, and that my friends had
VOL. v. u
2 90 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
interfered to prevent the representation. So it seems
they continue to act it, in spite of us all. For this we
must " trouble them at 'Size : " let it by all means be
brought to a plea : I am determined to try the right, and
will meet the expences. The reason of the Lombard lie
was that the Austrians — who keep up an Inquisition
throughout Italy, and a list of names of all who think or
speak of any thing but in favour of their despotism — have
for five years past abused me in every form in the
Gazette of Milan, etc. I wrote to you a week ago upon
the subject.
Now, I should be glad to know what compensation
Mr. Elliston could make me, not only for dragging my
writings on the stage in five days, but for being the cause
that I was kept for four days (from Sunday to Thursday
morning, the only post days) in the belief that the tragedy
had been acted and "unanimously hissed;" and this
with the addition that " / had brought it upon the stage,"
and consequently that none of my friends had attended
to my request to the contrary. Suppose that I had burst
a blood vessel, like John Keats, or blown [out] my brains
in a fit of rage, — neither of which would have been unlikely
a few years ago. At present I am, luckily, calmer than
I used to be, and yet I would not pass those four days
over again for — I know not what.
I wrote to you to keep up your spirits, for reproach is
useless always, and irritating ; but my feelings were very
much hurt, to be dragged like a Gladiator to the fate of a
Gladiator by that " Retiarius" Mr. Elliston. As to his
defence and offers of compensation, what is all this to the
purpose ? It is like Louis the i4'h, who insisted upon
buying at any price Algernon Sydney's horse,1 and, on
I. Byron refers to a discredited anecdote of Sydney and Louis —
" It is said that Louis, seeing Sydney mounted on a splendid
l82I.] A LETTER BY LIGHTNING-LIGHT. 291
refusal, on taking it by force, Sydney shot his horse. I
could not shoot my tragedy, but I would have flung it
into the fire rather than have had it represented.
I have now written nearly three acts of another (in-
tending to complete it in five), and am more anxious
than ever to be preserved from such a breach of all
literary courtesy and gentlemanly consideration.
If we succeed, well : if not, previous to any future
publication, we will request a promise not to be acted,
which I would even pay for (as money is their object), or
I will not publish — which, however, you will probably not
much regret.
The Chancellor l has behaved nobly. You have also
conducted yourself in the most satisfactory manner ; and
I have no fault to find with any body but the Stage-players
and their proprietor. I was always so civil to Elliston
personally, that he ought to have been the last to attempt
to injure me.
There is a most rattling thunder-storm pelting away
at this present writing ; so that I write neither by day,
nor by candle, nor torch light, but by lightning-\igM, : the
flashes are as brilliant as the most Gaseous glow of the
Gas-light company. My chimney-board has just been
thrown down by a gust of wind : I thought that it was
' English thorough-bred, was so enchanted with the animal that he
' immediately expressed a desire to become its purchaser. Sydney
' declined to part with it, whereupon the haughty monarch gave
'orders that money should be tendered and the horse seized.
' Sydney, burning with indignation and passion, when this command
' was brought to him, instantly took a pistol and shot the magnificent
' steed, saying that his horse was born a free creature, had served a
' free man, and should not be mastered by a king of slaves " (Ewald,
Life and Times of Algernon Sydney, vol. ii. p. 17).
I. "By the way," writes Murray to Byron, March 20, 1821
(Memoir, vol. i. pp. 420, 421), " Hobhouse spoke to Lord Grey
" about the impropriety of allowing a play, not intended for per-
" formance, to be acted on the stage. Earl Grey spoke to the Lord
" Chancellor, who said that he would grant an injunction."
292 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
the " bold Thunder " and " brisk Lightning " in person —
three of us would be too many. There it goes—flas/i
again ! but,
I tax not you, ye elements, with unkindness ;
I never gave yefran&s, nor called upon you ; *
as I have done by and upon Mr. Elliston.
Why do not you write? You should have at least
sent me a line of particulars : I know nothing yet but by
Galignani and the honourable Douglas.
Hobhouse has been paying back Mr. Canning's assault.2
1. "I tax not you, ye elements, with unkindness,
I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children,
You owe me no subscription ; why then let fall
Your horrible pleasure."
King Lear, act iii. sc. 2.
2. In the House of Commons, April 17, 1821, Mr. Lambton,
seconded by Mr. S. C. Whitbread, proposed "That this House do
" resolve itself into a Committee of the whole House to consider the
"state of the representation of the people in Parliament." The
motion was supported by Hobhouse, who, in meeting the objection
that the House would be inundated by demagogues, said, as reported
in the Traveller, April 18, 1821 —
" . . . If, however, the demagogue is but six months in finding
" his level, in shrinking to his proper dimensions, there is a descrip-
" tion of persons that do not in six months, no, nor in thirty years,
" find their level, and sink to their proper dimensions here. These
" are the regular adventurers, the downright trading politicians. The
" House will easily suggest to itself the sort of being.to which I allude ;
" but to prevent mistakes, I would presume to attempt a portrait,
" not finished, but not exaggerated. A smart sixth-form boy, the
" little hero of a little world, matures his precocious parts at college,
" and sends before him his fame to the metropolis ; a Minister, or
" some Borough-holder of the day thinks him worth saving from his
" democratic associates, and from the unprofitable principles which
".the thoughtless enthusiasm of youth may have inclined him hitherto
" to adopt. The hopeful youth yields at once; and, placed in the
"true line of promotion, he takes his beat with the more veteran
" prostitutes of Parliament. There he rounds his periods ; there he
"balances his antitheses; there he adjusts his alliterations; and,
" plastering up the interstices of his piebald patchwork rhetoric with
"froth and foam — this master of pompous nothings becomes first
" favourite of the great Council of the Nation. His very want of
" sincerity and virtue qualifies him for a corrupted audience, who
l82I.] HOBHOUSE ON CANNING. 293
He was right; for Canning had been, like Addison,
trying to " cuff down new-fledged merit" l Hobhouse has
in him " something dangerous " 2 if not let alone.
Well, and how does our Pope Controversy go on, and
' look upon his parts as an excuse for their degeneracy, and regard
' him, not only as the partner, but as the apologist of their common
' degradation. Such a man may have notoriously spurned at every
' principle of public morality and public honour ; he may have by
' turns insulted, derided, betrayed, and crouched to every party, or
' at least every politician, in the State. Sometimes he may have
1 shown all the arrogance of success, at other times have dis-
' played the true tameness of an underling, and have submitted to
' serve under those in public whom he has conspired in private to
1 ruin and destroy. Yet this man — with
" ' Beauty that shocks you, parts that none can trust,
Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust,' —
' this man, I say, shall be courted and caressed in Parliament, and
' he shall never be so much admired, never so much applauded, as
' when playing off his buffoonery at the expense of public virtue — as
' when depreciating the understandings or mocking the sufferings of
' the people. Such a man does not find his level ; he does not
' shrink to his proper dimensions in the unreformed House ; on the
4 contrary, he is the true House of Commons hero. Despised and
' detected as he may be without doors, he finds a shelter in the
' bosom of the Senate : sunk as he may be in public opinion, he
' there attains to an eminence which raises him for the time above
' the scorn of his fellow-countrymen. True, his fame is not lasting,
' but for the moment he is the glory and the shame of Parliament :
' no one equals him on that stage.
" ( Him, thus exalted, for a wit we own,
And court him as top-fiddle of the town.'
' Such a man, I say, sir, would have no place in a reformed Parlia-
' ment ; and if he be either useful or ornamental in a deliberative
' assembly, it is for him that should be reserved that nest of
' boroughs which it has been proposed to keep solely for the
' demagogues. Talents without character would be banished from
' such an assembly, and the honest discharge of a sacred trust would
' be the first, instead of the last, requisite of a public man."
1. Byron probably alludes to Venice Preserved, act ii. sc. 2 —
"... those baleful unclean birds,
Those lazy owls, who, perch'd near fortune's top,
Sit only watchful with their heavy wings
To cuff down new-fledg'd virtues, that would rise
To nobler heights, and make the grove harmonious."
2. Hamlet, act v. sc. i.
294 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
the pamphlet ? It is impossible to write any news : the
Austrian scoundrels rummage all letters.
Yours,
B.
P.S. — I could have sent you a good deal of Gossip
and some real information, were it not that all letters pass
through the Barbarians' inspection, and I have no wish
to inform them of any thing but my utter abhorrence
of them and theirs. They have only conquered by
treachery, however.
Send me some Soda-powders, some of " Acton's Corn-
" rubbers," and W. Scott's romances. And do pray
write : when there is anything to interest, you are always
silent.
895. — To Madame Guiccioli.1
[Undated.]
Ecco la verita di cib che io vi dissi pochi giorni fa,
come vengo sacrificato in tutte le maniere senza sapere il
I. Of this extract Moore (Life, p. 510) gives the following trans-
lation, prefaced by Countess Guiccioli's account of Byron's anxiety
on the occasion : —
"His quiet was, in spite of himself, often disturbed by public
' events, and by the attacks which, principally in his character of
' author, the journals levelled at him. In vain did he protest that
' he was indifferent to these attacks. The impression was, it is
' true, but momentary ; and he, from a feeling of noble pride, but
' too much disdained to reply to his detractors. But, however brief
' his annoyance was, it was sufficiently acute to occasion him much
' pain, and to afflict those who loved him. Every occurrence rela-
' live to the bringing Marino Faliero on the stage caused him
' excessive inquietude. On the occasion of an article in the Milan
' Gazette, in which mention was made of this affair, he wrote to me
' in the following manner : — ' You will see here confirmation of what
' I told you the other day ! I am sacrificed in every way, without
' knowing the why or the wherefore. The tragedy in question is not
' (nor ever was) written for, or adapted to, the stage ; nevertheless,
' the plan is not romantic ; it is rather regular than otherwise ; — in
1 82 1.] SUSCEPTIBILITY. 2 95
perche e il come. La tragedia di cui si parla non e (e
non era mai) ne scritta nb adatta al teatro ; ma non e
perb romantico il disegno, e piuttosto regolare — regolaris-
simo per 1* unitk del tempo, e mancando poco a quella
del sito. Voi sapete bene se io aveva intenzione di farla
rappresentare, poiche era scritta al vostro fianco e nei
momenti per certo piu tragici per me come uomo che
come autore, — perche voi eravate in affanno ed in pericolo.
Intanto sento dalla vostra Gazetta che sia nata una cabala,
un partito, e senza ch' io vi abbia presa la minima parte.
Si dice che Tautore ne fece la kttnra ! ! ! — qu\ forse ? a
Ravenna?— ed a chi? forse a Fletcher!!! quel illustre
litterato, etc., etc.
896. — To Thomas Moore.
Ravenna, May 20, 1821.
Since I wrote to you last week I have received
English letters and papers, by which I perceive that what
I took for an Italian truth is, after all, a French lie of the
Gazette de France. It contains two ultra-falsehoods in as
many lines. In the first place, Lord B. did not bring
forward his play, but opposed the same ; and, secondly,
it was not condemned, but is continued to be acted, in
despite of publisher, author, Lord Chancellor, and (for
aught I know to the contrary) of audience, up to the first
of May, at least — the latest date of my letters. You will
' point of unity of time, indeed, perfectly regular, and failing but
' slightly in unity of place. You well know whether it was ever my
' intention to have it acted, since it was written at your side, and at
' a period assuredly rather more tragical to me as a man than as an
' author ; {Q\ you were in affliction and peril. In the mean time, I
' learn from your Gazette that a cabal and party has been formed,
' while I myself have never taken the slightest step in the business.
' It is said that the author read it aloud I ! ! — here, probably, at
' Ravenna ? — and to whom ? perhaps to Fletcher ! ! ! — that illustrious
' literary character," etc., etc.
296 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
oblige me, then, by causing Mr. Gazette of France to
contradict himself, which, I suppose, he is used to. I
never answer a foreign criticism ; but this is a mere matter
of fact, and not of opinions, I presume that you have
English and French interest enough to do this for me —
though, to be sure, as it is nothing but the truth which
we wish to state, the insertion may be more difficult.
As I have written to you often lately at some length,
I won't bore you further now, than by begging you to
comply with my request; and I presume the esprit du
corps (is it " du" or "de"? for this is more than I know)
will sufficiently urge you, as one of " ours" to set this
affair in its real aspect. Believe me always yours ever
and most affectionately,
BYRON.
897. — To Richard Belgrave Hoppner.
Ravenna, May 25, 1821.
I am very much pleased with what you say of Switzer-
land, and will ponder upon it. I would rather she
married there than here for that matter. For fortune, I
shall make all that I can spare (if I live and she is correct
in her conduct) ; and if I die before she is settled, I have
left her by will five thousand pounds, which is a fair
provision out of England for a natural child. I shall
increase it all I can, if circumstances permit me ; but, of
course (like all other human things), this is very uncertain.
You will oblige me very much by interfering to have
the FACTS of the play-acting stated, as these scoundrels
appear to be organising a system of abuse against me,
because I am in their "list" I care nothing for their
criticism, but the matter of fact. I have written four acts
of another tragedy, so you see they can't bully me.
l82I.] THE CHIEF OF THE LIBERALS. 297
You know, I suppose, that they actually keep a list of
all individuals in Italy who dislike them — it must be
numerous. Their suspicions and actual alarms, about
my conduct and presumed intentions in the late row, were
truly ludicrous — though, not to bore you, I touched upon
them lightly. They believed, and still believe here, or
affect to believe it, that the whole plan and project of
rising was settled by me, and the means furnished, etc.,
etc. All this was more fomented by the barbarian agents,
who are numerous here (one of them was stabbed yester-
day, by the way, but not dangerously) : — and although
when the Commandant was shot here before my door in
December, I took him into my house, where he had
every assistance, till he died on Fletcher's bed; and
although not one of them dared to receive him into their
houses but myself, they leaving him to perish in the night
in the streets, they put up a paper about three months
ago, denouncing me as the Chief of the Liberals, and
stirring up persons to assassinate me. But this shall
never silence nor bully my opinions. All this came from
the German Barbarians.
898.— To John Murray.
R? Mayas11? 1821.
MR. MORAY, — Since I wrote the enclosed a week
ago, and for some weeks before, I have not had a line
from you. Now I should be glad to know upon what
principle of common or /^common feeling, you leave me
without any information but what I derive from garbled
gazettes in English, and abusive ones in Italian (the
Germans hating me as a Coal-heaver 1), while all this kick
up has been going on about the play? You SHABBY
I . I.e. a carbonaro.
298 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
fellow ! ! ! Were it not for two letters from Douglas
Kinnaird, I should have been as ignorant as you are
negligent.
I send you an Elegy as follows : —
Behold the blessings of a lucky lot !
My play is damned, and Lady Noel not.
So, I hear Bowles has been abusing Hobhouse : l if
I. Hobhouse contributed to the first edition of English Bards,
and Scotch Reviewers (Poems, vol. i. p. 327, note I, and Appendix
III. of this volume) some couplets on Bowles. These couplets
were afterwards exchanged for Byron's own lines, thus quoted by the
Quarterly reviewer in his article on Spence's Anecdotes of Books
and Men (Quarterly Review for July, 1820, p. 425) —
" If Pope, whose fame and genius from the first
Have foil'd the best of critics, needs the worst,
Do thou essay —
Let all the scandal of a former age
Perch on thy pen, and flutter o'er thy page ;
Affect a candour which thou canst not feel,
Clothe envy in the garb of honest zeal ;
Write as if St. John's soul could still inspire,
And do from hate what Mallet did for hire."
In the second of his Two Letters to the Right Honourable Lord
Byron (1821), pp. 103, 104, Bowles, referring to the attack on him-
self in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, says, "The task of
'bestowing the 'heaviest* and heartiest lashes, I find devolved on
'your friend the gallant and puissant Knight of Westminster.
' Can I, then, pass over entirely this your coadjutor, now my lance
' is in its rest ? I do not know whether Hobhouse or your Lordship
'wrote the lines quoted in the Quarterly. If Hobhouse did not
' write these, I find he wrote others more severe, and therefore I
' take them as they stand." He then quotes the lines given above,
and adapts them thus —
" If snow-white innocence, that from the first
Has foil'd the best defenders, need the worst,
Hobhouse, essay —
Let all the pertness of palav'ring prose
Froth on thy lips, and perch upon thy nose ;
Affect a virtue that thou can'st not feel ;
Clothe faction in the garb of patriot zeal ;
Against King, Commons, Lords, — and Canning, — bray
And do for HATE what Santerre did for pay ! "
To this Hobhouse replied with the following lines, quoted in the
Memoir of John Murray (vol. i. p. 421) —
1 82 1.] FOUR ACTS OF SARDANAPALUS. 299
that's the case, he has broken the truce, like Morillo's
successor, and I will cut him out, as Cochrane did the
Esmeralda.1
Since I wrote the enclosed packet, I have completed
(but not copied out) four acts of a new tragedy. When I
have finished the fifth, I will copy it out. It is on the
subject of Sardanapalus? the last king of the Assyrians.
The words Queen and pavilion occur, but it is not an
allusion to his Britannic Majesty, as you may tremulously
(for the admiralty custom) imagine. This you will one
day see (if I finish it), as I have made Sardanapalus brave ^
(though voluptuous, as history represents him,) and also
as amiable as my poor powers could render him. So that
it could neither be truth nor satire on any living monarch.
I have strictly preserved all the unities hitherto, and mean
to continue them in the fifth, if possible ; but not for the
Stage, Yours, in haste and hatred, you scrubby corre-
spondent !
B.
" Should Parson Bowles yourself or friend compare
To some French cut-throat, if you please, Santerre —
Or heap, malignant, on your living head
The smut and trash he pour'd on Pope when dead,
Say what reply — or how with him to deal —
Sot without shame and fool that cannot feel ?
You would not parley with a printers' hack —
You cannot cane him, for his coat is black ;
Reproof and chastisement are idly spent
On one who calls a kick a compliment.
Unwhipp'd, then, leave him to lampoon and lie
Safe in his parson's guise and infamy."
1. Lord Cochrane, who, in 1817, had undertaken the command
and organization of the Chilian navy, cut out the Spanish frigate
Esmeralda, which was lying under the batteries of Callao, on the
night of November 5, 1820.
2. Between May and September 10, 1821, Byron sent to Murray
the three dramas of Sardanapahts, The Two Foscari, and Cain.
They were published together in December, 1821, Murray paying
for them £2 710.
300 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
899. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, May 28'?* 1821.
DEAR MORAY, — Since my last of the 2 6th or 25th, I
have dashed off my fifth act of the tragedy called Sarda-
napalus. But now comes the copying over, which may
prove heavy work — heavy to the writer as to the reader.
I have written to you at least 6 times sans answer, which
proves you to be a — bookseller. I pray you to send me
a copy of Mr. " WranghanHs " reformation of "LanghornJs
" Plutarch : J " I have the Greek, which is somewhat small
of print, and the Italian, which is too heavy in style, and
as false as a Neapolitan patriot proclamation. I pray
you also to send me a life, published some years ago, of
the Magician Apollormis of T[yana], etc., etc.2 It is in
English, and I think edited or written by what " Martin
" Marprelate " calls " a bouncing priest" I shall trouble
you no further with this sheet than y? postage.
Yours, etc.,
B.
P.S. — Since I wrote this, I determined to inclose it
(as a half sheet) to Mr. K., who will have the goodness
to forward it. Besides, it saves sealing wax.
900. — To John Murray.
Ra May 30".' 1821.
DEAR MORAY, — You say you have written often : I
have only received yours of the eleventh, which is very
1. The Rev. John Langhorne's translation of Plutarch's Lives
(1770) was edited by the Rev. Francis Wrangham in 1810.
2. The Life of Apollonius of Tyana, of whom Gibbon wrote
(Decline and Fall, eel. 1854, vol. ii. p. 22, note), " We are at a loss to
"discover whether he was a sage, an impostor, or a fanatic," was
translated into English, from the Greek of Philostratus, by Charles
Blount in 1680, and by the Rev. Edward Berwick in 1810.
1 82 1.] SARDANAPALUS FINISHED. 30!
short. By this post, mfive packets, I send you the tragedy
of Sardanapalus, which is written in a rough hand : perhaps
Mrs. Leigh can help you to decypher it. You will please
to acknowledge it by return of post. You will remark
that the Unities are all strictly observed. The Scene
passes in the same Hall always. The time, a Summer's
night, about nine hours, or less, though it begins before
Sunset and ends after Sunrise. In the third act, when
Sardanapalus calls for a mirror to look at himself in his
armour, recollect to quote the Latin passage from Juvenal
upon Otho (a similar character, who did the same thing) :
Gifford will help you to it.1 The trait is perhaps too
familiar, but it is historical (of Otho, at least,) and natural
in an effeminate character.
Preface, etc., etc., will be sent when I know of the
arrival. For the historical account, I refer you to Dio-
dorus Siculus, from which you must have the chapters of
the Story translated, as an explanation and a note to the
drama.2
You write so seldom and so shortly, that you can
hardly expect from me more than I receive.
Yours truly, etc.
P.S. — Remember me to Gifford, and say that I doubt
that this MSS. will puzzle him to decypher it. The
Characters are quite different from any I have hitherto
attempted to delineate.
1. The quotation was not apparently made in the early edition
(1821). It is from Juvenal, Sat. ii. lines 99-103 —
"Ille tenet speculum, pathici gestamen Othonis,
Actoris Aurunci spolium, quo se ille videbat
Armatum, cum jam tolli vexilla juberet.
Res memoranda novis annalibus, atque recenti
Historia, speculum civilis sarcina belli."
2. Instead of the chapters from Diodorus Siculus, the explanatory
note gives a quotation from Mitford's History of Greece, vol. ix.
PP- 3JI-3I3-
302 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
You must have it copied out directly, as you best can,
and printed off in proofs (more than one), as I have
retained no copy in my hands.
With regard to the publication, I can only protest as
heretofore against its being acted, it being expressly
written not for the theatre.
901. — To Richard Belgrave Hoppner.
Ravenna, May 31, 1821.
I enclose you another letter, which will only confirm
what I have said to you.
About Allegra — I will take some decisive step in the
course of the year ; at present, she is so happy where she
is, that perhaps she had better have her alphabet imparted
in her convent.
What you say of the Dante is the first I have heard
of it — all seeming to be merged in the row about the
tragedy. Continue it ! — Alas ! what could Dante himself
now prophesy about Italy ? I am glad you like it, how-
ever, but doubt that you will be singular in your opinion.
My new tragedy is completed.
The B[enzoni] is right,1 — I ought to have mentioned
her humour and amiability, but I thought at her sixty,
beauty would be most agreeable or least likely. How-
ever, it shall be rectified in a new edition; and if any
of the parties have either looks or qualities which they
wish to be noticed, let me have a minute of them. I
I. This refers to the following passage in Note V. appended to
Marino Faliero: "From the present decay and degeneracy of
' Venice under the Barbarians, there are some honourable individual
' exceptions. . . . There is Alvise Querini, who, after a long and
' honourable diplomatic career, finds some consolation for the
' wrongs of his country, in the pursuits of literature with his nephew,
' Vittor Benzon, the son of the celebrated beauty, the heroine of
' ' La Biondina in Gondoletta,' etc."
1 82 1.] ELEGY ON LADY NOEL'S RECOVERY. 303
have no private nor personal dislike to Venice, rather the
contrary : but I merely speak of what is the subject of all
remarks and all writers upon her present state. Let me
hear from you before you start.
Believe me ever, etc.
P.S. — Did you receive two letters of Douglas Kin-
naird's in an endorse from me? Remember me to
Mengaldo, Seranzo, and all who care that I should
remember them. The letter alluded to in the enclosed,
" to the Cardinal" was in answer to some queries of the
government, about a poor devil of a Neapolitan, arrested
at Sinigaglia on suspicion, who came to beg of me here ;
being without breeches, and consequently without pockets
for halfpence, I relieved and forwarded him to his country,
and they arrested him at Pesaro on suspicion, and have
since interrogated me (civilly and politely, however,) about
him. I sent them the poor man's petition, and such in-
formation as I had about him, which I trust will get him
out again, that is to say, if they give him a fair hearing.
I am content with the article. Pray, did you receive,
some posts ago, Moore's lines which I enclosed to you,
written at Paris ? l
902. — To Thomas Moore.
Ravenna, June 4, 1821.
You have not written lately, as is the usual custom
with literary gentlemen, to console their friends with their
observations in cases of magnitude. I do not know
whether I sent you my " Elegy on the recovery of Lady
" Noel : "—
I. Probably the "Lines written on hearing that the Austrians
" had entered Naples," with the motto " Carbons Notati ! "
304 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
Behold the blessings of a lucky lot —
My play is damn'd, and Lady Noel not.
The papers (and perhaps your letters) will have put
you in possession of Muster Elliston's dramatic behaviour.
It is to be presumed that the play was fitted for the stage
by Mr. Dibdin, who is the tailor upon such occasions,
and will have taken measure with his usual accuracy. I
hear that it is still continued to be performed — a piece of
obstinacy for which it is some consolation to think that
the discourteous histrio will be out of pocket.
You will be surprised to hear that I have finished
another tragedy in five acts, observing all the unities
strictly. It is called Sardanapalus, and was sent by last
post to England. It is not for the stage, any more than
the other was intended for it — and I shall take better care
this time that they don't get hold on't.
I have also sent, two months ago, a further letter on
Bowles, etc. ; but he seems to be so taken up with my
" respect " (as he calls it) towards him in the former case,
that I am not sure that it will be published, being some-
what too full of " pastime and prodigality." I learn from
some private letters of Bowles's, that you were "the
" gentleman in asterisks." Who would have dreamed it ?
you see what mischief that clergyman has done by print-
ing notes without names. How the deuce was I to
suppose that the first four asterisks meant "Campbell"
and not '•'•Pope" and that the blank signature meant
Thomas Moore ? x You see what comes of being familiar
I. "In their eagerness, like true controversialists, to avail them-
' selves of every passing advantage, and convert even straws into
' weapons on an emergency, my two friends, during their short war-
' fare, contrived to place me in that sort of embarrassing position,
' the most provoking feature of which is, that it excites more amuse-
' ment than sympathy. On the one side, Mr. Bowles chose to cite,
' as a support to his argument, a short fragment of a note, addressed
''to him, as he stated, by ' a gentleman of the highest literary,' etc.,
1 82 1.] THE GENTLEMAN IN ASTERISKS. 305
with parsons. His answers have not yet reached me> but
I understand from Hobhouse, that he (H.) is attacked in
them. If that be the case, Bowles has broken the truce,
(which he himself proclaimed, by the way,) and I must
have at him again.
Did you receive my letters with the two or three
concluding sheets of Memoranda ?
There are no news here to interest much. A German
spy (boasting himself such) was stabbed last week, but not
'etc., and saying, in reference to Mr. Bowles's former pamphlet,
' ' You have hit the right nail on the head, and * * * * too.'
' This short scrap was signed with four asterisks ; and when, on the
' appearance of Mr. Bowles's Letter, I met with it in his pages, not
' the slightest suspicion ever crossed my mind that I had been myself
' the writer of it ; — my communications with my reverend friend and
' neighbour having been (for years, I am proud to say) sufficiently
' frequent to allow of such a hasty compliment to his disputative
'powers passing from my memory. When Lord Byron took the
' field against Mr. Bowles's Letter, this unlucky scrap, so authorita-
' lively brought forward, was, of course, too tempting a mark for
' his facetiousness to be resisted ; more especially as the person
'mentioned in it, as having suffered from the reverend critic's
' vigour, appeared, from the number of asterisks employed in de-
' signaling him, to have been Pope himself, though, in reality, the
' name was that of Mr. Bowles's former antagonist, Mr. Campbell.
' The noble assailant, it is needless to say, made the most of this
' vulnerable point ; and few readers could have been more diverted
' than I was with his happy ridicule of ' the gentleman in asterisks,'
' little thinking that I was myself, all the while, this veiled victim,
' — nor was it till about the time of the receipt of the above letter,
' that, by some communication on the subject from a friend in
' England, I was startled into the recollection of my own share in
' the transaction.
" While by one friend I was thus unconsciously, if not innocently,
"drawn into the scrape, the other was not slow in rendering me the
"same friendly service; — for, on the appearance of Lord Byron's
" answer to Mr. Bowles, I had the mortification of finding that,
" with a far less pardonable want of reserve, he had all but named
"me as his authority for an anecdote of his reverend opponent's
"early days, which I had, in the course of an after-dinner con versa -
" tion, told him at Venice, and which, — pleasant in itself, and,
"whether true or false, harmless, — derived its sole sting from the
"manner in which the noble disputant triumphantly applied it.
" Such are the consequences of one's near and dear friends taking to
" controversy." — Moore.
VOL. V. X
306 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
mortally. The moment I heard that he went about
bullying and boasting, it was easy for me, or any one
else, to foretell what would occur to him, which I did,
and it came to pass in two days after. He has got off,
however, for a slight incision.
A row the other night, about a lady of the place,
between her various lovers, occasioned a midnight dis-
charge of pistols, but nobody wounded. Great scandal,
however — planted by her lover — to be thrashed by her
husband, for inconstancy to her regular Servente, who is
coming home post about it, and she herself retired in
confusion into the country, although it is the acme of the
opera season. All the women furious against her (she
herself having been censorious) for being found out. She
is a pretty woman — a Countess Rasponi — a fine old
Visigoth name, or Ostrogoth.
The Greeks!1 what think you? They are my old
I. The Greek Revolution broke out in the provinces of Moldavia
and Wallachia, under the leadership of Alexander Hypsilantes
(1782-1828), son of the Hospodar of Wallachia, whose deposition
(1805-6) served Russia as an excuse for war with Turkey (Finlay,
History of the Greek Revolution, ed. 1877, vol. vi. p. no). He was
selected as leader of the movement by the Philike Hetairia, a secret
society, founded at Odessa in 1814, which helped to prepare the Greek
Revolution. He had served in the Russian army, become a major-
general, and lost his right arm at the battle of Culm (1813). But in
spite of military experience, he proved himself an incapable leader,
irresolute, vain, treacherous, untrustworthy. Crossing the Pruth
(February 22) March 6, 1821, he established himself at Jassy, whence
he issued a proclamation, March 7, calling the Greeks "to arms for
" our country and our religion," and boasting of Russian support.
(See the proclamation, dated February 23 (March 7) from Jassy, trans-
lated in the Traveller for April 13, 1821.) At Bucharest, which he
reached April 9, he remained inactive, distrusted by local leaders,
and publicly repudiated by the Emperor Alexander. As the Turkish
forces advanced, he crept back towards the Austrian frontier. When
news of his defeat at Dragashan (June 20) reached him, nine miles
in the rear of his army, he escaped (June 26) into Austrian territory,
where he was treated as a Russian deserter, and imprisoned at
Mongatz till 1827. He died at Vienna, January 31, 1828.
In the Morea, where the rising broke out towards the end of
1 82 1.] THE GREEK REVOLUTION. 307
acquaintances — but what to think I know not. Let us
hope howsomever.
Yours,
B.
903. — To Giovanni Battista Missiaglia.
June 12, 1821.
DEAR SIR, — Tell Count V. Benzone (with my respects
to him and to his Mother) that I have received his books
— and that I shall write to thank him in a few days.
Murray sends me books of travels — I do not know
why; for I have travelled enough myself to know that
such books VtefitBqfBet.
If you come here you will find me very glad to see
you, and very ready to dispute with you.
Yours ever,
BYRON.
March, 1821, the Greeks were more successful. On April 5, at
Kalamata, a solemn service of the Greek Church was held as a
thanksgiving for victories, and, four days later (April 9), an appeal
was issued to Christendom to aid the Greek Christians against the
Mussulman. Spreading northwards, the whole country south of
Thermopylae, by June, 1821, was in the hands of the Greeks, whose
fleet, under Miaoulis and Kanaris, swept the seas. But patriotic
efforts were too often defeated by the rivalries of leaders like
Germanos, Primate of Patras, Demetrius Hypsilantes (1793-1832),
younger brother of Alexander, who claimed to be viceroy, popular
leaders like Kolokotrones, or politicians like Alexander Mavrocor-
datos (1791-1865), the statesman of the movement, who had been
Mary Shelley's Greek teacher at Pisa. (For a description of Mavro-
cordatos, see Millingen's Memoirs of the Affairs of Greece, pp. 65, 66.)
A government and constitution were needed. A National Assembly,
summoned at Tripolitza, and removed to Piada, near Epidaurus,
met in December, 1821, and framed a constitution, which was pro-
claimed January 13, 1822, the New Year's day of Eastern Christians.
It consisted of a Legislative Assembly, and an executive body of five
members, presided over by Mavrocordatos, with the title of President
of Greece. (For Byron's share in the subsequent history of the
movement, see Letters, vol. vi.)
308 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
904. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, June 14"? 1821.
DEAR MURRAY, — I have resumed my "majestic
march " (as Gifford is pleased to call it) in Sardanapalus,
which by the favour of Providence and the Post Office
should be arrived by this time, if not interrupted. It was
sent on the 2"d June, 12 days ago.
Let me know, because I had but that one copy.
Can your printers make out the MS.? I suppose
long acquaintance with my scrawl may help them ; if not,
ask Mrs. Leigh, or Hobhouse, or D. K. : they know my
writing.
The whole five acts were sent in one cover, ensured
to England, paying forty five scudi here for the insurance.
I received some of your parcels : the Doge is longer
than I expected: pray, why did you print the face of
M[argarita] C[ogni] by way of frontispiece? It has
almost caused a row between the Countess G. and myself.
And pray, why did you add the note about the Kelso
woman's Sketches ? Did I not request you to omit it, the
instant I was aware that the writer was a female ?
The whole volume looks very respectable, and suffi-
ciently dear in price, but you do not tell me whether it
succeeds : your first letter (before the performance) said
that it was succeeding far beyond all anticipation; but
this was before the piracy of Elliston, which (for anything
I know, as I have had no news — your letter with papers
not coming) may have affected the circulation.
I have read Bowles's answer : I could easily reply,
but it would lead to a long discussion, in the course of
which I should perhaps lose my temper, which I would
rather not do with so civil and forbearing an antagonist.
I suppose he will mistake being silent for silenced.
1 82 1.] A NEW JOURNAL OF TR^VOUX. 309
I wish to know when you publish the remaining things
in MS. ? I do not mean theflrose, but the verse.
I am truly sorry to hear of your domestic loss ; but (as
I know by experience), all attempts at condolence in such
cases are merely varieties of solemn impertinence. There
is nothing in this world but Time.
Yours ever and truly,
B.
P.S. — You have never answered me about Holmes •,
the Miniature painter : can he come or no ? I want him
to paint the miniatures of my daughter and two other
persons.
In the i? pamphlet it is printed " a Mr. J. S." : it
should be " Mr. J. S.," and not " a" which is con-
temptuous ; it is a printer's error and was not thus
written.
905. — To Thomas Moore.
Ravenna, June 22, 1821.
Your dwarf of a letter came yesterday. That is
right ; — keep to your magnum opus — magnoperate away.
Now, if we were but together a little to combine our
Journal of Trevoux ! * But it is useless to sigh, and yet
very natural, — for I think you and I draw better together,
in the social line, than any two other living authors.
I forgot to ask you, if you had seen your own pane-
gyric in the correspondence of Mrs. Waterhouse and
I. At Trevoux, on the Saone in the Department of Ain, the Jesuits
founded the literary journal, Mtmoires de Trevoux, which began to
appear in 1701. By the same printing-press, established in 1695
by Louis Aug. de Bourbon, Prince de Dombes, was printed the
Dictionnaire de Trevoux, the first edition of which, in three folio
volumes, appeared in 1704.
310 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
Colonel Berkeley ? l To be sure their moral is not quite
exact ; but your passion is fully effective ; and all poetry
of the Asiatic kind — I mean Asiatic, as the Romans
called " Asiatic oratory," and not because the scenery is
Oriental — must be tried by that test only. I am not
quite sure that I shall allow the Miss Byrons (legitimate
or illegitimate) to read Lalla Rookh — in the first place,
on account of this said passion ; and, in the second, that
they may'nt discover that there was a better poet than
papa.
You say nothing of politics — but, alas ! what can be
said?
The world is a bundle of hay,
Mankind are the asses who pull,
Each tugs it a different way, —
And the greatest of all is John Bull !
How do you call your new project?8 I have sent
Murray a new tragedy, ycleped Sardanapalus, writ
according to Aristotle — all, save the chorus — I could not
reconcile me to that. I have begun another, and am in
the second act ; — so you see I saunter on as usual.
Bowles's answers have reached me; but I can't go
on disputing for ever, — particularly in a polite manner.
I suppose he will take being silent for silenced. He has
been so civil that I can't find it in my liver to be facetious
with him, — else I had a savage joke or two at his service.
*****
I can't send you the little journal, because it is in
1. The case of Waterhouse v. Berkeley was tried at Gloucester
Assizes in April, 1821. It was an action for damages brought by
John Waterhouse for the seduction of his wife by Colonel Berkeley.
The jury returned a verdict for the plaintiff, to whom they awarded
;£iooo damages.
2. The " project " was probably Alciphron, which Moore planned
in July, 1820, rewrote in prose as The Epicurean (1827), and did
not publish till 1839.
l82I.] ABHORRENCE OF ENGLISH TRAVELLERS. 31!
boards, and I can't trust it per post. Don't suppose it
is any thing particular ; but it will show the intentions of
the natives at that time — and one or two other things,
chiefly personal, like the former one.
So, Longman don't bite. — It was my wish to have
made that work of use. Could you not raise a sum upon
it (however small), reserving the power of redeeming it,
on repayment ?
Are you in Paris, or a villaging? If you are in the
city, you will never resist the Anglo-invasion you speak
of. I do not see an Englishman in half a year, and,
when I do, I turn my horse's head the other way. The
fact, which you will find in the last note to the Doge, has
given me a good excuse for quite dropping the least
connection with travellers.1
I do not recollect the speech you speak of, but
suspect it is not the Doge's, but one of Israel Bertuccio
to Calendaro. I hope you think that Elliston behaved
shamefully — it is my only consolation. I made the
Milanese fellows contradict their lie, which they did with
the grace of people used to it.
Yours, etc.,
B.
906. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, June 29".' 1821.
DEAR MURRAY, — From the last parcel of books, the
two first volumes of Butler's Catholics 2 are missing. As
1. " The fact is," says Byron, in the note to Marino Faliero here
referred to, " that I hold in utter abhorrence any contact with the
' travelling English. ... I was persecuted by these tourists even to
' my riding ground at Lido, and reduced to the most disagreeable
' circuits to avoid them. At Madame Benzoni's I repeatedly refused
' to be introduced to them ; — of a thousand such presentations pressed
'upon me, I accepted two, and both were to Irish women," etc.,
etc.
2. Charles Butler (1750-1832), after practising as a conveyancer,
312 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
the book is '•'•from the author," in thanking him for me,
mention this circumstance. Waldegrave and Walpole are
not arrived ; Scott's novels all safe.
By the time you receive this letter, the Coronation l
will be over, and you will be able to think of business.
Long before this you ought to have received the MSS. of
Sardanapalus. It was sent on the 2? Inst. By the way,
you must permit me to choose my own seasons of pub-
lication. All that you have a right to on such occasions
is the mere matter of barter : if you think you are likely
to lose by such or such a time of printing, you will have
full allowance made for it, on statement. It is now two
years nearly that MSS. of mine have been in your hands
was called to the Bar in 1791, the first Roman Catholic admitted to
the profession since 1688. As a real property lawyer, he held a
high position, and had frequently advised on Byron's behalf. His
Historical Memoirs respecting tlie English, Irish, and Scottish
Catholics from the Reformation to the Present Time (4 vols.) was
published in 1819-21.
I. The Coronation of George IV. was originally fixed for August I,
1820. But, owing to the proceedings against the Queen, the cere-
mony did not take place till July 19, 1821. On the night before,
the King slept at the Speaker's house. Seats to view the procession
sold from one guinea to twenty guineas ; stages rose as high as
the chimneys of adjoining houses ; and sight-seers began to be in
their places by one o'clock in the morning. Westminster Abbey
was opened at 4 a.m. The procession passed out of Westminster
Hall at 10.25, headed by the King's herb-woman and her six
maids, strewing the way with herbs. It proceeded along a raised
platform from the north door of Westminster Hall to the west door
of the Abbey, the King walking " in the Royal Robes, wearing a Cap
"of Estate adorned with jewels, under a Canopy of Cloth of Gold
" borne by sixteen Barons of the Cinque Ports." The service ended at
four o'clock, the King looking " like one expiring when he returned
"from the Abbey to the Hall" (Letters of Joseph Jekyll, p. 115).
After the service in the Abbey the banquet, with its attendant cere-
monies, was held in Westminster Hall. A brig of war, lying off
Norfolk Street, Strand, " armed with guns of the heaviest calibre,"
fired the salutes. An air-balloon in the Green Park, a boat race in
Hyde Park, fireworks, and illuminations in the street, provided
amusements for the sight-seers.
The enormous expenses of the Coronation, which was modelled on
that of James II., caused an outcry in and out of Parliament. The
new crown was said to have cost £54,coo, and the robes ,£24,000.
1 82 1.] SUCCESS OR FAILURE? 313
in statu quo. Whatever I may have thought (and, not
being on the spot, nor having any exact means of ascer-
taining the thermometer of success or failure, I have
had no determinate opinion upon the subject), I have
allowed you to go on in your own way, and acquiesced
in all your arrangements hitherto.
I pray you to forward the proofs of Sardanapalus as
soon as you can, and let me know if it be deemed press-
and print-worthy. I am quite ignorant how far the
Doge did or did not succeed : your first letters seemed to
say yes — your last say nothing. My own immediate
friends are naturally partial : one review (Blackwood's)
speaks highly of it,1 another pamphlet calls it " a failure."
It is proper that you should apprize me of this, because
I am in the third act of a third drama ; and if I have
nothing to expect but coldness from the public and hesi-
tation from yourself, it were better to break off in time.
I had proposed to myself to go on, as far as my Mind
would carry me, and I have thought of plenty of subjects.
But if I am trying an impracticable experiment, it is
better to say so at once.
So Canning and Burdett have been quarrelling : 2 if I
1. In Blackwood's Magazine for April, 1821 (pp. 93-103), the
reviewer praises the play vigorously : " Without question, no such
" tragedy as this of Marino Faliero has appeared in English since
" the day when Otway also was inspired to his masterpiece by the
" interests of a Venetian story and a Venetian conspiracy." On
the other hand, the Literary Gazette for April 28, 1821, speaks of
the play as "a drawling story, stagnating through five boggy acts,
"with hardly here and there an ignis fatuus or Jack-o-Lanthern to
"relieve the level and dismal monotony."
2. On May 2, 1807, Burdett fought a duel with James Paull over
the candidature for Westminster, and was wounded in the thigh.
On September 21, 1809, Canning fought Lord Castlereagh, and was
wounded in the thigh. But on the occasion to which Byron alludes,
no duel took place. From the King's Bench prison, in the spring of
1821, Burdett addressed a letter to a company of Reformers, who
met at the City of London Tavern, April 4, to eat and drink in the
cause of Parliamentary Reform. The letter contained the following
314 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
mistake not, the last time of their single combats, each
was shot in the thigh by his Antagonist; and their
Correspondence might be headed thus, by any wicked
wag :—
Brave Champions ! go on with the farce !
Reversing the spot where you bled ;
Last time both were shot in the * ;
Now (damn you) get knocked on the Jiead!
I have not heard from you for some weeks ; but I can
easily excuse the silence from it's occasion.
Believe me, yours ever and truly,
B.
P.S. — Do you or do you not mean to print the MSS.
Cantos — Pulci, etc. ?
P.S. 2? — To save you the bore of writing yourself,
when you are " not i" the vein," make one of your Clerks
send me a few lines to apprize me of arrivals, etc., of
MSS., and matters of business. I shan't take it ill;
and I know that a bookseller in large business must
passage : " Gentlemen, that Mr. Canning — I mention him as the
"champion of the party — apart for the whole — should defend, to
" the uttermost, a system, by the hocus pocus tricks of which he and
' ' his family get so much public money, can cause neither me, nor
" any man, surprise or anger ; —
" ' For 'tis their duty, all the learned think,
To espouse that cause by which they eat and drink.' "
As soon as Burdett was released from prison, and Canning re-
turned from the Continent, the latter demanded (June 7, 1821) an
explanation or satisfaction. Burdett, in reply (June 8, 1821) wrote,
' The letter in question is now before me ; and I am at a loss for a
' form of words in which I could have more guardedly marked the
' disqualification under which I conceive yourself and others to be
' from giving authority to your opinions on Parliamentary Reform,
' and at the same time have avoided making any allusion whatever
'to personal character" (The Courier, June 12, 1821). With this
disclaimer Canning was satisfied. Lord \V. Bentinck acted for
Canning, and Douglas Kinnaird for Burdett.
1 82 1.] JOHN BULL'S LETTER. 315
have his time too over-occupied to answer every body
himself.
P.S. 3?— -I have just read " John Bull's letter : " l it is
I . Byron alludes to a Letter to the Right Hon. Lord Byron. By John
Bull. The pamphlet (London, 1821, 8vo. 64 pp.). which was not
by Peacock (see p. 317, note l), was published by William Wright,
and the second page contains this announcement : " The Following
" Letter is the First of a Series to be continued occasionally. The
" Second Letter is addressed to Mr. Thomas Campbell. The Third
"is to His Majesty the King. And the Fourth is also to Lord
"Byron." No copy is catalogued in the British Museum, but
one is to be found in the Bodleian Library. The pamphlet is
reviewed in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, vol. ix.
The pamphleteer agrees with Byron that " cant," or, as he prefers
to call it, "humbug," is the primum mobile of the present age, and
thinks that Byron, himself the prince of humbugs, is in nothing a
greater humbug than in his affectation of saying that he is not "a
"great poet." The whole of Byron's misanthropy, again, is, he
says, humbug. " You thought it would be a fine interesting thing
"for a handsome young Lord to depict himself as a dark-souled,
" melancholy, morbid being, and you have done so, it must be
" admitted, with exceeding cleverness. In spite of all your pranks
" (Beppo, etc., Don Juan included), every boarding-school in the
' Empire still contains many devout believers in the amazing misery
'of the black-haired, high-browed, blue-eyed, bare-throated Lord
' Byron. How melancholy you look in the prints ! " " Stick to
' Don Juan," he continues : "it is the only sincere thing you have
' ever written ; and it will live many years after all your humbug
' Harolds have ceased to be, in your own words, ' a schoolgirl's tale
' — the wonder of an hour.' " The pamphleteer compares Don
Juan and Whistlecraft : "Mr. Frere writes elegantly, playfully,
' very like a gentleman, and a scholar, and a respectable man, and
1 his poems never sold, nor ever will sell. Your Don Juan, again,
' is written strongly, lasciviously, fiercely, laughingly — everybody
' sees in a moment that nobody could have written it but a man of
' the first order, both in genius and dissipation ; — a real master of
' all his tools — a profligate, pernicious, irresistible, charming Devil —
' and, accordingly, the Don sells, and will sell to the end of time,
' whether our good friend Mr. John Murray honours it with his
' imprimatur, or doth not so honour it. ... I had really no idea
' what a very clever fellow you were till I read Don Juan. In my
' humble opinion, there is very little in the literature of the present
' day that will really stand the test of half a century, except the
1 Scotch novels of Sir Walter Scott and Don Juan." He advises
Scott to stick to Scotland, and Byron to write in the key of Don
Juan on England of the day. " There is nobody but yourself who
"has any chance of conveying to posterity a true idea of the spirit
" of England in the days of His Majesty George IV." He concludes
31 6 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
diabolically well written, and full of fun and ferocity. I
must forgive the dog, whoever he is. I suspect three
with criticizing Byron's conduct at the time of his divorce, con-
demning it as an unsuccessful part of his humbug. "If," he says,
' I were to permit myself to hazard an opinion on a matter, with
' which, I confess, I have so very little to do, I should certainly
' say that I think it quite possible you were in the right in the
'quarrel with Lady Byron, — nay, that I think the odds are very
' decidedly in favour of your having been so ; and that was the
' opinion, I remember it very well, of by far the shrewdest person
' of my acquaintance (I need not say woman), at the time when the
'story happened. But this is nothing. The world had nothing
' whatever to do with a quarrel between you and Lady Byron, and
' you were the last man that should have set about persuading the
' world that the world had or could have anything to do with such
' a quarrel. What does a respectable English nobleman or gentle-
' man commonly do, when his wife and he become so disagreeable
' to each other that they must separate ? Why did you not ask of
' yourself that plain question, the morning you found you and Lady
' Byron could not get on together any longer ? I wish you had
' done so, and acted upon it, from my soul : for I think the whole
' of what you did on that unhappy occasion was in the very worst
' possible taste, and that it is a great shame you have never been
' told so in print — I mean in a plain, sensible, anti-humbug manner
' — from that day to this. What did the world care whether you
" quarrelled with your wife or not? — at least, what business had you
1 to suppose that the world cared a single farthing about any such
' affair ? It is surely a very good thing to be a clever poet : but
' it is a much more essential thing to be a gentleman ; and why,
' then, did you, who are both a gentleman and a nobleman, act
' upon this, the most delicate occasion, in all probability, your life
" was ever to present, as if you had been neither a nobleman nor a
' gentleman, but some mere overweeningly conceited poet ? To
' quarrel with your wife overnight, and communicate all your
' quarrel to the public the next morning, in a sentimental copy of
' verses ! To affect utter broken-heartedness, and yet be snatching
' the happy occasion to make another good bargain with Mr. John
' Murray ! To solicit the compassion of your private friends for a
'most lugubrious calamity, and to solicit the consolation of the
' public, in the shape of five shillings sterling per head — or, perhaps,
' I should rather say, per bottom ! To pretend dismay and despair,
' and get up for the nonce a clear pamphlet ! O, my Lord, I have
' heard of mean fellows making money of their wives (more particu-
larly in the army of a certain noble duke), but I never heard even
" of a commissary seeking to make money of his wife in a meaner
"manner than this of yours ! And then consider, for a moment,
' ' what beastliness it was of you to introduce her Ladyship in Don
" yuan — indeed, if I be not much mistaken, you have said things
' ' in that part of the poem for which, were I her brother, I should
1 82 1.] THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK. 317
people : one is Hobhouse, the other Mr. Peacock l (a very
clever fellow), and lastly Israeli ; there are parts very like
Israeli, and he has a present grudge with Bowles and
Southey, etc. There is something too of the author of
the Sketch-book 2 in the Style. Find him out.
The packet or letter addressed under cov* to Mr. H.
has never arrived, and never will. You should address
directly to me here^ and by the post.
" be very well entitled to pull your nose, — which (don't alarm
' ' yourself) I have not at present the smallest inclination or intention
"to do," etc., etc.
1. Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866), poet, novelist, friend and
at one time pensioner of Shelley, had, in 1819, obtained an appoint-
ment in the East India House. He had already satirized Byron,
without the good humour with which, in other instances, his powers
were relieved. In Nightmare Abbey (1818) Byron appears as
"Mr. Cypress;" and in the same novel Jane Clairmont probably
appears, though the lover of "Stella" is not "Cypress," but
" Scythrop." Peacock had also dedicated to Byron his Sir Proteus
(see Letters, vol. iii. p. 89, note 2), if, indeed, he was really the
author of that very inferior poem. Byron told Shelley his suspicions
about the pamphlet. Writing to Peacock from Ravenna, in August,
1821, Shelley says (Prose Works of Shelley, ed. H. Buxton Forman,
vol. iv. p. 222), " Lord B. thinks you wrote a pamphlet signed John
' Bull ; he says he knew it by the style resembling Melincourt, of
' which he is a great admirer." Melincourt was published in 1817.
To the quoted passage Peacock adds the following note : " Most
' probably Shelley's partiality for me and my book put too favour-
' able a construction on what Lord Byron may have said. Lord
' Byron told Captain Medwin that a friend of Shelley's had written
' a novel, of which he had forgotten the name, founded on his bear.
' He described it sufficiently to identify it, and Captain Medwin
' supplied the title in a note : but assuredly, when I condensed Lord
' Monboddo's views of the humanity of the Oran Outang into the
' character of Sir Oran Haul-ton, I thought neither of Lord Byron's
' bear nor of Caligula's horse. But Lord Byron was much in the
' habit of fancying that all the world was spinning on his pivot.
' As to the pamphlet signed 'John Bull,' I certainly did not write it.
' I never even saw it, and do not know what it was about." Byron
may have liked Melincourt for the vigorous fashion in which Peacock
assails Southey in that novel.
2. Washington Irving.
318 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
907. — To Thomas Moore.
Ravenna, July 5, 1821.
How could you suppose that I ever would allow any
thing that could be said on your account to weigh with
mel I only regret that Bowles had not said that you
were the writer of that note, until afterwards, when out
he comes with it, in a private letter to Murray, which
Murray sends to me. D — n the controversy !
" D— n Twizzle,
D— n the bell,
And d — n the fool who rung it — Well !
From all such plagues I'll quickly be delivered." '
I have had a friend of your Mr. Irving's — a very
pretty lad — a Mr. Coolidge,2 of Boston — only somewhat
too full of poesy and " entusymusy." I was very civil to
him during his few hours' stay, and talked with him much
of Irving, whose writings are my delight. But I suspect
that he did not take quite so much to me, from his having
expected to meet a misanthropical gentleman, in wolf-
skin breeches, and answering in fierce monosyllables,
instead of a man of this world. I can never get people
to understand that poetry is the expression of excited
passion, and that there is no such thing as a life of passion
any more than a continuous earthquake, or an eternal
fever. Besides, who would ever shave themselves in such
a state ?
I have had a curious letter to-day from a girl in
1. Byron quotes from "The Elder Brother" in Broad Grins, by
George Colman the Younger (1811) —
" Which Shove repeated warmly, tho' he shiver'd : —
' Damn Twizzle's house ! and damn the Bell !
And damn the fool who rang it ! — Well,
From all such plagues I'll quickly be delivered.' "
2. See Detached Thoughts, p. 421, (25).
l82I.] A GRATIFYING TRIBUTE. 319
England (I never saw her), who says she is given over
of a decline, but could not go out of the world without
thanking me for the delight which my poesy for several
years, etc., etc., etc. It is signed simply N. N. A. and has
not a word of "cant" or preachment in it upon any
opinions. She merely says that she is dying, and that as
I had contributed so highly to her existing pleasure,
she thought that she might say so, begging me to burn
her letter — which, by the way, I can not do, as I look
upon such a letter in -such circumstances as better than
a diploma from Gottingen. I once had a letter from
Drontheim in Norway1 (but not from a dying woman),
in verse, on the same score of gratulation. These are
the things which make one at times believe one's self a
poet. But if I must believe that * * * * *, and such
fellows, are poets also, it is better to be out of the corps.
I am now in the fifth act of Foscari, being the third
tragedy in twelve months, besides proses ; so you perceive
that I am not at all idle. And are you, too, busy ? I
doubt that your life at Paris draws too much upon your
time, which is a pity. Can't you divide your day, so as
to combine both? I have had plenty of all sorts of
worldly business on my hands last year, and yet it is not
so difficult to give a few hours to the Muses. This
sentence is so like * * * * that
Ever, etc.
If we were together, I should publish both my plays
(periodically) in our joint journal. It should be our plan
to publish all our best things in that way.
I. See Detached Thoughts, p. 425, (34).
320 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
908. — To John Murray.
R» July 6'* 1821.
DEAR SIR, — In agreement with a wish expressed by
Mr. Hobhouse, it is my determination to omit the Stanza
upon the horse of Semiramis in the fifth Canto of Don
Juan.1 I mention this in case you are, or intend to be,
the publisher of the remaining Cantos.
By yesterday's post, I ought in point of time, to have
had an acknowledgement of the arrival of the MSS. of
Sardanapahis. If it has arrived, and you have delayed
the few lines necessary for this, I can only say that you
are keeping two people in hot water — the postmaster
here, because the packet was insured, and myself, because
I had but that one copy.
I am in the fifth act of a play on the subject of the
Foscaris, father and son : Foscolo can tell you their
story.
I am, yours, etc.,
B.
P.S. — At the particular request of the Contessa G. I
have promised not to continue Don Juan,'2' You will
1. Don yuan, Canto V. stanzas lx., Ixi.
2. The following is the note from the Countess Guiccioli : —
"CuoR MIO, — Che fai del tuo dolore? Fammelo sapere per
1 Lega, perche mi da molta pena. Papa e Pierino sono partiti die
' sara un'ora, e non torneranno che Lunedl.
" Ricordati, mio Byron, della promessa che m'hai fatta. Non
' potrei mai dirti la soddisfazione ch'io ne provo ! Sono tanti i
' sentimenti di piacere e di confidenza che il tuo sacrificio m'inspira !
' Perche mai le parole esprimano cosl poco quello che passa dentro
' del 1'anima ! Se tu potessi vedere pienamente lo stato della mia
' da jersera in qua sono certa che saresti in qualche modo ricompen-
' sato del tuo sacrificio !
" Ti bacio, mio Byron, 1000 volte,
" La tua amantissima in eterno,
" TERESA GUICCIOLI G. G.
" P.S. — Mi reveresce solo D. Giovanni non resti all' Inferno."
1821.] DON JUAN TO BE DISCONTINUED. 321
therefore look upon these 3 cantos as the last of that poem.
She had read the two first in the French translation, and
never ceased beseeching me to write no more of it. The
reason of this is not at first obvious to a superficial
observer of FOREIGN manners; but it arises from the
wish of all women to exalt the sentiment of the passions,
and to keep up the illusion which is their empire. Now
Don Juan strips off this illusion, and laughs at that and
most other things. I never knew a woman who did not
protect Rousseau, nor one who did not dislike de Gram-
mont, Gil Bias, and all the comedy of the passions, when
brought out naturally. But "King's blood must keep
" word," as Serjeant Bothwell says.1
Write, you Scamp !
Your parcel of extracts never came and never will :
you should have sent it by the post ; but you are growing
a sad fellow, and some fine day we shall have to dissolve
partnership.
Send some Soda powders.
909. — To John Murray.
Ra. July 7t.h 1821.
DEAR SIR, — Enclosed are two letters from two of
your professional brethren. By one of them you will per-
ceive that, if you are disposed to " buy justice" it is to be
sold (no doubt as " Stationary ") at his Shop.
Thank him in my name for his good will, however,
On the back of the note Byron has written as follows : —
"July 4*!' 1821.
"This is the note of acknowledgment for the promise not to
" continue D. J. She says in the P.S. that she is only sorry that
" D. J. does not remain in Hell, (or go there). The dolore in the
" first sentence refers merely to a bilious attack which I had some
" days ago, and of which I got better."
I. Old Mortality, chap. vi.
VOL. V. Y
322 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
and good offices ; and say that I can't afford to " purchase
" justice," as it is by far the dearest article in these very
dear times.
Yours ever,
B.
910. — To John Murray.
R? July 9'!' 1821.
DEAR SIR, — The enclosed packet came quite open, so
I suppose it is no breach of confidence to send it back
to you, who must have seen it before. Return it to the
Address, explaining in what state I received it.
What is all this about Mitylem 1 (where I never was
in my life), " Manuscript Criticism on the Manchester
" business " (which I never wrote), " Day and Martin's
"patent blacking," and a "young lady who offered, etc.,"
of whom I never heard. Are the people mad, or merely
drunken ?
I have at length received your packet, and have
nearly completed the tragedy on the Foscaris.
Believe me, yours very truly,
B.
911. — To John Murray.
July 14*, 1821.
DEAR SIR, — According to your wish, I have expedited
by this post two packets addressed to J. Barrow, Esqr?,
Admiralty, etc. The one contains the returned proofs,
with such corrections as time permits, of Sardanapahis .
The other contains the tragedy of The Two Foscari in
I. Probably a revival of the "Extract of a Letter, containing
" an account of Lord Byron's residence in the Island of Mitylene,"
\vhich was printed with The Vampyre, a Tale (1819).
l82I.] THE TWO FOSCARl. 323
five acts, the argument of which Foscolo or Hobhouse
can explain to you ; or you will find it at length in P.
Daru's history of Venice : also, more briefly, in Sismondi's
/. jR. An outline of it is in the Pleasures of Memory 1
also. The name is a dactyl, " Foscari." Have the
goodness to write by return of Post, which is essential.
I trust that Sardanapalus will not be mistaken for a
political play, which was so far from my intention, that I
thought of nothing but Asiatic history. The Venetian
play, too, is rigidly historical. My object has been to
dramatize, like the Greeks (a modest phrase !), striking
passages of history, as they did of history and mythology.
You will find all this very «/zlike Shakespeare ; and so
much the better in one sense, for I look upon him to be
the worst of models, though the most extraordinary of
writers. It has been my object to be as simple and
severe as Alfieri, and I have broken down the poetry as
nearly as I could to common language. The hardship is,
that in these times one can neither speak of kings nor
Queens without suspicion of politics or personalities. I
intended neither.
I am not very well, and I write in the midst of un-
pleasant scenes here : they have, without trial or process,
I. " Thus kindred objects kindred thoughts inspire,
As summer-clouds flash forth electric fire.
And hence this spot gives back the joys of youth,
Warm as the life, and with the mirror's truth.
For this young Foscari, whose hapless fate
Venice should blush to hear the Muse relate,
When exile wore his blooming years away,
To sorrow's long soliloquies a prey,
When reason, justice, vainly urged his cause,
For this he roused her sanguinary laws ;
Glad to return, tho' Hope could grant no more,
And chains and torture hailed him to the shore."
See also Rogers' Italy. The story of the Foscari, as told in that
poem, was published in 1821. Byron's Two Foscari appeared with
Cain and Sardanapalus in December, 1821.
324 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
banished several of the first inhabitants of the cities —
here and all around the Roman States — amongst them
many of my personal friends, so that every thing is in
confusion and grief : it is a kind of thing which cannot
be described without an equal pain as in beholding it.
You are very niggardly in your letters.
Yours truly,
B.
P.S. — In the first soliloquy of Salemenes, read
" at once his Chorus and his Council ; "
" Chorus " being in the higher dramatic sense, meaning
his accompaniment, and not a mere musical train.
912. — To John Murray.
Ra. July 22<! 1821.
DEAR MURRAY, — By this post is expedited a parcel
of notes, addressed to J. Barrow, Esqr?, etc. Also, by
y? former post, the returned proofs of S\ardanapalus\
and the MSS. of the Two Foscaris. Acknowledge
these.
The printer has done wonders ; he has read what I
cannot — my own handwriting.
I oppose the " delay till Winter : " I am particularly
anxious to print while the Winter tJieatres are dosed, to
gain time, in case they try their former piece of politeness.
Any loss shall be considered in our contract, whether
occasioned by the season or other causes ; but print away,
and publish.
I think they must own that I have more styles than
one. " Sardanapalus " is, however, almost a comic cha-
racter : but, for that matter, so is Richard the third.
Mind the Unities^ which are my great object of research.
1 82 1.] ENGLISH BASENESS. 325
I am glad that Gifford likes it : as for " the Million," you
see I have carefully consulted anything but the taste of
the day for extravagant coups de theatre. Any probable
loss, as I said before, will be allowed for in our accompts.
The reviews (except one or two — Blackwood's, for in-
stance) are cold enough ; but never mind those fellows :
I shall send them to the right about, if I take it into my
head. Perhaps that in the Monthly * is written by Hodgson,
as a reward for having paid his debts, and travelled all
night to beg his mother-in-law (by his own desire) to let
him marry her daughter ; though I had never seen her in
my life, it succeeded. But such are mankind, and I have
always found the English baser in some things than any
other nation. You stare, but it's true as to gratitude, —
perhaps, because they are prouder, and proud people
hate obligations.
The tyranny of the government here is breaking out :
they have exiled about a thousand people of the best
families all over the Roman States. As many of my
friends are amongst them, I think of moving too, but not
till I have had your answers. Continue your address to
me here, as usual, and quickly. What you will not be
I. The Monthly Review for May, 1821 (pp. 41-50), reviews
Marino Faliero. The critic, after saying that the tragedy is " con-
' structed on the French model, and therefore more properly to be
'styled a poem than a play," continues thus: "We are sorry to
' give our opinion that this piece manifests the faults without the
' beauties of its model. It has the nakedness of plot, the uniformity
' of character, the tedious declamation, and the lengthened mono-
' logue, which belong to its archetype ; unredeemed by that judi-
' cious choice of fable, that heroic elevation of sentiment, and
' those moving conflicts of passion, which characterize the French
< school."
The Monthly Magazine for July, 1821, on the other hand, speaks
of the play as a "work worthy of the genius of its author. It has
' realized all the anticipations to which his previous efforts could
'fairly give rise." The final scene is characterized as one of
'stormy majesty," and the whole play as "a powerful and noble
'work, built for fame and futurity."
326 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
sorry to hear is, that the poor of the place, hearing that I
meant to go, got together a petition to the Cardinal to
request that he would request me to remain. I only heard
of it a day or two ago, and it is no dishonour to them nor
to me; but it will have displeased the higher powers,
who look upon me as a Chief of the Coalheavers. They
arrested a servant of mine for a Street quarrel with
an Officer (they drew upon one another knives and
pistols) ; but as the Officer was out of uniform, and in the
wrong besides, on my protesting stoutly, he was released.
I was not present at the affray, which happened by night
near my stables. My man (an Italian), a very stout and not
over patient personage, would have taken a fatal revenge
afterwards, if I had not prevented him. As it was, he
drew his stiletto, and, but for passengers, would have
carbonadoed the Captain, who (I understand) made but
a poor figure in the quarrel, except by beginning it. He
applied to me, and I offered him any satisfaction, either
by turning away the man, or otherwise, because he had
drawn a knife. He answered that a reproof would be
sufficient. I reproved him ; and yet, after this, the shabby
dog complained to the Government^ — after being quite
satisfied, as he said. This roused me, and I gave them
a remonstrance which had some effect. If he had not
enough, he should have called me out ; but that is not
the Italian line of conduct : the Captain has been repri-
manded, the servant released, and the business at present
rests there.
Write and let me know of the arrivals.
Yours,
B.
P.S. — You will of course publish the two tragedies
of Sardanapalus and the Foscaris together. You can
l82I.] EXILE OF THE GAMBAS. 327
aftenvards collect them with Manfred, and TJi£ Doge into
the works. Inclosed is an additional note.
913. — To Richard Belgrave Hoppner.
Ravenna, July 23, 1821.
This country being in a state of proscription, and all
my friends exiled or arrested — the whole family of Gamba
obliged to go to Florence for the present — the father and
son for politics — (and the Guiccioli, because menaced
with a con-vent, as her father is not here,) I have deter-
mined to remove to Switzerland, and they also. Indeed,
my life here is not supposed to be particularly safe — but
that has been the case for this twelvemonth past, and is
therefore not the primary consideration.
I have written by this post to Mr. Hentsch, junior,
the banker of Geneva, to provide (if possible) a house
for me, and another for Gamba's family, (the father, son,
and daughter,) on the Jura side of the lake of Geneva,
furnished, and with stabling (for me at least) for eight
horses. I shall bring Allegra with me. Could you assist
me or Hentsch in his researches ? The Gambas are at
Florence, but have authorised me to treat for them.
You know, or do not know, that they are great patriots —
and both — but the son in particular — very fine fellows.
This I know, for I have seen them lately in very awkward
situations — not pecuniary, but personal — and they behaved
like heroes, neither yielding nor retracting.
You have no idea what a state of oppression this
country is in — they arrested above a thousand of high
and low throughout Romagna — banished some and con-
fined others, without trial, process, or even accusation 1 1
Every body says they would have done the same by me
if they dared proceed openly. My motive, however, for
328 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
remaining, is because every one of my acquaintance,1 to
the amount of hundreds almost, have been exiled.
Will you do what you can in looking out for a couple
of houses furnished, and conferring with Hentsch for us?
We care nothing about society, and are only anxious for
a temporary and tranquil asylum and individual freedom.
Believe me, etc.
P.S. — Can you give me an idea of the comparative
I. Countess Guiccioli, as quoted by Moore (Life, p. 519), thus
explains Byron's stay at Ravenna after the banishment of his
friends —
" Lord Byron restava frattanto a Ravenna in un paese sconvolso
"dai partiti, e dove aveva certamente dei nemici di opinioni fanatici
"e perfidi, e la mia immaginazione me lo dipingeva circondato
"sempre da mille pericoli. Si puo dunque pensare cosa dovesse
" essere qual viaggio per me e cosa io dovessi soffrire nella sua lonta-
"nanza. Le sue lettere avrebbero potuto essermi di conforto ; ma
" quando io le riceveva era gia trascorso lo spazio di due giorni dal
"momento in cui furono scritte, e questo pensiero distruggeva tutto
" il bene che esse potevano farmi, e la mia anima era lacerata dai
"piu crudeli timori.
" Frattanto era necessario per la di lui convenienza che egli
" restasse ancora qualche tempo in Ravenna affinche non avesse a
"dirsi che egli pure ne era esigliato ; ed oltrecio egli si era somma-
"mente affezionato a qual soggiorno e voleva innanzi di partire
" vedere esausiti tutti i tentativi e tutte le speranze del ritorno dei
"miei parenti."
Moore gives the following version of the Italian : " Lord Byron,
" in the mean time, remained at Ravenna, in a town convulsed by
"party spirit, where he had certainly, on account of his opinions,
" many fanatical and perfidious enemies ; and my imagination
"always painted him surrounded by a thousand dangers. It may
" be conceived, therefore, what that journey must have been to me,
"and what I suffered at such a distance from him. His letters
" would have given me comfort ; but two days always elapsed
"between his writing and my receiving them; and this idea em-
"bittered all the solace they would otherwise have afforded me, so
"that my heart was torn by the most cruel fears. Yet it was
' ' necessary for his own sake that he should remain some time longer
'at Ravenna, in order that it might not be said that he also was
' banished. Besides, he had conceived a very great affection for
' the place itself; and was desirous, before he left it, of exhausting
' every means and hope of procuring the recall of my relations
' from banishment."
l82I.] THE DOGE AND THE BISHOP. 329
expenses of Switzerland and Italy? which I have for-
gotten. I speak merely of those of decent living, horses,
etc., and not of luxuries or high living. Do not, however,
decide any thing positively till I have your answer, as I
can then know how to think upon these topics of trans-
migration, etc., etc., etc.
914. — To John Murray.
R* July 30'!* 1821.
DEAR SIR, — Enclosed is the best account of the Doge
Faliero, which was only sent to me from an old MSS. the
other day. Get it translated, and append it as a note to
the next edition. You will perhaps be pleased to see
that my conceptions of his character were correct, though
I regret not having met with this extract before. You
will perceive that he himself said exactly what he is
made to say, about the Bishop of Treviso.1 You will
see also that he spoke very little, and those only words
" of rage and disdain," z after his arrest, which is the
case in the play, except when he breaks out at the close
of Act fifth. But his speech to the Conspirators is
better in the MSS. than in the play : I wish that I had
met with it in time. Do not forget this note, with a
translation.
1. Marino Faliero, act i. sc. 2 —
" Doge (solus) . . . but the priests — I doubt the priesthood
Will not be with us ; they have hated me
Since that rash hour, when, maddened with the drone,
I smote the tardy Bishop at Treviso,
Quickening his holy march."
2. Byron possibly alludes to Christabel—
" And thus it chanced, as I divine,
With Roland and Sir Leoline.
Each spake words of high disdain
And insult to his heart's best brother."
330 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
In a former note to the Juans, speaking of Voltaire,
I have quoted his famous " Zaire, tu pleures," which is
an error; it should be "Zaire, vous pkiirez :" 1 recollect
this ; and recollect also that your want of recollection has
permitted you to publish the note on the Kelso traveller,
which I had positively desired you not, for proof of which
I refer you to my letters. I presume that you are able
to lay your hand upon these letters,, as you are accused
publicly, in a pamphlet, of showing them about.
I wait your acknowledgement of the packets con-
taining The FoscariS) notes, etc., etc. : now your
Coronation is over, perhaps you will find time. I have
also written to Mr. Kinnaird, to say that I expect the two
tragedies to be published speedily, and to inform him
that I am willing to make any abatement, on your state-
ment of loss liable to be incurred by publishing at an
improper season.
I am so busy here about these poor proscribed exiles,2
who are scattered about, and with trying to get some of
them recalled, that I have hardly time or patience to
write a short preface, which will be proper for the two
plays. However, I will make it out, on receiving the
next proofs.
Yours ever and truly,
B.
P.S. — Please to append the letter about the Hellespont
as a note to your next opportunity of the verses on
Leander, etc., etc., etc., in Childe Harold. Don't forget
it amidst your multitudinous avocations, which I think of
celebrating in a dithyrambic ode to Albemarle Street.
1. Zaire, acte iv. sc. 2. See the conclusion of Byron's corrections
of Bacon's Apophthegms, Appendix VI.
2. See letter to the Duchess of Devonshire, p. 237.
l82I.] KEATS'S HYPERION. 331
Are you aware that Shelley has written an elegy on
Keats, and accuses the Quarterly of killing him ?
"Who killed John Keats?
" I," says the Quarterly,
So savage and Tartarly ;
" Twas one of my feats."
" Who shot the arrow ? "
" The poet-priest Milman
(So ready to kill man),
Or Southey or Barrow."
You know very well that I did not approve of Keats's
poetry, or principles of poetry, or of his abuse of Pope ;
but, as he is dead, omit all that is said about him in any
MSS. of mine, or publication. His Hyperion * is a fine
monument, and will keep his name. I do not envy the man
who wrote the article : your review people have no more
right to kill than any other foot pads. However, he who
would die of an article 2 in a review would probably have
died of something else equally trivial. The same thing
nearly happened to Kirke White,3 who afterwards died of
a consumption.
1. Yet when Medwin urged Hyperion as a proof of Keats's poetical
genius {Conversations, p. 360), Byron replied, " 'Hyperion ! ' why,
" a man might as well pretend to be rich who had one diamond.
" ' Hyperion ' indeed ! ' Hyperion' to a satyr."
2. " John Keats, who was killed off by one critique,
Just as he really promised something great,
If not intelligible, without Greek
Contrived to talk about the gods of late,
Much as they might have been supposed to speak.
Poor fellow ! His was an untoward fate ;
'Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle,
Should let itself be snufPd out by an article."
Don Juan, Canto XI. stanza Ix.
3. See Poems, ed. 1898, vol. i. p. 363, English Bards, and Scotch
Reviewers, lines 831-848.
332 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
915. — To Thomas Moore.
Ravenna, Augusta, 1821.
I had certainly answered your last letter, though but
briefly, to the part to which you refer merely saying,
"damn the controversy;" and quoting some verses of
George Colman's, not as allusive to you, but to the dis-
putants. Did you receive this letter ? It imports me to
know that our letters are not intercepted or mislaid.
Your Berlin drama1 is an honour, unknown since the
days of Elkanah Settle, whose Empress of Morocco was
represented by the Court ladies, which was, as Johnson
says, " the last blast of inflammation " to poor Dryden,
who could not bear it, and fell foul of Settle without
mercy or moderation, on account of that and a frontis-
piece, which he dared to put before his play.2
Was not your showing the Memoranda to * * 3
1. "There had been, a short time before, performed at the court
' of Berlin a spectacle founded on the poem of Lalla Rookh, in
' which the present Emperor of Russia personated ' Feramorz,' and
'the Empress, 'Lalla Rookh'" (Moore) — i.e. Nicholas I. (1796-
1855) and his wife, the Princess Charlotte of Prussia.
2. " Rochester had interest enough to have Settle's Empress of
' Morocco first acted at Whitehall by the lords and ladies of the
' court ; an honour which had never been paid to any of Dryden's
' compositions, however more justly entitled to it, both from
' intrinsic merit, and by the author's situation as poet laureat.
' Rochester contributed a prologue upon this brilliant occasion, to
' add still more grace to Settle's triumph." — Sir Walter Scott, Prose
Works, ed. 1834, vol. i. pp. 158, 159.
3. Moore, as was reported to Byron, had lent the " Memoranda "
to Lady Davy. Possibly her name may be represented by asterisks.
But it is more probably Lady Holland. Moore, in his Diary for
July 6, 1821 (Memoirs, etc., vol. iii. p. 251), notes, "By the bye, I
' yesterday gave Lady Holland Lord Byron's ' Memoirs ' to read ;
' and on my telling her that I rather feared he had mentioned her
' name in an unfair manner somewhere, she said, ' Such things give
' me no uneasiness ; I know perfectly well my station in the world :
' and I know all that can be said of me. As long as the few friends
' that I really am sure of speak kindly of me (and I would not
' believe the contrary if I saw it in black and white), all that the
' rest of the world can say is a matter of complete indifference to
1 82 1.] SCHLEGEL ON BYRON. 333
somewhat perilous ? Is there not a facetious allusion or
two which might as well be reserved for posterity ?
I know Schlegel well — that is to say, I have met him
occasionally at Copet. Is he not also touched lightly in
the Memoranda ? In a review of Childe Harold^ Canto
4th, three years ago, in Blackwood's Magazine, they
quote some stanzas of an elegy of Schlegel's on Rome,
from which they say that I might have taken some ideas.1
I give you my honour that I never saw it except in that
criticism, which gives, I think, three or four stanzas, sent
"me." Byron told Medwin that Lady Burghersh, to whom the
Memoir was lent, made a copy of it, which Moore obliged her to
destroy.
I. Moore, who met Schlegel at Paris, May 21, 1821, notes in his
Diary for that day {Memoirs, etc., vol. iii. p. 235), " Had much talk
" with Schlegel in the evening, who appears to me full of literary
" coxcombry ; ... is evidently not well inclined towards Lord
" Byron ; thinks he will outlive himself, and get out of date long
" before he dies. Asked me if I thought a regular critique of all
" Lord B.'s works, and the system on which they are written, would
" succeed in England, and seems inclined to undertake it." Moore
probably reported the substance of this conversation to Byron.
The following is the passage in Blackwood's Edinburgh. Magazine
(vol. iii. p. 222, note) : " We had lately sent to us a translation of an
' Elegy by William Augustus Schlegel, from which our corre-
' spondent supposes that Lord Byron has borrowed not a little of
' the spirit, and even of the expressions, of the Fourth Canto. We
' cannot, we must confess, observe any thing more than such coinci-
'idences as might very well be expected from two great poets
' contemplating the same scene. The opening of the German poem
' appears to us to be very striking ; but the whole is pitched in an
' elegiac key. Lord Byron handles the same topics with the deeper
' power of a tragedian —
" ' Trust not the smiling welcome Rome can give,
With her green fields, and her unspotted sky ;
Parthenope hath taught thee how to live,
Let Rome, imperial Rome, now teach to die.
"T is true, the land is fair as land may be ;
One radiant canopy of azure lies
O'er the Seven Hills far downward to the sea,
And upward where yon Sabine heights arise ;
Yet sorrowful and sad, I wend my way
Through this long ruined labyrinth, alone
Each echo whispers of the elder day,
I see a monument in every stone."
334 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
tfiem (they say) for the nonce by a correspondent — per-
haps himself. The fact is easily proved ; for I don't
understand German, and there was, I believe, no transla-
tion— at least, it was the first time that I ever heard of,
or saw, either translation or original.
I remember having some talk with Schlegel about
Alfieri, whose merit he denies. He was also wroth
about the Edinburgh Review of Goethe, which was
sharp enough, to be sure. He went about saying,
too, of the French — "I meditate a terrible vengeance
"against the French — I will prove that Moliere is no
"poet."1 * *
I don't see why you should talk of "declining."
When I saw you, you looked thinner, and yet younger,
than you did when we parted several years before. You
may rely upon this as fact. If it were not, I should say
nothing^ for I would rather not say unpleasant personal
things to any one — but, as it was the pleasant truth, I tell
it you. If you had led my life, indeed, changing climates
and connections — thinning yourself with fasting and
purgatives — besides the wear and tear of the vulture
passions, and a very bad temper besides, you might talk
in this way — but yott! I know no man who looks so
well for his years, or who deserves to look better and
I. Schlegel had already attempted to execute his threat. In his
Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature (translated by John Black,
2 vols., 8vo, London, 1815 ; vol. ii. pp. 40, 41) occurs the following
passage on Moliere : " Born and educated in an inferior rank, he
' enjoyed the advantage of becoming acquainted with the modes of
' living of the industrious part of the community from his own
' experience, and of acquiring the talent of imitating low modes of
' expression. . . . He was an actor, and it would appear of peculiar
' strength in overcharged and farcical comic parts ; so little was he
' prepossessed with prejudices of personal dignity that he ... was
' ever ready to deal out or to receive the blows which were then so
' frequent on the stage. . . . Louis XIV. . . . was very well con-
' tented with the buffoon whom he protected, and even exhibited
'his own elevated person occasionally in dances in his ballets."
l82I.] HELPING THE EXILES. 335
to be better, in all respects. You are a * * *, and,
what is perhaps better for your friends, a good fellow.
So don't talk of decay, but put in for eighty, as you well
may.
I am, at present, occupied principally about these
unhappy proscriptions and exiles, which have taken place
here on account of politics.1 It has been a miserable
sight to see the general desolation in families. I am
doing what I can for them, high and low, by such
interest and means as I possess or can bring to bear.
There have been thousands of these proscriptions within
the last month in the Exarchate, or (to speak modernly)
the Legations. Yesterday, too, a man got his back
broken, in extricating a dog of mine from under a mill-
wheel. The dog was killed, and the man is in the
greatest danger.2 I was not present — it happened before
I was up, owing to a stupid boy taking the dog to bathe
in a dangerous spot. I must, of course, provide for the
poor fellow while he lives, and his family, if he dies. I
would gladly have given a much greater sum than that
1. One of the chief reasons for the exile of the Gambas was the
hope that Byron would accompany them. Madame Guiccioli says
(Moore's Life, p. 518), "Una delle principal! ragioni per cui si
' erano esigliati i miei parenti era la speranza che Lord Byron pure
' lascierebbe la Romagna quando i suoi amici fossero partiti. Gia
' da qualche tempo la permanenza di Lord Byron in Ravenna era
' mal gradita dal Governo conoscendosile sue opinione e temendosila
1 sua influenza ed essaggiandosi anche i suoi mezzi per esercitarla.
' Si credeva che egli somministrasse danaro per provvedere 'armi, e
' che provvedesse ai bisogni della Societa. La verita era che nello
' spargere le sue beneficenze egli non s'informava delle opinioni
' politiche e religiosi di quello che aveva bisogno del suo soccorso :
' ogni misero ed ogni infelice aveva un eguale diviso alia sua
' generosita. Ma in ogni modo gli Anti-Liberali lo credevano il
' principale sostegno del Liberalismo della Romagna, e desideravano
' la sua partenza ; ma non osando provocarla in nessun modo
'diretto speravano di ottenerla indirettamente."
2. The man, whose name was Balani, died eleven days after the
accident. His widow was pensioned by Byron. (From information
given by Signor Savini to Mr. Richard Edgcumbe.)
THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
will come to that he had never been hurt. Pray, let me
hear from you, and excuse haste and hot weather.
Yours, etc.
*****
You may have probably seen all sorts of attacks upon
me in some gazettes in England some months ago.1 I
only saw them, by Murray's bounty, the other day. They
call me " Plagiary," and what not. I think I now, in my
time, have been accused of every thing.
I have not given you details of little events here ; but
they have been trying to make me out to be the chief of
a conspiracy, and nothing but their want of proofs for an
English investigation has stopped them. Had it been a
poor native, the suspicion were enough, as it has been for
hundreds.
Why don't you write on Napoleon ? 2 I have no spirits,
nor estro to do so. His overthrow, from the beginning,
was a blow on the head to me. Since that period, we
have been the slaves of fools. Excuse this long letter.
Ecco a translation literal of a French epigram.
Egle, beauty and poet, has two little crimes,
She makes her own face, and does not make her rhymes.
I am going to ride, having been warned not to ride in
a particular part of the forest on account of the ultra-
politicians.
Is there no chance of your return to England, and of
our Journal ? I would have published the two plays in
it — two or three scenes per number — and indeed all of
mine in it. If you went to England, I would do so still.
1. Byron probably alludes to a series of articles on his alleged
plagiarisms by A. A. Watts, which appeared in the Literary
Gazette for 1821 (February 24, March 3, 10, 17, 31).
2. Napoleon died May 5, 1821.
l82I.] SECOND LETTER ON BOWLES. 337
916. — To John Murray.
Ra August 41!1 1821.
DEAR SIR, — I return the proofs of the 2? pamphlet.1
I leave it to your choice and Mr. Gifford's, to publish it or
not, with such omissions as he likes. You must, however,
omit the whole of the observations against the Suburban
School: they are meant against Keats, and I cannot
war with the dead — particularly those already killed
by Criticism. Recollect to omit all that portion in
any case.
Lately I have sent you several packets, which require
answer : you take a gentlemanly interval to answer
them.
Yours, etc.,
BYRON.
P.S. — They write from Paris that Schlegel is making
a fierce book against ME : what can I have done to the
literary Col-captain of late Madame ? /, who am neither
of his country nor his horde? Does this Hundsfott's
intention appal you? if it does, say so. It don't me; for,
if he is insolent, I will go to Paris and thank him. There
is a distinction between native Criticism, because it be-
longs to the Nation to judge and pronounce on natives ;
but what have / to do with Germany or Germans, neither
my subjects nor my language having anything in common
with that Country ? He took a dislike to me, because I
refused to flatter him in Switzerland, though Madame de
Broglie begged me to do so, " because he is so fond of it.
" Voild les hommes ! "
I. The Second Letter on Bowles was not published till 1835.
For a portion of the criticism on Keats, which is now for the first
time published, see Appendix III. pp. 588, 589, note 3.
VOL. V. Z
33^ THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
917. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, August 7'!" 1821.
DEAR SIR, — I send you a thing which I scratched off
lately, a mere buffoonery, to quiz TJie Blues? in two
literary eclogues. If published, it must be anonymoitsly :
but it is too short for a separate publication; and you
have no miscellany, that I know of, for the reception of
such things. You may send me a proof, if you think it
worth the trouble; but don't let my name out for the
present, or I shall have all the old women in London
about my ears, since it sneers at the solace of their
antient Spinsterstry.
Acknowledge this, and the various packets lately sent.
Yours,
B?
918. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, August 7*?1 1821.
DEAR SIR, — By last post I forwarded a packet to
you : as usual, you are avised by this post.
I should be loth to hurt Mr. Bowles's feelings by
publishing the second pamphlet; and, as he has shown
considerable regard for mine, we had better suppress it
altogether : at any rate I would not publish it without
letting him see it first, and omitting all such matter as
might be personally offensive to him. Also all the part
about the Suburb School must be omitted, as it referred
to poor Keats 2 now slain by the Quarterly Review.
1. The Blues, a Literary Eclogue -was, published in No. in. of the
Liberal (pp. 1-24), with the motto —
" Nimium ne crede colori." — Virgil.
" O trust not, ye beautiful creatures, to hue,
Though your hair were as red as your stockings are blue."
2. Shelley arrived (August 6, 1821) on a visit to Byron, and sat
l82I.j SHELLEY AT RAVENNA. 339
If I do not err, I mentioned to you that I had heard
from Paris, that Schlegel announces a meditated abuse of
up talking with him till five in the morning of the 7th. The reitera-
tion of the charge to spare Keats may have been the result of talk
with the writer of Adonais, who says himself that he had roused
Byron to attack the Quarterly. In the Prose Works of Shelley (ed.
H. Buxton Forman, vol. iv. pp. 211-233) are many interesting
details of Byron's life at Ravenna. Shelley found Byron restored to
health and good looks, "immersed in politics and literature, greatly
"improved in every respect, ... in genius, in temper, in moral
"views, in health, in happiness," and living in "splendid apart-
"ments in the palace of his mistress's husband, who is one of the
" richest men in Italy." Fletcher, like his master, was improved in
health ; Tita acted as Shelley's valet. Byron's establishment, writes
Shelley to Peacock (pp. 222, 223), " consists, besides servants, of ten
" horses, eight enormous dogs, three monkeys, five cats, an eagle, a
"crow, and a falcon ; and all these, except the horses, walk about
" the house, which every now and then resounds with their unarbi-
" trated quarrels, as if they were the masters of it." In a postscript
he adds, " I find that my enumeration of the animals in this Circsean
" Palace was defective, and that in a material point. I have just
"met, on the grand staircase, five peacocks, two guinea-hens, and
" an Egyptian crane. I wonder who all these animals were before
" they were changed into these shapes."
To Byron's mode of life Shelley adapted his own simpler habits
as best he could. " Lord Byron gets up at two. I get up — quite
"contrary to my usual custom (but one must sleep or die, like
" Southey's sea-snake in Kehama} at twelve. After breakfast, we
" sit talking till six. From six till eight we gallop through the pine
" forests which divide Ravenna from the sea. We then come home
"and dine, and sit up gossipping till six in the morning." Some-
times the evening amusements were varied by pistol-shooting at a
pumpkin. In their after-dinner talks they discussed politics — the
hope of liberty for Italy and Greece ; Byron's future place of resi-
dence— whether Switzerland or Tuscany ; the charges made against
Shelley by Elise Foggi ; and literature — whether poetry and criticism,
matters on which they differed more than ever ; or their respective
works — Byron silent as to Adonais, loud in praise of Prometheus and
in censure of the Cenci ; Shelley cool towards Marino Faliero and
the Letter on Pope, but enthusiastic over Don Juan. For Canto
V. Shelley's admiration was strong enough to satisfy even Byron.
He speaks of it as " transcendently fine;" "every word has the
" stamp of immortality. I despair of rivalling Lord Byron, as well
' ' I may, and there is no other with whom it is worth contending.
' This canto is in the style, but totally, and sustained with incredible
'ease and power, like the end of the second canto. There is not a
' word which the most rigid assertor of the dignity of human nature
' could desire to be cancelled. It fulfils, in a certain degr' _-, what
"I have long preached of producing— something wholly new and
340 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
me in a criticism. The disloyalty of such a proceeding
towards a foreigner, who has uniformly spoken so well of
M? de Stael in his writings, and who, moreover, has nothing
to do with continental literature or Schlegel's country and
countrymen, is such, that I feel a strong inclination to
bring the matter to a personal arbitrament, provided it
can be done without being ridiculous or unfair. His
intention, however, must be first fully ascertained, before
I can proceed ; and I have written for some information
on the subject to Mr. Moore. The Man was also my
personal acquaintance; and though I refused to flatter
him grossly (as M? de B. requested me to do), yet I
uniformly treated him with respect — with much more,
indeed, than any one else : for his peculiarities are such,
that they, one and all, laughed at him; and especially
the Abbe Chevalier di Breme, who did nothing but make
me laugh at him so much behind his back, that nothing
but the politeness, on which I pique myself in society,
" relative to the age, and yet surpassingly beautiful " (ibid., p. 219).
On Shelley's arguments Byron gave up Switzerland. Shelley
thought it a place " little fitted for him : the gossip and the cabals of
"those anglicized coteries would torment him, as they did before,
" and might exasperate him to a relapse of libertinism, which he
" says he plunged into not from taste, but despair " (ibid,, p. 218).
Finally, Byron decided to remain in Italy, if Madame Guiccioli
and the Gambas would consent. Shelley was made to write her a
letter "in lame Italian," urging the "strongest reasons" he could
think of "against the Swiss emigration;" and at the same time
(August II, ibid.t pp. 224, 225) he wrote to his wife, asking her to
" inquire if any of the large palaces are to be let" at Pisa. Con-
vinced by Shelley, Madame Guiccioli gave up her project (August
15), adding at the end of her letter the words, " Sign ore — la vostra
" bonta mi fa ardita di chiedervi un favore — me lo accorderete voii
" Non partite da Ravenna senza Milord " (ibid., p. 228). By Shelley
the Palazzo Lanfranchi, on the Lung' Arno at Pisa, was taken for
Byron. Another result of the visit was the invitation to Leigh
Hunt, conveyed in Shelley's letter of August 26, 1821 (ibid., pp.
235-237), to come to Pisa, and "go shares," with Byron and him-
self, " in a periodical work to be conducted here, in which each of
' ' the contracting parties should publish all their original composi-
" tions, and share the profits."
1 82 1.] NATIVE AND FOREIGN CRITICISM. 341
could have prevented me from doing so to his face. He
is just such a character as William the testy * in Irving's
New York. But I must have him out for all that, since
his proceeding (supposing it to be true), is ungentlemanly
in all its bearings — at least in my opinion ; but perhaps
my partiality misleads me.
It appears to me that there is a distinction between
native and foreign criticism in the case of living authors,
or at least should be ; I don't speak of Journalists (who
are the same all over the world), but where a man, with
his name at length, sits down to an elaborate attempt to
defame a foreigner of his acquaintance, without provoca-
tion and without legitimate object : for what can I import
to the Germans? What effect can I have upon their
literature ? Do you think me in the wrong ? if so, say so.
Yours ever,
B.
P.S. — I mentioned in my former letters, that it was
my intention to have the two plays published immediately.
Acknowledge the various packets.
I am extremely angry with you, I beg leave to add,
for several reasons too long for present explanation.
Mr. D. K. is in possession of some of them.
I have just been turning over the homicide review of
I. Washington Irving's History of Neiv York, bk. iv., contains the
Chronicles of William the Testy. Wilhelmus Kieft, by nature,
and by the meaning of his name, a " wrangler or scolder" " had not
' ' been a year in the government of the province, before he was
' universally denominated William the Testy. His appearance
' answered to his name. He was a brisk, wiry, waspish little old
' g' .man : ... his face was broad, but his features were sharp ;
' .a cheeks were scorched into a dusky red by two fiery little grey
' eyes ; his nose turned up, and the corners of his mouth turned
' down, pretty much like the muzzle of an irritable pug-dog. . . .
' He seldom got into an argument without getting into a passion
' with his adversary for not being convinced gratis " (A Histoiy of
New York, by Diedrich Knickerbocker, ed. 1864, pp. 240, 241).
342 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
J. Keats. It is harsh certainly and contemptuous, but
not more so than what I recollect of the Edinburgh R. of
" the Hours of Idleness" in 1808. The Reviewer allows
him " a degree of talent which deserves to be put in the
" right way," " rays of fancy," " gleams of Genius," and
"powers of language." It is harder on L. Hunt than
upon Keats, and professes fairly to review only one book
of his poem. Altogether, though very provoking, it was
hardly so bitter as to kill, unless there was a morbid feel-
ing previously in his system.
919. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, August 10, 1821.
DEAR SIR, — Your conduct to Mr. Moore is certainly
very handsome ; 1 and I would not say so if I could help
it, for you are not at present by any means in my good
graces.
With regard to additions, etc., there is a Journal which
I kept in 1814 which you may ask him for ; also a Journal
which you must get from Mrs. Leigh, of my journey in
the Alps, which contains all the germs of Manfred. I
have also kept a small Diary here for a few months last
winter, which I would send you, and any continuation.
You would easy find access to all my papers and letters,
and do not neglect this (in case of accidents) on account of
the mass of confusion in which they are ; for out of that
chaos of papers you will find some curious ones of mine
and others, if not lost or destroyed. If circumstances,
however (which is almost impossible), made me ever
consent to a publication in my lifetime, you would in that
I. Moore notes in his Diary for July 27, 1821 (Memoirs, vol. iii.
p. 260), " Received also a letter from Murray, consenting to give me
" two thousand guineas for Lord Byron's Memoirs, on condition that,
" in case of survivorship, I should consent to be the editor."
1 82 1.] MURRAY'S PURCHASE OF THE MEMOIRS. 343
case, I suppose, make Moore some advance, in proportion
to the likelihood or non-likelihood of success. You are
both sure to survive me, however.
You must also have from Mr. Moore the correspond-
ence between me and Lady B., to whom I offered the
sight of all which regards herself in these papers. This
is important. He has her letter, and a copy of my
answer. I would rather Moore edited me than another.
I sent you Valpy's letter to decide for yourself, and
Stockdale's to amuse you. / am always loyal with you,
as I was in Galignani's affair, and you with me — now and
then.
I return you Moore's letter, which is very creditable
to him, and you, and me.
Yours ever,
B.
920. — To John Murray.
Ra. August 13*?' 1821.
DEAR SIR, — I think it as well to remind you that,
in "the Hints" all the part, which regards Jeffrey and
the E.R., must be omitted. Your late mistake about the
Kelso-woman induces me to remind you of this, which I
appended to your power of Attorney six years ago, viz.,
to omit all that could touch upon Jeffrey in that publica-
tion, which was written a year before our reconciliation
in 1812.
Have you got the Bust ?
I expect with anxiety the proofs of The Two Foscaris.
Yours,
B.
P.S. — Acknowledge the various packets.
344 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
921. — To John Murray.
R=> August I6'!1 1821.
DEAR SIR, — I regret that Holmes can't or won't
come : it is rather shabby, as I was always very civil
and punctual with him ; but he is but one rascal more —
one meets with none else amongst the English.
You may do what you will with my answer to Stock-
dale,1 of whom I know nothing, but answered his letter
civilly : you may open it, and burn it or not, as you
please. It contains nothing of consequence to any-body.
How should I, or, at least, was I then to know that he
was a rogue ? I am not aware of the histories of London
and its inhabitants.
Your more recent parcels are not yet arrived, but are
probably on their way.
I sprained my knee the other day in swimming, and
it hurts me still considerably.
I wait the proofs of the MSS. with proper impatience.
So you have published, or mean to publish, the new
Juans 1 an't you afraid of the Constitutional Assassination
of Bridge street? 2 vhen first I saw the name of Murray,
1. John Joseph Stockdale (1770-1847), whose actions against
Hansard (1836-40) led to the settlement of an important point of
"privilege," and who published (1826) the disgraceful Memoirs of
Harriette Wilson.
2. The Constitutional Association was formed to prosecute, by
means of a common fund, persons charged with offences against
Church and State. One of the attorneys to the association was
Charles Murray. Several attempts were made by members of the
Opposition to suppress the society as mischievous, if not illegal.
Brougham in the House of Commons, May 23, 1821 (Hansard, N.S.,
vol. v. pp. 891, 892), drew the attention of the House to the proceed-
ings of the society, and on May 30 (ibid., p. 1046) to the circular
" to the Magistrates of England " issued by the Bridge Street Com-
mittee. On June 5 (ibid., p. 1114) Dr. Lushington presented a
petition from Thomas Dolby, a bookseller in the Strand, who had
been prosecuted by the society, and attacked the conduct of Charles
Murray, one of its attorneys. Hobhouse, June 14 (ibid., p. 1181),
l82I.] THE CONSTITUTIONAL ASSOCIATION. 345
I thought it had been yours ; but was solaced by seeing
that your Synonime is an Attorneo, and that you are not
one of that atrocious crew.1
I am in a great discomfort about the probable war,
and with my damned trustees not getting me out of the
funds. If the funds break, it is my intention to go upon
the highway : all the other English professions are at
present so ungentlemanly by the conduct of those who
follow them, that open robbery is the only fair resource
left to a man of any principles; it is even honest, in
comparison, by being undisguised.
I wrote to you by last post, to say that you had done
the handsome thing by Moore and the Memoranda.
You are very good as times go, and would probably be
still better but for the " March of events " (as Napoleon
called it), which won't permit any body to be better than
they should be.
Love to Gifford. Believe me,
Yours ever and truly,
B.
presented a similar petition from a man named King. Finally
Whitbread, July 3 (ibid., p. 1486), proposed that an address be
presented, praying His Majesty to direct the Attorney-General to
enter a nolle prosequi against all indictments laid by the association ;
but the motion was lost. On June 5, 1821, an application for
warrants to apprehend the most active members of the society, was
refused by the Lord Mayor.
In Dolby's petition to the House of Commons, as quoted in the
Morning Chronicle for June 6, 1821, it is stated that Dolby "had
' several interviews with Mr. Murray, during the last of which
' terms were proposed by Mr. Murray, who, in consideration of
'your Petitioner's submitting to plead guilty, and enter
' into an engagement not to sell any books 'which the Association
' might deem offensive for two years, offered to waive bringing up
' your Petitioner for judgment." Possibly Byron may make special
reference to this provision.
I. " Many persons besides you," writes Murray (Memoir, vol. i.
p. 424), on September 6, 1821,. "have at first supposed that I was
"the person of the same name connected with the Constitutional
" Association, but without consideration ; for on what occasion have
346 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
P.S. — I restore Smith's 1 letter, wJwm thank for his
good opinion. Is the Bust by Thorwaldsen arrived ?
922. — To John Murray.
Ra. August 23d 1821.
DEAR SIR, — Enclosed are the two acts corrected.
With regard to the charges about the Shipwreck,' — I
think that I told both you and Mr. Hobhouse, years ago,
that [there] was not a single circumstance of it not taken
from fact; not, indeed, from any single shipwreck, but
all from actual facts of different wrecks. Almost all
Don Juan is real life, either my own, or from people
I knew. By the way, much of the description of the
furniture^ in Canto 3? , is taken from Tultys Tripoli 3 (pray
' I identified myself with a party ? My connexions are, I believe,
' even more numerous amongst the Whigs than the Tories. Indeed,
' the Whigs have nearly driven away the Tories from my house ;
' and Jeffrey said, ' If you wish to meet the most respectable of the
' Whigs, you must be introduced to Mr. Murray's room.' "
1. James Smith, brother of Horace, and joint author of Rejected
Addresses,
2. In the Monthly Magazine, vol. lii. (August, 1821, pp. 19-22,
and September, 1821, pp. 105-109), Byron's indebtedness to Sir J.
G. Dalyell's Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea (Edinburgh, 1812,
8vo) is pointed out.
3. Richard Tully, Consul at Tripoli 1783-93, wrote a Narrative
of a Ten Years' Residence at the Court of Tripoli. Published in 410
in 1816, the book reached a fourth edition in 1819. Byron, in Don
Juan (Canto III. stanzas Ixvii.-lxix.), made use of the following
passage from Tully's Narrative (2nd edit., p. 135) : —
" The hangings of the room were of tapestry, made in pannels of
' different coloured velvets, thickly inlaid with flowers of silk damask ;
' a yellow border, of about a foot in depth, finished the tapestry at
' top and bottom, the upper border being embroidered with Moorish
' sentences from the Koran in lilac letters. The carpet was of
' crimson satin, with a deep border of pale blue quilted : this is laid
' over Indian mats and other carpets. In the best part of the room
' the sofa is placed, which occupies three sides of an alcove, the
' floor of which is raised. The sofa and the cushions that lay around
' were of crimson velvet : the centre cushions being embroidered
' with a sun in gold of .highly embossed work, the rest were of gold
' and silver tissue. The curtains for the alcove were made to match
l82I.] LITERARY COINCIDENCES. 347
note this), and the rest from my own observation. Re-
member, I never meant to conceal this at all, and have
only not stated it, because Don Juan had no preface nor
name to it. If you think it worth while to make this
statement, do so, in your own way. / laugh at such
charges, convinced that no writer ever borrowed less, or
made his materials more his own. Much is coincidence :
for instance, Lady Morgan (in a really excellent book, I
assure you, on Italy 1) calls Venice an Ocean Rome ; I
have the very same expression in Foscari? and yet you
know that the play was written months ago, and sent to
England. The Italy I received only on the i6th in-'.
Your friend, like the public, is not aware, that my
dramatic simplicity is shidiously Greek, and must con-
tinue so : no reform ever succeeded at first. I admire
the old English dramatists ; but this is quite another field,
and has nothing to do with theirs. I want to make a
regular English drama, no matter whether for the Stage
or not, which is not my object, — but a mental tJieatre.
Yours ever,
B.
' those before the bed. A number of looking-glasses, and a profu-
' sion of fine china and chrystal completed the ornaments and furni-
' ture of the room, in which there were neither tables nor chairs.
' A small table, about six inches high, is brought in when refresh-
' ments are served : it is of ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl,
' tortoiseshell, ivory, gold and silver, of choice woods, or of plain
' mahogany, according to the circumstances of the proprietor.
1. In Italy (vol. iii. pp. 263, 264 of Galignani's 1821 edition), Lady
Morgan writes, " As the bark, however, glides on, as the shore
' recedes, and the city of the waves, the Rome of the ocean, rises on
' the horizon, the spirits rally," etc., etc. (For Lady Morgan, see
Letters, vol. iii. p. no, note 3.)
2. Tlu Two Foscari was, as Byron's MS. note records, "begun
"June the 12^, completed July the 9l.h, Ravenna, 1821." The
phrase occurs in act iii. sc. I —
" Their antique energy of mind, all that
Remain'd of Rome for their inheritance,
Created by degrees an ocean-Rome."
348 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
Is the bust arrived ?
P.S. — Can't accept your courteous offer.1
For Orford and for Waldegrave
You give much more than me you gave;
Which is not fairly to behave,
My Murray !
Because if a live dog, 'tis said,
Be worth a Lion fairly sped,
A live lord must be worth two dead,
My Murray !
And if, as the opinion goes,
Verse hath a better sale than prose —
Certes, I should have more than those,
My Murray !
But now this sheet is nearly crammed,
So, if you will, I shan't be shammed,
And if you won't, — you may be damned,
My Murray !
These matters must be arranged with Mr. Douglas
K. He is my trustee, and a man of honour. To him
you can state all your mercantile reasons, which you
might not like to state to me personally, such as " heavy
"season"— "flat public "— " don't go off "— " Lordship
" writes too much " — " won't take advice " — " declining
" popularity " — " deductions for the trade " — " make very
"little" — "generally lose by him" — "pirated edition"
— " foreign edition " — " severe criticisms," etc., with other
hints and howls for an oration, which I leave Douglas,
who is an orator, to answer.
I. I.e. £2000 for three cantos of Don yuan, Sardanapalus, and
The Two Foscari.
l82I.] SELLING A LIFE DEARLY. 349
You can also state them more freely to a third person,
as between you and me they could only produce some
smart postscripts, which would not adorn our mutual
archives.
I am sorry for the Queen,1 and that's more than
you are.
923. — To Thomas Moore.
Ravenna, August 24, 1821.
Yours of the 5th only yesterday, while I had letters
of the 8th from London. Doth the post dabble into our
letters? Whatever agreement you make with Murray,
if satisfactory to yoti, must be so to me. There need be
no scruple, because, though I used sometimes to buffoon
to myself, loving a quibble as well as the barbarian him-
self (Shakspeare, to wit) — " that, like a Spartan, I would
"sell my life as dearly as possible" — it never was my
intention to turn it to personal pecuniary account, but to
bequeath it to a friend — yourself — in the event of sur-
vivorship. I anticipated that period, because we happened
to meet, and I urged you to make what was possible now
by it, for reasons which are obvious. It has been no
possible privation to me, and therefore does not require
the acknowledgments you mention. So, for God's sake,
don't consider it like * * *
By the way, when you write to Lady Morgan, will
you thank her for her handsome speeches in her book
about my books? I do not know her address. Her
work is fearless and excellent on the subject of Italy —
pray tell her so — and I know the country. I wish she
had fallen in with me, I could have told her a thing or
two that would have confirmed her positions.
I. Queen Caroline died August 7, 1821.
350 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
I am glad you are satisfied with Murray, who seems
to value dead lords more than live ones. I have just
sent him the following answer to a proposition of his,
For Orford and for Waldegrave, etc.1
The argument of the above is, that he wanted to
" stint me of my sizings," 2 as Lear says, — that is to say
jwt to propose an extravagant price for an extravagant
poem, as is becoming. Pray take his guineas, by all
means — / taught him that. He made me a filthy offer
of pounds once; but I told him that, like physicians,
poets must be dealt with in guineas, as being the only
advantage poets could have in the association with them,
as votaries of Apollo. I write to you in hurry and bustle,
which I will expound in my next.
Yours ever, etc.
P.S. — You mention something of an attorney on his
way to me on legal business. I have had no warning of
such an apparition. What can the fellow want ? I have
some lawsuits and business, but have not heard of any
thing to put me to the expense of a travelling lawyer.
They do enough, in that way, at home.
Ah, poor Queen ! But perhaps it is for the best, if
Herodotus's anecdote 3 is to be believed * * *
Remember me to any friendly Angles of our mutual
1. Here follow the lines given in the previous letter.
2. " Tis not in thee
To grudge my pleasures, to cut off my train,
To bandy hasty words, to scant my sizes,
And, in conclusion, to oppose the bolt
Against my coming in."
King Lear, act ii. sc. 4.
3. The goddess Hera taught her priestess Cydippe, mother of
Cleobis and Biton, that death is a higher boon than life (wv
&Hfn>ov efrj a.vOpd>ir(f reQv6.va.i fia\\ov t) £a>fti> : Herodotus, i. 31).
1821.] LIBERTIES WITH HIS WRITINGS. 351
acquaintance. What are you doing ? Here I have had
my hands full with tyrants and their victims. There
never was such oppression, even in Ireland, scarcely !
924. — To John Murray.
Ra. August 31? 1821.
DEAR SIR, — I have received the Juans* which are
printed so carelessly, especially the 5^ Canto, as to be
disgraceful to me, and not creditable to you. It really
must be gone over again with the Manuscript, the errors
are so gross — words added — changed — so as to make
cacophony and nonsense. You have been careless of
this poem because some of your Synod don't approve of
it ; but I tell you, it will be long before you see any thing
half so good as poetry or writing. Upon what principle
have you omitted the note on Bacon and Voltaire ? and
one of the concluding stanzas sent as an addition ? because
it ended, I suppose, with —
And do not link two virtuous souls for life
Into that moral Centaur, man and wife ?
Now, I must say, once for all, that I will not permit
any human being to take such liberties with my writings
because I am absent. I desire the omissions to be
replaced (except the stanza on Semiramis) — particularly
the stanza upon the Turkish marriages; and I request
that the whole be carefully gone over with the MSS.
I never saw such stuff as is printed : — Gulleyaz instead
of Gulbeyaz, etc. Are you aware that Gulleyaz is a real
I. Cantos III., IV., and V. of Don yuan were published together
in August, 1821, without the name of author or publisher. The
sale was enormous. " The booksellers' messengers filled the street
" in front of the house in Albemarle Street, and the parcels of books
' ' were given out of the window in answer to their obstreperous
"demands" (Memoir of John Murray, vol. i. p. 413).
352 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
name, and the other nonsense ? I copied the Cantos out
carefully, so that there is no excuse, as the Printer reads,
or at least prints , the MSS. of the plays without error.
If you have no feeling for your own reputation, pray
have some little for mine. I have read over the poem
carefully, and I tell you, // is poetry. Your little envious
knot of parson-poets may say what they please : time will
show that I am not in this instance mistaken.
Desire my friend Hobhouse to correct the press,
especially of the last Canto, from the Manuscript as it is :
it is enough to drive one out of one's senses, to see the
infernal torture of words from the original. For instance
the line —
And pair their rhymes as Venus yokes her doves —
is printed —
And praise their rhymes, etc.
Also '•'•precarious " for "precocious ; " and this line, stanza
I33-—
And this strong extreme effect to tire no longer.1
Now do turn to the Manuscript and see if I ever wrote
such a line: it is not "verse.
No wonder the poem should fail (which, however, it
won't, you will see) with such things allowed to creep
about it. Replace what is omitted, and correct what is
so shamefully misprinted, and let the poem have fair
play ; and I fear nothing.
I see in the last two Numbers of the Quarterly a
strong itching to assail me (see the review of the
" Etonian " 2 ) : let it, and see if they shan't have enough
1. "And " should be deleted. The line runs thus —
" This strong extreme effect (to tire no longer
Your patience)," etc., etc.
2. " Godiva," says the Quarterly Review (vol. xxv. p. 106), " is
1 82 1.] A REVIEWER REVIEWED. 353
of it. I don't allude to Gifford, who has always been
my friend, and whom I do not consider as responsible
for the articles written by others.
But if I do not give Mr. Milman, and others of the
crew, something that shall occupy their dreams ! I have
not begun with the Quarterers ; but let them look to it.
As for Milman (you well know I have not been unfair to
his poetry ever), but I have lately had some information
of his critical proceedings in the Quarterly , which may
bring that on him which he will be sorry for. I happen
to know that of him, which would annihilate him, when
he pretends to preach morality — not that he is immoral,
You will publish the plays when ready. I am in such
a humour about this printing of Don Juan so inaccurately,
that I must close this.
Yours ever,
B.
P.S. — I presume that you have not lost the stanza to
which I allude ? it was sent afterwards : look over my
letters and find it.
The Notes you can't have lost — you acknowledged
them : they included eight or nine corrections of Bacon's
mistakes in the apophthegms.
And now I ask once more if such liberties, taken in a
man's absence, are fair or praise-worthy ? As for you, you
1 a successful imitation of the new Whistlecraft style ; we think,
' however, that with much of the instinctive delicacy and native
' gentility of the poet of ' Gyges,' the author has not succeeded in
' handling his subject with the same dexterity and decorum ; and if
' our literature is to be disgraced (as is threatened) by the publication
1 of an English Pucelle, we do not wish to see, in a work like The
' Etonian, any thing which may, in the most distant degree, remind
' us of such compositions."
VOL. V. 2 A
354 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
have no opinions of your own, and never had, but are
blown about by the last thing said to you, no matter by
whom.
925. — To John Murray.1
[Undated.]
DEAR SIR, — The enclosed letter is written in bad
humour, but not without provocation. However, let it
(that is, the bad humour) go for little ; but I must request
your serious attention to the abuses of the printer, which
ought never to have been permitted. You forget that all
the fools in London (the chief purchasers of your publica-
tions) will condemn in me the stupidity of your printer.
For instance, in the Notes to Canto fifth, " the Adriatic
" shore of the Bosphorus," instead of the Asiatic ! ! All
this may seem little to you — so fine a gentleman with
your ministerial connections ; but it is serious to me, who
am thousands of miles off, and have no opportunity of not
proving myself the fool your printer makes me, except
your pleasure and leisure, forsooth.
The Gods prosper you, and forgive you, for I won't.
B.
926. — To J. Mawman.2
R? A? 31*' 1821.
L? Byron presents his Compliments to Mr. Mawman
and would be particularly glad to see that Gentleman if
1. Written in the envelope of the preceding letter.
2. Byron gave Mawman a copy of the edition of Cantos III., IV.,
V. of Don Juan, and wrote the following inscription on the title-
page :—
"to J. Mawman, Esq™
" from the Author.
"SepU I?1 1821.
" Mr. Mawman is requested to show this copy to the publisher
"and to point out the gross printer's blunders, some of which only
1 82 1.] TWO PAPER BOOKS. 355
he can make it convenient to call at half past two to-
morrow afternoon.
L/? B. takes the liberty of sending his Carriage and
horses in case Mr. M. would like to make the round of
the remarkable buildings of Ravenna.
927. — To Thomas Moore.
Ravenna, September 3, 1821.
By Mr. Mawman (a paymaster in the corps, in which
you and I are privates) I yesterday expedited to your
address, under cover one, two paper books,1 containing
"the author has had time to correct. They did not exist in the
" MSS. but are owing to the carelessness of the printer, etc."
On the fly-leaf at the end of the volume Mawman has written, in
pencil, the following note : —
" Ld. B. shewed me a weather-beaten scrawl of paper which he
" told me had been taken off the pillar in the market-place of
" Ravenna, on which was offered a price for his head. Lord B.
"committed to my care a small packet (of a small 410. form and
" appearing to contain about 200 pages) intended for Mr. Moore,
"the poet, at Paris. This parcel I took to Brussels, and sent it
" thence thro' the Spanish ambassador resident in that capital to
" Paris. In October, Mr. Moore called at my house in London
" and enquired with great solicitude for this Parcel. I told him how
" I had caused it to be conveyed to Paris. He afterwards found it
"to have been safely delivered. This packet I believe to have
"been the memoirs of Lord Byron's Life which were afterwards
" destroyed." The copy of Don Juan is now in the possession of
Mr. Edward Pollock.
I. "One of the 'paper-books' mentioned in this letter," says
Moore (Life, p. 527), "as intrusted to Mr. Mawman for me, con-
" tained a portion, to the amount of nearly a hundred pages, of a
' ' prose story, relating the adventures of a young Andalusian noble-
" man, which had been begun by him, at Venice, in 1817. The
' ' following ; passage is all I shall extract from this amusing
" Fragment : —
" ' A few hours afterwards we were very good friends, and a few
" days after she set out for Arragon, with my son, on a visit to her
" father and mother. I did not accompany her immediately, having
" been in Arragon before, but was to join the family in their Moorish
" chateau within a few weeks.
" ' During her journey I received a very affectionate letter from
" Donna Josepha, apprising me of the welfare of herself and my son.
356 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
the Gt'aour-na\, and a thing or two. It won't all do —
even for the posthumous public — but extracts from it
may. It is a brief and faithful chronicle of a month or
so — parts of it not very discreet, but sufficiently sincere.
Mr. Mawman saith that he will, in person or per friend,
have it delivered to you in your Elysian fields.
If you have got the new Juans, recollect that there
are some very gross printer's blunders, particularly in the
fifth canto, — such as " praise " for " pair " — " precarious "
for " precocious " — " Adriatic " for " Asiatic " — " case "
for "chase" — besides gifts of additional words and
' On her arrival at the chateau, I received another still more afiec-
' donate, pressing me, in very fond, and rather foolish, terms, to
4 join her immediately. As I was preparing to set out from Seville,
' I received a third — this was from her father, Don Jose cli Cardozo,
' who requested me, in the politest manner, to dissolve my marriage.
' I answered him with equal politeness, that I would do no such
' thing. A fourth letter arrived — it was from Donna Josepha, in
' which she informed me that her father's letter was written by her
' particular desire. I requested the reason by return of post — she
4 replied, by express, that as reason had nothing to do with the
4 matter, it was unnecessary to give any — but that she was an injured
4 and excellent woman. I then enquired why she had written to me
4 the two preceding affectionate letters, requesting me to come to
' Arragon. She answered, that was because she believed me out of
' my senses — that, being unfit to take care of myself, I had only
' to set out on this journey alone, and making my way without
' difficulty to Don Jose di Cardozo's, I should there have found the
' tenderest of wives and — a strait waistcoat.
" 4 1 had nothing to reply to this piece of affection but a reiteration
' of my request for some lights upon the subject. I was answered,
' that they would only be related to the Inquisition. In the mean
4 time, our domestic discrepancy had become a public topic of
' discussion ; and the world, which always decides justly, not only
' in Arragon but in Andalusia, determined that I was not only to
' blame, but that all Spain could produce nobody so blameable.
' My case was supposed to comprise all the crimes which could, and
4 several which could not, be committed, and little less than an
' auto-da-f£ was anticipated as the result. But let no man say that
4 we are abandoned by our friends in adversity — it was just the
4 reverse. Mine thronged around me to condemn, advise, and
' console me with their disapprobation. — They told me all that was,
4 would, or could be said on the subject. They shook their heads —
4 they exhorted me — deplored me, with tears in their eyes, and —
4 went to dinner.' "
1 82 1.] A FIERCE LETTER. 357
syllables, which make but a cacophonous rhythmus. Put
the pen through the said, as I would mine through
Murray's ears, if I were alongside him. As it is, I have
sent him a rattling letter, as abusive as possible. Though
he is publisher to the " Board of Longitude? he is in no
danger of discovering it.
I am packing for Pisa — but direct your letters fiere,
till further notice.
Yours ever, etc.
928. — To John Murray.
Septr. 4'h 1821.
DEAR SIR, — Enclosed are some notes, etc. You will
also have the goodness to hold yourself in readiness to
publish the long delayed letter to Blackwoods, etc. ; but
previously let me have a proof of it, as I mean it for a
separate publication. The enclosed note * you will annex
to the Foscaris ; also the dedication.
Yours,
B.
929. — To John Murray.
R? September 4<h 1821.
DEAR SIR, — By Saturday's post, I sent you a fierce
and furibond letter upon the subject of the printer's
blunders in Don Juan. I must solicit your attention to
the topic, though my wrath hath subsided into sullenness.
I. This note probably contained Byron's answer to Southey's
Preface to A Vision of Judgment. The Two Foscari (published
December, 1821), which Byron had intended to dedicate to Scott,
appeared, in consequence of the attack on Southey, without a dedi-
cation. (For fresh proof of Byron's dislike to Southey, for Southey's
Preface to A Vision ofjudgm&it, Byron's reply, Southey's answer,
and other references to the dispute, see Liters, vol. vi. Appendix I.)
358 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
Yesterday I received Mr. Mawman, a friend of yours,
and because he is a friend of yours ; and that's more than
I would do in an English case, except for those whom I
honour. I was as civil as I could be among packages,
even to the very chairs and tables; for I am going to
Pisa in a few weeks, and have sent and am sending off
my chattels. It regretted me that, my books and every
thing being packed, I could not send you a few things I
meant for you ; but they were all sealed and baggaged,
so as to have made it a Month's work to get at them
again. I gave him an envelope, with the Italian Scrap
in it,1 alluded to in my Gilchrist defence. Hobhouse
will make it out for you, and it will make you laugh, and
him too, the spelling particularly. The " Mericani" of
whom they call me the " Capo " (or Chief), mean
"Americans," which is the name given in Romagna to
a part of the Carbonari ; 2 that is to say, to the popular
part, the troops of the Carbonari. They were originally
a society of hunters in the forest, who took that name of
Americans, but at present comprize some thousands, etc. \
but I shan't let you further into the secret, which may be
participated with the postmasters. Why they thought me
their Chief, I know not : their Chiefs are like " Legion,
" being Many." However, it is a post of more honour
than profit, for, now that they are persecuted, it is fit that
I should aid them ; and so I have done, as far as my
means will permit. They will rise again some day, for
these fools of the Government are blundering : they
actually seem to know nothing; for they have arrested
and banished many of their own party, and let others
escape who are not their friends.
1. An anonymous letter which Byron had received, threatening
him with assassination.
2. See p. 158, note I.
l82I.] EXCELLENCE OF THE JUANS. 359
What thinkst thou of Greece ?
Address to me here as usual, till you hear further
from me.
By Mawman I have sent a journal to Moore ; but it
won't do for the public, — at least a great deal of it won't ;
— -parts may.
I read over the Juans, which are excellent. Your
Synod was quite wrong ; and so you will find by and bye.
I regret that I do not go on with it, for I had all the plan
for several cantos, and different countries and climes.
You say nothing of the note I enclosed to you, which
will explain why I agreed to discontinue it (at Madame
G.'s request) ; but you are so grand, and sublime, and
occupied, that one would think, instead of publishing for
"the Board of Longittide" that you were trying to
discover it.
Let me hear that Gifford is better. He can't be spared
either by you or me.
Enclosed is a note, which I will thank you not to
forget to acknowledge and to publish.
Yours,
B.
930. — To John Murray.
[Post-mark dated Sept. 9, 1821.]
DEAR SIR, — Will you have the goodness to forward
the enclosed to Mr. Gilchrist, whose address I do not
exactly know ? If that Gentleman would like to see my
second letter to you, on the attack upon himself, you can
forward him a copy of the proof.
Yours ever,
B.
360 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
931. — To John Murray.
Sept'. 9l.h 1821.
DEAR SIR,' — Please to forward the enclosed also to
Mr. Gilchrist.
I cut my finger, in diving yesterday, against a sharp
shell, and can hardly write.
Last week, I sent a long note (in English) to the play :
let me have a proof of it ; but, as I am in haste, you can
publish the play with the whole of //, except the part
referring to SOUTHEY, to which I wish to add something ;
and we will then append the whole to a re-print. All
the part, down to where it begins on that rascal, will do
for publication without my reviewing it — that is to say, if
your printer will take pains, and not be careless, as about
the newjuans.
Let me hear that Mr. Gifford is better, and your
family well.
Yours,
B.
932. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, Sepf. lol.h 1821.
DEAR SIR, — By this post I send you three packets
containing Cain, a Mystery (i.e. a tragedy on a sacred
subject) in three acts.1 I think that it contains some
poetry, being in the style of "Manfred" Send me a
proof of the whole by return of post. If tJiere is time,
publish it with the other two: if not, print it separately,
and as soon as you can.
Of the dedications (sent lately), I wish to transfer that
I. Cain, a Mystery, was published by Murray with Sardanapahts
and The Tivo Foscari in December, 1821.
l82I.] CAIN, A MYSTERY. 361
to Sir Walter Scott to this drama of Cain, reserving that
of the " Foscaris" for another, for a particular reason, of
which more by and bye. Write.
Yours,
B.
933. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, September I2*.h 1821.
DEAR SIR, — By Tuesday's post, I forwarded, in three
packets, the drama of " Cain" in three acts, of which I
request the acknowledgement when arrived. To the last
speech of Eve, in the last act (i.e. where she curses Cain),
add these three lines to the concluding one —
May the Grass wither from thy foot ! the Woods
Deny thee shelter ! Earth a home ! the Dust
A Grave ! the Sun his light ! and Heaven her God !
There's as pretty a piece of Imprecation for you, when
joined to the lines already sent, as you may wish to meet
with in the course of your business. But don't forget the
addition of the above three lines, which are clinchers to
Eve's speech.
Let me know what Gifford thinks (if the play arrives
in safety) ; for I have a good opinion of the piece, as
poetry : it is in my gay metaphysical style, and in the
Manfred line.
You must at least commend my facility and variety,
when you consider what I have done within the last
fifteen months, with my head, too, full of other and of
mundane matters. But no doubt you will avoid saying
any good of it, for fear I should raise the price upon you :
that's right — stick to business ! Let me know what your
other ragamuffins are writing, for I suppose you don't like
362 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
starting too many of your Vagabonds at once. You may
give them the start, for any thing I care.
If this arrives in time to be added to the other two
dramas, publish them togetfar : if not, publish it separately,
in the same form, to tally for the purchasers. Let me
have a proof of the whole speedily. It is longer than
Manfred.
Why don't you publish my Pulcil1 the best thing I
ever wrote, with the Italian to it. I wish I was alongside
of you : nothing is ever done in a man's absence ; every
body runs counter, because they can. If ever I do return
to England, (which I shan't though,) I will write a poem
to which English Bards, etc., shall be New Milk, in com-
parison. Your present literary world of mountebanks
stands in need of such an Avatar ; but I am not yet quite
bilious enough : a season or two more, and a provocation
or two, will wind me up to the point, and then, have at
the whole set !
I have no patience with the sort of trash you send me
out by way of books ; except Scott's novels, and three or
four other things, I never saw such work or works.
Campbell is lecturing, Moore idling, Southey twaddling,
Wordsworth driveling, Coleridge muddling, Joanna Baillie
piddling, Bowles quibbling, squabbling, and sniveling.
Milman will do, if he don't cant too much, nor imitate
Southey : the fellow has poesy in him ; but he is envious,
and unhappy, as all the envious are. Still he is among
the best of the day. Barry Cornwall will do better by
and bye, I dare say, if he don't get spoilt by green tea,
and the praises of Pentonville and Paradise Row. The
pity of these men is, that they never lived either in high
I. Byron's translation of the first Canto of Luigi Pulci's Morgante
Maggiore, with the Italian, was published in the Liberal, No. iv.
pp. I93-249-
l82I.] FREE OF THE CORPORATION. 363
life^ nor in solitiide: there is no medium for the knowledge
of the busy or the still world. If admitted into high life
for a season, it is merely as spectators — they form no part
of the Mechanism thereof. Now Moore and I, the one
by circumstances, and the other by birth, happened to be
free of the corporation, and to have entered into its
pulses and passions, qitarum partes fidnms. Both of us
have learnt by this much which nothing else could have
taught us.
Yours,
B.
P.S. — I saw one of your brethren, another of the
Allied Sovereigns of Grub-Street, the other day, viz. :
Mawman the Great, by whom I sent due homage to your
imperial self. Tomorrow's post may perhaps bring a
letter from you; but you are the most ungrateful and
ungracious of correspondents. But there is some excuse
for you, with your perpetual levee of politicians, parson-
scribblers, and loungers : some day I will give you a
poetical Catalogue of them.
The post is come : no letter, but never mind.
How is Mrs. Murray, and Gifford ? Better ? Say well.
My Compliments to Mr. Heber * upon his Election.
I. Richard Heber (1773-1833) was elected M.P. for the University
of Oxford, August 24, 1821. The vacancy was caused by the
elevation of Sir William Scott to the peerage. At the end of the
poll the candidates stood thus —
Mr. Heber 612
Sir John Nicholl 519
Majority for Mr. Ileber 93
364 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
934. — To Thomas Moore.
Ravenna, September 17, 1821.
The enclosed lines,1 as you will directly perceive, are
written by the Rev. W. L. B * *. Of course it is for him
to deny them if they are not.
Believe me, yours ever and most affectionately,
B.
P.S. — Can you forgive this? It is only a reply to
your lines against my Italians. Of course I will stand by
my lines against all men ; but it is heartbreaking to see
such things in a people as the reception of that unre-
deemed ****** in an oppressed country. Your
apotheosis is now reduced to a level with his welcome,
and their gratitude to Grattan is cancelled by their
atrocious adulation of this, etc., etc., etc.
935. — To Thomas Moore.
Ravenna, September 19, 1821.
I am in all the sweat, dust, and blasphemy of an
universal packing of all my things, furniture, etc., for
I. " To the Irish Avatar "—
" Ere the daughter of Brunswick is cold in her grave," etc.
The following sentence from a letter of Curran is prefixed as a
motto : " And Ireland, like a bastinadoed elephant, kneeling to
" receive the paltry rider" (Life of Curran, vol. ii. p. 336). At the
end of the verses are these words : " (Signed) W. L. B * *, M.A.,
" and written with a view to a Bishoprick." Moore notes in his
Diary for November 3, 1821 (Memoirs, etc., vol. iii. pp. 297, 298),
" Received Lord B.'s tremendous verses against the King and the
" Irish, for their late exhibition in Dublin ; richly deserved by my
" servile countrymen, but not, on this occasion, by the King, who,
" as far as he was concerned, acted well and wisely." Byron was
indignant that George IV. should have made his triumphal entry
into Dublin when his wife was lying dead in London. The king
reached the Vice-Regal Lodge at Dublin, August 12 ; the queen's
funeral procession left London for Harwich, August 14.
1 82 1.] SWITZERLAND. 365
Pisa, whither I go for the winter. The cause has been
the exile of all my fellow Carbonics, and, amongst them,
of the whole family of Madame G. ; who, you know, was
divorced from her husband last week, "on account of
" P.P. clerk of this parish," l and who is obliged to join
her father and relatives, now in exile there, to avoid
being shut up in a monastery, because the Pope's decree
of separation required her to reside in casa paterna^ or
else, for decorum's sake, in a convent. As I could not
say with Hamlet, " Get thee to a nunnery," I am pre-
paring to follow them.
It is awful work, this love, and prevents all a man's
projects of good or glory. I wanted to go to Greece
lately (as every thing seems up here) with her brother,
who is a very fine, brave fellow (I have seen him put to
the proof), and wild about liberty. But the tears of a
woman who has left her husband for a man, and the
weakness of one's own heart, are paramount to these
projects, and I can hardly indulge them.
We were divided in choice between Switzerland and
Tuscany, and I gave my vote for Pisa, as nearer the
Mediterranean, which I love for the sake of the shores
which it washes, and for my young recollections of 1809.
Switzerland is a curst selfish, swinish country of brutes,
placed in the most romantic region of the world. I
never could bear the inhabitants, and still less their Eng-
lish visitors ; for which reason, after writing for some
information about houses, upon hearing that there was a
I. An allusion to Pope's Memoirs of P.P., Clerk of this Parish.
These Memoirs, which begin thus : "In the Name of the Lord.
" Amen. I, P.P. by the grace of God Clerk of this Parish, writeth
" this History," were supposed to be written in ridicule of Bishop
Burnet's History of my own Times. Pope, in the Prolegomena to The
Dunciad, denied this ; but see Courthope's edition of Pope's Works,
vol. x. p. 435, note I.
366 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
colony of English all over the cantons of Geneva, etc., I
immediately gave up the thought, and persuaded the
Gambas to do the same.
By the last post I sent you " The Irish Avatar," —
what think you ? The last line — " a name never spoke
" but with curses or jeers "• — must run either " a name
" only uttered with curses or jeers," or, " a wretch never
"named but with curses or jeers." Becase as how,
" spoke " is not grammar, except in the House of Com-
mons ; and I doubt whether we can say " a name spoken"
for mentioned. I have some doubts, too, about " repay,"
— "and for murder repay with a shout and a smile."
Should it not be, " and for murder repay him with shouts
" and a smile," or " reward him with shouts and a
"smile?"
So, pray put your poetical pen through the MS. and
take the least bad of the emendations. Also, if there be
any further breaking of Priscian's head, will you apply a
plaster ? I wrote in the greatest hurry and fury, and sent
it to you the day after ; so, doubtless, there will be some
awful constructions, and a rather lawless conscription of
rhythmus.
With respect to what Anna Seward calls " the liberty
"of transcript," — when complaining of Miss Matilda
Muggleton, the accomplished daughter of a choral vicar
of Worcester Cathedral, who had abused the said " liberty
"of transcript," by inserting in the Malvern Mercury
Miss Seward's " Elegy on the South Pole," as her own
production, with her own signature, two years after having
taken a copy, by permission of the authoress — with re-
gard, I say, to the "liberty of transcript," I by no
means oppose an occasional copy to the benevolent
few, provided it does not degenerate into such licen-
tiousness of Verb and Noun as may tend to " disparage
1821.] "THE IRISH AVATAR." 367
" my parts of speech " l by the carelessness of the
transcribblers.
I do not think that there is much danger of the
" King's Press being abused " upon the occasion, if the
publishers of journals have any regard for their remaining
liberty of person. It is as pretty a piece of invective
as ever put publisher in the way to " Botany." There-
fore, if they meddle with it, it is at their peril. As for
myself, I will answer any jontleman — though I by no
means recognise a " right of search " into an unpublished
production and unavowed poem. The same applies to
things published sans consent. I hope you like, at least
the concluding lines of the Pome ?
What are you doing, and where are you ? in England ?
Nail Murray — nail him to his own counter, till he shells
out the thirteens. Since I wrote to you, I have sent him
another tragedy — Cain2 by name — making three in
1. "There, sir, an attack upon my language! What do you
" think of that ? — an aspersion upon my parts of speech ! Was ever
"such a brute ?" (Mrs. Malaprop, in The Rivals, act iii. sc. 3).
" Was it you that reflected on my parts of speech? " (ibid., act iv.
sc. 2).
2. Byron, in a note to his Preface to Cain, says, " The reader
"will perceive that the author has partly adopted in this poem the
" notion of Cuvier, that the world had been destroyed several times
"before the creation of man."
The reference is to Cuvier's Discours sur les revolutions de la
surface du globe, translated in 1813 by Robert Kerr, under the title
of " Essay on the Theory of the Earth." Cuvier's words are (Dis-
cours, etc., ed. 1825, p. 282) —
" Je pense done, avec MM. Deluc et Dolomieu, que, s'il y a quel-
" que chose de constate en geologic, c'est que la surface de notre
' globe a etc victime d'une grande et subite revolution, dont la
' date ne peut remonter beaucoup au deli de cinq ou six mille ans ;
' que cette revolution a enfonce et fait disparaitre les pays qu"
' habitaient auparavant les hommes . . . qu'elle a, au contraire,
' mis a sec le fond de la derniere mer, et en a forme les pays aujour-
" d'hui habites . . . Mais ces pays aujourd'hui habites, et que la
" derniere revolution a mis a sec, avaient deja etc habites aupara-
" vant, si non par des hommes, du moins par des animaux terrestres :
' ' par consequent une revolution precedente, au moins, les avail
" mis sous les eaux ; et, si 1'on peut en juger par les differens ordres
368 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
MS. now in his hands, or in the printer's. It is in the
Manfred metaphysical style, and full of some Titanic
declamation; — Lucifer being one of the dram. per s.^ who
takes Cain a voyage among the stars, and afterwards to
" Hades," where he shows him the phantoms of a former
world, and its inhabitants. I have gone upon the notion
of Cuvier, that the world has been destroyed three or
four times, and was inhabited by mammoths, behemoths,
and what not ; but not by man till the Mosaic period, as,
indeed, is proved by the strata of bones found; — those
of all unknown animals, and known, being dug out, but
none of mankind. I have, therefore, supposed Cain to
be shown, in the rational Preadamites, beings endowed
with a higher intelligence than man, but totally unlike
him in form, and with much greater strength of mind and
person. You may suppose the small talk which takes
place between him and Lucifer upon these matters is not
quite canonical.
The consequence is, that Cain comes back and kills
Abel in a fit of dissatisfaction, partly with the politics of
Paradise, which had driven them all out of it, and partly
because (as it is written in Genesis) Abel's sacrifice
was the more acceptable to the Deity. I trust that the
Rhapsody has arrived — it is in three acts, and entitled
" A Mystery" according to the former Christian custom,
and in honour of what it probably will remain to the reader.
Yours, etc.
'd'animaux dont on y trouve les depouilles, ils avaient peut-etre
' subi jusqu'a deux ou trois irruptions de la mer."
In August, 1829, Goethe at Weimar told Crabb Robinson
Diary, vol. ii. p. 435, et seqq.) that " ' Byron should have lived to
' execute his vocation.' ' And that was ? ' I asked. ' To dramatize
' the Old Testament. What a subject under his hands would the
' Tower of Babel have been ! ' He continued, ' You must not
' take it ill ; but Byron was indebted for the profound views he took
' of the Bible to the ennui he suffered from it at school ' (Goethe
' calls ennui (Langeweile) the Mother of the Muses)."
1821.] A MERE BUFFOONERY. 369
936. — To Thomas Moore.
September 20, 1821.
After the stanza on Grattan, concluding with "His
"soul o'er the freedom implored and denied," will it
please you to cause insert the following "Addenda,"
which I dreamed of during to-day's Siesta : —
Ever glorious Grattan ! etc., etc., etc.
I will tell you what to do. Get me twenty copies of the
whole carefully and privately printed off, as your lines
were on the Naples affair. Send me six, and distribute
the rest according to your own pleasure.
I am in a fine vein, "so full of pastime and prodi-
" gality ! " — So here's to your health, in a glass of grog.
Pray write, that I may know by return of post — address
to me at Pisa. The Gods give you joy !
Where are you? in Paris? Let us hear. You will
take care that there be no printer's name, nor author's, as
in the Naples stanza, at least for the present.
937. — To John Murray.
Ra. Septr. 201!1 1821.
DEAR MURRAY, — You need not send " The Bhies" 1
which is a mere buffoonery, never meant for publication.
The papers to which I allude, in case of Survivorship,
are collections of letters, etc., since I was sixteen years
old, contained in the trunks in the care of Mr. Hobhouse.
This collection is at least doubled by those I have now
here ; all received since my last Ostracism. To these I
should wish the Editor to have access, not for the purpose
of abusing confidences^ nor of hurting the feelings of
I. The Blues : a Literary Eclogue was published in the Liberal,
No. iii. pp. 1-2 1.
VOL. V. 2 B
370 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
correspondents living, or the memories of the dead ; but
there are things which would do neither, that I have left
unnoticed or unexplained, and which (like all such things)
Time only can permit to be noticed or explained, though
some are to my credit. The task will, of course, require
delicacy; but that will not be wanting, if Moore and
Hob house survive me, and, I may add, yourself; and
that you may all three do so, is, I assure you, my very
sincere wish. I am not sure that long life is desirable
for one of my temper and constitutional depression of
Spirits, which of course I suppress in society ; but which
breaks out when alone, and in my writings, in spite of
myself. It has been deepened, perhaps, by some long
past events (I do not allude to my marriage, etc. — on the
contrary, that raised them by the persecution giving a
fillip to my Spirits) ; but I call it constitutional, as I have
reason to think it. You know, or you do not know, that
my maternal Grandfather1 (a very clever man, and
amiable, I am told) was strongly suspected of Suicide
(he was found drowned in the Avon at Bath), and that
another very near relative of the same branch took
poison, and was merely saved by antidotes. For the
first of these events there was no apparent cause, as he
was rich, respected, and of considerable intellectual
resources, hardly forty years of age, and not at all ad-
dicted to any unhinging vice. It was, however, but a
strong suspicion, owing to the manner of his death and
to his melancholy temper. The second had a cause, but
it does not become me to touch upon it ; it happened
when I was far too young to be aware of it, and I never
heard of it till after the death of that relative, many years
I. Byron's great-grandfather, Alexander Davidson Gordon, was
drowned in the Ythan in 1 760, and his grandfather, George Gordon,
in the canal at Bath in 1779. In both cases there was suspicion of
suicide.
l82I.] A VERY ODD FANCY. 371
afterwards. I think, then, that I may call this dejection
constitutional. I had always been told that in temper I
more resembled my maternal Grandfather than any of
my fathers family — that is, in the gloomier part of his
temper, for he was what you call a good natured man,
and I am not.
The Journal here I sent by Mawman to Moore the
other day ; but as it is a mere diary, only parts of it would
ever do for publication. The other Journal, of the tour
in 1816, I should think Augusta might let you have a
copy of; but her nerves have been in such a state since
1815, that there is no knowing. Lady Byron's people,
and L? Caroline Lamb's people, and a parcel of that set,
got about her and frightened her with all sorts of hints
and menaces, so that she has never since been able to
write to me a clear common letter, and is so full of mysteries
and miseries, that I can only sympathize, without always
understanding her. All my loves, too, make a point of
calling upon her, which puts her into a flutter (no diffi-
cult matter); and, the year before last I think, Lady
F. W. W. marched in upon her, and Lady O., a few
years ago, spoke to her at a party ; and these and such
like calamities have made her afraid of her shadow. It
is a very odd fancy that they all take to her : it was only
six months ago, that I had some difficulty in preventing
the Countess G. from invading her with an Italian letter.
I should like to have seen Augusta's face, with an Etruscan
Epistle, and all its Meridional style of isstmas, and other
superlatives, before her.
I am much mortified that Gifford don't take to my new
dramas : to be sure, they are as opposite to the English
drama as one thing can be to another; but I have a
notion that, if understood, they will in time find favour
(though not on the stage) with the reader. The Simplicity
372 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
of plot is intentional, and the avoidance of rant also, as
also the compression of the Speeches in the more severe
situations. What I seek to show in The Foscaris is the
suppressed passion, rather than the rant of the present
day. For that matter —
" Nay, if thou'lt mouth,
I'll rant as well as them " —
would not be difficult, as I think I have shown in my
younger productions — not dramatic ones, to be sure.
But, as I said before, I am mortified that Gifford don't
like them; but I see no remedy, our notions on the
subject being so different. How is he ? well, I hope :
let me know. I regret his demur the more that he has
been always my grand patron, and I know no praise
which would compensate me in my own mind for his
censure. I do not mind reviews, as I can work them at
their own weapons.
Yours ever and truly,
B.
P.S. — By the way, on our next settlement (which will
take place with Mr. Kinnaird), you will please to deduct
the various sums for books, packages received and sent, the
bust, tooth-powder, etc., etc., expended by you on my
account.
Hobhouse, in his preface to " Rimini? will probably
be better able to explain my dramatic system, than I
could do, as he is well acquainted with the whole thing.
It is more upon the Alfieri School than the English.
I hope that we shall not have Mr. Rogers here : there
is a mean minuteness in his mind and tittle-tattle that I
dislike, ever since I found him out (which was but slowly) ;
besides he is not a good man : why don't he go to bed ?
What does he do travelling ?
l82I.] SIX CONDITIONS. 373
The Journal of 1814 I dare say Moore will give, or a
copy.
Has Cain (the dramatic third attempt), arrived yet ?
Let me know.
Address to me at Pisa, whither I am going. The
reason is, that all my Italian friends here have been
exiled, and are met there for the present ; and I go to
join them, as agreed upon, for the Winter.
938. — To John Murray.
Ravenna, September 24^ 1821.
DEAR MURRAY, — I have been thinking over our late
correspondence, and wish to propose to you the following
articles for our future : —
jstiy That you shall write to me of yourself, of the
health, wealth, and welfare of all friends ; but of me (quoad
me) little or nothing.
2d!y That you shall send me Soda powders, tooth-
powder, tooth-brushes, or any such anti-odontalgic or
chemical articles, as heretofore, ad libitum, upon being
re-imbursed for the same.
3d!y That you shall not send me any modern, or (as
they are called) new, publications in English whatsoever,
save and excepting any writing, prose or verse, of (or
reasonably presumed to be of) Walter Scott, Crabbe,
Moore, Campbell, Rogers, Gifford, Joanna Baillie, Irving
(the American), Hogg, Wilson (Isle of Palms Man), or
any especial single work of fancy which is thought to be
of considerable merit ; Voyages and travels, provided that
they are neither in Greece, Spain, Asia Minor, Albania,
nor Italy, will be welcome : having travelled the countries
mentioned, I know that what is said of them can convey
nothing further which I desire to know about them. No
other English works whatsoever.
374 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
4tl!ly That you send me no periodical works whatsoever —
no Edinburgh^ Quarterly ', Monthly, nor any Review, Maga-
zine, Newspaper, English or foreign, of any description.
gthiy Tnat yOU sen(j me no opinions whatsoever, either
good, bad, or indifferent, of yourself, or your friends, or
others, concerning any work, or works, of mine, past,
present, or to come.
gthiy That a|i negotiations in matters of business be-
tween you and me pass through the medium of the
Honb'e Douglas Kinnaird, my friend and trustee, or Mr.
Hobhouse, as Alter Ego, and tantamount to myself
during my absence, or presence.
Some of these propositions may at first seem strange,
but they are founded. The quantity of trash I have
received as books is incalculable, and neither amused nor
instructed. Reviews and Magazines are at the best but
ephemeral and superficial reading : who thinks of the
grand article of last year in any given review ? in the next
place, if they regard myself, they tend to increase Egotism ;
if favourable, I do not deny that the praise elates, and if
unfavourable, that the abuse irritates — the latter may
conduct me to inflict a species of Satire, which would
neither do good to you nor to your friends : they may
smile now, and so may you ; but if I took you all in
hand, it would not be difficult to cut you up like gourds.
I did as much by as powerful people at nineteen years
old, and I know little as yet, in three and thirty, which
should prevent me from making all your ribs Gridirons
for your hearts, if such were my propensity. But it is
not. Therefore let me hear none of your provocations.
If any thing occurs so very gross as to require my notice,
I shall hear of it from my personal friends. For the
rest, I merely request to be left in ignorance.
The same applies to opinions, good, bad, or indifferent,
1 82 1.] PRAISE OR CENSURE BY REVIEWERS. 375
of persons in conversation or correspondence : these do
not interrupt, but they soil the current of my Mind, I
am sensitive enough, but not till I am touched; and here
I am beyond the touch of the short arms of literary
England, except the few feelers of the Polypus that crawl
over the Channel in the way of Extract.
All these precautions in England would be useless :
the libeller or the flatterer would there reach me in spite
of all ; but in Italy we know little of literary England,
and think less, except what reaches us through some
garbled and brief extract in some miserable Gazette.
For two years (excepting two or three articles cut out and
sent to you, by the post) I never read a newspaper which
was not forced upon me by some accident, and know,
upon the whole, as little of England as you all do of
Italy, and God knows that is little enough, with all your
travels, etc., etc., etc. The English travellers know Italy
as you know Guernsey : how much is that?
If any thing occurs so violently gross or personal as
to require notice, Mr. Ds- Kinnaird will let me know ; but
of praise I desire to hear nothing.
You will say, " to what tends all this ? " I will answer
THAT; — to keep my mmdfree and unbiassed by all paltry
and personal irritabilities of praise or censure; — to let
my Genius take its natural direction, while my feelings
are like the dead, who know nothing and feel nothing of
all or aught that is said or done in their regard.
If you can observe these conditions, you will spare
yourself and others some pain : let me not be worked
upon to rise up ; for if I do, it will not be for a little : if
you can not observe these conditions, we shall cease to
be correspondents, but not friends ; for I shall always be
Yours ever and truly,
BYRON.
376 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
P.S. — I have taken these resolutions not from any
irritation against you or yours, but simply upon reflection
that all reading, either praise or censure, of myself has
done me harm. When I was in Switzerland and Greece,
I was out of the way of hearing either, and how I wrote
tJiere ! In Italy I am out of the way of it too; but
latterly, partly through my fault, and partly through your
kindness in wishing to send me the newest and most
periodical publications, I have had a crowd of reviews,
etc., thrust upon me, which have bored me with their
jargon, of one kind or another, and taken off my attention
from greater objects. You have also sent me a parcel of
trash of poetry, for no reason that I can conceive, unless
to provoke me to write a new English Bards. Now
this I wish to avoid ; for if ever I do, it will be a strong
production ; and I desire peace, as long as the fools will
keep their nonsense out of my way.
939. — To John Murray.
Sepf. 27'!' 1821.
DEAR MURRAY, — Give the enclosed to Moore when
he comes over, as he is about to do. It contains some-
thing for you to look at, but not for publication. Address
to Pisa.
I thought Ricciardetto was Rose's, but pray thank Lord
Glenbervie * therefor. He is an old and kind friend of
I. Lord Glenbervie's translation, The First Canto of Ricciardetto,
translated from the Italian of Forteguerri, etc., was privately printed
in 1821. It was published with the translator's name in 1822.
By his wife, the Hon. Catherine Anne North, daughter of Lord
North, the Prime Minister, he had one son, the Hon. Frederick
Sylvester North Douglas (born 1791, died 1819). Frederick Douglas
is called by Byron "the modern Greek," because of his Essay on
Certain Points of Resemblance between the Ancient and Modern Greeks
(1813).
l82I.] THE HIGH ROMAN FASHION. 377
mine, if it be the old man you mean. Is the young one
dead or alive ? I mean the " modern Greek " — Frederick
S. Douglas?
Moore and you can settle between you about the
" Memoranda : " / can only do what I can to accommo-
date arrangements, as fixed between you, which I shall
do readily and cheerfully.
Yours in haste,
B.
P.S. — Is Cain arrived? He was sent on the n°? in
three packets. Did you get a new Italian account of M.
Faliero's Conspiracy for a note, sent two months ago by
the post ? and printed for the first time ?
940. — To Thomas Moore.
September 27, 1821.
It was not Murray's fault. I did not send the MS.
overture, but I send it now,1 and it may be restored;— or,
at any rate, you may keep the original, and give any
copies you please. I send it, as written, and as I read
it to you — I have no other copy.
By last week's two posts, in two packets, I sent to
your address, at Paris, a longish poem upon the late
Irishism of your countrymen in their reception of the
King. Pray, have you received it ? It is in " the high
" Roman fashion," and full of ferocious phantasy. As you
could not well take up the matter with Paddy (being of
the same nest), I have j — but I hope still that I have
done justice to his great men and his good heart. As
I. "The lines 'Oh Wellington,' which I had missed in their
'• original place at the opening of the Third Canto, and took for
" granted that they had been suppressed by his publisher" (Moore).
378 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
for Castlereagh you will find it laid on with a trowel. I
delight in your " fact historical " l — is it a fact ?
Yours, etc.
P.S. — You have not answered me about Schlegel —
why not ? Address to me at Pisa, whither I am going,
to join the exiles — a pretty numerous body at present.
Let me hear how you are, and what you mean to do. Is
there no chance of your recrossing the Alps ? If the G.
Rex marries again, let him not want an Epithalamium —
suppose a joint concern of you and me, like Sternhold
and Hopkins !
941. — To John Murray.
Sept? 28^ 1821.
DEAR MORAY, — I add another cover to request you
to ask Moore to obtain (if possible) my letters to the late
Lady Melbourne from Lady Cowper. They are very
numerous, and ought to have been restored long ago, as
I was ready to give back Lady M.'s in exchange : these
latter are in Mr. Hobhouse's custody with my other
papers, and shall be punctually restored if required. I
did not choose before to apply to Lady Cowper, as her
mother's death naturally kept me from intruding upon
her feelings at the time of its occurrence. Some years
have now elapsed, and it is essential that I should have
my own epistles. They are essential as confirming that
part of the " Memoranda " which refer to the two periods
(1812 and 1814) when my marriage with her niece was
I. Perhaps the " fact historical " is a story told by Moore, in his
Diary for August 23, 1821 (Metnoirs, vol. iii. p. 270). Sir E. Nagle
announced the death of Napoleon to George IV. by " saying, ' I have
" the pleasure to tell your Majesty that your bitterest enemy is dead.'
" ' No ! is she, by God ? ' said the King. Put this into verse
"afterwards."
l82I.] A HINT OR TWO. 379
in contemplation, and will tend to show what my real
views and feelings were upon that subject, which have
been so variously represented. You need not let this
motive be stated to L? Cr- , as it in no degree concerns
tier particularly ; but if they refuse to give them up (or
keep back any — recollect that they are in great quantity),
it would become the duty of the Editor and my Executors
to refer to parts of Lady Melbourne's letters — so that the
thing is as broad as it is long. They involve also many
other topics, which may or may not be referred to,
according to the discretion of Moore, etc., when the time
comes.
You need not be alarmed : the "fourteen years " l will
hardly elapse without some mortality amongst us ; it is a
long lease of life to speculate upon. So your Cent per
Cent Shylock Calculation will not be in so much peril, as
the " Argosie " will sink before that time, and " the pound
" of flesh " be withered previously to your being so long
out of a return.
I also wish to give you a hint or two (as you have
really behaved very handsomely to M. in the business,
and are a fine fellow in your line) for your advantage.
If by your own management you can extract any of my
epistles from \2 Caroline Lamb (mind she don't give you
forgeries in my hand : she has done as much you know
before now) they might be of use in your collection
(sinking of course the names and all such circumstances as
might hurt living feelings, or those of survivors); they
treat of more topics than love occasionally.
As to those to other correspondents (female, etc.),
there are plenty scattered about in the world ; but how
to direct you to recover them, I know not : most of them
have kept them — I hear at least that L? O., and F. W.
I. See p. 271, note 2.
380 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
have kept theirs; but these letters are of course inac-
cessible (and perhaps not desirable), as well as those of
some others.
I will tell you who may happen to have some letters
of mine in their possession : Lord Powerscourt, some to
his late brother ; Mr. Long of — (I forget his place) — but
the father of Edward Long of the Guards, who was
drowned in going to Lisbon early in 1809 ; Miss Elizabeth
Pigot, of Southwell, Notts (she may be Mistress by this
time, for she had more years than I) : they were not love-
letters, so that you might have them without scruple.
There are, or might be, some to the late Rev? J. C.
Tattersall, in the hands of his brother (half-brother)
Mr. Wheatley, who resides near Canterbury, I think.
There are some to Charles Gordon, now of Dulwich ;
and some few to Mrs. Chaworth; but these latter are
probably destroyed or inaccessible.
All my letters to Lady B., before and since her mar-
riage, are in her possession, as well as her own which I
sent to her : she had not the courtesy to restore me mine ;
but never mind ; though they were too much to my credit
for her to give them back, we can do without them.
I mention these people and particulars merely as
chances: most of them have probably destroyed the
letters, which in fact were of little import, most of them
written when very young, and several at School and
College.
Peel (the second brother of the Secretary) was a cor-
respondent of mine, and also Porter, the son of the
Bishop of Clogher ; Lord Clare a very voluminous one ;
William Harness (a friend of Jew Milman's) another;
Charles Drummond (son of the Banker) ; William Bankes
(the Voyager) ; your friend R. C. Dallas, Esqr?. Hodgson,
Henry Drury, Hobhouse, you were already aware of.
1821.] A LIST OF CORRESPONDENTS. 381
I have gone through this long list l of
" The cold, the faithless, and the dead," *
because I know that, like " the curious in fish sauce,"
you are a researcher of such things.
Besides these, there are other occasional ones to
literary men and so forth, complimentary, etc., etc., etc.,
not worth much more than the rest. There are some
hundreds, too, of Italian notes of mine, scribbled with a
noble contempt of the grammar and dictionary, and in
very English Etruscan ; for I speak Italian very fluently,
but write it carelessly and incorrectly to a degree.
942. — To Thomas Moore.
September 29, 1821.
I send you two rough things, prose and verse, not
much in themselves, but which will show, one of them,
1. " To all the persons upon this list who were accessible, applica-
1 tion has, of course, been made, — with what success it is in the
' reader's power to judge from the communications that have been
' laid before him. Among the companions of the poet's boyhood
' there are (as I have already had occasion to mention and regret)
' but few traces of his youthful correspondence to be found ; and of
' all those who knew him at that period, his fair Southwell corre-
' spondent alone seems to have been sufficiently endowed with the
' gift of second-sight to anticipate the Byron of a future day, and
' foresee the compound interest that Time and Fame would accumu-
' late on every precious scrap of the young bard which she hoarded.
' On the whole, however, it is not unsatisfactory to be able to state
' that, with the exception of a very small minority (only one of
' whom is possessed of any papers of much importance), every dis-
' tinguished associate and intimate of the noble poet, from the very
' outset to the close of his extraordinary career, has come forward
' cordially to communicate whatever memorials they possessed of
' him, — trusting, as I am willing to flatter myself, that he confided
' these treasures to one, who, if not able to do full justice to the
' memory of their common friend, would, at least, not willingly
' suffer it to be dishonoured in his hands " (Moore).
2. " They come, in dim procession led,
The cold, the faithless, and the dead."
The Lady of the Lake, Canto I. stanza xxxiii.
382 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
the state of the country, and the other, of your friend's
mind, when they were written. Neither of them were
sent to the person concerned, but you will see, by the
style of them, that they were sincere, as I am in signing
myself
Yours ever and truly,
B.
Of the two enclosures, one was a letter intended to be sent to
Lady Byron, from which Moore (.Life, p. 534) made the following
extracts : —
943. — To Lady Byron.
Ravenna, Marza I mo, 1821.
I have received your message, through my sister's
letter, about English security, etc., etc. It is considerate,
(and true, even,) that such is to be found — but not that I
shall find it. Mr. * *, for his own views and purposes,
will thwart all such attempts till he has accomplished his
own, viz. to make me lend my fortune to some client of
his choosing.
At this distance — after this absence, and with my
utter ignorance of affairs and business — with my temper
and impatience, I have neither the means nor the mind
to resist * * * * Thinking of the funds as I do, and
wishing to secure a reversion to my sister and her children,
I should jump at most expedients.
What I told you is come to pass — the Neapolitan war
is declared. Your funds will fall, and I shall be in con-
sequence ruined. That's nothing — but my blood relations
will be so. You and your child are provided for. Live
and prosper — I wish so much to both. Live and prosper
— you have the means. I think but of my real kin and
kindred, who may be the victims of this accursed bubble.
1 82 1.] A CHARITY BALL. 383
You neither know nor dream of the consequences of
this war. It is a war of men with monarchs, and will
spread like a spark on the dry, rank grass of the vegetable
desert. What it is with you and your English, you do
not know, for ye sleep. What it is with us here, I know,
for it is before, and around, and within us.
Judge of my detestation of England and of all that it
inherits, when I avoid returning to your country at a time
when not only my pecuniary interests, but, it may be, even
my personal security, require it. I can say no more, for
all letters are opened. A short time will decide upon
what is to be done here, and then you will learn it with-
out being more troubled with me or my correspondence.
Whatever happens, an individual is little, so the cause is
forwarded.
I have no more to say to you on the score of affairs,
or on any other subject.
The second enclosure consisted of some verses, written by Byron,
December 10, 1820, on seeing the following paragraph in a news-
paper : — " Lady Byron is this year the Lady Patroness of the Annual
" Charity Ball given in the Town Hall at Hinckley, hi Leicestershire,
"and Sir George Crewe, Bart., the principal Steward." The para-
graph will be found in the Morning Chronicle for Tuesday, Novem-
ber 21, 1820. From these verses, Moore prints the following : —
What matter the pangs of a husband and father,
If his sorrows in exile be great or be small,
So the Pharisee's glories around her she gather,
And the saint patronises her " Charity Ball."
What matters — a heart, which though faulty was feeling,
Be driven to excesses which once could appal —
That the sinner should suffer is only fair dealing,
As the saint keeps her charity back for " the Ball,"
etc., etc.
384 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
944. — To Thomas Moore.
September — no — October I, 1821.
I have written to you lately, both in prose and verse,
at great length, to Paris and London. I presume that
Mrs. Moore, or whoever is your Paris deputy, will forward
my packets to you in London.
I am setting off for Pisa, if a slight incipient inter-
mittent fever do not prevent me. I fear it is not strong
enough to give Murray much chance of realising his
thirteens again. I hardly should regret it, I think, pro-
vided you raised your price upon him — as what Lady
Holderness1 (my sister's grandmother, a Dutchwoman)
used to call Augusta, her Residee Legatoo — so as to pro-
vide for us all : my bones with a splendid and larmoy-
ante edition, and you with double what is extractable
during my lifetime.
I have a strong presentiment that (bating some out of
the way accident) you will survive me. The difference
of eight years, or whatever it is, between our ages, is
nothing. I do not feel (nor am, indeed, anxious to feel)
the principle of life in me tend to longevity. My father
and mother died, the one at thirty-five or six, and the
other at forty-five ; and Dr. Rush, or somebody else, says
that nobody lives long, without having one parent, at least,
an old stager.
I should, to be sure, like to see out my eternal mother-
in-law, not so much for her heritage, but from my natural
antipathy. But the indulgence of this natural desire is
too much to expect from the Providence who presides
over old women. I bore you with all this about lives,
because it has been put in my way by a calculation of
I. See Letters, vol. i. p. 18, note i. Mary, daughter of Francis
Doublet, Member of the States of Holland, married in 1743 Robert
D'Arcy, fourth and last Earl of Holderness.
1 82 1.] THE VISION OF JUDGMENT. 385
insurances which Murray has sent me. I really think
you should have more, if I evaporate within a reasonable
time.
I wonder if my Cain has got safe to England. I
have written since about sixty stanzas of a poem, in
octave stanzas, (in the Pulci style, which the fools in
England think was invented by Whistlecraft — it is as old
as the hills in Italy,) called T/ie Vision of Judgment? by
Quevedo Redivivus, with this motto —
" A Daniel come to judgment, yea, a Daniel :
I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word."
In this it is my intent to put the said George's Apo-
theosis in a Whig point of view, not forgetting the Poet
Laureate for his preface and his other demerits.
I am just got to the pass where Saint Peter, hearing
that the royal defunct had opposed Catholic Emancipa-
tion, rises up, and, interrupting Satan's oration, declares
he will change places with Cerberus sooner than let him
into heaven, while he has the keys thereof.
I must go and ride, though rather feverish and chilly.
It is the ague season ; but the agues do me rather good
than harm. The feel after the fit is as if one had got rid
of one's body for good and all.
The gods go with you ! — Address to Pisa.
Ever yours.
I. The Vision of Judgment was published as Article I. in the first
number of The Liberal : Verse and Prose from the South (London,
1822). Goethe (Crabb Robinson's Diary, vol. ii. p. 437) delighted
in the poem, and characterized the verses on George IV. as the
" sublime of hatred." Francisco Gomez de Quevedo Villegas (1580-
1645), the Spanish satirist, " the scourge of silly poets," published
his five Sueilos (Visions) in 1627. The first, El Suefto de las Cavalleras
(the Vision of the Skulls), is a picture of the Last Judgment and a
satire on human vice. Quevedo's Visions were translated by, among
others, Sir R. L'Estrange in 1667 ; but the version printed in the
Edinburgh edition (3 vols., 1798) of Quevedo's Select Works is that
of an anonymous translator.
VOL. V. 2 C
386 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
P.S. — Since I came back, I feel better, though I
stayed out too late for this malaria season, under the thin
crescent of a very young moon, and got off my horse to
walk in an avenue with a Signora for an hour. I thought
of you and
" When at eve thou rovest
By the star thou lovest." l
But it was not in a romantic mood, as I should have been
once ; and yet it was a new woman, (that is, new to me,)
and, of course, expected to be made love to. But I
merely made a few common-place speeches. I feel, as
your poor friend Curran said, before his death, " a moun-
" tain of lead upon my heart," 2 which I believe to be
constitutional, and that nothing will remove it but the
same remedy.
945. — To John Murray.
Octr. 4'!1 1821.
DEAR MURRAY, — I send you in 8 sheets, and 106
stanzas (octave), a poem entitled a Vision of Judgement,
etc., by Quevedo Redivivus, of which you will address
the proof to me at Pisa, and an answer by return of post.
Pray, let the Printer be as careful as he can to decypher
it, which may be not so easy.
It may happen that you will be afraid to publish it :
in that case, find me a publisher, assuring him that, if he
1. These lines begin the second stanza of " Go where glory waits
" thee" (Moore's Irish Melodies, No. I.).
2. Curran died October 14, 1817. " His spirits were now in a state
' of the most distressing depression. He complained of having ' a
' mountain of lead upon his heart.' This despondency he increased
' by dwelling perpetually upon the condition of Ireland, which his
' imagination was for ever representing to him as doomed to endless
' divisions and degradation " (Life of the Right Hon. J. P. Curran,
ed. 1819, vol. ii. p. 381).
1 82 1.] GROWING DEPRESSION. 387
gets into a scrape, I will give up my name or person. I
do not approve of your mode of not putting publisher's
names on title pages (which was unheard of, till you gave
yourself that air) : an author's case is different, and from
time immemorial have (sic) published anonymously.
I wait to hear the arrival of various packets.
Yours,
B.
Address to Pisa.
946. — To Thomas Moore.
October 6, 1821.
By this post I have sent my nightmare to balance the
incubus of Southey's impudent anticipation of the Apo-
theosis of George the Third.1 I should like you to take
a look over it, as I think there are two or three things in
it which might please " our puir hill folk."
By the last two or three posts I have written to you
at length. My ague bows to me every two or three days,
but we are not as yet upon intimate speaking terms. I
have an intermittent generally every two years, when the
climate is favourable (as it is here), but it does me no
harm. What I find worse, and cannot get rid of, is the
growing depression of my spirits, without sufficient cause.
I ride — I am not intemperate in eating or drinking — and
my general health is as usual, except a slight ague, which
rather does good than not. It must be constitutional;
for I know nothing more than usual to depress me to that
degree.
How do you manage ? I think you told me, at Venice,
that your spirits did not keep up without a little claret.
I. Southey's Vision of Judgment appeared in 1821.
388 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
I can drink, and bear a good deal of wine (as you may
recollect in England) ; but it don't exhilarate — it makes
me savage and suspicious, and even quarrelsome. Lau-
danum has a similar effect ; but I can take much of *'/
without any effect at all. The thing that gives me the
highest spirits (it seems absurd, but true) is a dose of
salts — I mean in the afternoon, after their effect. But
one can't take them like champagne.
Excuse this old woman's letter; but my lemancholy
don't depend upon health, for it is just the same, well or
ill, or here or there.
Yours, etc.
947. — To John Murray.
Ra. Octr.e 9'.h 1821.
DEAR MORAY, — You will please to present or convey
the enclosed poem 1 to Mr. Moore : I sent him another
copy to Paris, but he has probably left that city.
It is doubtful whether the poem was written by Felicia
Hemans for the prize of the Dartmoor Academy, or by
the Revd. W. L. Bowles with a view to a bishopric : your
own great discernment will decide between them.
By last post I sent the Vision of fiidgement by Quevedo
Redivivus. I just piddle a little with these trifles to keep
my hand in for the new English Bards, etc., which I per-
ceive some of your people are in want of, and which I
only wait for a short visit to your country, to put me
more in possession of the nonsense of some of your
newer ragamuffins, to commence. I have not sought it;
but if I do begin, it shall go hard, as Shylock says, " but
" I better the Instruction."
Yours ever,
B.
i. "The Irish Avatar."
l82I.] SHELLEY ON DON JUAN. 389
Address to Pisa,1 and acknowledge all packets by
name — else it makes confusion.
i. Byron, however, lingered at Ravenna a fortnight longer. All
was ready for him at Pisa, and, as the following letter (from Shelley
shows, the Countess Guiccioli was beginning to despair of his ever
leaving Ravenna : —
"Pisa, Octr. 21, 1821.
" MY DEAR LORD BYRON, — I should have written to you long
" since but that I have been led to expect you almost daily in Pisa,
" and that I imagined you would cross my letter on your road.
" Many thanks for Don Juan. It is a poem totally of its own
" species, and my wonder and delight at the grace of the composition
" no less than the free and grand vigour of the conception of it per-
" petually increase. The few passages which any one might desire
" to be cancelled in the Is,' and 2'ld Cants, are here reduced almost
" to nothing. This poem carries with it at once the stamp of
" originality and a defiance of imitation. Nothing has ever been
" written like it in English, nor, if I may venture to prophesy, will
" there be, without carrying upon it the mark of a secondary and
" borrowed light. You unveil and present in its true deformity what
" is worst in human nature, and this is what the witlings of the age
" murmur at, conscious of their want of power to endure the scrutiny
" of such a light. We are damned to the knowledge of good and
"evil, and it is well for us to know what we should avoid no less
" than what we should seek.
" The character of Lambro, his return, the merriment of his
" daughter's guests, made, as it were, in celebration of his funeral, the
" meeting with the lovers, and the death of Haidee, are circumstances
" combined and developed in a manner that I seek elsewhere in vain.
" The fifth Canto, which some of your pet Zoili in Albemarle S*.
" said was dull, gathers instead of loses, splendour and energy : the
" language in which the whole is clothed — a sort of cameleon under
"the changing sky of the spirit that kindles it — is such as these
" lisping days could not have expected, and are, believe me, in spite
" of the approbation which you wrest from them, little pleased to
" hear.
" One can hardly judge from recitation, and it was not until I read
"it in print that I have been able to do it justice. This sort of
" writing only on a great plan, and perhaps in a more compact form,
" is what I wished you to do when I made my vows for an epic.
" But I am content. You are building up a drama, such as
" England has not yet seen, and the task is sufficiently noble and
" worthy of you.
" When may we expect you ? The Countess G. is very patient,
" though sometimes she seems apprehensive that you will never leave
" Ravenna.
" I have suffered from my habitual disorder and from a tertian
" fever since I returned, and my ill health has prevented me from
" shewing her the attentions I could have desired in Pisa.
39° THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
P.S. — If there is anything new of Israel's, send it me.
I like Israeli : ist!y he " having done the handsome
" thing by me," as Winifred Jenkins says, when you
showed him (you shabby fellow !) my marginal notes in
Athens upon his Essay — instead of being angry like a
spoilt child of ink and paper; and 2nc!ly, because he is
the Bayle of literary speculation, and puts together more
amusing information than anybody; and 3d.Iy, he likes
Pope.
Don't forget to send me my first act of Werner (if
Hobhouse can find it amongst my papers) — send it by
the post (to Pisa) ; and also cut out Sophia Lee's " Ger-
" man's tale," 1 from the Canterbury Tales, and send it in
a letter also.
" I have heard from Hunt, who tells me that he is coming out in
" November, by sea I believe.
" Your house is ready and all the furniture arranged. Lega, they
" say, is to have set off yesterday.
" The Countess tells me that you think of leaving Allegra for the
' present at the convent. Do as you think best ; but I can pledge
' myself to find a situation for her here such as you would approve,
' in case you change your mind.
" I hear no political news but such as announces the slow victory
' of the spirit of the past over that of the present. The other day,
' a number of Heteristi, escaped from the defeat in Wallachia, past
' through Pisa, to embark at Leghorn and join Ipsilanti in Livadia.
' It is highly to the credit of the actual government of Tuscany, that
' it allowed these poor fugitives 3 livres a day each, and free quarters
' during their passage through these states.
" Mrs. S. desires her best regards.
"My dear Lord Byron, yours most faithfully,
" P. B. SHELLEY."
I. "Kruitzner, or the German's Tale," by Harriet Lee, was
fublished in vol. iv. of the second edition of the Canterbury Tales
1801) of Harriet and Sophia Lee. The parallel passages between
the Tale and Werner are given in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine
(vol. xii. pp. 713-719).
The first act of Werner, which Byron wrote in 1815, and which
could not be found in 1821, will be published in vol. v. of Byron's
Works (Poems) from the MS. in Mr. Murray's possession. The
play, as published in 1823, was printed from a MS. in Mrs. Shelley's
handwriting.
The Hon. F. Leveson Gower (Ninetemth Century, August, 1899)
1 82 1.] A GREAT READER OF THE BIBLE. 391
I began that tragedy in 1815, but Lady Byron's farce
put it out of my head for the time of her representation.
By the way, you have a good deal of my prose tracts
in MSS. Let me have proofs of them all again — I mean
the controversial ones, including the last two or three years
of time. Another question. The Epistle of St. Paul,
which I translated from the Armenian — for what reason
have you kept it back, though you published that stuff
which gave rise to The Vampire! Is it because you are
afraid to print any thing in opposition to the Cant of
the Quarterly about " Manicheism " ? Let me have a
proof of that Epistle directly. I am a better Christian
than those parsons of yours, though not paid for being so.
Send— Faber's Treatise on the " Cabiri."
Sainte-Croix's "Mysteres du Paganisme" (scarce,
perhaps, but to be found, as Mitford refers to his work
frequently).
A common Bible, of a good legible print (bound in
Russia). I have one ; but as it was the last gift of my
Sister (whom I shall probably never see again), I can
only use it carefully, and less frequently, because I like
to keep it in good order. Don't forget this, for I am a
great reader and admirer of those books, and had read
them through and through before I was eight years old, —
that is to say, the Old Testament, for the New struck me
as a task, but the other as a pleasure. I speak as a boy,
from the recollected impression of that period at Aberdeen
in 1796.
Any novels of Scott, or poetry of the same. Ditto of
maintains that the play, which Murray published in 1823 as Byron's,
was really written by his grandmother, Georgiana, Duchess of
Devonshire, and given by her to Lady Caroline Lamb, and by
Lady Caroline to Byron. (See also Literature, August 12, 19, 26,
1899.) The subject will be fully discussed in vol. v. of Byron's
Poems.
392 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
Crabbe, Moore, and the Elect ; but none of your damned
commonplace trash, — unless something starts up of actual
merit, which may very well be, for 'tis time it should.
" Plutarch's Morals, etc.," in the old English translation.
" Gillies' Greece," and interval between Alexander and
Augustus (I have Mitford), in Octavo, if possible — I can't
read quartos.
" Life of Apollonius of Tyana," published (or trans-
lated) 8 or nine (9) years ago.
" Leslie's Short and Easy Method with the Deists."
I want a Bayle, but am afraid of the carriage and the
weight, as also of folios in general.
" Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy." 1
948. — To John Murray.
Octr. 20^ 1821.
DEAR MORAY, — j^the errors are in the MSS., write
me down an Ass: they are not, and I am content to
undergo any penalty if they be. Besides, the omitted
Stanza (last but one or two), sent afterwards, was that in
the MSS. too ?
Have you received a printed sheet or two from an
old MSS., as a note to The Doge? sent two months ago ?
I am anxious about that.
As to " honour" I will trust no man's honour in affairs
of barter. I will tell you why. A state of bargain is
Hobbes's " state of Nature — a state of war." 2 It is so
with all men. If I come to a friend, and say, " friend,
1. In a letter, dated November 14, Murray writes, " I have now
" sent you all the books you wrote for, and amongst them your own
' ' copy of Burton, which I got at your sale. The bible I have sent
" you is one with a selection of the best commentaries."
2. " Negari non potest, quin status hominum naturalis, antequam
" in societatem coiretur, bellum fuerit " (Hobbes, De Give, Libertas,
cap. i. § 12).
1 82 1.] THE ETHICS OF BARGAINING. 393
" lend me five hundred pounds ! " — he either does it, or
says that he can't or won't ; but if I come to Ditto, and say,
" Ditto, I have an excellent house, or horse, or carriage,
"or MSS., or books, or pictures, or, etc., etc., etc., etc.,
" etc., honestly worth a thousand pounds, you shall have
" them for five hundred," what does Ditto say ? Why, he
looks at them, he hums, he 7ia's, — he humbiigs^ if he can,
to get a bargain as cheaply as he can, because it is a
bargain : this is in the blood and bone of mankind ; and
the same man who would lend another a thousand
pounds without interest, would not buy a horse of him
for half its value if he could help it. It is so : there's no
denying it ; and therefore I will have as much as I can,
and you will give as little. And there's an end. All men
are intrinsical rascals, and I am only sorry that, not being
a dog, I can't bite them.
So, Thomas M[oore] is in town incog. : love to him.
I except him from my regretted morsures, for I have
always found him the pink of honour and honesty :
besides I liked his country till its late performance.
By the way, did Mawman or Mawman's friend deliver
to him the two MSS. Books consigned for him ? This
is your concern, so anatomize Mawman about it. They
belong to your posthumous adventure, that is to say, to
mine.
I am filling another * for you with little anecdotes, to
my own knowledge, or well authenticated, of Sheridan,
Curran, etc., and such other public men as I recollect to
have been acquainted with, for I knew most of them
more or less. I will do what I can to prevent your
losing by my obsequies.
Acknowledge packets.
Yours,
B.
i. The contents of this book are printed in Chap. XXIII.
394 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
P.S. — Address to Pisa.
P.S. — Acknowledge Vision of Judgement by Quevedo
Redivivus, sent on the pth; also "The Irish Avatar"
(for Mr. Moore), put in the letter-bag afterwards, a day
or two.
949. — To Samuel Rogers.1
Ravenna, Oct. 21s.1 1821.
DEAR ROGERS, — I shall be (the Gods willing) in
Bologna on Saturday next. This is a curious answer to
your letter; but I have taken a house in Pisa for the
I. Rogers, who left England in August, 1821, reached Venice in
October. Thence he wrote to Byron, proposing to visit him at
Ravenna (Clayden's Rogers and his Contemporaries, vol. i. p. 319).
They met at Bologna. On the road to Bologna from Ravenna
Byron met Lord Clare. See Detached Thoughts, p. 455 (91) and
p. 462 (113). "At Bologna," writes Rogers from Florence to his
sister, November n, 1821 (ibid., pp. 320, 323), "I waited a day
' for Lord Byron, and crossed the Apennines with him. Our party
' consisted of a dog, a cat, a hawk, an old gondolier from Venice,
' and other sundries. His Foscari is already printed, and will, I
' fear, get the start of us. ... Lord Byron is gone to live at Pisa.
' He spent only one day here. I wish you had seen him set off,
' every window of the inn was open to see him. ... I received a
' visit from our old friend the poet, with his book. Lord Byron
' amused himself with writing a sonnet for him, in which he makes
' him describe himself as a bore ; whether he will shew it about I
'don't know." The meeting is described by Rogers in his Italy
(Bologna) —
" Much had pass'd
Since last we parted ; and those five short years —
Much had they told ! His clustering locks were turn'd
Gray ; nor did aught recall the Youth that swam
From Sestos to Abydos. Yet his voice,
Still it was sweet ; still from his eye the thought
Flashed lightning-like, nor lingered on the way,
Waiting for words. Far, far into the night
We sat, conversing — no unwelcome hour,
The hour we met ; and, when Aurora rose,
Rising, we climb'd the rugged Apennine."
For Byron's journey across the Apennines and visit to Florence
with Rogers, see Detached Thoughts, p. 464 (114, 115).
1 82 1.] AN INVITATION TO ROGERS. 395
winter, to which all my chattels — furniture, horses, car-
riages, and live stock — are already removed, and I am
preparing to follow.
The cause of this removal is, shortly, the exile or pro-
scription of all my friends' relations and connections here
into Tuscany, on account of our late politics ; and where
they go, I accompany them. I merely remained till
now to settle some arrangements about my daughter, and
to give time for my furniture, etc., to precede me. I
have not here a seat or a bed hardly, except some/wry
chairs, and tables, and a mattrass for the week to come.
If you will go on with me to Pisa, I can lodge you
for as long as you like ; (they write that the house, the
Palazzo Lanfranchi,1 is spacious : it is on the Arno ;) and
I have four carriages, and as many saddle-horses (such as
they are in these parts), with all other conveniences at
your command, as also their owner. If you can't do
this, we may, at least, cross the Apennines together; or
if you are going by another road, we shall meet at
Bologna, I hope. I address this to the post-office (as
you desire), and you will probably find me at the Albergo
di San Marco. If you arrive first, wait till I come up,
which will be (barring accidents) on Saturday or Sunday
at farthest.
I presume you are alone in your voyages. Moore is
in London incog, according to my latest advices from
those climates.
It is better than a lustre (five years and six months
I. The Lanfranchi family, Ghibelline leaders at Pisa, are men-
tioned by Count Ugolino (in Circle ix. of Hell), together with the
Gualandi and Sismondi, as compassing his destruction. See Inferno.
Canto XXXIII. lines 31-33—
" Con cagne magre, studiose e conte,
Gualandi con Sismondi e con Lanfranchi,
S'avea messi dinanzi dalla fronte."
396 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
and some days, more or less) since we met ; and like the
man from Tadcaster in the farce Love Laughs at Lock-
smiths l ), whose acquaintances, including the cat and the
terrier, " who caught a halfpenny in his mouth," were all
"gone dead," but too many of our acquaintances have
taken the same path. Lady Melbourne, Grattan, Sheri-
dan, Curran, etc., etc. — without reckoning the oiTroAAoi —
almost every body of much name of the old school. But
" so am not I, said the foolish fat scullion ; " 2 therefore
let us make the most of our remainder.
Let me find two lines from you at " the Hostel or Inn."
Yours ever, etc.,
B.
950. — To John Murray.
Ra. Octr. 26'!' 1821.
DEAR MORAY, — I waited here another week to receive
the proofs of Cain, which have not arrived, though your
last letter announced them for next post. I must start
for Pisa on Saturday, so by this means there is a. fortnight
lost ; for the proof must follow through cross posts. Upon
1. Love Laughs at Locksmiths, by G. Colman the Younger,
act ii. Risk, disguised as Solomon Lob, in conversation with
Totterton, who asks after their mutual friends, kills them all.
" Totterton, And honest Mat Figgins, the grocer — is he hale and
"hearty?
" Risk. He be dead too.
" Totterton. He dead too ! Poor Mat ! his lump sugar was
" excellent. He had a dog, I remember, that chucked a halfpenny
" off his nose into his mouth whenever you said ' nine.' Is the dog
"alive?
" Risk. Noa ; he eat a halfpenny.
" Totterton. And did that kill him ?
"Risk. Ees ; 'Twere such a varry bad one."
2. " We had a fat, foolish scullion — my father, I think, kept her
"for her simplicity; — she had been all autumn struggling with a
"dropsy. — 'He is dead,' said Obadiah, — 'he is certainly dead !' —
" ' So am not I,' said the foolish scullion " ( Tristram Shandy, Bk. V.
c. 7).
l82I.] A FINE GENTLEMAN. 397
my word, you will provoke me to play you some trick,
one of these days, that you won't like.
By this post I send you a third corrected copy of Don
Juan. I will thank you to be more careful in future.
Yours, etc.
Please to acknowledge the Vision of Judgement by
Quevedo Redivivus, and other packets.
951. — To John Murray.
Ra, Octr. 26'!' 1821.
DEAR MORAY, — You say the errors are in the MSS. :
now, excuse me, but this is not true ; and I defy you to
prove it to be true.
The truth is you are a fine gentleman, and negligent
as becomes a mighty man in his business.
I send you a third copy corrected^ with some alteration ;
and, by this and the other corrected copies, I request you
to print any future impression.
BYRON.
P.S. — Collate this with the other two copies, both
sent by the post. And, pray, when I send you a parcel
or packet, do acknowledge it. I care nothing about my
letters or your answers: I only want to know, when I
have taken trouble about a thing, that it has arrived.
You shall be the hero of my next poem : will you
publish it ?
952. — To Thomas Moore.
Ravenna, Oct. 28, 1821.
" Tis the middle of night by the castle clock," 1 and in
three hours more I have to set out on my way to Pisa —
I. Christabel, Part I. line I.
398 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
sitting up all night to be sure of rising. I have just made
them take off my bed-clothes — blankets inclusive — in
case of temptation from the apparel of sheets to my
eyelids.
Samuel Rogers is — or is to be — at Bologna, as he
writes from Venice.
I thought our Magnifico would "pound you," if
possible.1 He is trying to " pound " me, too j but I'll
specie the rogue — or at least, I'll have the odd shillings
out of him in keen iambics.
Your approbation of Sardanapalus 2 is agreeable, for
more reasons than one. Hobhouse is pleased to think
as you do of it, and so do some others — but the " Arimas-
" pian " whom, like " a Gryphon in the wilderness," 3 I
will "follow for his gold" (as I exhorted you to do
before), did or doth disparage it — " stinting me in my
"sizings." His notable opinions on the Foscari and
Cain he hath not as yet forwarded ; or, at least, I have
not yet received them, nor the proofs thereof, though
promised by last post.
I see the way that he and his Quarterly people are
tending — they want a row with me, and they shall have
1. I.e. Murray would try to pay in pounds, not guineas, for the
Memoirs.
2. Moore, in his Diary for September 30, 1821 (Memoirs, etc., vol.
iii. p. 282), writes, " Read the proofs of Lord B.'s ' Sardanapalus,'
" with which I was delighted. Much originality in the character of
" Sardanapalus, but not a dramatic personage ; his sly, insinuating
" sarcasms too delicate for the broad sign-painting of the stage."
3. The Arimaspians, a one-eyed people of Scythia, coveted gold
for the adornment of their hair. Hence there is perpetual strife
between them and the Gryphons, creatures in form half-eagle, half-
lion, who guard the mines (Herodotus, iv. 13). Byron refers to
Milton's Paradise Lost (Bk. II. lines 943, etc.) —
" As when a gryphon thro' the wilderness,
With winged course, o'er hill or moory dale,
Pursues the Arimaspian, who, by stealth,
Had from his wakeful custody purloined
The guarded gold."
l82I.] BRUNSWICK BLARNEY. 399
it. I only regret that I am not in England for the nonce ;
as, here, it is hardly fair ground for me, isolated and out
of the way of prompt rejoinder and information as I am.
But, though backed by all the corruption, and infamy,
and patronage of their master rogues and slave renegadoes,
if they do once rouse me up,
"They had better gall the devil, Salisbury." '
I have that for two or three of them, which they had
better not move me to put in motion ; — and yet, after all,
what a fool I am to disquiet myself about such fellows !
It was all very well ten or twelve years ago, when I was
a " curled darling," and minded such things. At present,
I rate them at their true value ; but, from natural temper
and bile, am not able to keep quiet.
Let me hear from you on your return from Ireland,
which ought to be ashamed to see you, after her Bruns-
wick blarney.2 I am of Longman's opinion, that you
should allow your friends to liquidate the Bermuda claim.3
1. " Thou wert better gall the devil, Salisbury."
King John, act iv. sc. 3.
2. The Annual Register, 1821 (p. 220), quotes the following
passage from the Dublin Evening Post : —
" No King that ever reigned has rendered such a service as this to
' Ireland. If our factions, losing all their asperities, shall ultimately
1 be melted into one feeling of Devotion to the Sovereign, and of
' rational attachment to the Country, posterity will attribute the
' blessings to the Fourth King of the Brunswick Line, to the first
' King that ever visited Ireland, in the pride, pomp, and circum-
' stance of glorious Peace."
Upon this passage Byron fastens in " The Irish Avatar" (Septem-
ber 16, 1821) —
" But he comes ! the messiah of royalty conies !
Like a goodly Leviathan rolled from the waves !
Then receive him as best such an advent becomes,
With a legion of cooks, and an army of slaves ! " etc., etc.
See also the address of the Corporation of Dublin to George IV.,
in the Annual Register, 1821 (p. 322*).
3. Moore, during his visit to London in September, 1821 (Memoirs,
vol. iii. p. 281), was told by Longman that Lord Lansdowne had
400 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
Why should you throw away the two thousand pounds
(of the non-guinea. Murray) ;upon that cursed piece of
treacherous inveiglement? I think you carry the matter
a little too far and scrupulously. When we see patriots
begging publicly, and know that Grattan received a fortune
from his country, I really do not see why a man, in no
whit inferior to any or all of them, should shrink from
accepting that assistance from his private friends which
every tradesman receives from his connections upon much
less occasions. For, after all, it was not your debt — it
was a piece of swindling against you. As to * * *, and
the " what noble creatures ! l etc., etc.," it is all very fine
and very well, but, till you can persuade me that there is
110 credit^ and no self-applause to be obtained by being of
use to a celebrated man, I must retain the same opinion
of the human sp&cies, which I do of our friend Mr. Spe«>.
Yours ever, etc.,
BYRON.
953. — To John Murray.
gbre 30th J82!.
DEAR MORAY, — You say the errors were in the MSS.
of D. J. — but the omitted stanza, which I sent you in an
after letter, and the omitted notes? please to replace
them.
Yours,
B.
placed .£1000 in his hands to liquidate the Bermuda claim against
himself. Lord John Russell (ibid., p. 292) also pressed on Moore
.£200 for the same object.
I. "I had mentioned to him, with all the praise and gratitude
" such friendship deserved, some generous offers of aid which, from
" more than one quarter, I had received at this period, and which,
" though declined, have been not the less warmly treasured in my
" recollection " (Moore).
1 82 1.] PRESENTIMENT OF EVIL. 4OI
I am just setting off for Pisa.1
Favour the enclosed to Mr. Moore.
Address to Pisa.
I. Moore (Life, p. 538) quotes Countess Guiccioli's account of
Byron's reluctance to leave Ravenna. "Egli era parti to con molto
" riverescimento da Ravenna, e col pressentimento che la sua
"partenza da Ravenna ci sarebbe cagione di molti mali. In ogni
"lettera che egli mi scriveva allora egli mi esprimeva il suo dis-
"piacere di lasciare Ravenna. ' Se papa e richiamato (mi scriveva
"egli) io torno in quel istante a Ravenna, e se e richiamato prima
"dellamia partenza, io nonparto? In questa speranza egli differl
" varii mesi a partire. Ma, finalmente, non potendo piu sperare il
"nostro ri torno prossimo, egli mi scriveva — 'Io parto molto mal
"volontieri prevedendo dei mali assai grandi per voi altri emassimo
" per voi ; altro non dico, — Io vedrete.' E in un altra lettera, ' Io
"lascio Ravenna cosi mal volontieri, e cosl persuaso che la mia
" partenza non puo che condurre da un male ad un altro piu grande
"che non ho cuore di scrivere altro in questo punto.' Egli mi
" scriveva allora sempre in Italiano e trascrivo le sue precise parole
" — ma come quei suoi pressentimenti si verificarono poi in appresso ! "
Of this passage Moore (ibid., pp. 538, 539) gives the following
translation : —
" He left Ravenna with great regret, and with a presentiment
" that his departure would be the forerunner of a thousand evils to
"us. In every letter he then wrote to me, he expressed his dis-
" pleasure at this step. ' If your father should be recalled,' he said,
" ' 1 immediately return to Ravenna ; and if he is recalled previous
" to my departure, / remain.1 In this hope he delayed his journey
" for several months ; but at last, no longer having any expectation
"of our immediate return, he wrote to me, saying, 'I set out most
"unwillingly, foreseeing the most evil results for all of you, and
"principally for yourself. I say no more, but you will see.'
"And in another letter he says, 'I leave Ravenna so unwillingly,
"and with such a persuasion on my mind that my departure will
" lead from one misery to another, each greater than the former, that
" I have not the heart to utter another word on the subject.' He
"always wrote to me at that time in Italian, and I transcribe his
"exact words. How entirely were these presentiments verified by
"the event!"
Another passage from Countess Guiccioli's letter, of which the
original has been lost, is given by Moore (ibid., p. 539) —
" This sort of simple life he led until the fatal day of his departure
" for Greece, and the few variations he made from it may be said to
' have arisen solely from the greater or smaller number of occasions
' which were offered him of doing good, and from the generous
1 actions he was continually performing. Many families (in Ravenna
'principally) owed to him the few prosperous days they ever en-
' joyed. His arrival in that town was spoken of as a piece of
VOL. V. 2 D
402 THE PALAZZO GUICCIOLI, RAVENNA. [CHAP. XXII.
' public good fortune, and his departure as a public calamity ; and
' this is the life which many attempted to asperse as that of a liber -
' tine ! But the world must at last learn how, with so good and
' generous a heart, Lord Byron, susceptible, it is true, of the most
' energetic passions, yet, at the same time, of the sublimest and
1 most pure, and rendering homage in his acts to every virtue — how
'he, I say, could afford such scope to malice and to calumny.
' Circumstances, and also, probably, an eccentricity of disposition
' (which, nevertheless, had its origin in a virtuous feeling, an exces-
' sive abhorrence for hypocrisy and affectation), contributed, perhaps,
'to cloud the splendour of his exalted nature in the opinion of
'many. But you will well know how to analyse these contra-
' dictions in a manner worthy of your noble friend and of yourself,
' and you will prove that the goodness of his heart was not inferior
' to the grandeur of his genius."
l82I.] ITALY REPLUNGED INTO BARBARISM. 403
CHAPTER XXIII.
" MY DICTIONARY," MAY, 1821 — DETACHED THOUGHTS,1
OCTOBER 15, 1821 — MAY 18, 1822.
Ravenna, May I?1 1821.
AMONGST various journals, memoranda, diaries, etc.,
which I have kept in the course of my living, I began
one about three months ago, and carried it on till I had
filled one paper-book (thinnish), and two sheets or so of
another. I then left off, partly because I thought we
should have some business here, and I had furbished up
my arms, and got my apparatus ready for taking a turn
with the Patriots, having my drawers full of their pro-
clamations, oaths, and resolutions, and my lower rooms
of their hidden weapons of most calibres; and partly
because I had filled my paper book. But the Neapolitans
have betrayed themselves and all the World, and those
who would have given their blood for Italy can now
only give her their tears.
Some day or other, if dust holds together, I have
been enough in the Secret (at least in this part of the
country) to cast perhaps some little light upon the
atrocious treachery which has replunged Italy into
Barbarism. At present I have neither the time nor the
I. In this and previous editions copious extracts have been made
from Byron's Detached Thoughts. But the original manuscript is
here, for the first time, given in its entirety. The volume bears
the inscription "Paper Book of G.G.B, L"? B — . Ravenna, 1821."
404 "MY DICTIONARY." [CHAP. xxni.
temper. However, the real Italians are not to blame
— merely the scoundrels at the Heel of the Boot, which
the Hun now wears, and will trample them to ashes with
for their Servility.
I have risked myself with the others here, and how
far I may or may not be compromised is a problem at
this moment : some of them like " Craigengelt " would
" tell all and more than all to save themselves ; " but, come
what may, the cause was a glorious one, though it reads
at present as if the Greeks had run away from Xerxes.
Happy the few who have only to reproach themselves
with believing that these rascals were less rascaille than
they proved. Here in Romagna the efforts were neces-
sarily limited to preparations and good intentions, until
the Germans were fairly engaged in equal warfare, as we
are upon their very frontiers without a single fort, or hill,
nearer than San Marino. Whether " Hell will be paved
" with " those " good intentions," I know not ; but there
will probably be good store of Neapolitans to walk
upon the pavement, whatever may be it's composition.
Slabs of lava from their mountain, with the bodies of
their own damned Souls for cement, would be the fittest
causeway for Satan's Corso.
But what shall I write? another Journal? I think
not. Anything that comes uppermost — and call it " my
" Dictionary."
MY DICTIONARY.
Augustus. — I have often been puzzled with his
character. Was he a great Man ? Assuredly. But not
one of my great men. I have always looked upon Sylla
as the greatest Character in History, for laying down
his power at the moment when it was
" too great to keep or to resign,"
1 8 2 1 .] AUGUSTUS. 40 5
and thus despising them all. As to the retention of his
power by Augustus, the thing was already settled. If he
had given it up, the Commonwealth was gone, the republic
was long past all resuscitation. Had Brutus and Cassius
gained the battle of Philippi, it would not have restored
the republic — its days ended with the Gracchi, the rest
was a mere struggle of parties. You might as well cure a
Consumption, restore a broken egg, as revive a state so
long a prey to every uppermost Soldier as Rome had
long been.
As for a despotism, if Augustus could have been sure
that all his Successors would have been like himself (I
mean not as Octavius^ but Augustus), or Napoleon would
have insured the world that none of his Successors would
have been like himself, the antient or modern World
might have gone on like the Empire of China — in a state
of lethargic prosperity.
Suppose, for instance, that, instead of Tiberius and
Caligula, Augustus had been immediately succeeded by
Nerva, Trajan, the Antonines, or even by Titus and his
father, what a difference in our estimate of himself? So
far from gaining by the contrast, I think that one half of
our dislike arises from his having been heired by Tiberius,
and one half of Julius Caesar's fame from his having had
his empire consolidated by Augustus.
Suppose that there had been no Octavius, and Tiberius
had " jumped the life " between, and at once succeeded
Julius ? And yet it is difficult to say whether hereditary
right, or popular choice, produce the worse Sovereigns.
The Roman Consuls make a goodly show, but then they
only reigned for a year, and were under a sort of personal
obligation to distinguish themselves. It is still more
difficult to say which form of Government is the worst
— all are so bad. As for democracy, it is the worst
406 " MY DICTIONARY." [CHAP. XXIII.
of the whole; for what is (in fact) democracy? an
Aristocracy of Blackguards.
ABERDEEN — OLD AND NEW, OR THE AULDTOUN
AND NEWTOUN.
For several years of my earliest childhood I was in
that City, but have never revisited it since I was ten
years old. I was sent at five years old, or earlier, to a
School kept by a Mr. Bowers, who was called " Bodsy
" Bowers " by reason of his dapperness. It was a School
for both sexes. I learned little there, except to repeat
by rote the first lesson of Monosyllables — " God made
" man, let us love him " — by hearing it often repeated,
without acquiring a letter. Whenever proof was made
of my progress at home, I repeated these words with the
most rapid fluency; but on turning over a new leaf, I
continued to repeat them, so that the narrow boundaries
of my first year's accomplishments were detected, my
ears boxed (which they did not deserve, seeing that it
was by ear only that I had acquired my letters), and my
intellects consigned to a new preceptor. He was a very
decent, clever, little Clergyman, named Ross, after-
wards Minister of one of the Kirks (East I think).
Under him I made an astonishing progress, and I recol-
lect to this day his mild manners and good-natured
pains-taking.
The moment I could read, my grand passion was
history ; and why, I know not, but I was particularly
taken with the battle near the Lake Regillus in the
Roman History, put into my hands the first.
Four years ago, when standing on the heights of
Tusculum, and looking down upon the little round Lake,
that was once Regillus, and which dots the immense
1 82 1.] GRAMMAR SCHOOL OF ABERDEEN. 407
expanse below, I remembered my young enthusiasm and
my old instructor.
Afterwards I had a very serious, saturnine, but kind
young man, named Paterson, for a Tutor : he was the
son of my Shoemaker, but a good Scholar, as is common
with the Scotch. He was a rigid Presbyterian also.
With him I began Latin in Ruddiman's Grammar, and
continued till I went to the " Grammar School " (Scotice
"Schule" — Aberdonice "Squeel"), where I threaded
all the Classes to the fourth, when I was re-called to
England (where I had been hatched) by the demise of
my Uncle.
I acquired this handwriting, which I can hardly read
myself, under the fair copies of Mr. Duncan of the same
city. I don't think that he would plume himself upon
my progress. However, I wrote much better then than I
have ever done since. Haste and agitation of one kind
or another have quite spoilt as pretty a scrawl as ever
scratched over a frank.
The Grammar School might consist of a hundred and
fifty of all ages under age. It was divided into five
classes, taught by four masters, the Chief teaching the
fifth and fourth himself, as in England the fifth, sixth
forms, and Monitors are heard by the Head Masters.
DETACHED THOUGHTS.
Octr. is1!1 1821.
I have been thinking over the other day on the
various comparisons, good or evil, which I have seen
published of myself in different journals English and
foreign. This was suggested to me by accidentally turn-
ing over a foreign one lately ; for I have made it a rule
latterly never to search for anything of the kind, but not
to avoid the perusal if presented by Chance.
408 DETACHED THOUGHTS. [CHAP. XXIII.
To begin then — I have seen myself compared person-
ally or poetically, in English, French, German (as inter-
preted to me), Italian, and Portuguese, within these nine
years, to Rousseau — Goethe — Young — Aretino — Timon of
Athens — " An Alabaster Vase lighted up within " — Satan
— Shakespeare — Buonaparte — Tiberius — Aeschylus —
Sophocles — Euripides — Harlequin — The Clown — Stern-
hold and Hopkins — to the Phantasmagoria — to Henry the
8'!1 — to Chenies — to Mirabeau — to young R. Dallas (the
Schoolboy) — to Michael Angelo — to Raphael — to a. petit
maitre — to Diogenes — to Childe Harold — to Lara — to the
Count in Beppo — to Milton — to Pope — to Dryden — to
Burns — to Savage — to Chatterton — to " oft have I heard
" of thee my Lord Biron " in Shakespeare — to Churchill
the poet — to Kean the Actor — to Alfieri, etc., etc., etc.
The likeness to Alfieri was asserted very seriously by an
Italian, who had known him in his younger days : it of
course related merely to our apparent personal disposi-
tions. He did not assert it to me (for we were not then
good friends), but in society.
The Object of so many contradictory comparisons
must probably be like something different from them all ;
but what that is, is more than / know, or any body else.
My Mother, before I was twenty, would have it that
I was like Rousseau, and Madame de Stael used to say
so too in 1813, and the Edin1' Review has something of
the sort in its critique on the 4* Canto of CK. Jfai. I
can't see any point of resemblance : he wrote prose, I
verse : he was of the people, I of the Aristocracy : he was
a philosopher, I am none : he published his first work at
forty, I mine at eighteen : his first essay brought him
universal applause, mine the contrary : he married his
housekeeper, I could not keep house with my wife : he
thought all the world in a plot against /urn, my little
1 82 1.] A COMPARISON BY CONTRASTS. 409
world seems to think me in a plot against it, if I may
judge by their abuse in print and coterie : he liked
Botany, I like flowers, and herbs, and trees, but know
nothing of their pedigrees : he wrote Music, I limit my
knowledge of it to what I catch by Ear — I never could
learn any thing by study, not even a language, it was all
by rote and ear and memory : he had a bad memory, I
had at least an excellent one (ask Hodgson the poet, a
good judge, for he has an astonishing one) : he wrote
with hesitation and care, I with rapidity and rarely with
pains : he could never ride nor swim " nor was cunning of
" fence," / am an excellent swimmer, a decent though not
at all a dashing rider (having staved in a rib at eighteen
in the course of scampering), and was sufficient of fence
— particularly of the Highland broadsword ; not a bad
boxer when I could keep my temper, which was difficult,
but which I strove to do ever since I knocked down Mr.
Purling and put his knee-pan out (with the gloves on)
in Angelo's and Jackson's rooms1 in 1806 during the
sparring ; and I was besides a very fair cricketer — one of
the Harrow Eleven when we play[ed] against Eton in 1805.-'
Besides, Rousseau's way of life, his country, his manners,
his whole character, were so very different, that I am at a
loss to conceive how such a comparison could have arisen,
as it has done three several times, and all in rather a
remarkable manner. I forgot to say, that he was also
short-sighted, and that hitherto my eyes have been the
contrary to such a degree, that, in the largest theatre of
Bologna, I distinguished and read some busts and inscrip-
tions painted near the stage, from a box so distant, and
so darkly lighted, that none of the company (composed of
young and very bright-eyed people — some of them in the
1. Letters, vol. i. p. 99, note I ; and p. 189, note 2.
2. Ibid., vol. i. p. 70.
410 DETACHED THOUGHTS. [CHAP. XXIII.
same box) could make out a letter, and thought it was a
trick, though I had never been in that theatre before.
Altogether, I think myself justified in thinking the
comparison not well founded. I don't say this out of
pique, for Rousseau was a great man, and the thing if
true were flattering enough ; but I have no idea of being
pleased with a chimera.
i.
When I met old Courtenay,1 the Orator, at Rogers the
poet's in 1811-1812, I was much taken with the portly
remains of his fine figure, and the still acute quickness of
his conversation. It was he who silenced Flood in the
English House by a crushing reply to a hasty debut of
the rival of Grattan in Ireland. I asked Courtenay (for
I like to trace motives), if he had not some personal pro-
vocation ; for the acrimony of his answer seemed to me
(as I had read it) to involve it. Courtenay said " he had
" — that when in Ireland (being an Irishman) at the bar of
"the Irish house of Commons that Flood had made a
" personal and unfair attack upon himself, who, not being
"a member of that house, could not defend himself; and
" that some years afterwards, the opportunity of retort offer-
" ing in the English Parliament, he could not resist it."
He certainly repaid F. with interest, for Flood never made
any figure, and only a speech or two afterwards in the E.
H. of Commons. I must except, however, his speech on
I. John Courtenay (1741-1816), M.P. for Tamworth, and after-
wards for Appleby, belonged to the Devonshire family, and was not
"an Irishman" (Collins, Peerage, ed. Brydges, ii. 575, note, and
vi. 267, note). He was private secretary to Viscount Townshend
when Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland (1767-72). His attack upon
Flood was made December 3, 1783, in the debate on Fox's East
India Bill, when Flood made his first speech in the English House
of Commons.
l82I.] IDEALS OF ORATORY. 411
Reform in 1790, which "Fox called the best he ever
" heard upon that Subject."
2.
When Fox was asked what he thought the best speech
he had ever heard, he replied " Sheridan's on the Impeach-
"ment of Hastings in the house of Commons" (not that
in Westminster Hall). When asked what he thought of
his own speech on the breaking out of the War ? he replied
"that was a damned good speech too." — From Ld.
Holland.
3-
When Sheridan made his famous speech already
alluded to, Fox advised him to speak it over again in
Westminster Hall on the trial, as nothing better could be
made of the subject; but Sheridan made his new speech
as different as possible, and, according to the best Judges,
very inferior to the former, notwithstanding the laboured
panegyric of Burke upon his Colleagw. — L? H.
4-
Burke spoilt his own speaking afterwards by an imita-
tion of Sheridan's in Westminster Hall : this Speech he
called always " the grand desideratum, which was neither
" poetry nor eloquence, but something better than both."
5-
I have never heard any one who fulfilled my Ideal of
an Orator. Grattan would have been near it but for his
Harlequin delivery. Pitt I never heard. Fox but once,
and then he struck me as a debater, which to me seems
as different from an Orator as an Improvisatore or a
versifier from a poet. Grey is great, but it is not oratory.
412 DETACHED THOUGHTS. [CHAP. XXIII.
Canning is sometimes very like one. Windham I did not
admire, though all the world did : it seemed such sophistry.
Whitbread was the Demosthenes of bad taste and vulgar
vehemence, but strong and English. Holland is impressive
from sense and sincerity. Lord Lansdowne good, but
still a debater only. Grenville I like vastly, if he would
prune his speeches down to an hour's delivery. Burdett
is sweet and silvery as Belial himself, and / think the
greatest favourite in Pandemonium; at least I always
heard the Country Gentlemen and the ministerial devilry
praise his speeches upstairs, and run down from Bellamy's
when he was upon his legs. I heard Bob. Milnes make
his second speech : it made no impression. I like Ward
— studied, but keen, and sometimes eloquent. Peel, my
School and form-fellow (we sate within two of each other)
strange to say I have never heard, though I often wished
to do so ; but, from what I remember of him at Harrow,
he is, or should be, among the best of them. Now, I do
not admire Mr. Wilberforce's speaking ; it is nothing but
a flow of words — " words, words alone."
I doubt greatly if the English have any eloquence,
properly so called, and am inclined to think that the
Irish had a great deal, and that the French will have,
and have had in Mirabeau. Lord Chatham and Burke
are the nearest approaches to Orators in England. I
don't know what Erskine may have been at the bar, but
in the house I wish him at the Bar once more. Lauderdale
is shrill, and Scotch, and acute. Of Brougham I shall
say nothing, as I have a personal feeling of dislike to
the man.
But amongst all these — good, bad, and indifferent — I
never heard the speech which was not too long for the
auditors, and not very intelligible except here and there.
The whole thing is a grand deception, and as tedious
1 82 1.] SHERIDAN. 413
and tiresome as may be to those who must be often
present. I heard Sheridan only once, and that briefly ;
but I liked his voice, his manner, and his wit : he is the
only one of them I ever wished to hear at greater length.
In society I have met him frequently : he was superb ! He
had a sort of liking for me, and never attacked me — at
least to my face, and he did every body else — high names,
and wits, and orators, some of them poets also. I have
seen [him] cut up Whitbread, quiz M? de Stael, annihilate
Colman, and do little less by some others (whose names
as friends I set not down), of good fame and abilities.
Poor fellow ! he got drunk very thoroughly and very
soon. It occasionally fell to my lot to convoy him
home — no sinecure, for he was so tipsy that I was obliged
to put on his cock'd hat for him : to be sure it tumbled
off again, and I was not myself so sober as to be able to
pick it up again.
6.
There was something odd about Sheridan. One day
at a dinner he was slightly praising that pert pretender
and impostor, Lyttelton (The Parliament puppy, still
alive, I believe). I took the liberty of differing from
him : he turned round upon me, and said, " Is that your
" real opinion ? " I confirmed it. Then said he,
" Fortified by this concurrence, I beg leave to say that it
" in fact is also my opinion, and that he is a person
" whom I do absolutely and utterly despise, abhor, and
"detest." He then launched out into a description of
his despicable qualities, at some length, and with his
usual wit, and evidently in earnest (for he hated Lyttelton).
His former compliment had been drawn out by some
preceding one, just as it's reverse was by my hinting that
it was unmerited.
414 DETACHED THOUGHTS. [CHAP. XXIII.
7-
One day I saw him take up his own " Monody on
" Garrick." He lighted upon the dedication to the
Dowager Lady Spencer : on seeing it he flew into a rage,
and exclaimed " that it must be a forgery — that he had
" never dedicated anything of his to such a d — d canting
" b — h," etc., etc., etc. ; and so went on for half an hour
abusing his own dedication, or at least the object of it.
If all writers were equally sincere, it would be ludicrous.
8.
He told me that, on the night of the grand success of
his S[choof\ for S\candal\ he was knocked down and put
into the watch house for making a row in the Street,
and being found intoxicated by the watchmen.
9-
Latterly, when found drunk one night in the kennel,
and asked his Name by the Watchmen, he answered
" Wilberforce."
The last time I met him was, I think, at Sir Gilbert
Elliot's, where he was as quick as ever. No, it was not
the last time : the last time was at Douglas K*? s. I have
met him in all places and parties — at Whitehall with the
Melbournes, at the Marquis of Tavistock's, at Robins1
the Auctioneer's, at Sir Humphrey Davy's, at Sam Rogers's,
in short, in most kinds of company, and always found
him very convivial and delightful.
10.
Sheridan's liking for me (whether he was not mystifying
me I do not know ; but Lady C? L. and others told me
he said the same both before and after he knew me) was
I. Letters, vol. iii. p. 203, note 3.
l82I.] IMPRESSION OF PARLIAMENT. 415
founded upon English Bards and S. Reviewers. He told
me that he did not care about poetry (or about mine — at
least, any but that poem of mine), but he was sure, from
that and other symptoms, I should make an Orator, if I
would but take to speaking, and grow a parliament man.
He never ceased harping upon this to me, to the last ;
and I remember my old tutor Dr. Drury had the same
notion when I was a boy : but it never was my turn of
inclination to try. I spoke once or twice as all young
peers do, as a kind of introduction into public life ; but
dissipation, shyness, haughty and reserved opinions,
together with the short time I lived in England — after
my majority (only about five years in all) — prevented
me from resuming the experiment. As far as it went, it
was not discouraging — particularly my first speech (I
spoke three or four times in all); but just after it my
poem of C* H* was published, and nobody ever thought
about my prose afterwards : nor indeed did I ; it became
to me a secondary and neglected object, though I some-
times wonder to myself if I should have succeeded ?
ii.
The Impression of Parliament upon me was that it's
members are not formidable as Speakers, but very much
so as an audience ; because in so numerous a body there
may be little Eloquence (after all there were but two
thorough Orators in all Antiquity, and I suspect still
fewer in modern times), but must be a leaven of thought
and good sense sufficient to make them know what is
right, though they can't express it nobly.
12.
Home Tooke and Roscoe both are said to have
declared, that they left Parliament with a higher opinion
41 6 DETACHED THOUGHTS. [CHAP. XXIII.
of its aggregate integrity and abilities than that with
which they had entered it. The general amount of both
in most parliaments is probably about the same, as also
the number of Speakers and their talent. I except
Orators, of course, because they are things of Ages and
not of Septennial or triennial reunions.
Neither house ever struck me with more awe or
respect than the same number of Turks in a Divan, or
of Methodists in a barn would have done. Whatever
diffidence or nervousness I felt (and I felt both in a great
degree) arose from the number rather than the quality of
the assemblage, and the thought rather of the public
without than the persons within — knowing (as all know)
that Cicero himself, and probably the Messiah, could
never have alter'd ithe vote of a single Lord of the
Bedchamber or Bishop.
I thought our house dull, but the other animating
enough upon great days.
1 2 [so repeated by Byron].
Sheridan dying was requested to undergo "an
" Operation : " he replied that he had already submitted
to two, which were enough for one man's life time.
Being asked what they were, he answered, " having his
" hair cut, and sitting for his picture."
Whenever an American requests to see me (which is
not unfrequently), I comply : istly, because I respect
a people who acquired their freedom by firmness without
excess ; and 2ndly, because these trans-atlantic visits, " few
" and far between," make me feel as if talking with Posterity
from the other side of the Styx. In a century or two, the
1821.] MONK LEWIS. 417
new English and Spanish Atlantides will be masters of
the old Countries in all probability, as Greece and Europe
overcame their Mother Asia in the older, or earlier ages
as they are called.
14.
Sheridan was one day offered a bet by M. G. Lewis.1
" I will bet you, Mr. Sheridan, a very large sum : I will
"bet you what you owe me as Manager, for my ' Castle
" Spectre.' " " I never make large bets" said Sheridan :
"but I will lay you a very small one; I will bet you
" what it is WORTH ! "
Lewis, though a kind man, hated Sheridan ; and we
had some words upon that score when in Switzerland in
1816. Lewis afterwards sent me the following epigram
upon Sheridan from Saint Maurice : —
" For worst abuse of finest parts
Was Misophil begotten ;
There might indeed be blacker hearts,
But none could be more rotten"
1 6.
Lewis at Oatlands was observed one morning to have
his eyes red, and his air sentimental : being asked why ?
replied, " that when people said any thing kind to him,
" it affected him deeply ; and just now the Duchess has
" said something so kind to me that ..." here " tears
" began to flow " again. " Never mind, Lewis," said Col.
Armstrong to him, "never mind, don't cry. She could
" not mean it"
I. Letters, vol. ii. p. 314, note 4.
VOL. V. 2 E
41 8 DETACHED THOUGHTS. [CHAP. XXI 1 1.
17-
Lewis was a good man, a clever man, but a bore, a
damned bore, one may say. My only revenge or con-
solation used to be, setting him by the ears with some
vivacious person who hated Bores, especially M? de
Stael, or Hobhouse, for example. But I liked Lewis:
he was a Jewel of a Man had he been better set. I don't
mean personally \ but less tiresome ; for he was tedious,
as well as contradictory, to every thing and every body.
Being short-sighted, when we used to ride out together
near the Brenta in the twilight in Summer, he made me
go before to pilot him. I am absent at times, especially
towards evening ; and the consequence of this pilotage
was some narrow escapes to the Monk on horseback.
Once I led him into a ditch, over which I had passed as
usual forgetting to warn my convoy. Once I led him
nearly into the river, instead of on the moveable bridge
which incommodes passengers; and twice did we both
run against the diligence, which, being heavy and slow,
did communicate less damage than it received in its
leaders, who were ferrasse'd by the charge. Thrice did
I lose him in the gray of the Gloaming, and was obliged
to bring to to his distant signals of distance and distress.
All the time he went on talking without intermission, for
he was a man of many words.
Poor fellow, he died, a martyr to his new riches, of
a second visit to Jamaica —
" I'll give the lands of Deloraine
Dark Musgrave were alive again ! "
that is
I would give many a Sugar Cane
Monk Lewis were alive again !
1 82 1.] LONG BAILLIE. 419
18.
Lewis said to me, " Why do you talk Venetian " (such
as I could talk, not very fine to be sure) "to the
" Venetians ? and not the usual Italian ? " I answered,
partly from habit, and partly to be understood, if possible.
" It may be so," said Lewis, " but it sounds to me like
" talking with a brogue to an Irishman?
19.
Baillie (commonly called Long Baillie, a very clever
man, but odd), complained in riding to our friend Scrope
B. Davies, " that he had a stitch in his side." " I don't
" wonder at it " (said Scrope) " for you ride like a tailor"
Whoever had seen B. on horseback, with his very tall
figure on a small nag, would not deny the justice of the
reparte'e.
20.
In 1808, Scrope and myself being at Supper at
Steevens's (I think Hobhouse was there too) after the
Opera, young Goulburne (of the Blues and of the Blue-
viad) came in full of the praises of his horse, Grimaldi,
who had just won a race at Newmarket. " Did he win
"easy?" said Scrope. "Sir," replied Goulburne, "he
" did not even condescend to/w^at coming in." " No "
(said Scrope) "and $Q you puff for him."
21.
Captain Wallace, a notorious character of that day,
and tJien intimate with most of the more dissipated young
men of the day, asked me one night at the Gaming
table, where I thought his Soul would be found after
death ? I answered him, " In Silver Hell" (a cant name
for a second rate Gambling house).
420 DETACHED THOUGHTS. [CHAP. XXIII.
22.
When the Honb.le J. W. Ward quitted the Whigs, he
facetiously demanded, at Sir James Macintosh's table, in
the presence of Mad! de Stael, Malthus, and a large and
goodly company of all parties and countries, " what it
"would take to re-whig him, as he thought of turning
"again." "Before you can be re-whigged" (said I), "I
" am afraid you must be re- Warded" This pun has been
attributed to others : they are welcome to it ; but it was
mine notwithstanding, as a numerous company and Ward
himself doth know. I believe Luttrel versified it after-
wards to put into the M. Chronicle — at least the late
Lady Melbourne told me so. Ward took it good-
humouredly at the time.
23-
When Sheridan was on his death-bed, Rogers aided
him with purse and person : this was particularly kind in
Rogers, who always spoke ill of Sheridan (tomcat least) ;
but indeed he does that of every-body to any body.
Rogers is the reverse of the line
" The best good man with the worst natured Muse,"
being
" The worst good man with the best natured Muse."
His Muse being all Sentiment and Sago and Sugar, while
he himself is a venomous talker. I say " worst good
" man " because he is (perhaps) a good man — at least he
does good now and then, as well he may, to purchase
himself a shilling's worth of Salvation for his Slanders.
They are so little too — small talk, and old Womanny ;
and he is malignant too, and envious, and — he be
damned !
l8zi.] A MACHINE OF IMAGINATION. 42!
24.
Curran ! Curran's the Man who struck me most.
Such Imagination ! There never was any thing like it,
that ever I saw or heard of. His publislud life, his pub-
lished speeches, give you no idea of the Man — none at
all. He was a Machine of Imagination, as some one
said that Piron was an " Epigrammatic Machine."
I did not see a great deal of Curran — only in 1813 ;
but I met him at home (for he used to call on me), and
in society, at Mac'Intosh's, Holland House, etc., etc., etc.,
and he was wonderful, even to me, who had seen many
remarkable men of the time.
25-
A young American, named Coolidge, called on me not
many months ago : he was intelligent, very handsome,
and not more than twenty years old according to appear-
ances. A little romantic, but that sits well upon youth,
and mighty fond of poesy as may be suspected from his
approaching me in my cavern. He brought me a message
from an old Servant of my family (Joe Murray), and told
me that he (Mr. Coolidge) had obtained a copy of my
bust from Thorwal[d]sen at Rome, to send to America.
I confess I was more flattered by this young enthusiasm
of a solitary trans-atlantic traveller, than if they had
decreed me a Statue in the Paris Pantheon (I have seen
Emperors and demagogues cast down from their pedestals
even in my own time, and Grattan's name razed from the
Street called after him in Dublin) I say that I was more
flattered by it, because it was single, ^in-political, and was
without motive or ostentation — the pure and warm feeling
of a boy for the poet he admired. It must have been
expensive though. / would not pay the price of a
422 DETACHED THOUGHTS. [CHAP. XXIII.
Thorwaldsen bust for any human head and shoulders,
except Napoleon's, or my children's, or some "absurd
" Womankind's " as Monkbarns calls them, or my Sister's.
If asked, why then I sate for my own — answer, that it
was at the request particular of J. C. Hobhouse, Esqre,
and for no one else. A picture is a different matter —
every body sits for their picture ; but a bust looks like
putting up pretensions to permanency, and smacks some-
thing of a hankering for public fame rather than private
remembrance.
26.
One of the cleverest men I ever knew in Conversation
was Scrope Beardmore Davies. Hobhouse is also very
good in that line, though it is of less consequence to a
man who has other ways of showing his talents than in
company. Scrope was always ready, and often witty :
Hobhouse as witty, but not always so ready, being more
diffident.
27.
A drunken man ran against Hobhouse in the Street.
A companion of the Drunkard, not much less so, cried
out to Hobhouse, " Arit you ashamed to run against a
" drunken man ? couldn't you see that he was drunk ? "
" Damn him " (answered Hobhouse) " isn't he ashamed
" to run against me ? couldn't he see that / was sober ? "
28.
When Brummell * was obliged (by that affair of poor
Meyler, who thence acquired the name of " Dick the
" Dandy-killer " — it was about money and debt and all
that) to retire to France, he knew no French ; and having
I. Letters, vol. ii. p. 126, note r.
l82I.] A TINGE OF DANDYISM. 423
obtained a Grammar for the purposes of Study, our friend
Scrope Davies was asked what progress Brummell had
made in French, to which he responded, " that B. had
" been stopped like Buonaparte in Russia by the Elements."
I have put this pun into " Beppo," which is " a fair
" exchange and no robbery ; " for Scrope made his fortune
at several dinners (as he owned himself), by repeating
occasionally as his own some of the buffooneries with
which I had encountered him in the Morning.
29.
I liked the Dandies ; they were always very civil to
me, though in general they disliked literary people, and
persecuted and mystified Me. de Stael, Lewis, Horace
Twiss, and the like, damnably. They persuaded Me. de
Stael that Alvanley had a hundred thousand a year, etc.,
etc., till she praised him to his face for his beauty ! and
made a set at him for Albertine (Libertine, as Brummell
baptized her, though the poor Girl was and is as correct
as maid or wife can be, and very amiable withal), and a
hundred fooleries besides.
The truth is, that, though I gave up the business
early, I had a tinge of Dandyism in my minority, and
probably retained enough of it, to conciliate the great
ones ; at four and twenty. I had gamed, and drank, and
taken my degrees in most dissipations ; and having no
pedantry, and not being overbearing, we ran quietly
together. I knew them all more or less, and they made
me a Member of Watier's (a superb Club at that time),
being, I take it, the only literary man (except two ot/iers,
both men of the world, M. and S.) in it.
Our Masquerade was a grand one ; so was the Dandy
Ball, too, at the Argyle, but that (the latter) was given by
the four Chiefs, B., M., A., and P., if I err not.
424 DETACHED THOUGHTS. [CHAP. XXIII.
I was a Member of the Alfred too, being elected while
in Greece. It was pleasant — a little too sober and
literary, and bored with Sotheby and Sir Francis
D'lvernois ! but one met Peel, and Ward, and Valentia,
and many other pleasant or known people; and was
upon the whole a decent resource on a rainy day, in a
dearth of parties, or parliament, or an empty season.
3*.
I belonged, or belong, to the following Clubs or
Societies : — to the Alfred, to the Cocoa tree, to Waller's,
to the Union, to Racket's (at Brighton), to the Pugilistic,
to the Owls or " Fly by Night," to the Cambridge Whig
Club, to the Harrow Club, Cambridge, and to one or two
private Clubs, to the Hampden political Club, and to the
Italian Carbonari, etc., etc., etc., " though last not least."
I got into all these, and never stood for any other — at
least to my own knowledge. I declined being proposed
to several others ; though pressed to stand Candidate.
32-
If the papers lie not (which they generally do),
Demetrius Zograffo of Athens is at the head of the
Athenian part of the present Greek Insurrection. He
was my Servant in 1809, 1810, 1811, 1812, at different
intervals in those years (for I left him in Greece when I
went to Constantinople), and accompanied me to Eng-
land in 1811. He returned to Greece, Spring 1812.
He was a clever, but not apparently an enterprizing, man ;
but Circumstances make men. His two sons (then
infants) were named Miltiades and Alcibiades. May the
Omen be happy !
l82I.] HAPPINESS OF GAMBLERS. 425
33-
I have a notion that Gamblers are as happy as most
people, being always excited. Women, wine, fame, the
table, even Ambition, sate now and then ; but every turn
of the card, and cast of the dice, keeps the Gamester
alive : besides one can Game ten times longer than one
can do any thing else.
I was very fond of it when young, that is to say, of
" Hazard ; " for I hate all Card Games, even Faro.
When Macco (or whatever they spell it) was introduced,
I gave up the whole thing ; for I loved and missed the
rattle and dash of the box and dice, and the glorious
uncertainty, not only of good luck or bad luck, but of
any luck at all, as one had sometimes to throw often to
decide at all.
I have thrown as many as fourteen mains ' running,
and carried off all the cash upon the table occasionally ;
but I had no coolness or judgement or calculation. It
was the delight of the thing that pleased me. Upon the
whole, I left off in time without being much a winner or
loser. Since one and twenty years of age, I played but
little, and then never above a hundred or two, or three.
34-
As far as Fame goes (that is to say living Fame) I
have had my share — perhaps, indeed, certainly more than
my deserts. Some odd instances have occurred to my
own experience of the wild and strange places, to which
a name may penetrate, and where it may impress. Two
years ago (almost three, being in August or July 1819),
I received at Ravenna a letter in English verse from
Drontheim in Norway, written by a Norwegian, and full
of the usual compliments, etc., etc. It is still somewhere
426 DETACHED THOUGHTS. [CHAP. XXIII.
amongst my papers. In the same month, I received an
invitation into Holstein from a Mr. Jacob sen (I think),
of Hamburgh ; also (by the same medium), a translation
of Medora's song in the " Corsair " by a Westphalian
Baroness (not " Thunderton-tronck "), with some original
verses of hers (very pretty and Klopstock-ish), and a
prose translation annexed to them, on the subject of my
wife. As they concerned her more than me, I sent them
to her together with Mr. J.'s letter. It was odd enough
to receive an invitation to pass the summer in Holstein,
while in Italy, from people I never knew. The letter
was addressed to Venice. Mr. J. talked to me of the
" wild roses growing in the Holstein summer : " why
then did the Cimbri and Teutones emigrate ?
What a strange thing is life and man? Were I to
present myself at the door of the house, where my
daughter now is, the door would be shut in my face,
unless (as is not impossible) I knocked down the porter ;
and if I had gone in that year (and perhaps now) to
Drontheim (the furthest town in Norway), or into
Holstein, I should have been received with open arms
into the mansions of Strangers and foreigners, attached
to me by no tie but that of mind and rumour.
As far as Fame goes, I have had my share : it has
indeed been leavened by other human contingencies, and
this in a greater degree than has occurred to most literary
men of a decent rank in life ; but on the whole I take it
that such equipoise is the condition of humanity.
I doubt sometimes whether, after all, a quiet and
unagitated life would have suited me : yet I sometimes
long for it. My earliest dreams (as most boys' dreams
are) were martial ; but a little later they were all for
love and retirement, till the hopeless attachment to M.
C. began, and continued (though sedulously concealed)
1 82 1.] THE MR. TULK. 427
•very early in my teens ; and so upwards for a time. This
threw me out again " alone on a wide, wide sea."
In the year 1804, I recollect meeting my Sister at
General Harcourt's x in Portland Place. I was then one
thing, and as she had always till then found me. When
we met again in 1805 (she told me since), that my
temper and disposition were so completely altered, that
I was hardly to be recognized. I was not then sensible
of the change, but I can believe it, and account for it.
35-
A private play being got up at Cambridge, a Mr.
Tulk, greatly to the inconvenience of Actors and audience,
declined his part on a sudden, so that it was necessary
to make an apology to the Company. In doing this,
Hobhouse (indignant like all the rest at this inopportune
caprice of the Seceder) stated to the audience " that in
"consequence of a Mr. Tulk having unexpectedly thrown
"up his part, they must request their indulgence, etc.,
" etc." Next day, the furious Tulk demanded of Hob-
house, " did you, Sir, or did you not use that expression ? "
" Sir," (said Hobhouse) " I did or did not use that ex-
" pression." " Perhaps " (said Scrope Davies, who was
present), " you object to the indefinite article^ and prefer
" being entitled ttie Mr. Tulk ? " The Tulk eyed Scrope
indignantly ; but aware, probably, that the said Scrope,
besides being a profane Jester, had the misfortune to be
a very good shot, and had already fought two or three
duels, he retired without further objections to either
article, except a conditional menace — if he should
ascertain that an intention, etc., etc., etc.
i. Letters, vol. i. p. 24, note I.
428 DETACHED THOUGHTS. [CHAP. XXIII.
36.
I have been called in as Mediator or Second at least
twenty times in violent quarrels, and have always con-
trived to settle the business without compromising the
honour of the parties, or leading them to mortal conse-
quences ; and this too sometimes in very difficult and
delicate circumstances, and having to deal with very hot
and haughty Spirits — Irishmen, Gamesters, Guardsmen,
Captains and Cornets of horse, and the like. This was
of course in my youth, when I lived in hot-headed
company. I have had to carry challenges from Gentle-
men to Noblemen, from Captains to Captains, from
lawyers to Counsellors, and once from a Clergyman to
an officer in the Life-guards. It may seem strange, but
I found the latter by far the most difficult
" . . . to compose
The bloody duel without blows."
The business being about a woman. I must add too
that I never saw a woman behave so ill, like a cold-
blooded heartless whore as she was ; but very handsome
for all that. A certain Susan C. was she called. I never
saw her but once, and that was to induce her but to say
two words (which in no degree compromised herself),
and which would have had the effect of saving a priest
or a Lieutenant of Cavalry. She would not say them,
and neither N. or myself (the Son of Sir E. N., and a
friend to one of the parties) could prevail upon her to
say them, though both of us used to deal in some sort
with Womankind. At last I managed to quiet the
combatants without her talisman, and, I believe, to her
great disappointment. She was the d — st b — h that I
ever saw, and I have seen a great many. Though my
Clergyman was sure to lose either his life or his living,
1 82 1.] SCHLEGEL'S MODESTY. 429
he was as warlike as the Bishop of Beauvais, and would
hardly be pacified : but then he was in love, and that is
a martial passion.
37-
[Scrawled out by Byron.]
38.
Somebody asked Schlegel (the Dousterswivel of
Madame de Stael) " whether he did not think Canova
" a great Sculptor ? " " Ah ! " replied the modest Prussian,
" did you ever see my bust by Tiecke ? "
39-
At Venice, in the year 1817, an order came from
Vienna for the Archbishop to go in State to Saint Mark's
in his Carriage and four horses, which is much the same
as commanding the Lord Mayor of London to proceed
through Temple Bar in his Barge.
40.
When I met Hudson Lowe, the Jailor, at Lord
Holland's, before he sailed for Saint Helena, the dis-
course turned on the battle of Waterloo. I asked him
whether the dispositions of Napoleon were those of a
great General : he answered disparageingly, " that they
" were very simple" I had always thought that a degree
of Simplicity was an ingredient of Greatness.
41.
I was much struck with the simplicity of Grattan's
manners in private life : they were odd, but they were
natural. Curran used to take him off bowing to the very
ground, and " thanking God that he had no peculiarities
43° DETACHED THOUGHTS. [CHAP. XXIII.
" of gesture or appearance," in a way irresistibly ludicrous.
And Rogers used to call him " a Sentimental Harlequin ; "
but Rogers back-bites every body; and Curran, who
used to quiz his great friend Godwin to his very face,
would hardly respect a fair mark of mimicry in another.
To be sure, Curran was admirable ! To hear his
description of the examination of an Irish witness, was
next to hearing his own speeches : the latter I never
heard, but I have the former.
42.
I have heard that, when Grattan made his first speech
in the English Commons, it was for some minutes doubt-
ful whether to laugh at or cheer him. The debut of his
predecessor, Flood, had been a complete failure, under
nearly similar circumstances. But when the ministerial
part of our Senators had watched Pitt (their thermometer)
for their cue, and saw him nod repeatedly his stately nod
of approbation, they took the hint from their huntsman,
and broke out into the most rapturous cheers. Grattan's
speech indeed deserved them : it was a cJief d'ceuvre. I did
not hear that speech of his (being then at Harrow), but
heard most of his others on the same question ; also that
on the war of 1815. I differed from his opinion on the
latter question, but coincided in the general admiration
of his eloquence.
43-
At the Opposition Meeting of the peers in 1812 at
Lord Grenville's, when L? Grey and he read to us the cor-
respondence upon Moira's negociation, I sate next to the
present Duke of Grafton. When it was over, I turned
to him, and said, " What is to be done next ? " " Wake
" the Duke of Norfolk " (who was snoring near us) replied
1 82 1.] LORD ELDON. 43!
he, "I don't think the Negociators have left anything
" else for us to do this turn."
44.
In the debate, or rather discussion, afterwards in the
House of Lords upon that very question, I sate
immediately behind Lord Moira, who was extremely
annoyed at G.'s speech upon the subject, and while G.
was speaking, turned round to me repeatedly, and asked
me whether I agreed with him? It was an awkward
question to me who had not heard both sides. Moira
kept repeating to me, " it was not so, it was so and so,
" etc." I did not know very well what to think, but I
sympathized with the acuteness of his feelings upon the
subject.
45-
Lord Eldon affects an Imitation of two very different
Chancellors, Thurlow and Loughborough, and can indulge
in an oath now and then. On one of the debates on the
Catholic question, when we were either equal or within
one (I forget which), I had been sent for in great haste
to a Ball, which I quitted, I confess, somewhat reluctantly,
to emancipate five Millions of people. I came in late,
and did not go immediately into the body of the house,
but stood just behind the Woolsack. Eldon turned round,
and, catching my eye, immediately said to a peer (who
had come to him for a few minutes on the Woolsack, as
is the custom of his friends), " Damn them ! they'll have
"it now, by G — d! The vote that is just come in will
" give it them."
46.
When I came of age, some delays on account of some
birth and marriage certificates from Cornwall occasioned
432 DETACHED THOUGHTS. [CHAP. XXIII.
me not to take my seat for several weeks. When these
were over, and I had taken the Oaths, the Chancellor
apologized to me for the delay, observing "that these
" forms were a part of his duty." I begged of him to
make no apology, and added (as he certainly had shown
no violent hurry) " Your Lordship was exactly like ' Tom
" Thumb ' (which was then being acted), You did your
" duty, and you did no more"
47-
In a certain Capital abroad, the Minister's Secretary
(the Minister being then absent) was piqued that I did
not call upon him. When I was gomg away, Mr. W.,
an acquaintance of mine, applied to him for my passport,
which was sent, but at the same time accompanied by
a formal note from the Secretary stating "that at Mr,
" W?s request he had granted, etc.," and in such a manner
as appeared to hint that it was only to oblige Mr. W.
that he had given me that which in fact he had no right
to refuse to Any-body. I wrote to him the following
answer : — " Lord B. presents his Compliments to L., and
" is extremely obliged to Mr. W. for the passport."
48.
There was a Madman of the name of Battersby, that
frequented Steevens's and the Prince of Wales's Coffee-
houses, about the time when I was leading a loose life
about town, before I was of age. One night he came up
to some hapless Stranger, whose coat was not to his liking,
and said, " Pray, Sir, did the tailor cut your coat in that
" fashion, or the rats gnaw it ? "
49-
The following is (I believe) better known. A beau
(dandies were not then christened) came into the P. of
1 82 1.] SOTHEBY. 433
W.'s, and exclaimed, " Waiter, bring me a glass of Madeira
" Negus with a Jelly, and rub my plate with a Chalotte."
This in a very soft tone of voice. A Lieutenant of the
Navy, who sate in the next box, immediately roared out
the following rough parody : " Waiter, bring me a glass
" of d— d stiff Grog, and rub * * with a brick-bat."
So.
Sotheby is a good man, rhymes well (if not wisely),
but is a bore. He seizes you by the button. One night
of a route at Mrs. Hope's, he had fastened upon me
(something about Agamemnon, or Orestes, or some of
his plays), notwithstanding my symptoms of manifest
distress (for I was in love, and had just nicked a minute,
when neither mothers, nor husbands, nor rivals, nor
gossips, were near my then idol, who was beautiful as
the Statues of the Gallery where we stood at the time) —
Sotheby I say had seized upon me by the button and
the heart-strings, and spared neither. W. Spencer, who
likes fun, and don't dislike mischief, saw my case, and
coming up to us both, took me by the hand, and pathetic-
ally bade me farewell : " for," said he, " I see it is all
"over with you." Sotheby then went away. "Sic me
" servavit Apollo."
It is singular how soon we lose the impression of
what ceases to be constantly before us. A year impairs,
a lustre obliterates. There is little distinct left without
an effort of memory : then indeed the lights are rekindled
for a moment ; but who can be sure that Imagination is
not the torch-bearer ? Let any man try at the end of ten
years to bring before him the features, or the mind, or
the sayings, or the habits, of his best friend, or his
VOL. v. 2 F
434 DETACHED THOUGHTS. [CHAP. XXIII.
greatest man (I mean his favourite — his Buonaparte, his
this, that or 'tother), and he will be surprized at the
extreme confusion of his ideas. I speak confidently
on this point, having always past for one who had a
good, aye, an excellent memory. I except indeed our
recollections of Womankind : there is no forgetting them
(and be d — d to them) any more than any other remark-
able Era, such as " the revolution," or " the plague," or
"the Invasion," or "the Comet," or "the War" of such
and such an Epoch — being the favourite dates of Man-
kind, who have so many blessings in their lot, that
they never make their Calendars from them, being too
common. For instance, you see "the great drought,"
" the Thames frozen over," " the Seven years war broke
"out," the E. or F. or S. "Revolution commenced,"
" The Lisbon Earthquake," " the Lima Earthquake," "The
" Earthquake of Calabria," the " Plague of London,"
" Ditto of Constantinople," " the Sweating Sickness,"
" The Yellow fever of Philadelphia," etc., etc., etc. ; but
you don't see " the abundant harvest," " the fine Summer,"
" the long peace," " the wealthy speculation," the " wreck-
" less voyage," recorded so emphatically ? By the way,
there has been a thirty years war, and a Seventy years
war: was there ever a Seventy or a thirty years Peace!
Or was there ever even a day's Universal peace, except
perhaps in China, where they have found out the
miserable happiness of a stationary and unwarlike medio-
crity? And is all this, because Nature is niggard or
savage ? or Mankind ungrateful ? Let philosophers
decide. I am none.
52.
In the year 1814, as Moore and I were going to dine
with Lord Grey in P. Square, I pulled out a "Java
1 82 1.] MEZZOPHANTI. 435
" Gazette " (which Murray had sent to me), in which
there was a controversy on our respective merits as
poets. It was amusing enough that we should be pro-
ceeding peaceably to the same table, while they were
squabbling about us in the Indian Seas (to be sure, the
paper was dated six months before), and filling columns
with Batavian Criticism. But this is fame, I presume.
53-
In general, I do not draw well with literary men : not
that I dislike them, but I never know what to say to
them after I have praised their last publication. There
are several exceptions, to be sure ; but then they have
either been men of the world, such as Scott, and Moore,
etc., or visionaries out of it, such as Shelley, etc. : but
your literary every day man and I never went well in
company — especially your foreigner, whom I never could
abide. Except Giordani, and — and — and — (I really
can't name any other) I do not remember a man amongst
them, whom I ever wished to see twice, except perhaps
Mezzophanti, who is a Monster of Languages, the Briareus
of parts of Speech, a walking Polyglott and more, who
ought to have existed at the time of the tower of Babel
as universal Interpreter. He is indeed a Marvel — un-
assuming also : I tried him in all the tongues of which
I knew a single oath (or adjuration to the Gods against
Postboys, Lawyers, Tartars, boatmen, Sailors, pilots,
Gondoliers, Muleteers, Camel-drivers, Vetturini, Post-
masters, post-horses, post-houses, post-everything), and
Egad ! he astounded me even to my English.
54-
Three Swedes came to Bologna, knowing no tongue
but Swedish. The inhabitants in despair presented them
436 DETACHED THOUGHTS. [CHAP. XXIII.
to Mezzophanti. Mezzophanti (though a great Linguist)
knew no more Swedish than the Inhabitants. But in
two days, by dint of dictionary, he talked with them
fluently and freely, so that they were astonished, and
every body else, at his acquisition of another tongue in
forty eight hours. I had this anecdote first from M?
Albrizzi, and afterwards confirmed by himself— and he
is not a boaster.
55-
I sometimes wish that I had studied languages with
more attention : those which I know, even the classical
(Greek and Latin, in the usual proportion of a sixth form
boy), and a smattering of modern Greek, the Armenian
and Arabic Alphabets, a few Turkish and Albanian
phrases, oaths, or requests, Italian tolerably, Spanish less
than tolerably, French to read with ease but speak with
difficulty — or rather not at all — all have been acquired
by ear or eye, and never by anything like Study. Like
" Edie Ochiltree," " I never dowed to bide a hard turn o'
" wark in my life."
To be sure, I set in zealously for the Armenian and
Arabic, but I fell in love with some absurd womankind
both times, before I had overcome the Characters ; and at
Malta and Venice left the profitable Orientalists for — for
— (no matter what), notwithstanding that my master, the
Padre Pasquale Aucher (for whom, by the way, I com-
piled the major part of two Armenian and English
Grammars), assured me " that the terrestrial Paradise
" had been certainly in Armenia" I went seeking it —
God knows where — did I find it ? Umph ! Now and
then, for a minute or two.
1 82 1.] SHERIDAN'S TEARS. 437
56.
Of Actors, Cooke was the most natural, Kemble the
most supernatural, Kean a medium between the two, but
Mrs. Siddons worth them all put together, of those whom
I remember to have seen in England.
57-
I have seen Sheridan weep two or three times : it
may be that he was maudlin ; but this only renders it
more impressive, for who would see —
" From Marlborough's eyes the tears of dotage flow,
And Swift expire a driveller and a show ?"
Once I saw him cry at Robins's, the Auctioneer's, after a
splendid dinner full of great names and high Spirits. I
had the honour of sitting next to Sheridan. The occasion
of his tears was some observation or other upon the
subject of the sturdiness of the Whigs in resisting Office,
and keeping to their principles. Sheridan turned round
— " Sir, it is easy for my Lord G., or Earl G., or Marquis
" B., or L1? H., with thousands upon thousands a year —
"some of it either presently derived or inherited in Sine-
" cures or acquisitions from the public money — to boast
"of their patriotism, and keep aloof from temptation;
" but they do not know from what temptations those
" have kept aloof, who had equal pride — at least equal
"talents, and not unequal passions, and nevertheless
" knew not in the course of their lives what it was to have
" a shilling of their own." And in saying this he wept.
58.
I have more than once heard Sheridan say, that he
never " had a shilling of his own : " to be sure, he contrived
to extract a good many of other people's.
DETACHED THOUGHTS. [CHAP. XXIII.
In 1815, I had occasion to visit my Lawyer in
Chancery Lane: he was with Sheridan. After mutual
greetings, etc., Sheridan retired first. Before recurring
to my own business, I could not help enquiring that of S.
" Oh " (replied the Attorneo), " the usual thing — to stave
" off an action from his Wine-Merchant, my Client."
"Well" (said I) "and what do you mean to do?"
" Nothing at all for the present," said he : " would you
" have us proceed against old Sherry ? What would be
" the use of it ? " And here he began laughing, and
going over Sheridan's good gifts of Conversation. Now,
from personal experience, I can vouch that my Attorneo
is by no means the tenderest of men, or particularly
accessible to any kind of impression out of the Statute or
record. And yet Sheridan, in half an hour, had found
the way to soften and seduce him in such a manner, that
I almost think he would have thrown his Client (an
honest man with all the laws and some justice on his
side) out of the window, had he come in at the moment.
Such was Sheridan ! He could soften an Attorney !
There has been nothing like it since the days of
Orpheus.
59-
When the Bailiffs (for I have seen most kinds of life)
came upon me in 1815, to seize my chattels (being a
peer of parliament my person was beyond him), being
curious (as is my habit), I first asked him " what Extents
" elsewhere he had for Government ? " upon which he
showed me one upon one house only for seventy thousand
pounds ! Next I asked him, if he had nothing for
Sheridan ? " Oh, Sheridan," said he : " aye, I have this "
(pulling out a pocket-book, etc.). " But, my L., I have
" been in Mr. Sheridan's house a twelve-month at a time :
1 82 1.] HOPE AND MEMORY. 439
" a civil gentleman — knows how to deal with wj, etc., etc.,
" etc." Our own business was then discussed, which was
none of the easiest for me at that time. But the Man
was civil, and, (what I valued more), communicative. I
had met many of his brethren years before in affairs of
my friends (commoners, that is), but this was the first (or
second) on my own account. A civil Man, feed accord-
ingly : probably he anticipated as much.
60.
No man would live his life over again, is an old and
true saying, which all can resolve for themselves. At
the same time, there are probably moments in most men's
lives, which they would live over the rest of life to regain ?
Else, why do we live at all ? Because Hope recurs to
Memory, both false ; but — but — but — but — and this but
drags on till — What ? I do not know, and who does ?
" He that died o' Wednesday." By the way, there is a
poor devil to be shot tomorrow here (Ravenna) for
murder. He hath eaten half a Turkey for his dinner,
besides fruit and pudding; and he refuses to confess?
Shall I go to see him exhale ? No. And why ? Because
it is to take place at Nine. Now, could I save him, or a
fly even from the same catastrophe, I would out-match
years ; but as I cannot, I will not get up earlier to see
another man shot, than I would to run the same risk in
person. Besides, I have seen more men than one die
that death (and other deaths) before to-day.
It is not cruelty which actuates mankind, but excite-
ment, on such occasions ; at least, I suppose so. It is
detestable to take life in that way, unless it be to preserve
two lives.
44° DETACHED THOUGHTS. [CHAP. XXIII.
Old Edgeworth, the fourth or fifth Mrs. Edgeworth,
and the Miss Edgeworth were in London, 1813. Miss
Edgeworth liked, Mrs. Edgeworth not disliked, old Edge-
worth a bore — the worst of bores — a boisterous Bore. I
met them in society once at a breakfast of Sir H. D.'s.
Old Edgeworth came in late, boasting that he had given
" Dr. Parr a dressing the night before " (no such easy
matter by the way). I thought her pleasant. They all
abused Anna Seward's memory.
62.
When on the road, they heard of her brother's, and
his Son's, death. What was to be done ? Their London
Apparel was all ordered and made ! So they sunk his
death for the six weeks of their Sojourn, and went into
mourning on their way back to Ireland. Fact!
63-
While the Colony were in London, there was a book,
with a Subscription for the " recall of Mrs. Siddons to
" the Stage," going about for signatures. Moore moved
for a similar subscription for the " recall of Mr. Edgeworth
"to Ireland!"
64.
Sir Humphrey Davy told me, that the Scene of the
French Valet and Irish postboy in " Ennui " was taken
from his verbal description to the Edgeworths in Edge-
worthtown of a similar fact on the road occurring to
himself. So much the better — being life.
1 82 1.] MARY CHAWORTH. 441
65.
When I was fifteen years of age, it happened that in
a Cavern in Derbyshire I had to cross in a boat (in which
two people only could lie down) a stream which flows
under a rock, with the rock so close upon the water, as
to admit the boat only to be pushed on by a ferry-man
(a sort of Charon), who wades at the stern stooping all
the time. The Companion of my transit was M. A. C.,1
with whom I had been long in love, and never told it,
though sJie had discovered it without. I recollect my
sensations, but cannot describe them — and it is as well.
We were a party — a Mr. W., two Miss W.'s, Mr. and
Mrs. Cl — ke, Miss M., and my M. A. C. Alas ! why do
I say My ? Our Union would have healed feuds, in
which blood had been shed by our fathers ; it would have
joined lands, broad and rich ; it would have joined at
least one heart, and two persons not ill-matched in years
(she is two years my elder) ; and — and — and — what has
been the result ? SJie has married a man older than her-
self, been wretched, and separated. I have married, and
am separated : and yet We are not united.
66.
One of my notions, different from those of my co-
temporaries, is, that the present is not a high age of
English Poetry : there are more poets (soi-disant) than
ever there were, and proportionally less poetry.
This thesis I have maintained for some years, but,
strange to say, it meeteth not with favour from my
brethren of the Shell. Even Moore shakes his head,
and firmly believes that it is the grand Era of British
Poesy.
I. Letters, vol. i. p. 1 6, note I.
442 DETACHED THOUGHTS. [CHAP. XXIII.
^riv^y £o~tji,
When I belonged to the D. L^ Committee, and was
of the S.J£. °f Management, the number of plays
upon the shelves were about jive hundred. Conceiving
that amongst these there must be some of merit, in person
and by proxy I caused an investigation. I do not think
that, of those which I saw, there was one which could
be conscientiously tolerated. There never were such
things as most of them.
Mathurin was very kindly recommended to me by
Walter Scott, to whom I had recourse; firstly, in the
hope that he would do something for us himself; and
secondly, in my despair, that he would point out to us
any young (or old) writer of promise. Mathurin sent
his Bertram, and a letter without his address, so that at
first I could give him no answer. When I at last hit
upon his residence, I sent him a favourable answer, and
something more substantial. His play succeeded, but
I was at that time absent from England.
I tried Coleridge, too ; but he had nothing feasible
in hand at the time. Mr. Sotheby obligingly offered all
his tragedies, and I pledged myself; and, notwithstand-
ing many squabbles with my Committe[e]d Brethren,
did get " Ivan " accepted, read, and the parts distributed.
But lo ! in the very heart of the matter, upon some
&^-ness on the part of Kean, or warmth on that of the
Authour, Sotheby withdrew his play.
Sir J. B. Burgess J did also present four tragedies and
a farce, and I moved Green-room and S. Committee ;
but they would not.
Then the Scenes I had to go through ! The authours,
and the authoresses, the Milliners, the wild Irishmen,
I. Letters , vol. iii. p. 235, note I.
l82I.] A WILD IRISHMAN. 443
the people from Brighton, from Blackwall, from Chatham,
from Cheltenham, from Dublin, from Dundee, who came
in upon me ! To all of whom it was proper to give a
civil answer, and a hearing, and a reading. Mrs. Glover's
father, an Irish dancing-Master of Sixty years, called
upon me to request to play " Archer" drest in silk stock-
ings on a frosty morning, to show his legs (which were
certainly good and Irish for his age, and had been still
better). Miss Emma Somebody, with a play entitled
the " Bandit of Bohemia," or some such title or produc-
tion. Mr. O'Higgins, then resident at Richmond, with
an Irish tragedy, in which the unities could not fail to be
observed, for the protagonist was chained by the leg to
a pillar during the chief part of the performance. He
was a wild man, of a salvage (sic) appearance ; and the
difficulty of not laughing at him was only to be got over
by reflecting upon the probable consequences of such
cachinnation.
As I am really a civil and polite person, and do hate
giving pain, when it can be avoided, I sent them up to
Douglas Kinnaird, who is a man of business, and suffici-
ently ready with a negative, and left them to settle with
him. And, as at the beginning of next year, I went
abroad, I have since been little aware of the progress of
the theatres.
68.
Players are said to be an impracticable people.
They are so. But I managed to steer clear of any
disputes with them, and, excepting one debate with the
Elder Byrne about Miss Smith's Pas de (Something — I
forget the technicals), I do not remember any litigation
of my own. I used to protect Miss Smith, because she
was like Lady Jane Harley in the face ; and likenesses
444 DETACHED THOUGHTS. [CHAP. XXIII.
go a great way with me. Indeed, in general, I left such
things to my more bustling colleagues, who used to
reprove me seriously for not being able to take such
things in hand without buffooning with the Histrions,
and throwing things into confusion by treating light
matters with levity.
69.
Then the Committee ! — then the Sub-Committee !
We were but few, and never agreed ! There was Peter
Moore who contradicted Kinnaird, and Kinnaird who
contradicted everybody : then our two managers, Rae l
and Dibdin,2 and our Secretary, Ward ! And yet we
were all very zealous and in earnest to do good, and so
forth. Hobhouse furnished us with prologues to our
revived Old English plays, but was not pleased with me
for complimenting him as " the Upton " of our theatre
(Mr. Upton is or was the poet who writes the songs for
Astley's)j and almost gave up prologuizing in consequence.
70.
In the Pantomime of 1815-16, there was a Repre-
sentation of the Masquerade of 1814, given by " us
" Youth " of Watier's Club to Wellington and Co. Douglas
Kinnaird, and one or two others with myself, put on
Masques, and went on the Stage amongst the " ol TroXXot,"
to see the effect of a theatre from the Stage. It is very
grand. Douglas danced among the figuranti, too ; and
they were puzzled to find out who we were, as being
more than their number. It was odd enough that D. K.
and I should have been both at the real Masquerade,
and afterwards in the Mimic one of the same on the
stage of D. L. Theatre.
I. Letters, vol. iii. p. 216, note 2, 2. Ibid., p. 212, note I.
1 82 1.] A NEW WORLD AT CAMBRIDGE. 445
When I was a youth, I was reckoned a good actor.
Besides " Harrow Speeches " (in which I shone) I en-
acted "Penruddock" in the "Wheel of Fortune," and
" Tristram Fickle " in Allingham's farce of" the Weather-
" cock," for three nights (the duration of our compact),
in some private theatricals at Southwell in 1806, with
great applause. The occasional prologue for our volun-
teer play was also of my composition. The other
performers were young ladies and gentlemen of the
neighbourhood ; and the whole went off with great effect
upon our good-natured audience.
72.
When I first went up to College, it was a new and a
heavy hearted scene for me. Firstly, I so much dis-
liked leaving Harrow, that, though it was time (I being
seventeen), it broke my very rest for the last quarter with
counting the days that remained. I always hated Harrow
till the last year and half, but then I liked it. Secondly,
I wished to go to Oxford and not to Cambridge. Thirdly,
I was so completely alone in this new world, that it half
broke my Spirits. My companions were not unsocial,
but the contrary — lively, hospitable, of rank, and fortune,
and gay far beyond my gaiety. I mingled with, and
dined and supped, etc., with them; but, I know not how,
it was one of the deadliest and heaviest feelings of my
life to feel that I was no longer a boy. From that
moment I began to grow old in my own esteem ; and
in my esteem age is not estimable. I took my gradations
in the vices with great promptitude, but they were not
to my taste; for my early passions, though violent in
the extreme, were concentrated, and hated division or
44^ DETACHED THOUGHTS. [CHAP. XXIII.
spreading abroad. I could have left or lost the world
with or for that which I loved ; but, though my tempera-
ment was naturally burning, I could not share in the
common place libertinism of the place and time without
disgust. And yet this very disgust, and my heart thrown
back upon itself, threw me into excesses perhaps more
fatal than those from which I shrunk, as fixing upon me
(at a time) the passions, which, spread amongst many,
would have hurt only myself.
73-
People have wondered at the Melancholy which runs
through my writings. Others have wondered at my
personal gaiety ; but I recollect once, after an hour, in
which I had been sincerely and particularly gay, and
rather brilliant, in company, my wife replying to me
when I said (upon her remarking my high spirits) " and
" yet, Bell, I have been called and mis-called Melancholy
" — you must have seen how falsely, frequently." " No,
" B.," (she answered) " it is not so : at heart you are the
" most melancholy of mankind, and often when apparently
" gayest."
74-
If I could explain at length the real causes which
have contributed to increase this perhaps natural tempera-
ment of mine, this Melancholy which hath made me
a bye-word, nobody would wonder ; but this is impossible
without doing much mischief. I do not know what other
men's lives have been, but I cannot conceive anything
more strange than some of the earlier parts of mine.
I have written my memoirs, but omitted all the really
conseq^lential and important parts, from deference to the
dead, to the living, and to those who must be both.
1 82 1.] UNGUARDED WINNINGS. 447
75-
I sometimes think that I should have written the
whole as a lesson, but it might have proved a lesson to be
learnt rather than avoided; for passion is a whirlpool,
which is not to be viewed nearly without attraction from
its Vortex.
76.
I must not go on with these reflections, or I shall be
letting out some secret or other to paralyze posterity.
77-
One night, Scrope Davies at a gaming house (before
I was of age), being tipsy as he usually was at the
Midnight hour, and having lost monies, was in vain
intreated by his friends, one degree less intoxicated than
himself, to come or go home. In despair, he was left to
himself, and to the demons of the dice-box. Next day,
being visited, about two of the Clock, by some friends
just risen with a severe headache and empty pockets
(who had left him losing at four or five in the morning),
he was found in a sound sleep, without a night-cap, and
not particularly encumbered with bed-cloathes: a Chamber-
pot stood by his bed-side, brim-fiill of Bank Notes !
all won, God knows how, and crammed, Scrope knew
not where ; but there they were, all good legitimate notes,
and to the amount of some thousand pounds.
78.
At Brighthelmstone (I love orthography at length), in
the year 1808, Hobhouse, Scrope Davies, Major Cooper,
and myself, having dined together with Lord Delvin,
Count (I forget the french Emigrant nomenclature), and
448 DETACHED THOUGHTS. [CHAP. XXIII.
others, did about the middle of the night (we four)
proceed to a house of Gambling, being then amongst us
possest of about twenty guineas of ready cash, with which
we had to maintain as many of your whorson horses and
servants, besides house-hold and whore-hold expenditure.
We had, I say, twenty guineas or so, and we lost them,
returning home in bad humour. Cooper went home.
Scrope and Hobhouse and I (it being high Summer), did
firstly strip and plunge into the Sea, whence, after half
an hour's swimming of those of us (Scrope and I) who
could swim, we emerged in our dressing-gowns to discuss
a bottle or two of Champaigne and Hock (according to
choice) at our quarters. In course of this discussion,
words arose ; Scrope seized H. by the throat ; H. seized
a knife in self-defence, and stabbed Scrope in the shoulder
to avoid being throttled. Scrope fell bathed in blood
and wine — for the bottle fell with him, being infinitely
intoxicated with Gaming, Sea-bathing at two in the
morning, and Supplementary Champaigne. The skirmish
had past before I had time or thought to interfere. Of
course I lectured against gambling —
" Pugnare Thracum est,"
and then examined Scrope's wound, which proved to be
a gash long and broad, but not deep nor dangerous.
Scrope was furious : first he wanted to fight, then to go
away in a post-chaise, and then to shoot himself, which
latter intention I offered to forward, provided that he did
not use my pistols, which, in case of suicide, would
become a deo-dand to the King. At length, with many
oaths and some difficulty, he was gotten to bed. In the
morning, Cool reflection and a Surgeon came, and, by
dint of loss of blood, and sticking plaister, the quarrel
(which Scrope had begun), was healed as well as the
l82I.] MARGARET PARKER. 449
wound, and we were all friends as for years before and
after.
79-
My first dash into poetry was as early as 1800. It
was the ebullition of a passion for my first Cousin
Margaret Parker (daughter and grand-daughter of the
two Admirals Parker),1 one of the most beautiful of
evanescent beings. I have long forgotten the verses, but
it would be difficult for me to forget her. Her dark
eyes ! her long eye-lashes ! her completely Greek cast of
face and figure ! I was then about twelve — She rather
older, perhaps a year. She died about a year or two
afterwards, in consequence of a fall which injured her
spine and induced consumption. Her Sister, Augusta
(by some thought still more beautiful), died of the same
malady ; and it was indeed in attending her that Margaret
met with the accident, which occasioned her own death.
My Sister told me that, when she went to see her shortly
before her death, upon accidentally mentioning my name,
Margaret coloured through the paleness of mortality to
the eyes, to the great astonishment of my Sister, who (re-
siding with her Grandmother, Lady Holderness) saw at that
time but little of me for family reasons, knew nothing of
our attachment, nor could conceive why my name should
affect her at such a time. I knew nothing of her illness
(being at Harrow and in the country), till she was gone.
Some years after, I made an attempt at an Elegy.
A very dull one. I do not recollect scarcely any thing
equal to the transparent beauty of my cousin, or to the
sweetness of her temper, during the short period of our
intimacy. She looked as if she had been made out of
a rainbow — all beauty and peace.
I. Letters, vol. i. p. 7, note I.
VOL. V. 2 G
450 DETACHED THOUGHTS. [CHAP. XXIII.
My passion had its usual effects upon me: I could
not sleep, could not eat ; I could not rest ; and although
I had reason to know that she loved me, it was the
torture of my life to think of the time which must elapse
before we could meet again — being usually about tivelve
hours of separation ! But I was a fool then, and am not
much wiser now.
80.
My passions were developed very early — so early,
that few would believe me, if I were to state the period,
and the facts which accompanied it. Perhaps this was
one of the reasons which caused the anticipated melancholy
of my thoughts — having anticipated life.
My earlier poems are the thoughts of one at least ten
years older than the age at which they were written : I
don't mean for their solidity, but their Experience. The
two first Cantos of C? H? were completed at twenty two,
and they are written as if by a man older than I shall
probably ever be.
[8 1 omitted by Byron.]
82.
Upon Parnassus, going to the fountain of Delphi
(Castri), in 1809, I saw a flight of twelve Eagles
(Hobhouse says they are Vultures — at least in conversa-
tion), and I seized the Omen. On the day before, I
composed the lines to Parnassus (in Childe Harold), and,
on beholding the birds, had a hope that Apollo had
accepted my homage. I have at least had the name
and fame of a Poet during the poetical period of life
(from twenty to thirty) : whether it will last is another
1 82 1.] PROJECTED SETTLEMENT IN AMERICA. 451
matter ; but I have been a votary of the Deity and the
place, and am grateful for what he has done in my
behalf, leaving the future in his hands as I left the past.
83-
Like Sylla, I have always believed that all things
depend upon Fortune, and nothing upon ourselves. I
am not aware of any one thought or action worthy of
being called good to myself or others, which is not to be
attributed to the Good Goddess, Fortune !
84.
Two or three years ago, I thought of going to one of
the Americas, English or Spanish. But the accounts
sent from England, in consequence of my enquiries, dis-
couraged me. After all, I believe most countries,
properly balanced, are equal to a Stranger (by no means
to the native, though). I remembered General Ludlow's
domal inscription : —
" Omne solum forti patria " —
And sate down free in a country of Slavery for many
centuries. But there is no freedom, even for Masters, in
the midst of slaves : it makes my blood boil to see the
thing. I sometimes wish that I was the Owner of Africa,
to do at once, what Wilberforce will do in time, viz. —
sweep Slavery from her desarts, and look on upon the
first dance of their Freedom.
As to political slavery — so general — it is man's own
fault ; if they will be slaves, let them ! Yet it is but " a
" word and a blow." See how England formerly, France,
Spain, Portugal, America, Switzerland, freed themselves !
There is no one instance of a long contest, in which men
did not triumph over Systems. If Tyranny misses her
452 DETACHED THOUGHTS. [CHAP. XXIII.
first spring, she is cowardly as the tiger, and retires to be
hunted.
85.
An Italian (the younger Count Ruota), writing from
Ravenna to his friend at Rome in 1820, says of me, by
way of compliment, " that in society no one would take
" me for an Englishman, though he believes that I am
" English at bottom — my manners were so different."
This he meant as a grand eulogy, and I accept it as such.
The letter was shown to me this year by the Corre-
spondent, Count P. G., or by his
86.
I have been a reviewer. In " the Monthly Review "
I wrote some articles, which were inserted. This was in
the latter part of 1811. In 1807, in a Magazine called
" Monthly Literary Recreations," I reviewed Words-
worth's trash of that time. Excepting these, I cannot
accuse myself of anonymous Criticism (that I recollect),
though I have been offered more than one review in our
principal Journals.
87.
Till I was eighteen years old (odd as it may seem), I
had never read a review. But, while at Harrow, my
general information was so great on modern topics, as to
induce a suspicion that I could only collect so much
information from review s> because I was never seen read-
ing, but always idle and in mischief, or at play. The
truth is that I read eating, read in bed, read when no one
else reads ; and had read all sorts of reading since I was
five years old, and yet never met with a review, which is
the only reason that I know of why I should not have
1 82 1.] THE PROMISE OF AN ORATOR. 453
read them. But it is true ; for I remember when Hunter
and Curzon, in 1804, told me this opinion at Harrow, I
made them laugh by my ludicrous astonishment in asking
them, " what is a review ? " To be sure, they were
then less common. In three years more, I was better
acquainted with that same, but the first I ever read was
in 1806-7.
88.
At School, I was (as I have said) remarked for the
extent and readiness of my general information ; but in
all other respects idle ; capable of great sudden exertions
(such as thirty or forty Greek Hexameters — of course
with such prosody as it pleased God), but of few con-
tinuous drudgeries. My qualities were much more
oratorical and martial, than poetical ; and Dr. D., my
grand patron (our head-master), had a great notion that
I should turn out an Orator, from my fluency, my turbu-
lence, my voice, my copiousness of declamation, and my
action. I remember that my first declamation astonished
him into some unwonted (for he was economical of such),
and sudden compliments, before the declaimers at our
first rehearsal. My first Harrow verses (that is, English
as exercises), a translation of a chorus from the Prome-
theus of Aeschylus, were received by him but cooly : no
one had the least notion that I should subside into
poesy.
89.
Peel, the Orator and Statesman (" that was, or is, or
" is to be "), was my form fellow, and we were both at
the top of our remove (a public School Phrase). We
were on good terms, but his brother was my intimate
friend. There were always great hopes of Peel amongst
454 DETACHED THOUGHTS. [CHAP. XXIII.
us all — Masters and Scholars, and he has not disappointed
them. As a Scholar, he was greatly my superior: as
a declaimer, and Actor, I was reckoned at least his
equal. As a school boy out of school, I was always in
scrapes, and he never ; and in School he always knew his
lesson, and I rarely; but when I knew it, I knew it
nearly as well. In general information, history, etc., etc.,
I think I was his Superior, as also of most boys of my
standing.
89 [twice].
The prodigy of our School days was George Sinclair
(son of Sir John) : he made exercises for half the School
(literally), verses at will, and themes without it. When in
the Shell, he made exercises for his Uncle, Dudley
Macdonald (a dunce who could only play upon the flute),
in the sixth. He was a friend of mine, and in the same
remove, and used at times to beg me to let him do my
exercise — a request always most readily accorded, upon
a pinch, or when I wanted to do something else, which
was usually once an hour. On the other hand, he was
pacific, and I savage ; so I fought for him, or thrashed
others for him, or thrashed himself to make him thrash
others, whom it was necessary, as a point of honour and
stature, that he should so chastise. Or, we talked politics,
for he was a great politician, and were very good friends.
I have some of his letters, written to me from School,
still.
90.
Clayton was another School Monster of learning, and
talent, and hope ; but what has become of him I do not
know : he was certainly a Genius.
1 82 1.] LORD CLARE. 455
My School friendships were with me passions (for I
was always violent), but I do not know that there is one
which has endured (to be sure, some have been cut short
by death) till now. That with Lord Clare : began one of
the earliest and lasted longest, being only interrupted by
distance, that I know of. I never hear the word " Clare "
without a beating of the heart even now, and I write it
with the feelings of 1803-4-5 ad infinitum.
92.
In 1812, at Middelton (Lord Jersey's), amongst a
goodly company of Lords, Ladies, and wits, etc., there
was poor old Vice Leach, the lawyer, attempting to play
off the fine gentleman. His first exhibition — an attempt
on horseback, I think, to escort the women — God knows
where, in the month of November, ended in a fit of the
Lumbago — as Lord Ogleby says, " a grievous enemy to
"Gallantry and address" — and if he could but have
heard Lady Jersey quizzing him (as I did) next day for
the cause of his malady, I don't think that he would have
turned a "Squire of dames" in a hurry again. He
seemed to me the greatest fool (in that line) I ever saw.
This was the last I saw of old Vice Leach, except in
town, where he was creeping into assemblies, and trying
to look young and gentlemanly.
93-
Erskine too ! Erskine 2 was there — good, but intoler-
able. He jested, he talked, he did every thing admirably,
but then he would be applauded for the same thing twice
1. Letters, vol. i. p. 116, note I.
2. Ibid.) vol. ii. p. 390, note 5.
45 6 DETACHED THOUGHTS. [CHAP. XXIII.
over : he would read his own verses, his own paragraphs,
and tell his own story, again and again — and then " the
" trial by Jury ! ! ! " I almost wished it abolished, for I
sate next him at dinner. As I had read his published
speeches, there was no occasion to repeat them to me.
Chester (the fox hunter), surnamed " Cheeks Chester"
and I sweated the Claret, being the only two who did so.
Cheeks, who loves his bottle, and had no notion of meet-
ing with a "bon vivant" in a scribbler, in making my
eulogy to somebody one evening, summed it up in —
" By G— d, he drinks like a Man!"
94.
Nobody drank, however, but Cheeks and I. To be
sure, there was little occasion, for we swept off what was
on the table (a most splendid board, as may be supposed,
at Jersey's) very sufficiently. However, we carried our
liquor discreetly, like " the Baron of Bradwardine."
95-
If I had to live over again, I do not know what I
would change in my life, unless it were for not to have
lived at all. All history and experience, and the rest,
teaches us that the good and evil are pretty equally
balanced in this existence, and that what is most to be
desired is an easy passage out of it.
What can it give us but years ? and those have little
of good but their ending.
96.
Of the Immortality of the Soul, it appears to me that
there can be little doubt, if we attend for a moment to
1 82 1.] IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 457
the action of Mind. It is in perpetual activity. I used
to doubt of it, but reflection has taught me better. It
acts also so very independent of body : in dreams for
instance incoherently and madly, I grant you ; but still
it is Mind, and much more Mind than when we are awake.
Now, that this should not act separately, as well as jointly,
who can pronounce ? The Stoics, Epictetus and Marcus
Aurelius, call the present state " a Soul which drags a
" Carcase : " a heavy chain, to be sure ; but all chains,
being material, may be shaken off.
How far our future life will be individual, or, rather,
how far it will at all resemble our present existence, is
another question ; but that the Mind is eternal, seems as
probable as that the body is not so. Of course, I have
ventured upon the question without recurring to Revela-
tion, which, however, is at least as rational a solution of
it as any other.
A material resurrection seems strange, and even
absurd, except for purposes of punishment; and all
punishment, which is to revenge rather than correct, must
be morally wrong. And when the World is at an end,
what moral or warning purpose can eternal tortures
answer ? Human passions have probably disfigured the
divine doctrines here, but the whole thing is inscrutable.
It is useless to tell me not to reason, but to believe. You
might as well tell a man not to wake but sleep. And then
to bully with torments ! and all that ! I cannot help
thinking that the menace of Hell makes as many devils,
as the severe penal codes of inhuman humanity make
villains.
Man is born passionate of body, but with an innate
though secret tendency to the love of Good in his Main-
spring of Mind. But God help us all ! It is at present
a sad jar of atoms.
458 DETACHED THOUGHTS. [CHAP. XXIII.
97-
Matter is eternal, always changing, but reproduced,
and, as far as we can comprehend Eternity, Eternal ; and
why not Mind? Why should not the Mind act with and
upon the Universe ? as portions of it act upon and with
the congregated dust called Mankind? See, how one
man acts upon himself and others, or upon multitudes ?
The same Agency, in a higher and purer degree, may act
upon the Stars, etc., ad infinitum.
98.
I have often been inclined to Materialism in philo-
sophy but could never bear its introduction into
Christianity, which appears to me essentially founded
upon the Soul. For this reason, Priestley's Christian
Materialism always struck me as deadly. Believe the
resurrection of the body, if you will, but not without a
Soul. The devil's in it, if, after having had a Soul (as
surely the Mind, or whatever you call it, is) in this world,
we must part with it in the next, even for an Immortal
Materiality. I own my partiality for Spirit.
99-
I am always most religious upon a sun-shiny day ; as
if there was some association between an internal approach
to greater light and purity, and the kindler of this dark
lanthorn of our external existence.
100.
The Night is also a religious concern ; and even more
so, when I viewed the Moon and Stars through Herschell's
telescope, and saw that they were worlds.
1 82 1.] ARGUMENT FOR A CREATOR. 459
IOI.
If, according to some speculations, you could prove
the World many thousand years older than the Mosaic
Chronology, or if you could knock up Adam and Eve
and the Apple and Serpent, still what is to be put up in
their stead ? or how is the difficulty removed ? Things
must have had a beginning, and what matters it when or
howl
I sometimes think that Man may be the relic of some
higher material being, wrecked in a former world, and
degenerated in the hardships and struggle through Chaos
into Conformity — or something like it; as we see
Laplanders, Esquimaux, etc., inferior in the present state,
as the Elements become more inexorable. But even then
this higher pre-Adamite supposititious Creation must have
had an Origin and a Creator ; for a Creator is a more
natural imagination than a fortuitous concourse of atoms.
All things remount to a fountain, though they may flow to
an Ocean.
IO2.
What a strange thing is the propagation of life ! A
bubble of Seed * * * might (for aught we know) have
formed a Caesar or a Buonaparte: there is nothing
remarkable recorded of their Sires, that I know of.
103.
Lord Kames has said (if I misquote not), " that a
" power to call up agreeable ideas at will would be
" something greater for mortals than all the boons of a
" fairy tale."
I have found increasing upon me (without sufficient
cause at times) the depression of Spirits (with few
460 DETACHED THOUGHTS. [CHAP. XXIII.
intervals), which I have some reason to believe constitu-
tional or inherited.
104.
Plutarch says, in his life of Lysander, that Aristotle
observes, "that in general great Geniuses are of a
"melancholy turn, and instances Socrates, Plato, and
" Hercules (or Heracleitus), as examples, and Lysander,
"though not while young, yet as inclined to it when
" approaching towards age." Whether I am a Genius or
not, I have been called such by my friends as well as
enemies, and in more countries and languages than one,
and also within a no very long period of existence. Of
my Genius, I can say nothing, but of my melancholy, that
it is " increasing and ought to be diminished " — but how ?
105-
I take it that most men are so at bottom, but that it
is only remarked in the remarkable. The Duchesse de
Broglie, in reply to a remark of mine on the errors of
clever people, said, " that they were not worse than others,
" only being more in view, more noted, especially in all
" that could reduce them to the rest, or raise the rest to
" them." In 1816, this was.
106.
In fact (I suppose that), if the follies of fools were all
set down like those of the wise, the wise (who seem at
present only a better sort of fools), would appear almost
intelligent.
107.
I have met George Colman occasionally, and thought
him extremely pleasant and convivial. Sheridan's humour,
1 82 1.] COLMAN AND ALCIBIADES. 461
or rather wit, was always saturnine, and sometimes
savage : he never laughed (at least that / saw, and I
watched him), but Colman did. I have got very drunk
with them both ; but, if I had to choose, and could not
have both at a time, I should say, " let me begin the
" evening with Sheridan, and finish it with Colman."
Sheridan for dinner — Colman for Supper. Sheridan for
Claret or port ; but Colman for every thing, from the
Madeira and Champaigne at dinner — the Claret with a
layer of port between the Glasses — up to the Punch of
the Night, and down to the Grog or Gin and water of
day-break. All these I have threaded with both the
same. Sheridan was a Grenadier Company of Life-
Guards, but Colman a whole regiment — of tight Infantry,
to be sure, but still a regiment.
1 08.
Alcibiades is said to have been " successful in all his
" battles ; " but what battles ? Name them ! If you
mention Caesar, or Annibal, or Napoleon, you at once
rush upon Pharsalia, Munda, Alesia, Cannae, Thrasimene,
Trebia, Lodi, Marengo, Jena, Austerlitz, Friedland,
Wagram, Moskwa ; but it is less easy to pitch upon the
victories of Alcibiades, though they may be named too —
though not so readily as the Leuctra and Mantinea of
Epaminondas, the Marathon of Miltiades, the Salamis of
Themistocles, and the Thermopylae of Leonidas.
Yet upon the whole it may be doubted, whether there
be a name of Antiquity, which comes down with such a
general charm as that of Alcibiades. Why? I cannot
answer : who can ?
462 DETACHED THOUGHTS. [CHAP. XXIII.
109.
The vanity of Victories is considerable. Of all who
fell at Waterloo or Trafalgar, ask any man in company to
name you ten off hand : they will stick at Nelson ; the
other will survive himself. Nelson was a hero : the other
is a mere Corporal, dividing with Prussians and Spaniards
the luck, which he never deserved. He even — but I hate
the fool, and will be silent.
no.
The Miscreant Wellington is the Cub of Fortune, but
she will never lick him into shape : if he lives, he will be
beaten — that's certain. Victory was never before wasted
upon such an unprofitable soil, as this dunghill of Tyranny,
whence nothing springs but Viper's eggs.
in.
I remember seeing Blucher in the London Assemblies,
and never saw anything of his age less venerable. With
the voice and manners of a recruiting Sergeant, he pre-
tended to the honours of a hero ; just as if a stone could
be worshipped, because a Man had stumbled over it.
112.
There is nothing left for Mankind but a Republic,
and I think that there are hopes of such. The two
Americas (South and North) have it ; Spain and Portugal
approach it ; all thirst for it. Oh Washington !
"3-
Pisa, NovT 5'!' 1821.
"There is a strange coincidence sometimes in the
"little things of this world, Sancho," says Sterne
1 82 1.] MEETING WITH LORD CLARE. 463
in a letter (if I mistake not) ; and so I have often
found it.
Page 128, article 91,' of this collection of scattered
things, I had alluded to my friend Lord Clare in terms
such as my feelings suggested. About a week or two
afterwards, I met him on the road between Imola and
Bologna, after not having met for seven or eight years.
He was abroad in 1814, and came home just as I set out
in 1816.
This meeting annihilated for a moment all the years
between the present time and the days of Harrow. It
was a new and inexplicable feeling, like rising from the
grave, to me. Clare, too, was much agitated — more in
appearance than even myself; for I could feel his heart
beat to his fingers' ends, unless, indeed, it was the pulse
of my own which made me think so. He told me that
I should find a note from him, left at Bologna. I did.
We were obliged to part for our different journeys — he
for Rome, I for Pisa; but with the promise to meet
again in Spring. We were but five minutes together,
and in the public road ; but I hardly recollect an hour of
my existence which could be weighed against them. He
had heard that I was coming on, and had left his letter
for me at B., because the people with whom he was
travelling could not wait longer.
Of all I have ever known, he has always been the
least altered in every thing from the excellent qualities
and kind affections which attached me to him so strongly
at School. I should hardly have thought it possible for
Society (or the World as it is called), to leave a being with
so little of the leaven of bad passions. I do not speak
from personal experience only, but from all I have ever
heard of him from others during absence and distance.
I. See ante, p. 455.
464 DETACHED THOUGHTS. [CHAP. XXIII.
114.
I met with Rogers at Bologna : staid a day there,
crossed the Appennines with him. He remained at
Florence; I went on to Pisa — 8b!e 29, 30^ etc., 1821.
"5-
I re-visited the Florence Gallery, etc. My former
impressions were confirmed; but there were too many
visitors there, to allow me to feel any thing properly.
When we were (about thirty or forty) all stuffed into the
Cabinet of Gems, and knick-knackeries, in a corner of
one of the Galleries, I told R. that it " felt like being in
" the Watch-house." I left him to make his obeisances
to some of his acquaintances, and strolled on alone — the
only few minutes I could snatch of any feeling for the
works around me. I do not mean to apply this to a
tcte a fete scrutiny with Rogers, who has an excellent
taste and deep feeling for the Arts (indeed much more of
both than I can possess ; for of the former I have not
much) ; but to the crowd of jostling starers and travelling
talkers around me.
I heard one bold Briton declare to the woman on his
arm, looking at the Venus of Titian, " Well, now, this is
" really very fine indeed," — an observation, which, like
that of the landlord in Joseph Andrews " on the certainty
"of death," was (as the landlord's wife observed),
" extremely true."
In the Pitti palace, I did not omit Goldsmith's pre-
scription for a Connoisseur, viz : " that the pictures would
" have been better, if the painter had taken more pains,
" and to praise the works of Pietro Perugino."
FIELDING'S RADICALISM. 465
116.
I have lately been reading Fielding over again.
They talk of Radicalism, Jacobinism, etc., in England (I
am told), but they should turn over the pages of" Jonathan
" Wild the Great." The inequality of conditions, and
the littleness of the great, were never set forth in stronger
terms; and his contempt for Conquerors and the like
is such, that, had he lived now, he would have been
denounced in " the Courier " as the grand Mouth-piece
and Factionary of the revolutionists. And yet I never
recollect to have heard this turn of Fielding's mind
noticed, though it is obvious in every page.
117.
The following dialogue passed between me and a
very pretty peasant Girl (Rosa Benini, married to
Domenico Ovioli, or Oviuoli, the Vetturino) at Ravenna.
Rosa. " What is the Pope ? "
I. " Don't you know?"
Rosa. " No, I don't know. What or who is he ? Is
I. " He is an old man."
Rosa. "What nonsense to make such a fuss about
" an old man. Have you ever seen him ? "
I. " Yes, at Rome."
Rosa. " You English don't obey the Pope ? "
I. " No, we don't ; but you do."
Rosa. " I don't know what I believe, but the priests
" talk about him. I am sure I did not know what he
" was."
This dialogue I have translated nearly verbatim, and
I don't think that I have either added to or taken away
from it. The speaker was under eighteen, and an old
VOL. v. 2 H
466 DETACHED THOUGHTS. [CHAP. XXIII.
acquaintance of mine. It struck me as odd that I should
have to instruct her who the Pope was : I think they
might have found it out without me by this time. The
fact is indisputable, and occurred but a few weeks ago,
before I left Ravenna.
Pisa, Nov^ 6"? 1821.
118.
i.
Oh ! talk not to me of a name great in story
The days of our Youth are the days of our Glory,
And the myrtle and ivy of sweet two and twenty
Are worth all your laurels though ever so plenty.
2.
What are garlands and crowns to the brow that is
wrinkled ?
'Tis but as a dead flower with May-dew besprinkled :
Then away with all such from the head that is hoary,
What care I for the wreaths that can only give Glory ?
3-
Oh ! Fame ! if I e'er took delight in thy praises,
'Twas less for the sake of thy high-sounding phrases,
Than to see the bright eyes of the dear One discover
She thought that I was not unworthy to love her.
4-
There chiefly I sought thee, there only I found thee ;
Her Glance was the best of the rays that surround thee,
When it sparkled o'er aught that was bright in my story,
I knew it was love, and I felt it was Glory.
I composed these stanzas (except the fourth added
now) a few days ago, on the road from Florence to Pisa.
Pisa, Nov^ 6'!1 1821.
l82I.] AN ONLY CHILD. 467
119.
My daughter Ada, on her recent birthday the other
day (the lo'!1 of December 1821), completed her sixth
year. Since she was a Month old, or rather better, I
have not seen her. But I hear that she is a fine child,
with a violent temper.
I have been thinking of an odd circumstance. My
daughter, my wife, my half sister, my mother, my sister's
123 4
mother, my natural daughter, and myself, are or were all
56 7
only children. My sister's Mother (Lady Conyers) had
only my half sister by that second marriage (herself too
an only child), and my father had only me (an only child)
by his second marriage with my Mother (an only child
too). Such a complication of only children, all tending
to one family ', is singular enough, and looks like fatality
almost. But the fiercest Animals have the rarest numbers
in their litters, as Lions, tigers, and even Elephants which
are mild in comparison.
1 20.
May !#!> 1822.
I have not taken up this sort of Journal for many
months: shall I continue it? "Chicosa?"
I have written little this year, but a good deal last
(1821). Five plays in all (two yet unpublished), some
Cantos, etc. I have begun one or two things since, but
under some discouragement, or rather indignation at the
brutality of the attacks, which I hear (for I have seen but
few of them) have been multiplied in every direction
against me and my recent writings. But the English
dishonour themselves more than me by such conduct.
It is strange, but the Germans say that I am more popular
in Germany by far than in England, and I have heard the
468 DETACHED THOUGHTS. [CHAP. XXIII.
Americans say as much of America. The French, too,
have printed a considerable number of translations — in
prose ! with good success ; but their predilection (if it
exists) depends, I suspect, upon their belief that I have
no great passion for England or the English. It would
be singular if I had ; however, I wish them no harm.
I2I.1
i. Here the manuscript ends.
1 82 1.] THE LANGUAGE OF LUCIFER. 469
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE PALAZZO LANFRANCHI, PISA, NOVEMBER —
DECEMBER, 1821.
HEAVEN AND EARTH — OPINIONS ON CAIN.
954. — To John Murray.
Pisa, November 3, 1821.
DEAR MORAY, — The two passages cannot be altered
without making Lucifer talk like the Bishop of Lincoln l
— which would not be in the character of the former.
The notion is from Cuvier 2 (that of the old Worlds), as
I have explained in an additional note to the preface.
The other passage is also in character: if nonsense — so
much the better, because then it can do no harm, and
the sillier Satan is made, the safer for every body. As
to " alarms," etc., do you really think such things ever
led any body astray? Are these people more impious
1. Byron probably contrasts Lucifer with the Bishop of Lincoln,
from the alliteration or from their association in the proverb, " The
" devil looks over Lincoln." The same reference to the devil as
"overseer," or Bishop, of Lincoln occurs in Don Juan (Canto
XVI. stanza Ixxxii.), where preferment gave " Peter Pith"
"... to lay the devil who looks o'er Lincoln,
A fat fen vicarage, and nought to think on."
Dr. Arnold, speaking of Cain, used to say, " There is something to
" me almost awful in meeting suddenly, in the works of such a man,
"so great and solemn a truth as is expressed in that speech of
" Lucifer, ' He who bows not to God hath bowed to me ' " (Stanley's
Life of Arnold, ed. 1887, vol. i. p. 263, note),
2. See p. 367, note 2.
470 THE PALAZZO LANFRANCHI, PISA. [CHAP. XXJV.
than Milton's Satan? or the Prometheus of ^Eschylus?
or even than the Sadducees of your envious parson, the
Fall of Jerusalem fabricator?1 Are not Adam, Eve,
Adah, and Abel, as pious as the Catechism ?
Gifford is too wise a man to think that such things
can have any serious effect : who was ever altered by a
poem? I beg leave to observe, that there is no creed
nor personal hypothesis of mine in all this : but I was
obliged to make Cain and Lucifer talk consistently, and
surely this has always been permitted to poesy. Cain
is a proud man : if Lucifer promised him kingdoms, etc.,
it would elate him : the object of the Demon is to depress
him still further in his own estimation than he was before,
by showing him infinite things and his own abasement,
till he falls into the frame of mind that leads to the
Catastrophe, from mere internal irritation, not premedi-
tation, or envy of Abel (which would have made him
contemptible), but from the rage and fury against the
inadequacy of his state to his conceptions, and which
discharges itself rather against Life, and the Author of
Life, than the mere living.
His subsequent remorse is the natural effect of looking
on his sudden deed. Had the deed been premeditated,
his repentance would have been tardier.
The three last MS. lines of Eve's curse are replaced
from memory on the proofs, but incorrectly (for I keep
no copies). Either keep these three, or replace them with
the other three, whichever are thought least bad by Mr.
Gifford. There is no occasion for a revise; it is only
losing time.
Either dedicate it to Walter Scott,2 or, if you think he
1 . The Rev. H. H. Milman.
2. Cain was dedicated to Scott : see his letter accepting the
dedication, Letters, vol. vi., Letter 969, note.
1 82 1.] A PERSECUTED BOOK. 471
would like the dedication of The Foscaris better, put the
dedication to The Foscaris. Ask him which.
Your first note was queer enough ; but your two other
letters, with Moore's and Gifford's opinions, set all right
again. I told you before that I can never recast any
thing. I am like the Tiger : if I miss the first spring, I
go growling back to my Jungle again ; but if I do hit, it
is crushing. Now for Mr. Mawman, I received him
civilly as your friend, and he spoke of you in a friendly
manner. As one of the squadron of Scribblers I could
not but pay due reverence to a commissioned officer.
I gave him that book with the inscription to show to
you, that you might correct the errors. With the rest I
can have nothing to do; but he has served you very
right. You have played the stepmother to D\pii\ J\uan\
throughout, either ashamed or afraid, or negligent, to your
own loss and nobody's credit. Who ever heard before of
a ptiblisher's not putting his name ? The reasons for my
anonyme I stated; they were family ones entirely. Some
travelling Englishmen whom I met the other day at
Bologna told me, that you affect to wish to be considered
as not having anything to do with that work, which, by
the way, is sad half and half dealing — for you will be a
long time before you publish a better poem.
You seem hurt at the words " the publisher" What !
you — who won't put your name on the title page — would
have had me stick J. M. Esq'e on the blank leaf. No,
Murray ! you are an excellent fellow, a little variable and
somewhat of the opinion of every body you talk with
(particularly the last person you see), but a good fellow
for all that ; yet nevertheless I can't tell you that I think
you have acted very gallantly by that persecuted book —
which has made its way entirely by itself, without the
light of your countenance, or any kind of encouragement
472 THE PALAZZO LANFRANCHI, PISA. [CHAP. XXIV.
— critical — or bibliopolar. You disparaged the last three
cantos to me, and kept them back above a year ; but I
have heard from England that (notwithstanding the
errors of the press) they are well thought of; for instance,
by American Irving, which last is a feather in my (fool's)
cap.
You have received my letter (open) through Mr.
Kinnaird, and so, pray, send me no more reviews of any
kind. I will read no more of evil or good in that line.
Walter Scott has not read a review of himself for thirteen
years.
The bust is not my property, but Hob/wise's. I
addressed it to you as an Admiralty man, great at the
Custom house. Pray deduct the expences of the same,
and all others.
Yours ever,
BYRON.
955. — To John Murray.
Pisa, Nov. 9, 1821.
I never read the Memoirs at all, not even since they
were written ; and I never will : the pain of writing them
was enough ; you may spare me that of a perusal. Mr.
Moore has (or may have) a discretionary power to omit
any repetition, or expressions which do not seem good to
him, who is a better judge than you or I.
956. — To John Murray.
Pisa, Nov! I2'.h 1821.
DEAR SIR, — I have marked, on the back of the en-
closed proof of the letter on M* Wilson, the names of the
writings, mostly unpublished, which, if collected together,
would form a volume or two which might be entitled
l82I.] HEAVEN AND EARTH. 473
Miscellanies. You must recollect, however, that the
letter, on the British review, signed Chttterbtukf must
have a note stating that the name of Clutterbiuk was
adopted long before (a year I think) the publication of
the Monastery and Abbot. If you don't do this, I shall
be accused (with the usual justice) of plagiarism from
Walter Scott.
The whole of these tracts might be published simply
and unostentatiously, with the letter on B[owles]'s Pope
at the head of then. Be careful about their dates.
Let me know your intention.
Your hum1? S?
BYRON.
Opened by me, this day, Nov' i4l-h 1821, and sent to
M- Kinnaird.
B.
957. — To John Murray.
Pisa, Nov! I4*.h 1821.
DEAR SIR, — Enclosed is a lyrical drama, (entitled A
Mystery, 2 from its subject,) which, perhaps, may arrive
1. The Monastery opens with an "Introductory Epistle from
"Captain Clutterbuck, late of His Majesty's Regiment of
"Infantry to The Author of Waverley." The author of Waverley
returns the compliment in The Abbot, and The Fortunes of Nigel is
prefaced by a letter from Captain Clutterbuck to Dr. Dryasdust.
Byron's "letter on Mr. Wilson," signed " Wortley Clutterbuck,"
is the Reply to Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, printed in Letters ',
vol. iv. Appendix IX. (See also ibid., p. 385, note I.)
2. Heaven and Earth. Though revised by Gifford, and printed,
it was not published till 1822, when it appeared in The Liberal,
No. ii. pp. 165-206. The Second Part was never written. It
was commenced, so Byron told Medwin {Conversations, p. 231), "at
" Ravenna, on the Qth of October last. It occupied about fourteen
" days. Douglas Kinnaird tells me that he can get no bookseller to
" publish it. It was offered to Murray, but he is the most timid of
" God's booksellers, and starts at the title. He has taken a dislike
474 THE PALAZZO LANFRANCHI, PISA. [CHAP. XXIV.
in time for the volume. If it should not (for I must have
the proofs first, as it is not very legibly written) you can
add it to the volume with the Pulci and Dante. Perhaps
you might publish it in a separate appendix form of the
same type, etc., for the purchasers of Cain, so that they
might bind it up with the new volume ; and then put it
together with the others in a second edition, supposing a
second edition possible. You will find it pious enough, I
trust, — at least some of the Chorus might have been
written by Sternhold and Hopkins themselves for that,
and perhaps for melody. As it is longer, and more
lyrical and Greek, than I intended at first, I have not
divided it into acts, but called what I have sent Part first,
as there is a suspension of the action, which may either
close there without impropriety, or be continued in a way
that I have in view. I wish the first part to be published
before the second, because, if it don't succeed, it is better
to stop there than to go on in a fruitless experiment.
I desire you to acknowledge the arrival of this packet
by return of post, if you can conveniently, with a proof.
Your obedient ser!,
B.
P.S. — My wish is to have it published at the same
time, and, if possible, in the same volume, with the
others ; because, whatever the merits or demerits of these
pieces may be, it will perhaps be allowed that each is of
a different kind, and in a different style; so that, in-
cluding the prose and the D\pn\ J\uans\, etc., I have at
least sent you variety during the last year or two.
The present packet consists of 12 sheets, which will
make more than fifty printed pages additional to the
"to that three-syllabled word Mystery, and says, I know not why,
" that it is another Cain."
1 821.] FOUR PLAYS. 475
Volume. I suppose that there is not enough in the four
plays (or poems) to make two volumes, but they will form
one large one.
Two words to say that you have received the packet
will be enough.
958. — To John Murray.
^Undated.]
SIR, — I only received by this day's post the enclosed,
which you addressed by mistake to Ravenna. I presume
that the three plays are to be published together ; because,
if not, I will not permit their separate publication. I
repeat this, because a passage in your letter makes it
doubtful. I sent you a fourth by last post (a lyrical
drama on a scriptural subject — "the Deluge"), which
I could wish to be published at the same time, and (if
possible and in time) in the same volume. I return you
the notes (not of " the Doge," as you say by mistake),
but of the new poems. Most of the packets have, I
believe, arrived in safety. I wrote to M1- K? to accept
your proposal for the three plays and three cantos of
jD[on] f[uan], distinctly giving to understand that the
other poems did not enter into that agreement.
I am your obed' serv',
B.
P.S. — What is the reason that I see Cain and the
Foscaris announced, and not Sardanapalus ?
959. — To Thomas Moore.
Pisa, November 16, 1821.
There is here Mr. Taaffe, an Irish genius, with whom
we are acquainted. He hath written a really excellent
47 6 THE PALAZZO LANFRANCHI, PISA. [CHAP. XXIV.
Commentary on Dante,1 full of new and true information,
and much ingenuity. But his verse is such as it hath
pleased God to endue him withal. Nevertheless, he is
so firmly persuaded of its equal excellence, that he won't
divorce the Commentary from the traduction, as I ven-
tured delicately to hint, — not having the fear of Ireland
before my eyes, and upon the presumption of having
shotten very well in his presence (with common pistols
too, not with my Manton's) the day before.
But he is eager to publish all, and must be gratified,
though the Reviewers will make him suffer more tortures
I. The first volume of Taaffe's Comment on the Divine Comedy of
Dante, printed in Italy from the type of Didot, was published in
1822 by Murray without the author's name. It was reviewed in
the London Monthly Review (vol. cii. pp. 225-242), but no more
of the work was published. A letter from Shelley, recommending
the book to Oilier for publication, is quoted by Professor Dowden
{Life of Shelley, vol. h. pp. 364, 365). The translation was in
octosyllabic terza rima, a metre which, in Byron's opinion, did not
" seem to suit the genius of English poetry — it is certainly uncalcu-
"lated for a work of any length" (Medwin, Conversations of Lord
Byron, p. 241). In Taaffe's hands it was not successful. "There's
"Taaffe," said Byron (ibid., p. 243), "is not satisfied with what
"Carey has done, but he must be traducing him [Dante] too.
" What think you of that fine line in the Inferno being rendered, as
" Taaffe has done it ?—
" ' I Mantuan, capering, squalid, squalling.'
"There's alliteration and inversion enough, surely! I have ad-
" vised him to frontispiece his book with his own head, Capo di
" Traditore, 'the head of a traitor ;' then will come the title-page
" comment — Hell 1 "
John Taaffe was a Knight Commander of the Order of St. John
of Jerusalem, and wrote its history ( The History of the Holy, Military,
Sovereign Order of St. John of Jemsalem, 4 vols., London, 1852).
His privately printed poem, Adelais (2 vols.), also appeared in
1852. Though Byron calls him a "good fellow," Taaffe was his
butt at Pisa. The affair with the dragoon (March, 1822), in which
Byron and Shelley were involved, was due to Taaffe, whom
Trelawney (decora's of Shelley, Byron, and the Author, ed. 1887,
p. 122) describes as "a resolute bore, but timid rider." After the
fray Taaffe disappeared, and it was supposed that he was confined in
Byron's house, "guarded by bull-dogs" (Prose Works of Shelley,
ed. H. Buxton Forman, vol. iv. p. 316). Subsequently his valorous
talk gained him the nickname of " False Taaffe " (ibid.).
1 82 1.] TAAFFE'S COMMENT ON DANTE. 477
than there are in his original. Indeed, the Notes are
well worth publication; but he insists upon the trans-
lation for company, so that they will come out together,
like Lady C * * t chaperoning Miss * *. I read a letter
of yours to him yesterday, and he begs me to write to
you about his Poeshie. He is really a good fellow,
apparently, and I dare say that his verse is very good
Irish.
Now, what shall we do for him? He says that he
will risk part of the expense with the publisher. He will
never rest till he is published and abused — for he has a
high opinion of himself — and I see nothing left but to
gratify him, so as to have him abused as little as possible ;
for I think it would kill him. You must write, then, to
Jeffrey to beg him not to review him, and I will do the
same to Gifford, through Murray. Perhaps they might
notice the Comment without touching the text. But I
doubt the dogs — the text is too tempting.
• »'•''*•
I have to thank you again, as I believe I did before,
for your opinion of Cain,1 etc.
I. Moore wrote, September 30, 1821, preferring Sardanapalus to
The Two Foscari. " But Cain" he continues, " is wonderful —
" terrible — never to be forgotten. If I am not mistaken, it will sink
"deep into the world's heart; and while many will shudder at its
"blasphemy, all must fall prostrate before its grandeur. Talk of
"yEschylus and his Prometheus ! here is the true spirit both of the
" Poet — and the Devil." Shelley, writing to Gisborne, April 10,
1822 (Prose Works of Shelley, ed. H. Buxton Forman, vol. iv. p.
264), asks, " What think you of Lord Byron's last volume ? In my
" opinion it contains finer poetry than has appeared in England
"since the publication of Paradise Regained. Cain is apocalyptic
" — it is a revelation not before communicated to man."
Goethe and Walter Scott spoke their admiration in similar terms.
But while men of letters were impressed with the grandeur of the
poetry, society condemned the poem for its supposed " wickedness."
" Tell dear George," writes Lady Granville to Lady G. Morpeth,
January I, 1822 (Letters of Harriet, Countess Granville, vol. i.
p. 219), "that I think Cain most wicked, but not without feeling
THE PALAZZO LANFRANCHI, PISA. [CHAP. XXIV.
You are right to allow to settle the claim ; but
I do not see why you should repay him out of your
legacy — at least, not yet.1 If you feel about it (as you
are ticklish on such points), pay him the interest now,
and the principal when you are strong in cash ; or pay
him by instalments ; or pay him as I do my creditors —
that is, not till they make me.
I address this to you at Paris, as you desire. Reply
soon, and believe me ever, etc.
P.S. — What I wrote to you about low spirits is, how-
ever, very true. At present, owing to the climate, etc.
(I can walk down into my garden, and pluck my own
oranges, — and, by the way, have got a diarrhoea in
consequence of indulging in this meridian luxury of
" or passion. Parts of it are magnificent, and the effect of Granville
" reading it out loud to me was that I roared till I could neither
"hear nor see." Mrs. Piozzi, speaking of Carlile's republication of
Paine's Age of Reason, says, "Lord Byron's book (Cain) will do
"more mischief than his; and you see there is a cheap edition
"advertised, in order to disseminate the poyson. Why, the yellow
"fever is not half as mischievous" (Autobiography, etc., of Mrs.
Piozzi, vol. ii. p. 447). Crabb Robinson enters in his Diary for
March I, 1822 (Diary, vol. ii. p. 227), " Came home early from
" Aders' to read Cain. The author has not advanced any novelties
"in his speculations on the origin of evil, but he has stated one or
" two points with great effect. The book is calculated to spread
" infidelity by furnishing a ready expression to difficulties which
" must occur to every one, more or less, and which are passed over
" by those who confine themselves to scriptural representations.
" The second act is full of poetic energy, and there is some truth of
"passion in the scenes between Cain's wife and himself."
I. " Having discovered that, while I was abroad, a kind friend
"had, without any communication with myself, placed at the dis-
" posal of the person who acted for me a large sum for the discharge
" of this claim, I thought it right to allow the money thus generously
"destined, to be employed as was intended, and then immediately
" repaid my friend out of the sum given by Mr. Murray for the
" manuscript. It may seem obtrusive, I fear, to enter into this
' ' sort of personal details ; but, without some few words of explana-
" tion, such passages as the above would be unintelligible " (Moore).
The "kind friend" was Lord Lansdowne.
1 82 1.] A CHILD'S HAIR. 479
proprietorship,) my spirits are much better. You seem to
think that I could not have written the Vision, etc., under
the influence of low spirits ; but I think there you err.1
A man's poetry is' a distinct faculty, or soul, and has no
more to do with the every-day individual than the In-
spiration with the Pythoness when removed from her
tripod.
960.— To Lady Byron.3
(To the care of the Hon. Mrs. Leigh, London.)
Pisa, November 17, 1821.
I have to acknowledge the receipt of "Ada's hair,"
which is very soft and pretty, and nearly as dark already
as mine was at twelve years old, if I may judge from
what I recollect of some in Augusta's possession, taken
at that age. But it don't curl, — perhaps from its being
let grow.
I also thank you for the inscription of the date and
name, and I will tell you why ; — I believe that they are
the only two or three words of your hand-writing in my
possession. For your letters I returned ; and except the
two words, or rather the one word, " Household," written
twice in an old account book, I have no other. I burnt
your last note, for two reasons : — firstly, it was written in
a style not very agreeable; and, secondly, I wished to
take your word without documents, which are the worldly
resources of suspicious people.
I suppose that this note will reach you somewhere
1. "My remark had been hasty and inconsiderate, and Lord
"Byron's is the view borne out by all experience. Almost all the
"tragic and gloomy writers have been, in social life, mirthful
" persons " (Moore).
2. This letter, never sent to Lady Byron, was enclosed by Byron
in a letter to Lady Blessington (May 6, 1823), and is printed by
Moore (Life, pp. 581, 582). Possibly the date should be 1822.
480 THE PALAZZO LANFRANCHI, PISA. [CHAP. XXIV.
about Ada's birthday — the roth of December, I believe.
She will then be six, so that in about twelve more I shall
have some chance of meeting her ; — perhaps sooner, if I
am obliged to go to England by business or otherwise.
Recollect, however, one thing, either in distance or near-
ness ; — every day which keeps us asunder should, after so
long a period, rather soften our mutual feelings, which
must always have one rallying-point as long as our child
exists, which I presume we both hope will be long after
either of her parents.
The time which has elapsed since the separation has
been considerably more than the whole brief period of
our union, and the not much longer one of our prior
acquaintance. We both made a bitter mistake ; but now
it is over, and irrevocably so. For, at thirty-three on my
part, and a few years less on yours, though it is no very
extended period of life, still it is one when the habits and
thought are generally so formed as to admit of no modi-
fication; and as we could not agree when younger, we
should with difficulty do so now.
I say all this, because I own to you, that, notwith-
standing every thing, I considered our re-union as not
impossible for more than a year after the separation ; —
but then I gave up the hope entirely and for ever. But
this very impossibility of re-union seems to me at least a
reason why, on all the few points of discussion which can
arise between us, we should preserve the courtesies of life,
and as much of its kindness as people who are never to
meet may preserve perhaps more easily than nearer con-
nections. For my own part, I am violent, but not
malignant; for only fresh provocations can awaken my
resentments. To you, who are colder and more con-
centrated, I would just hint, that you may sometimes
mistake the depth of a cold anger for dignity, and a
1 82 1.] WHO OFFENDS MOST FORGIVES LEAST. 481
worse feeling for duty. I assure you that I bear you now
(whatever I may have done) no resentment whatever.
Remember, that if you have injured me in aught, this for-
giveness is something ; and that, if I have injured you^ it
is something more still, if it be true, as the moralists say,
that the most offending are the least forgiving.
Whether the offence has been solely on my side, or
reciprocal, or on yours chiefly, I have ceased to reflect
upon any but two things, — viz. that you are the mother
of my child, and that we shall never meet again. I think
if you also consider the two corresponding points with
reference to myself, it will be better^for all three.
Yours ever,
NOEL BYRON.
961. — To Douglas Kinnaird.
Pisa, November 20, 1821.
MY DEAR KINNAIRD, — I ought to have answered
your letter long ago, but I am but just subsiding into my
new residence, after all the bore and bustle of changing.
The traveller can " take his ease in his inn," but those
who are settled in a place, and must move with bag and
baggage, are (as I suppose you know by experience)
necessarily more tardy in their arrangements.
I have a very good spacious house, upon the Arno,
and have nothing to complain of, except that it is less
quiet than my house in Ravenna. — And so you are at
Rome ? — I am glad you have got rid of the gout ; — the
tumour, if not of podagrous origin, will subside of itself.
At Bologna I met with Rogers, and we crossed the
Apennines together — probably you have got him at Rome
by this time. I took him to visit our old friend the sexton,
at the Certosa, (where you and I met with Bianchetti),
VOL. v. 21
482 THE PALAZZO LANFRANCHI, PISA. [CHAP. XXIV.
who looked at him very hard, and seemed well disposed
to keep him back in his skull-room. The said sexton,
by the way, brought out his two daughters, to renew our
acquaintance ; one of them is very pretty, and the other
sufficiently so. He talked pathetically of the venality of
the age, in which young virgins could not be espoused
without a dower: so that, if you are disposed to portion
them in your way to Milan, you have an opportunity of
exercising your benevolence.
I was obliged to set out the next day with [Rogers] ;
remained with him a day at Florence, and then came on
alone to Pisa, where I found all my friends in good health
and plight. [Rogers] looks a little black still about being
called " venerable," but he did not mention it. It was at
his own request that I met him in the City of Sausages :
he is not a bad traveller, but bilious.
As to Don Juan, it is not impossible that he might
have visited the city which you recommend to his inspec-
tion ; but these costermonger days are unfavourable to all
liberal extension of morality. As to his author, he can
hardly come on to Rome again for the present ; but some
day or other probably may. You ask after Bowles ? but
he has been so extremely civil, that I could not, without
appearing overbearing and insolent, continue the contro-
versy ; for I could not answer without saying something
sharp, and therefore it is better to be silent.
If Lord Clare and Lord Sligo are at Rome, and are
of your acquaintance, will you tell them both, with my
best remembrances, that I will answer their letters soon.
I find my old friends have got a notion (founded,
I suppose, on an angry note of mine to a poem), that I
receive nobody, and renew no old acquaintance. They
are very much mistaken — I only desire no new ones.
The silly note, (which, by the way, I desired Murray to
1 82 1.] THORWALDSEN'S BUST. 483
suppress before publication), was caused by a really
impudent assertion of an anonymous traveller, who said,
that he, or she, had frequently declined an introduction
to me. Now I never in my life proposed, and rarely
would accept, an English introduction since I came
abroad.
Let me hear from you whenever you think it is not
a bore to do so, and believe me,
Ever and truly yours,
BYRON.
962. — To John Murray.
Pisa, Nov. 24l.h 1821.
DEAR SIR, — By a not very temperate letter from Mr.
Hobhouse, in a style which savours somewhat of the
London tavern, I perceive that there has been some
mistake or misunderstanding about the block of a bust.
This as I do not understand — I cannot explain. I
addressed it to your care for Mr. Hobhouse, and indeed
with his name on the direction — always understood that
all expences were to be at my charge, and that the trouble
would not be greater than you have often been willing to
take. I thought that as publisher to the Admiralty, etc.,
you would be able more easily to get it through the
Custom house. Something, however, has happened, it
seems, to excite Mr. H.'s indignation, and I could really
wish to be spared such altercations as (were he not one
of my oldest friends) must have ended hi a total rupture.
For this you must be partly to blame, as surely my
directions were extremely clear.
Of his language to me I can only say that I can
hardly believe him to have been sober when he used it.
Not content with an invective about the marble, he has
484 THE PALAZZO LANFRANCHI, PISA. [CHAP. XXIV.
launched (uncalled for, for I did not solicit his opinion
that I recollect at least) into a most violent invective
upon the subject of Cain (not on a religious account at
all as he says) and in such terms as make the grossest
review in the lowest publication that ever I read upon
any scribbler moderate in comparison. He then pro-
ceeds (still unasked) upon the subject of the MSS.
sold by Mr. Moore, and I do not know which of the
two he bespatters most. Having thus " bespattered the
" poetical eminence of the day " as Gifford says to
quiz Timothy Adney * in the Baviad and Meviad, I
should be glad to know whether there is anything re-
proachable in the means or the motive of that transaction.
/ can derive no profit from it — and Moore in doing so
was merely anticipating a legacy — at my express desire
often repeated to him ! Whatever blame then there may
be is mine — and ought to be. Does Mr. Hobhouse
dispute my right to leave Memoirs of myself for post-
humous • publication ? Have not thousands done it ?
Are there not — or have there not been circumstances
which require it in my case — or would he have me leave
the tale for him to tell ? But the best is that I happen
to know he himself keeps — and has kept for many years
a regular diary and disquisition upon all his own personal
as well as public transactions — and has he done this with
no view to posthumous publication ? I will not believe
it. I shall not quote his expressions because really some
of them to me could only be noticed in one way — and
that way neither present distance — nor past intimacy,
were I nearer — would induce me to take — without some
overt action accompanied the harshness of his language.
I have even written him as temperate an answer as I
believe ever human being did in the like circumstances.
I. See The Baviad, line 187 and note.
1 82 1.] THE CAUSE OF A QUARREL. 485
Is there anything in the MSS. that could be personally
obnoxious to himself? I am sure I do not remember,
nor intended it. Mr. Kinnaird and others had read them
at Paris and noticed none such.
If there were any — I can only say — that even that
would not sanction the tone of his letter, which I showed
to one or two English and Irish friends of mine here —
who were perfectly astonished at the whole of it. I do
not allude to the opinions (which may or may not be
founded) but to the language — which seems studiously
insulting. You see, Murray, what a scene you have super-
induced— because the original sin seems to have been
about this foolish bust, or I am convinced that he would
have expressed his opinions less in the Election style.
However I am more hurt than angry — for I cannot afford
to lose an old friend for a fit of ill-humour.
Yours ever,
B.
P.S. — Have you publicated the three plays in one
volume — that will be the best way? And I wish to
know what you think about doing with the Miscellanies
as I have formed no positive determination about them —
the prose ones I mean. The " poeshie " you must publish
as heretofore decided — but whether with or without the
prose I leave to your pleasure — As Listen says that " is
" all hoptional you know." x
Have you given the " Irish Avatar " to Mr. Moore ?
as I requested you to do ? You are a pretty fellow upon
the whole for making a confusion.
I. In a note to Peacock's Headlong Hall (Works, ed. 1875, vol. i.
p. i), the editor, Thomas Cole, C.B., says, "Liston, in one of his
"farces, used to make a strong point, when asked to 'remember
" the coachman,' by dividing sixpence between guard and coach -
" men, and explaining that the gift was ' hoptional.' "
486 THE PALAZZO LANFRANCHI, PISA. [CHAP. XXIV.
963. — To John Murray.
Pisa, December 4, 1821.
DEAR SIR, — By extracts in the English papers, — in
your holy Ally, Galignani's Messenger, — I perceive that
"the two greatest examples of human vanity in the
" present age " are, firstly, " the ex-Emperor Napoleon,"
and secondly, " his Lordship, etc., the noble poet," mean-
ing your humble servant, " poor guiltless I."
Poor Napoleon ! he little dreamed to what " vile
" comparisons " the turn of the Wheel would reduce him !
I cannot help thinking, however, that had our learned
brother of the newspaper office seen my very mode-
rate answer to the very scurrile epistle of my radical
patron, John Hobhouse, M.P., he would have thought the
thermometer of my " Vanity " reduced to a very decent
temperature. By the way you do not happen to know
whether Mrs. Fry had commenced her reform of the
prisoners at the time when Mr. Hobhouse was in
Newgate? there are some of his phrases, and much of
his style (in that same letter), which led me to suspect
that either she had not, or that he had profited less than
the others by her instructions. Last week I sent back
the deed of Mr. Moore signed and witnessed. It was
inclosed to Mr. Kinnaird with a request to forward it
to you. I have also transmitted to him my opinions
upon your proposition, etc., etc., but addressed them to
himself.
I have got here into a famous old feudal palazzo,1 on
I. '"It is one of those marble piles that seem built for
' eternity, whilst the family whose name it bears no longer exists,'
' said Shelley, as we entered a hall that seemed built for giants. ' I
' remember the lines in the Inferno* said I : ' a Lanfranchi was
' one of the persecutors of Ugolino.' ' The same," answered
' Shelley ; ' you will see a picture of Ugolino and his sons in his
' room. Fletcher, his valet, is as superstitious as his master, and
1 82 1.] A HAUNTED PALACE. 487
the Arno, large enough for a garrison, with dungeons
below and cells in the walls, and so full of Ghosts, that
the learned Fletcher (my valet) has begged leave to
change his room, and then refused to occupy his new
room, because there were more ghosts there than in the
other. It is quite true that there are most extraordinary
noises (as in all old buildings), which have terrified the
servants so as to incommode me extremely. There is
one place where people were evidently walled up; for
there is but one possible passage, broken through the wall,
and then meant to be closed again upon the inmate. The
house belonged to the Lanfranchi family, (the same men-
tioned by Ugolino in his dream, as his persecutor with
Sismondi,) and has had a fierce owner or two in its time.
The staircase, etc., is said to have been built by Michel
Agnolo (sic). It is not yet cold enough for a fire. What
a climate !
I am, however, bothered about these spectres, (as they
say the last occupants were, too,) of whom I have as yet
seen nothing, nor, indeed, heard (myself); but all the
other ears have been regaled by all kinds of supernatural
sounds. The first night I thought I heard an odd noise,
but it has not been repeated. I have now been here
more than a month.
Yours,
BYRON.
P.S. Pray send me two or three dozen of "Acton's
' says the house is haunted, so that he cannot sleep for rumbling
1 noises overhead, which he compares to the rolling of bowls. No
'wonder; old Lanfranchi's ghost is unquiet, and walks at night.'
' The palace was of such size, that Lord Byron only occupied the
' first floor ; and at the top of the staircase leading to it was the
' English bull-dog, whose chain was long enough to guard the door,
' and prevent the entrance of strangers ; he, however, knew Shelley,
' growled, and let us pass." — Medwin, Conversations of Lord Byron,
November 20, 1821, pp. 3, 4.
488 THE PALAZZO LANFRANCHI, PISA. [CHAP. XXIV.
" corn-rubbers " in a parcel by the post — -packed dry and
well — if you can.
I have received safely the parcel containing the Seal —
the E. Review — and some pamphlets, etc. The others
are I presume upon their way.
Are there not designs from Faust? Send me some,
and a translation of it, — if such there is. Also of Goethe's
life if such there be ; if not — the original German.
964. — To John Sheppard.1
Pisa, December 8, 1821.
SIR, — I have received your letter. I need not say,
that the extract which it contains has affected me, because
I. John Sheppard (1785-1879), a clothier of Frome, wrote
poetry, books of travel, and devotional works. His Thoughts pre-
parative or persuasive to Private Devotion (1823) was widely read.
The following is the letter which Byron is answering : —
"The Iron Gates, Frome, Somerset, Nov' 21, 1821.
" MY LpRD, — More than two years ago a lovely and beloved wife
1 was taken from me, after a very short union, by lingering disease.
' She possessed unvarying gentleness and fortitude, and a piety so
1 retiring as rarely to disclose itself in words, but so influential as to
' produce uniform benevolence of conduct. In the last hour of life
' (after a farewell look on a lately-born and only infant, for whom
'she had evinced inexpressible affection) her last whispers were,
' ( God's happiness ! ' ' God's happiness ! '
" Since the second anniversary of her decease I have read some
' papers which no one had seen during her life, and which contain
'her most secret thoughts. I am induced to communicate to your
' Lordship a passage from these papers which there is no doubt
' refers to yourself, as I have more than once heard the writer men-
' tion your agility on the rocks at Hastings.
" ' Oh ! my God, I take encouragement from the assurance of Thy
' word, to pray to Thee in behalf of one for whom I have lately been
' much interested. May the person to whom I allude, and who is
' now we fear as much distinguished for his neglect of Thee as for
' the transcendent talents Thou hast bestowed on him, be awakened
' to a sense of his own danger, and led to seek that peace of mind
'in a proper sense of religion which he has found this world's
' enjoyments unable to prorure. Do Thou grant that his future
' example may be productive of far more extensive benefit than his
' past conduct and writings have been of evil, and may the Sun of
1 82 1.] PRAYER FOR BYRON'S WELFARE. 489
it would imply a want of all feeling to have read it with
indifference. Though I am not quite sure that it was
intended by the writer for me, yet the date, the place
where it was written, with some other circumstances that
you mention, render the allusion probable. But for
whomever it was meant, I have read it with all the
pleasure which can arise from so melancholy a topic.
I say pleasure — because your brief and simple picture of
' Righteousness which we trust will at some future period arise on
' him be bright in proportion to the darkness of those clouds which
' guilt has raised around him ; and the balm which it bestows
1 healing and soothing in proportion to the keenness of that agony
' which the punishment of his vices has inflicted on him. May the
' hope, that the sincerity of my own efforts for the attainment of
' holiness and the approval of my own love to the great Author of
' Religion will render this prayer and every other for the welfare
' of mankind more efficacious, cheer me in the path of duty : but
' let me not forget that while we are permitted to animate ourselves
' to exertion by every innocent motive, these are but the lesser
'streams which may serve to increase the current, but which de-
' prived of the grand fountain of good, a deep conviction of inborn
' sin, and firm belief in the efficacy of Christ's atonement for the
' salvation of those who trust in Him and really seek to serve Him,
' would soon dry up and leave us as barren in every virtue as
' before.
" 'July 31? 1814, Hastings.'
" There is nothing, my Lord, in this extract which in a literary
' sense can at all interest you ; but it may perhaps appear to you
' worthy of reflexion how deep and expansive a concern for the
1 happiness of others the Christian faith can awaken in the midst of
' youth and prosperity. Here is nothing poetical and splendid, as
' in the expostulatory homage of M. De Lamartine, but here is the
' sublime, my Lord ; for this intercession was offered on your account
' to the Supreme Source of happiness. It sprang from a faith more
' confirmed than that of the French poet, and from a charity which
' in combination with faith, shewed its power unimpaired amidst
' the languors and pains of approaching dissolution. I will hope
' that a prayer which I am sure was deeply sincere may not be
' always unavailing.
" It would add nothing, my Lord, to the fame with which your
' genius has surrounded you, for an unknown and obscure individual
' to express his admiration of it. I had rather be numbered with
' those who wish and pray that ' wisdom from above,' and ' peace
' and joy ' may enter such a mind.
"JOHN SHEPPARD.'
490 THE PALAZZO LANFRANCHI, PISA. [CHAP. XXIV.
the life and demeanour of the excellent person whom I
trust you will again meet, cannot be contemplated with-
out the admiration due to her virtues, and her pure and
unpretending piety. Her last moments were particularly
striking ; and I do not know that, in the course of read-
ing the story of mankind, and still less in my observations
upon the existing portion, I ever met with any thing so
unostentatiously beautiful. Indisputably, the firm be-
lievers in the Gospel have a great advantage over all
others, — for this simple reason, that, if true, they will
have their reward hereafter ; and if there be no hereafter,
they can be but with the infidel in his eternal sleep,
having had the assistance of an exalted hope, through
life, without subsequent disappointment, since (at the
worst for them) " out of nothing, nothing can arise," not
even sorrow. But a man's creed does not depend upon
himself: who can say, I will believe this, that, or the
other? and least of all, that which he least can com-
prehend. I have, however, observed, that those who
have begun life with extreme faith, have in the end
greatly narrowed it, as Chillingworth, Clarke (who ended
as an Arian), Bayle, and Gibbon (once a Catholic), and
some others ; while, on the other hand, nothing is more
common than for the early sceptic to end in a firm belief,
like Maupertuis, and Henry Kirke White.
But my business is to acknowledge your letter, and
not to make a dissertation. I am obliged to you for
your good wishes, and more than obliged by the extract
from the papers of the beloved object whose qualities
you have so well described in a few words. I can assure
you that all the fame which ever cheated humanity into
higher notions of its own importance would never weigh
in my mind against the pure and pious interest which a
virtuous being may be pleased to take in my welfare. In
l82I.] ADA'S BIRTHDAY. 491
this point of view, I would not exchange the prayer of
the deceased in my behalf for the united glory of Homer,
Caesar, and Napoleon, could such be accumulated upon a
living head. Do me at least the justice to suppose, that
" Video meliora proboque," '
however the " deteriora sequor " may have been applied
to my conduct.
I have the honour to be
Your obliged and obedient servant,
BYRON.
P.S. — I do not know that I am addressing a clergy-
man ; but I presume that you will not be affronted by
the mistake (if it is one) on the address of this letter.
One who has so well explained, and deeply felt, the
doctrines of religion, will excuse the error which led me
to believe him its minister.
965. — To John Murray.
Pisa, December IO, 1821.
DEAR SIR, — This day and this hour, (one, on the
clock,) my daughter is six years old. I wonder when I
shall see her again, or if ever I shall see her at all.2
1. Ovid, Met., vii. 20 —
" I know the right, and I approve it too ;
Condemn the wrong, and yet the wrong pursue."
2. " During our drive and ride this evening, Lord Byron declined
' our usual amusement of pistol-firing, without assigning a cause.
' He hardly spoke a word during the first half-hour, and it was
' evident that something weighed heavily on his mind. There was
' a sacredness in his melancholy that I dared not interrupt. At
' length he said, ' This is Ada's birthday, and might have been the
' happiest day of my life : as it is ! ' He stopped, seemingly
'ashamed of having betrayed his feelings It lasted till
' Me came within a mile of the Argive gate. There our silence was
' all at once interrupted by shrieks that seemed to proceed from a
492 THE PALAZZO LANFRANCHI, PISA. [CHAP. XXIV.
I have remarked a curious coincidence, which almost
looks like a fatality.
My mother, my wife, my daughter, my half-sister, my
sister's mother, my natural daughter (as far at least as /
am concerned), and myself, are all only children.
My father, by his first marriage with Lady Conyers
(an only child), had only my sister ; and by his second
marriage with another only child, an only child again.
Lady Byron, as you know, was one also, and so is my
daughter, etc.
Is not this rather odd — such a complication of only
children? By the way, send me my daughter Ada's
miniature. I have only the print, which gives little or
no idea of her complexion.
I heard the other day from an English voyager, that
her temper is said to be extremely violent. Is it so?
It is not unlikely considering her parentage. My temper
is what it is — as you may perhaps divine, — and my Lady's
was a nice little sullen nucleus of concentrated Savageness
to mould my daughter upon, — to say nothing of her two
Grandmothers, both of whom, to my knowledge, were as
pretty specimens of female Spirit as you might wish to
see on a Summer's day.
I have answered your letters, etc., either to you in
person, or through M' D. K?
The broken Seal and Edinburgh R\eview~\, etc., arrived
safely. The others are I presume upon their way.
Yours, etc.,
N. B.
' cottage by the side of the road. We pulled up our horses to
' enquire of a contadino .... He told us, that a widow had just
' lost her only child, and that the sounds proceeded from the wail-
' ings of some women over the corpse. Lord Byron was much
' affected ... 'I shall not be happy,' said he, ' till I hear that
' my daughter is well. I have a great horror of anniversaries.' " —
Medwin, Conversations of Lord Byron, pp. 145, 146.
1821.] THE GIAOUR STORY. 493
966. — To Thomas Moore.
Pisa, December 12, 1821.
What you say about Galignani's two biographies is
very amusing : and, if I were not lazy, I would certainly
do what you desire. But I doubt my present stock of
facetiousness — that is, of good serious humour, so as not
to let the cat out of the bag.1 I wish you would under-
take it. I will forgive and indulge you (like a Pope)
beforehand, for any thing ludicrous, that might keep
those fools in their own dear belief that a man is a loup
garou.
I suppose I told you that the Giaour story had
actually some foundation on facts ; or, if I did not, you
will one day find it in a letter of Lord Sligo's,2 written to
me after the publication of the poem. I should not like
marvels to rest upon any account of my own, and shall
say nothing about it. However, the real incident is still
remote enough from the poetical one, being just such as,
happening to a man of any imagination, might suggest
such a composition. The worst of any real adventures is
that they involve living people — else Mrs. 's, 's,
etc., are as " German to the matter " as Mr. Maturin could
desire for his novels. * * *
The consummation you mentioned for poor Taafife
was near taking place yesterday. Riding pretty sharply
1. " Mr. Galignani having expressed a wish to be furnished with
' a short Memoir of Lord Byron, for the purpose of prefixing it to
' the French edition of his works, I had said jestingly in a preceding
' letter to his Lordship, that it would be but a fair satire on the dis-
' position of the world to 'bemonster his features,' if he would
' write for the public, English as well as French, a sort of mock-
' heroic account of himself, outdoing, in horrors and wonders, all
' that had yet been related or believed of him, and leaving even
' Goethe's story of the double murder at Florence far behind "
(Moore).
2. See Letters, vol. ii. p. 257, note 2.
494 THE PALAZZO LANFRANCHI, PISA. [CHAP. XXIV.
after Mr. Medwin and myself in turning the corner of
a lane between Pisa and the hills, he was spilt, — and,
besides losing some claret on the spot, bruised himself
a good deal, but is in no danger. He was bled, and
keeps his room. As I was ahead of him some hundred
yards, I did not see the accident; but my servant, who
was behind, did, and says the horse did not fall — the
usual excuse of floored equestrians. As TaafFe piques
himself upon his horsemanship, and his horse is really a
pretty horse enough, I long for his personal narrative, —
as I never yet met the man who would fairly claim a
tumble as his own property.
Could not you send me a printed copy of the " Irish
" Avatar ? " — I do not know what has become of Rogers
since we parted at Florence.
Don't let the Angles keep you from writing. Sam
told me that you were somewhat dissipated in Paris,
which I can easily believe. Let me hear from you at
your best leisure.
Ever and truly, etc.
P.S.— December 13.
I enclose you some lines written not long ago, which
you may do what you like with, as they are very harm-
less.1 Only, if copied, or printed, or set, I could wish it
more correctly than in the usual way, in which one's
" nothings are monstered," as Coriolanus says.
You must really get TaafFe published — he never will
rest till he is so. He is just gone with his broken head
to Lucca, at my desire, to try to save a man from being
I. The lines beginning —
"Oh ! talk not to me of a name great in story ;
The days of our Youth are the days of our Glory," etc.
See Detached Thoughts, p. 466 (118).
LORD BYRON,
AS HE APPEARED AFTER HIS DAILY RIDE AT PISA AND GENOA.
{From a Silhouette cut in paper by Mrs. Leigh Hunt.)
[To face p. 494.
1 82 1.] CONDEMNED TO THE STAKE. 495
burnt.1 The Spanish * * *, that has her petticoats over
Lucca, had actually condemned a poor devil to the stake,
for stealing the wafer box out of a church. Shelley and
I, of course, were up in arms against this piece of piety,
and have been disturbing every body to get the sentence
changed. Taaffe is gone to see what can be done.
B.
967. — To Percy Bysshe Shelley.
December 12, 1821.
MY DEAR SHELLEY, — Enclosed is a note for you from
His reasons are all very true, I dare say, and it
might and may be of personal inconvenience to us. But
that does not appear to me to be a reason to allow a
being to be burnt without trying to save him. To save
him by any means but remonstrance is of course out of
the question ; but I do not see why a temperate remon-
strance should hurt any one. Lord Guilford is the man,
if he would undertake it. He knows the Grand Duke
personally, and might, perhaps, prevail upon him to inter-
fere. But, as he goes to-morrow, you must be quick, or it
will be useless. Make any use of my name that you please.
Yours ever, etc.
968. — To Thomas Moore.
[Undated.]
I send you the two notes,2 which will tell you the
story I allude to of the Auto da Fe. Shelley's allusion
1. The report of the intended auto dafe at Lucca was picked up
by Medwin at a bookseller's shop in Pisa (Conversations, pp. 267-
270). The foundation for the story seems to have been a proclama-
tion by the Duchess of Lucca, Maria Louisa, widow of Louis, King
of Etruria, and daughter of Charles IV. of Spain, making her
subjects liable to Spanish law. The prisoner escaped to Florence.
2. The following are the two notes which were enclosed, as
printed in Moore's Life, p. 546 : —
THE PALAZZO LANFRANCHI, PISA. [CHAP. XXIV.
to his " fellow-serpent," l Is a buffoonery of mine.
Goethe's Mephistofilus calls the serpent who tempted
Eve "my aunt, the renowned snake;" and I always
insist that Shelley is nothing but one of her nephews,
walking about on the tip of his tail.
To Lord Byron.
"Two o'clock, Tuesday Morning.
"Mv DEAR LORD, — Although strongly persuaded that the story
' must be either an entire fabrication, or so gross an exaggeration
'as to be nearly so ; yet, in order to be able to discover the truth
' beyond all doubt, and to set your mind quite at rest, I have taken
' the determination to go myself to Lucca this morning. Should it
' prove less false than I am convinced it is, I shall not fail to exert
' myself in eveiy way that I can imagine may have any success. Be
1 assured of this.
" Your Lordship's most truly,
[TAAFFE ?].
"P.S. — To prevent bavardage, I prefer going in person to
" sending my servant with a letter. It is better for you to mention
"nothing (except, of course, to Shelley) of my excursion. The
" person I visit there is one on whom I can have every dependence
" m every way, both as to authority and truth."
To Lord Byron.
" Thursday Morning.
" MY DEAR LORD BYRON, — I hear this morning that the design,
' which certainly had been in contemplation, of burning my fellow-
' serpent, has been abandoned, and that he has been condemned to
' the galleys. Lord Guilford is at Leghorn ; and as your courier
' applied to me to know whether he ought to leave your letter for
' him or not, I have thought it best since this information to tell
' him to take it back.
" Ever faithfully yours,
"P. B. SHELLEY."
I. " Staub soil er fressen, tmd mit Lust,
Wie meine Muhme, die beriihmte Schlange."
Goethe, Faust, Prolog., 92, 93.
I.] A LETTER FROM SHELLEY. 497
APPENDIX I.
LETTERS FROM SHELLEY TO BYRON, FROM
JANE CLAIRMONT TO BYRON, AND FROM
SHELLEY TO JANE CLAIRMONT.
(See p. 14, note I, and p. 73, note 2.)
(i) Letter from Shelley to Byron.
" MY DEAR LORD BYRON, — I have no conception of what
Clare's letter to you contains, and but an imperfect one of the sub-
ject of her correspondence with you at all. One or two of her
letters, but not lately, I have indeed seen ; but as I thought them
extremely childish and absurd, and requested her not to send them,
and she afterwards told me she had written and sent others in place
of them, I cannot tell if those which I saw on that occasion were
sent to you or not. I wonder, however, at your being provoked at
what Clare writes ; though that she should write what is provoking
is very probable. You are conscious of performing your duty to
Allegra, and your refusal to allow her to visit Clare at this distance
you conceive to be part of that duty. That Clare should have
wished to see her is natural. That her disappointment should vex
her, and her vexation make her write absurdly, is all in the natural
order of things. But, poor thing, she is very unhappy and in bad
health, and she ought to be treated with as much indulgence as
possible. The weak and the foolish are in this respect like kings ;
they can do no wrong.
" I think I have said enough to excuse myself for declining to be
the instrument of the communication of her wishes or sentiments to
you ; of course I should be always happy to convey yours to her.
But at present I do not see that you need trouble yourself further
than to take care that she should receive regular intelligence of
Allegra's health, etc. You can write to me, or make your secretary
write to her (as you do not like writing yourself), or arrange it in
any manner most convenient to yourself. Of course I should be
happy to hear from you on any subject.
"Galignani tells us that on the iyth of August you arrived in
London, and immediately drove to the Queen's house with dis-
patches from Italy. If your wraith indited the note which I received,
VOL. V. 2 K
498 LETTER FROM JANE CLAIRMONT. [l.
he also will receive this answer. Do you take no part in the impor-
tant nothings which the most powerful assembly in the world is now
engaged in weighing with such ridiculous deliberation ? At least,
if ministers fail in their object, shall you or not return as a candidate
for any part of the power they will lose ? Their successors, I hope,
and you, if you will be one of them, will exert that power to other
purposes than their's. As to me, I remain in Italy for the present.
If you really go to England, and leave Allegra in Italy, I think you
had better arrange so that Clare might see Allegra in your absence
if she pleases. The objections now existing against a visit either to
or from her, would be then suspended ; and such a concession would
prevent all future contention on the subject. People only desire
with great eagerness that which is forbidden or withheld. Besides
that, you should shew yourself above taking offence at any thing she
has written, which of course you are.
" It would give me great pleasure to hear from you, and to
receive news of more cantos of Don yuan, or something else. You
have starved us lately. Mrs. S. unites with me in best regards, and
I remain, my dear Lord Byron,
" Your very sincere, etc.,
"PERCY B. SHELLEY.
"Pisa, Sep. 17, 1820.
"P.S. — If I were to go to the Levant or Greece, could you be
of any service to me? If so, I should be very much obliged to you."
(2) .Letter from Jane Clairmont to Byron.
"I have just received the letter which announces the putting
Allegra into a convent. Before I quitted Geneva you promised
me — verbally, it is true — that my child, whatever its sex, should
never be away from one of its parents. This promise originated in
my being afflicted at your idea of placing it under the protection of
Mrs. Leigh. This promise is violated, not only slightly, but in a
mode and by a conduct most intolerable to my feeling of love for
Allegra. It has been my desire and my practice to interfere with
you as little as possible ; but were I silent now, you would adopt
this as an argument against me at some future period. I therefore
represent to you that the putting Allegra, at her years, into a con-
vent, away from any relation, is to me a serious and deep affliction.
Since you first gave the hint of your desire, I have been at some
pains to inquire into their system, and I find that the state of the
children is nothing less than miserable. I see no reason to believe
that convents are better regulated at Ravenna, a secondary, out-of-
the-way town of the Roman States, than at Florence, the capital of
Tuscany. Every traveller and writer upon Italy joins in condemning
them, which would be alone sufficient testimony, without adverting
to the state of ignorance and profligacy of the Italian women, all
pupils of convents. They are bad wives, most unnatural mothers ;
licentious and ignorant, they are the dishonour and unhappiness of
society. This then, with every advantage in your power, of wealth,
i
i.] A MOTHER'S APPEAL. 499
of friends, is the education you have chosen for your daughter. This
step will procure to you an innumerable addition of enemies and of
blame, for it can be regarded but in one light by the virtuous, of
whatever sect or denomination. Allegra's misfortune, in being
condemned by her father to a life of ignorance and degradation, in
being deprived of the advantages which the belonging to the most
enlightened country in the world entitle her to, and of the protection
and friendship of her parents' friends (so essential to the well-being
of a child in her desolate situation), by the adoption of a different
religion and of an education known to be contemptible, will be
received by the world as a perfect fulfilment on your part of all the
censures passed upon you. How will Lady Byron — never yet
justified for her conduct towards you — be soothed, and rejoice in the
honourable safety of herself and child, and all the world be bolder
to praise her prudence, my unhappy Allegra furnishing the con-
demning evidence ! I alone, misled by love to believe you good,
trusted to you, and now I reap the fruits.
"I do not describe my feelings of sorrow that this is to be
Allegra's destiny, because I know what an excitement it would be to
you to continue and if possible to augment the burthen. But I entreat
you to retract this step, if not for her sake, at least for your own.
Be assured that no reasons can be found to justify this measure. If
you doubt that passion may hinder my judging rightly about it,
take the opinion of Mrs. Hoppner — a lady every way worthy your
attention. Her great knowledge of the world will ensure you the
most safe and laudable conduct to be pursued with regard to
Allegra's education, and I feel so much confidence in her goodness
and sound judgment, that I should submit to her decision with the
greatest pleasure. I resigned Allegra to you that she might be
benefitted by advantages which I could not give her. It was
natural for me to expect that your daughter would become an object
of affection, and would receive an education becoming the child of
an English nobleman. Since, however, you are indifferent to her,
or that the purity of your principles does not allow you to cherish
a natural child, I entreat you, as an act of justice, to allow the
following scheme to be put into execution, that Allegra may have
the benefits her mother can procure to her. I propose to place her,
at my own expense, in one of the very best English boarding-
schools, where, if she is deprived of the happiness of a home and
paternal care, she at least would receive an English education,
which would enable her, after many years of painful and unpro-
tected childhood, to be benefitted by the kindness and affection of
her parents' friends. This school shall be chosen by your own
friends. I will see her only so often as they shall decide, because
I hope to induce you, by this sacrifice of myself, to yield the
child to proper hands. By adopting this plan you will save your
credit and also the expense ; and the anxiety for her safety and
well-being need never trouble you ; you will become as free as if
you had no such tie. I entreat you earnestly not to be obdurate
on this point. Believe me, in putting Allegra into a convent to
ease yourself of the trouble, and to hurt me in my affection for her,
500 LETTER FROM JANE CLAIRMONT. [l.
you have done almost a greater injury to yourself than to me or her.
So blind is hatred ! I have already mentioned the evil to your
reputation ; besides which, in separating her from you at this early
age, her attachment is weakened, and the difference of religion,
added to the evil stories concerning you, will, in a few years more,
completely alienate her from you. Such is the miserable and
unsatisfactory state produced by this step to all three. To none
does it procure one atom of advantage or pleasure. I add another
remark upon this convent scheme : If it is a place suited to Allegra,
why need you pay a double pension to ensure her proper treatment
and attention ? This little fact, coming from yourself, says every
thing in condemnation of the plan. I know not how to address
you in terms fit to awaken acquiescence to the above requests ;
yet neither do I know why you should doubt the wisdom and
propriety of what I propose, seeing that I have never, with regard
to Allegra, sought anything but her advantage, even at the price
of total unhappiness to myself. ' My heart,' to use the words of an
author, ' is rather wise because it loves much than because it knows
much," and the great affection I feel for her makes me to arrive at
the knowledge of what is her good, almost as it were instinctively.
I pray you to allow yourself to be advised on this point, and I
mention Mdme. Hoppner because she is friendlily disposed towards
you, and enabled by her situation to judge fairly what difference
exists between an Italian and English education. You would have
had this letter much sooner, but I was absent at Florence when the
letter from Ravenna arrived at Pisa. They, not willing to annoy
me whe.n on a visit, kept it some time ; but as my stay became
longer, sent it to me. I beg you will address to Pisa as usual, to
which city I return in another week. I cannot say how anxiously
I expect your answer. Since I read the letter I have not had a
moment's content, fearing to allow myself ease, lest Allegra should
be suffering from neglect. Nor can I be happy until some plan is
decided upon of a real advantage to her. I am desirous also of
knowing how far Bagna-cavallo is from Ravenna, and if on the sea-
coast ; also whether Allegra is entered only for a short time or for
a fixed period. The answer to these questions is of the greatest
importance to me. Again, I entreat you to yield, so that we may
both be easy about her ; I not suffering from anxiety and injury,
nor you from the contention in your heart of hatred and pride
which my entreaties awaken. I know that expressions of affection
and friendship only exasperate you, yet I cannot help wishing you
as much happiness as you inflict unjust misery upon me. Then,
indeed, you would be blessed.
"CLAIRE.
"Florence, March 24, 1821."
Across the top at the end of this letter, Byron has
written — •
" D? HOPPNER, — The moral part of the letter upon the Italians,
I.] ADVICE FROM SHELLEY. 501
etc., comes with an excellent grace from the writer now living with
a man and his wife — and having planted a child in the R. Foundling,
etc. With regard to the rest of the letter, you know as well as any
one how far it is or is not correct."
(3) Letter from Shelley to Jane Clairmont.
" Pisa, Sunday mor.1
" MY DEAR CLARE, — I know not what to think of the state of
your mind, or what to fear for you. Your late plan about Allegra
seems to me, in its present form, pregnant with irremediable infamy
to all the actors in it except your self ; in any form wherein / must
actively co-operate, with inevitable destruction. I COULD NOT
refuse Lord Byron's challenge ; though that, however to be depre-
cated, would be the least in the series of mischiefs consequent upon
my intervention in such a plan. I say this because I am shocked at
the thoughtless violence of your designs, and I wish to put my sense
of their madness in the strongest light. I may console myself,
however, with the reflection that the attempt even is impossible,
as I have no money. So far from being ready to lend me 3 or
400 pounds, Horace Smith has lately declined to advance 6 or 7
napoleons for a musical instrument which I wished to buy for Jane
at Paris, nor have I any other friend to whom I could apply.
" You think of going to Vienna. The change might have a
favourable effect upon your mind, and the occupations and exertions
of a new state of life wean you from counsels so desperate as those
to which you have been lately led. I must try to manage the money
for your journey, if so you have decided. You know how different
my own ideas are of life. I also have been struck by the heaviest
inflictions almost which a high spirit and a feeling heart ever
endured. Some of yours and of my evils are in common, and I am
therefore in a certain degree a judge. If you would take my advice,
you would give up this evil pursuit after shadows, and temper
yourself to the season ; seek in the daily and affectionate intercourse
of friends, a respite from these perpetual and irritating projects.
Live from day to day, attend to your health, cultivate literature and
liberal ideas to a certain extent, and expect that from time and
change which no exertions of your own can give you. Serious
and calm reflection has convinced me that you can never obtain
Allegra by such means as you have lately devised, or by any means
to be devised. Lord Byron is inflexible, and he has her in his power.
Remember, Clare, when you rejected my earnest advice at Milan,
and how vain is now your regret ! This is the second of my
Sybillaic volumes ; if you wait for the third, it may be sold at a
still higher price. If you think well, this summer go to Vienna ;
but wherever you go or stay, let the past be past.
I. The date is fixed as March, 1822, by the reference to the
affray at Pisa.
502 LETTER FROM SHELLEY. [l.
" I expect soon to write to you on another subject, respecting
which, however, all is as you already know. Farewell.
" Your affectionate S.
"I am much pleased with your translation of Goethe, which
cannot fail to succeed if finished as begun. Lord B. thinks I have
sent it to Paris to be translated, and therefore does not yet expect
copy. I shall, of course, have it copied out for him, and preserve
your's to be sent to England.
"I send you 50 francesconi — 6 more than your income— as you
have made some expenses for me and Mary, I know not what.
Pray acknowledge the receipt of it.
" Mary has written, she tells me, an account of yesterday's
affray. The man, I am sorry to say, is much worse ; but never did
any one provoke his own fate so wantonly. I was struck from my
horse, and, had not Capt. Hay warded off the sabre with his stick,
must inevitably have been killed. Capt. Hay has a severe sabre-
wound across the face."
II.] MANFRED REVIEWED. 503
APPENDIX II.
GOETHE AND BYRON.
(See p. 33, note i.)
IN this Appendix are given (i) the text of Goethe's review
of Manfred, which originally appeared in Kunst und Alter-
thum (see Goethe's Sammtliche Werke, Vollstandige Ausgabe
infiinfzehn Bdnden, vol. xiii. pp. 640-642 : Stuttgart, 1874) ;
(2) Hoppner's translation of the review, extracted from
Moore's Life, pp. 448, 449 ; (3) some additional notes on
Goethe's relations with Byron, mainly drawn from Professor
A. Brandl's Goethes Verh'dltniss zu Byron (Goethe-J ahrbuch,
Zwanzigster Band, 1899).
(i) Text of Goethe's review of Manfred in Kunst und
Alterthum (ii. 2. 191).
"Eine wunderbare, mich nahberiihrende Erscheinung war mir
das Trauerspiel Manfred von Byron. Dieser seltsame, geistreiche
Dichter hat meinen Faust in sich aufgenommen, und, hypochon-
drisch, die seltsamste Nahrung daraus gesogen. Er hat die seinen
Zwecken zusagenden Motive auf eigene Weise benutzt, so dasz keins
mehr dasselbige ist, und gerade deszhalb kann ich seinen Geist nicht
genugsam bewundern. Diese Umbildung ist so aus dem Ganzen,
dasz man dariiber und iiber die Aehnlichkeit und Unahnlichkeit mit
dem Vorbild hochst interessante Vorlesungen halten konnte ; wobei
ich freilich nicht laugne, dasz uns die diistere Gluth einer granzen-
losen, reichen Verzweiflung am Ende lastig wird. Doch ist der
Verdrusz, den man empfindet, immer mit Bewunderung und
Hochachtung verkniipft.
" Wir finden also in dieser Tragodie ganz eigentlich die Quint-
essenz der Gesinnungen und Leidenschaften des wunderbarsten,
zu eigener Qual geborenen Talents. Die Lebens- und Dichtungs-
weise des Lords Byron erlaubt kaum gerechte und billige Beurtheil-
ung. Er hat oft genug bekannt, was ihn qualt ; er hat es wieder-
holt dargestellt, und kaum hat irgend jemand Mitleid mit seinem
unertraglichen Schmerz, mit dem er sich wiederkauend immer
herumarbeitet.
504 GOETHE AND BYRON. [ll.
" Eigentlich sind es zwei Frauen, deren Gespenster ihn unablassig
verfolgen, welche auch im genannten Stiicke grosze Rollen spielen,
die eine unter dem Namen Astarte, die andere, ohne Gestalt und
Gegenwart, blosz eine Stimme.
" Von dem graszlichen Abenteuer, das er mil der ersten erlebt,
erzahlt man Folgendes : Als ein junger, kiihner, hochst anziehender
Mann, gewinnt er die Neigung einer florentinischen Dame ; der
Gemahl entdeckt es und ermordet seine Frau. Aber auch der
Morder wird in derselben Nacht auf der Strasze todt gefunden, ohne
dasz jedoch der Verdacht auf irgend jemand kbnnte geworfen werden.
Lord Byron entfernt sich von Florenz und schleppt solche Gespen-
ster sein ganzes Leben hinter sich drein.
"Dieses marchenhafte Ereignisz wird durch unzahlige Anspiel-
ungen in seinen Gedichten vollkommen wahrscheinlich, wie er denn
z. B., hochst grausam in seinen eigenen Eingeweiden wiithend, die
unselige Geschichte jenes Konigs von Sparta auf sich anwendet.
Sie ist folgende : Pausanias, lacedamonischer Feldherr, durch den
wichtigen Sieg bei Plataa ruhmgekront, nachher aber durch Ueber-
muth, Starrsinn, rauhes, hartes Betragen die Liebe der Griechen,
wegen heimlichen Verstandnisses mit dem Feinde das Vertrauen
seiner Landsleute verlierend — dieser ladet eine schwere Blutschuld
auf sich, die ihn bis an sein schmahliches Ende verfolgt. Denn
als er im schwarzen Meere die Flotte der verbiindeten Griechen
befehligt, entbrennt er in rasender Leidenschaft gegen eine schone
byzantinische Jungfrau. Nach langem Widerstreben gewinnt sie der
Machthaber endlich den Eltern ab : sie soil Nachts zu ihm gefiihrt
werden. Schamhaft bittet sie die Diener, die Lampen zu loschen ;
es geschieht, und sie, im Zimmer umhertastend, stoszt die Lampen-
saule um. Aus dem Schlaf erwacht Pausanias ; argwohnisch ver-
muthet er Morder, ergreift das Schwert und haut die Geliebte nieder.
Der graszliche Anblick dieser Scene verlaszt ihn niemals, der
Schatten verfolgt ihn unablassig, so dasz er Gottheiten und geister-
bannende Priester vergebens anruft.
" Welch ein verwundetes Herz musz der Dichter haben, der
sich eine solche Begebenheit aus der Vorwelt heraussucht, sie sich
aneignet und sein tragisches Ebenbild damit belastet ! Nachste-
hender, von Unmuth und Lebensverdrusz iiberladene Monolog
wird nun durch diese Anmerkungen verstandlich ; wir empfehlen
ihn alien Freunden der Deklamation zur bedeutenden Uebung.
Hamlets Monolog erscheint hier gesteigert. Kunst gehort dazu,
besonders das Eingeschaltete herauszuheben und den Zusammen-
hang des Ganzen rein und flieszend zu erhalten. Uebrigens wird
man leicht gewahr werden, dasz ein gewisser heftiger, ja exzen-
trischer Ausdruck nothig ist, um die Intention des Dichters darzu-
stellen.
" MANFRED allein.
"Der Zeit des Schreckens Narren sind wir ! Tage,
Bestehlend, stehlen sie sich weg. Wir leben
In Lebens Ueberdrusz, in Scheu des Todes.
In all den Tagen der verwunschten Posse —
II.]
"WE ARE THE FOOLS OF TIME." 505
Lebendige Last auf widerstrebenden Herzen,
In Sorgen stockt es, heftig schlagt's in Pein,
Der Freud' ein End' ist Todeskampf und Ohnmacht —
In all den Tagen, den vergangnen, kiinftigen —
Im Leben ist nichts Gegenwart — du zahlst
Wie wenig ! — weniger als wenig, wo die Seele
Nicht nach dem Tod verlangt, und doch zuriick
Wie vor dem Winterstrome schreckt. Das Frbsteln
War' nur ein Augenblick — Ich hab' ein Mittel
In meiner Wissenskraft : die Todten ruf ich
Und frage sie : Was ist denn, das wir furchten ?
Der Antwort ernsteste ist doch das Grab.
Und das ist nichts, antworten sie mir nicht. —
" Antwortete begrabner Priester Gottes
Dem Weib zu Endor ! Sparta's Konig zog
Aus griech'scher Jungfrau nie entschlafnem Geist
Antwort und Schicksal : das Geliebteste
Hatt' er gemordet, wuszte nicht, wen er traf :
Starb ungesiihnt. Wenn er auch schon zu Hiilfe
Den Zeus von Phryxus rief, Phigaliens *
Arkadische Beschworer aufrief, zu gewinnen
Vom aufgebrachten Schatten sein Verzeihen,
Auch eine Granze nur des Rachens. Die versetzte
Mit zweifelhaftem Wortsinn : doch erfullt ward's.
" Und hatt' ich nie gelebt, das, was ich liebe,
Ware noch lebendig ! hatt' ich nie geliebt,
Das, was ich liebe, war' noch immer schon
Und gliicklich, gliickverspendend ! Und was aber,
Was ist sie jetzt ? Fur rneine Siinden biiszte sie ! —
Ein Wesen ? Denk' es nicht ! — Vielleicht ein Nichts.
In wenig Stunden frag' ich nicht umsonst ;
In dieser Stunde fiircht' ich, wie ich trotze.
Bis diese Stunde schreckte mich kein Schauen
Der Geister, guter, boser. Zittr' ich nun ?
Und fiihl' am Herzen fremden, kalten Thau ?
Doch kann ich thun, was mich im Tiefsten widert j
Der Erde Schrecken ruf ich auf. — Es nachtet ! "
I. The version adopted in the Berlin edition (Strehlke, iii. 450)
is —
" Den milden Zeus berief, Phigaliens," u.s.w.
506 GOETHE AND BYRON. [ll.
(2) Hoppner's translation of Goethe's review (Moore's
Life, pp. 448, 449)-
" GOETHE ON MANFRED.
(1820.)
" Byron's tragedy, Manfred, was to me a wonderful phenomenon,
and one that closely touched me. This singular intellectual poet
has taken my Faustus to himself, and extracted from it the strangest
nourishment for his hypochondriac humour. He has made use of
the impelling principles in his own way, for his own purposes, so
that no one of them remains the same ; and it is particularly on this
account that I cannot enough admire his genius. 1'he whole is in
this way so completely formed anew that it would be an interesting
task for the critic to point out, not only the alterations he has made,
but their degree of resemblance with, or dissimilarity to, the original ;
in the course of which I cannot deny that the gloomy heat of an
unbounded and exuberant despair becomes at last oppressive to us.
Yet is the dissatisfaction we feel always connected with esteem and
admiration.
" We find thus in this tragedy the quintessence of the most
astonishing talent born to be its own tormentor. The character of
Lord Byron's life and poetry hardly permits a just and equitable
appreciation. He has often enough confessed what it is that
torments him. He has repeatedly pourtrayed it ; and scarcely any
one feels compassion for this intolerable suffering, over which he is
ever laboriously ruminating. There are, properly speaking, two
females whose phantoms for ever haunt him, and which, in this piece
also, perform principal parts— one under the name of Astarte ; the
other without form or actual presence, and merely a voice. Of the
horrid occurrence which took place with the former the following
is related : When a bold and enterprising young man, he won the
affections of a Florentine lady. Her husband discovered the amour,
and murdered his wife ; but the murderer was the same night found
dead in the street, and there was no one on whom any suspicion
could be attached. Lord Byron removed from Florence, and these
spirits haunted him all his life after.
" This romantic incident is rendered highly probable by innu-
merable allusions to it in his poems. As, for instance, when turning
his sad contemplations inwards, he applies to himself the fatal history
of the King of Sparta. It is as follows : Pausanias, a Lacedemonian
general, acquires glory by the important victory at Plataea, but after-
wards forfeits the confidence of his countrymen through his arro-
gance, obstinacy, and secret intrigues with the enemies of his country.
This man draws upon himself the heavy guilt of innocent blood,
which attends him to his end ; for, while commanding the fleet of
the allied Greeks, in the Black Sea, he is inflamed with a violent
passion for a Byzantine maiden. After long resistance, he at length
obtains her from her parents, and she is to be delivered up to him
at night. She modestly desires the servant to put out the lamp,
and, while groping her way in the dark, she overturns it. Pausanias
it.] GOETHE'S INTEREST IN BYRON. 507
is awakened from his sleep — apprehensive of an attack from mur-
derers, he seizes his sword, and destroys his mistress. The horrid
sight never leaves him. Her shade pursues him unceasingly, and
he implores for aid in vain from the gods and the exorcising priests.
" That poet must have a lacerated heart who selects such a scene
from antiquity, appropriates it to himself, and burdens his tragic
image with it. The following soliloquy, which is overladen with
gloom and a weariness of life, is, by this remark, rendered intel-
ligible. We recommend it as an exercise to all friends of declamation.
Hamlet's soliloquy appears improved upon here."
"[It requires some art to eliminate interpolations and to pre-
serve in simple yet connected fashion the unity of the whole. In
other respects, it will be readily recognized that, to reproduce the
meaning of the poet, a vehemence of tone and even an exaggerated
turn of expression must of necessity be adopted.] "
Here follows Goethe's translation of Manfred's soliloquy —
" We are the fools of Time ... the night approaches."
Manfred, act ii. sc. 2.
(3) Notes on the relations of Byron with Goethe.
Eckermann's Conversations of Goethe, familiar to English
readers through John Oxenford's translation (2 vols. 1850),
abound in references to Byron, which show the interest
that Goethe took in his poetry and personality. The same
interest was felt by Byron towards Goethe.
"I have a great curiosity," he told Medwin (Conversations,
vol. ii. pp. 130, 131), "about everything relating to Goethe, and
please myself with thinking there is some analogy between our
characters and writings. So much interest do I take in him, that
I offered to give ,£100 to any person who would translate his
Memoirs for my own reading. Shelley has sometimes explained
part of them to me. He seems to be very superstitious, and is a
believer in astrology. ... I would give the world to read Faust
in the original. I have been urging Shelley to translate it."
It may not be uninteresting to collect some illustrations
of the attraction felt by Goethe to Byron's life and writings.
A regular reader of English newspapers, Goethe followed
with eagerness the public discussion of Byron's domestic
affairs in March and April, 1816. " Fare Thee Well " and
" The Sketch," then published in the daily press, introduced
him to Byron's poetry, and led him to study first the poet's
character and then his works. His interest grew rapidly.
On May 4, 1816, he asks Eichstadt what was known about
508 GOETHE AND BYRON. [ll.
Byron, and two entries in his Diary, dated respectively May
22 and 23, are " Lord Byron's Gedichte," and " The Corsair,
" Gedicht von Lord Byron."
At Weimar, on October 25, 1816, Ticknor and Everett
had a conversation with Goethe.
"Of Lord Byron," says Ticknor (Life, vol. i. p. 114; Goethes
Gesprciche, herausg. von W. F. von Biedermann, iii. 270, 271),
"he spoke with interest and discrimination — said that his poetry
showed great knowledge of human nature and great talent in de-
scription : Lara, he thought, ' bordered on the kingdom of spectres ;
and of his late separation from his wife, that, in its circumstances
and the mystery in which it is involved, it is so poetical, that if
Lord Byron had invented it he could hardly have had a more
fortunate subject for his genius."
At this stage Goethe was more attracted by Byron's life
than by his poetry. But the interest widened. He read the
criticisms on Byron which appeared in the Quarterly Review
for October, 1816, and, as is proved by the entries in his Diary
for June 2, 3, and 16, 1817, The Siege of Corinth, Parisina,
and The Prisoner of Chilian. He studied Glenarvon, and
discussed with Tieck all that the latter could tell him about
Byron. An entry in the Diary for November 26, 1817 — "Zu
" Knebel1, iiber Byron, Ubersetzung seiner Gedichte " — suggests
that he or his friends were engaged in translating Byron's
poetry. The entry probably refers to the following transla-
tion of "Fare Thee Well," preserved among the Goethe
papers in the archives at Weimar. The translation is in
the handwriting of Dr. Weller, the Jena librarian, and the
evidence, discussed by Professor Brandl (Sonder-Abdruck
aus dent Goethe-J ahrbuch, xx. 4), leaves Goethe's authorship
at least doubtful. It is not contained in the Berlin edition
(Strehlke) of Goethe's works.
" Lebe Du woAl" von Lord Byron.
" Leb' Du wohl ! — und ist's auf immer —
Sei's fur immer ! — lebe wohl 1
Kannst Du gleich mir nicht vergeben,
Dir emport mein Herz sich nicht. —
" Kb'nnt' ich diese Brust Dir offnen,
Wo Dein Haupt oft hingelehnt
Sich in sanften Schlaf ergoszen —
Den Du nie mehr finden wirst ! —
ii.] "FARE THEE WELL." 509
"Konnt" ich dieses Herz Dir zeigen,
Das Du nun so leicht verschmah'st —
Warlich, eingestehen miiszt Du :
'Dies zu reizen war nicht gut.' —
" Mag die Welt dafur Dich loben,
Mag sie lachen bei dem Schlag, —
Selbst ihr Lob musz Dich beleid'gen,
Das sich stiizt auf andrer Schmerz.
"Ob mich mancher Fehl enstellet, —
Konnt ein andrer Arm mir wohl,
Als der ehmals mich umschlungen,
Wunden schlagen, die nichts heilt ?
" Doch — ja doch — o, tausch' Dich selbst nicht ! —
Liebe mag wohl langsam scheiden,
Doch zerriszen plozlich — glaub' mir 1 —
Trennen so sich Herzen nicht. —
" Deines wird stets Leben fiihlen —
Meines — ach ! — ob blutend — schlagen ;
Der nie sterbende Gedanke
Qualt — getrennt auf immer seyn !—
" Dies sind Worte tiefern Kummers
Als die Klagen um den Toden ;
Beide leben ; — jeden Morgen
Weckt sie ein verwittibt (sic) Bett. —
" Und willst Du von unsers Kindes
Ersten Lauten Trost Dir sammeln ;
Magst Du wohl ihm sprechen lernen :
' Vater ! ' — dessen Sorg' ihm fehlt ? —
" Driicket ihre kleine Hand Dich,
Ihre Lippe driickt sie Deine —
Denk an Ihn, Desz Herz Dich segnet !
Denk an Ihn, den Du geliebt ! —
" Sollten ihre Ziige gleichen
Denen, die Du nicht mehr sehn magst —
Zitternd wird sich in Dir regen
Noch ein treuer Puls fur mich. —
" Meine Fehler — alle kennst Du ! —
Meinen Wahnsinn — wer kennt diesen ? —
All mein Hoffen, wo Du gehest,
Welkend geht es doch mit Dir. —
" Jeder Sinn ist mir zerriittet ;
Stolz — den keine Welt mocht beugen,
510 GOETHE AND BYRON. [ll.
Beugt sich Dir — von Dir verlassen,
Weicht die Seele selbst von mir. —
" Doch umsonst !— Was hilft's der Worte !—
Minder noch von mir der Worte ! —
Nichts doch bandigt den Gedanken,
Wider Willen dringt's hervor. —
" Leb* denn wohl ! — von Dir getrennt —
Losgerissen aller Bande —
Herzversengt — allein — verbleichet —
Kann ich kaum noch mehr nun sterben. —
" Den 24sten Nov. 1817."
On October n, 1817, Goethe received from a young
American a copy of Manfred, which he at once read and
re-read. Two days later, he wrote to Knebel his opinion of
the poem, using language which is almost identical with that
of his review published in Kunst und Alterthum in 1820.
On November 30 he began, and in two days completed,
his translation of the " Curse."
The poem seized hold upon Goethe with singular force.
He appears to explain his interest in it by saying that, in
Manfred, he heard the echo of his own Faust, and traced
the real .experiences of a great genius tortured by remorse
into passionate, concentrated expression. Taken literally,
the explanation is unsatisfactory. Byron himself warmly
repudiated the charge.
"The Germans," he said to Medwin (Conversations, vol. i.
p. 201), "'and I believe Goethe himself, consider that I have taken
great liberties with Faust. All I know of that drama is from a
sorry French translation, from an occasional reading or two into
English of parts of it by Monk Lewis when at Diodati, and from
the Hartz Mountain scene, that Shelley versified the other day.
Nothing I envy him so much as to be able to read that astonishing
production in the original. As to originality, Goethe has too much
sense to pretend that he is not under obligations to other authors,
ancient and modern : — who is not ? "
In fact, no real similarities with Faust, whether in motive
or development, can be traced except in the opening scene
of Manfred, and the story of Byron's adventures at Florence,
ending in a murder, though it imposed on Goethe, was an
invention circulated by the Courrier Franqais. On the other
hand, the explanation, in the sense probably intended by
[ll. PASSAGES FROM MANFRED. 511
Goethe, is true and adequate. Manfred was the first poem
since Faust which dealt with the struggles of the searching
human mind groping for love outside the sphere of nature.
Goethe himself, in conversation with Hermann Fu'rst von
Piickler, September 14, 1826 (Goethes Gespr'dche, v. 308),
expressly disclaimed the idea that Manfred was an imitation
of Faust, adding that it had interested him to trace the
unconscious transformation which Byron had made of his
Mephistopheles. As for the poem being a record of any
real personal experience, it might, he said, well reflect the
mind of a poet suddenly bereft of every private or domestic
hope, and even of a home.
Five translations by Goethe of passages in Manfred
prove his interest in the poem.
1. Manfred's soliloquy, act i. sc. i —
"The lamp must be replenished . . .
The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life."
Goethe's version, written in his own hand in pencil, and
placed in a blue envelope, endorsed by himself, " Manfred,
" Dec. Jena, 1817," is in the Weimar archives. It is evidently
not only fragmentary, but experimental. As quoted by
Professor Brandl, in the Goethe-J ahrbuch (xx. 9), it runs as
follows : —
" Die Lampe will geliillt seyn doch auch dann
Brennt sie so lange nicht als ich wachen musz
Mein Schlummer — Wenn ich schlummre, 's ist kein Schlaf
Nur ein Verfolgen daurender Gedancken
Dem ich nicht widerstehe. In meinem Herzefn]
Ists immer wach. Wie ich die Augen schliesz
Sie sehn hinein. Und lebe doch und fiihre
Das Ansehn die Gestalt des Athmenden
Doch sollte Kummer nicht des Weisen Lehrer
Sorgen sind Kenntnis die am meisten kennen
Vertiefen sich bejammernd der verwiinschten Wahrheit
Erkenntnis Baum ist nicht der Baurn des Lebens."
2. The "Curse" (act i. sc. i), printed in the Weimar
edition of Goethe's works (iii. 201). The following are the
lines : —
" Wenn der Mond ist auf der Welle,
Wenn der Gluhwurm ist im Gras,
512 GOETHE AND BYRON. [ll.
Und ein Scheinlicht auf dem Grabe,
Irres Licht auf dem Morast ;
Wenn die Sterne fallend schieszen,
Eul' der Eul' erwiedernd heult,
Und die Blatter schweigend ruhen
An des dunkeln Hiigels Wand,
Meine Seel" sei auf der deinen
Mit Gewalt und Zeichenwink !
" 1st dein Schlummer noch so tief,
Kommt dein Geist doch nie zum Schlaf.
Da sind Schatten, die nicht schwinden,
Da Gedanken, die nicht bannest.
Die Gewalt, die du nicht kennest,
Laszt dich nimmermehr allein.
Bist ins Leichentuch gewindelt,
Eingehiillt in einer Wolke,
Und fiir immer, immer wohnst du
In dem Geiste dieses Spruchs.
" Siehst mich nicht voriiber gehen,
Fiihlst mich doch in deinem Auge
Als ein Ding, das ungesehen
Nah dir sein musz, wie es war ;
Und wenn du, geheim durchschaudert,
Deinen Kopf umwendend, blickest,
Sollst dich wundern, dasz nicht etwa
Wie ein Schatten bin zur Stelle ;
Nein ! die Kraft, die du empfunden,
1st, was sich in dir verbirgt.
" Und ein Zauberwort und Lied
Taufte dich mit einem Fluch,
Und schon hat ein Geist der Luft
Dich umgarnt mit einer Schlinge.
In dem Wind ist eine Stimme,
Die verbeut dir dich zu freuen ;
Und wenn dir die Nacht versagt
Ihres reinen Himmels Ruhe,
Bringt der Tag 'ne Sonn' herauf
War' sie nieder ! wiinschest du.
" Deinen falschen Thranen zog ich
Todtlichste Essenzen aus ;
Deinem eignen Herzen sog ich
Blut, das schwarzeste, vom Quell ;
Deinem Lacheln lockt' ich Schlangen,
Dort geheim geringelt, ab,
Deinem Lippenpaar entsaugt' ich
Allerschlimmstes aller Gifte.
Jedem Gift, das ich erprobet,
Schlimmer ist dein eignes doch.
II.] TRANSLATED FRAGMENTS OF MANFRED. 513
" Bei deiner kalten Brust, dem Schlangenlacheln,
Der Arglist unergriindlichem Schlund,
Bei dem so tugendsam scheinenden Auge,
Bei der verschlossenen Seele Trug,
Bei der Vollendung deiner Kunste,
Dem Wahn, du tragest ein Menschliches Herz,
Bei deinem Gefallen an Anderer Pein,
Bei deiner Kains-Bruderschaft,
Beschwore ich dich und nothige
Dich, selbst dir eigne Holle zu sein !
" Auf dein Haupt giesz' ich die Schale,
Die dich solchem Urtheil widmet :
Nicht zu schlafen, nicht zu sterben,
Sei dein dauernd Miszgeschick !
Scheinbar soil der Tod sich nahen
Deinem Wunsch, doch nur als Grauen.
Schau ! der Zauber wirkt timber dir,
Dich geklirrlos fesselt Kette ;
Ueber Herz und Him zusammen
1st der spruch ergangen, — Schwinde 1 "
3. Manfred's soliloquy (act ii. sc. 2) : "We are the fools
" of time and terror," etc. This appeared in Kunst und
Alterthum (ii. 2. 191), and is printed in the Weimar edition
(iii. 199). Professor Brandl (Goethe-J ahrbuch, xx. 10, n)
\ gives, from Goethe's pencil-written manuscript, a list of the
different corrections made by the translator before his version
assumed its final shape.
4. A fragmentary version, in Goethe's own handwriting,
partly in pencil, partly in ink, of the duologue between
Manfred and Astarte (act ii. sc. 4). As quoted by Professor
Brandl (ibid., pp. ii, 12), the translation runs as follows : —
" [Manfred] Hor'mich ! Hor'mich !
Astarte meine Liebste sprich zu mir,
So viel hab ich geduldet dulde noch
Sieh her auf mich ! Das Grab
Als ich fur dich.
*****
Todsiindlichst wie wir liebten
*****
Antworteten mir — Manches antwortete mir
Geister und Menschen. Du alleine schweigst
*****
Doch sprich mir zu. Die Sterne iiberwacht ich
Den Himmel iiberblickt ich dich zu suchen
VOL. V. 8 L
514 GOETHE AND BYRON. [ll.
Sprich mir I So hab ich doch die Welt durchwandert
Und deines Gleichen nie gefunden. Sprich doch !
Sieh diesen Bosen — Sie bedauern mich
Sie furcht ich nicht fur dich allein empfind ich
Sprich mir und wars im Zorn o rede nur
Ich weisz nicht was dich einmal nur zu horen
Das einmal einemal noch.
[Astarte] Manfred.
[Manfred] Nur zu ! Nur zu !
In diesem Tone leb ich — deine Stimme ists.
[A starte] Zu Morgen Manfred schliest dein irdisch Leid
Leb wohl.
[Manfred] Sag sehen wir uns wieder
[Astarte] Leb wohl
[Manfred] Barmherzigkeit ! Ein Wort ! Du liebst mich ?
[Astarte] Manfred."
5. A quarto leaf contains, in Goethe's own handwriting,
in pencil, a couplet from act iii. sc. 4, " For the night hath
"been to me," etc. As quoted by Professor Brandl (ibid.,
p. 12), the lines run as follows : —
" Denn die Nacht
Bot mir ein freundlicher Gesicht
Als Menschen."
For the next two years Goethe says but little of Byron,
and that little is inaccurate. Thus (May 4, 1819) he alludes
to an imaginary visit of Byron to Ghent. He considers The
Vampyre to be his work, and attributes to him " The Burial
"of Sir John Moore." But Don Juan revived Goethe's
interest. The two first cantos, published in July, 1819, did
not reach him till the spring of 1820. In May he had
written a notice of this " grenzenlos-geniales Werk," and
translated the five opening stanzas. These appeared in
Kunst und Alterthum in 1821 (Weimar edition, iii. 197, and
Sammtliche Werke, xiii. 637). Professor Brandl (Goethe-
Jahrbuch, xx. 13) quotes an attempted version of another
passage as existing in Goethe's own handwriting in the
Weimar archives. The following is Goethe's translation of
the five opening stanzas of Don Juan : —
" Mir fehlt ein Held I—' Ein Held, er sollte fehlen,
Da Jahr und Monat neu vom neusten spricht.'
II.] FIVE STANZAS OF DON JUAN. 515
Ein Zeitungsschreiber mag sich schmeichelnd qualen,
So sagt die Zeit ; es sei der rechte nicht.
Von solchen mag ich wahrlich nichts erzahlen,
Da nehm' ich mir Freund Juan in's Gesicht ;
Wir haben in der Oper ihn gesehen,
Friiher als billig war, zum Teufel gehen.
" Vernon, der Metzger Cumberland, und Wolf so mil,
Auch Hawke, Prinz Ferdinand, Burgoyne auf s Beste,
Keppel und Howe, sie batten ihre Feste
Wie Wellesley jetzt — der Konige Schattenschritt
Von Stamme Banko's — Raben aus einem Neste !
Der Ruhm, die Lust zu herrschen reiszt sie mit.
Dumouriez's, Bonaparte's Kampfgewinnsten,
Die Zeitung steht den Herren gleich zu Diensten.
" Barnave kennt und Brissot die Geschichte,
Condorcet, Mirabeau und Petion auch ;
Clootz, Danton, Marat litten viel Geriichte,
Selbst la Fayette, er ging beinah in Rauch ;
Dann Joubert, Hoche, vom Militar-Verpflichte,
Lannes, Desaix, Moreau ! Es war der Brauch,
Zu ihrer Zeit an ihnen viel zu preisen ;
Doch will das nichts fur meine Lieder heiszen.
" Nelson war unser Kriegsgott, ohne Frage,
Und ist es noch dem herzlichsten Bekenntnisz ;
Doch von Trafalgar tonet kaum die Sage,
Und so ist Fluth und Ebbe wetterwendisch.
Denn die Armee ist popular zu Tage,
Und mit dem Seevolk nicht im Einverstandnisz :
Der Prinz ist fiir den Landdienst, und indessen
Sind Duncan, Nelson, Howe — sie sind vergessen.
" Vor Agamemnon lebten manche Braven,
So wie nachher, von Sinn und holier Kraft j
Sie wirkten viel, sind unberiihmt entschlafen,
Da kein Poet ihr Leben waiter schafft.
Von unsern Helden mocht' ich Niemand strafen,
Da jeder sich am Tag zusammenrafft ;
Fur mein Gedicht wiiszt' ich mir aber keinen,
Und nenne so Don Juan mein, den Meinen.' '
The perusal of F. J. Jacobsen's Brief e an eine deutsche
Eddfrau iiberdie neuesten englischen Dichter (Altona, 1820)
further stimulated Goethe's study of Byron. Jacobsen dis-
cusses the English writers of the day, with special attention
to Byron, whose portrait forms the frontispiece of the book.
Goethe was thus led to study English Bards, and Scotch
Reviewers. Not only are the two books mentioned together
516 GOETHE AND BYRON. [ll.
in the Diary (January 17 and 20, 1821), but the Weimar
archives contain a sheet of paper, on one side of which he
has scribbled notes on Jacobsen, and on the other has begun
a translation of lines 487-492 of English Bards, etc. Both
the notes and verses are printed by Professor Brandl (Goethe-
Jahrbuch, xx. 14, 15). At one time Goethe proposed to
translate the whole satire, for he tells Benecke (November
14, 1822) of his intention to make a complete version.
In December, 1821, Cain had been published, with The
Two Foscari and Sardanapalus. But the volume was not
-, read by Goethe till 1823. Later in the same year, the"
Moniteur for October 30, 1823, reviewed Cain, Mystere
dramatique de Lord Byron, traduit en vers frangais, et
refute" dans une suite de remarques philosophiques et critiques
par Fabre d? Olivet. 8? a Paris chez Serviere, libraire, A
copy of this article, with Goethe's corrections, exists among
his papers. Goethe's own review of the poem, which ap-
peared in 1824 in Kunst iind Alterthum, will be found in his
S'dmmtliche Werke (xiii. 643-645, ed. Stuttgart, 1874, etc.).
Goethe preferred Heaven and Earth to Cam, and he
ranked it above all Byron's serious poetry. On the subject
of this -poem, and on The Vision of Judgment, Crabb
Robinson, in his Diary (vol. ii. pp. 434-437), records an
interesting conversation with Goethe : —
/"This, and indeed every evening, I believe, Lord Byron was the
subject of his praise. He said, ' Es sind keine Flickworter im
Gedichte' ('There is no padding in his poetry'). And he com-
pared the brilliancy and clearness of his style to a metal wire
drawn through a steel plate. In the complete edition of Byron's
Works, including the ' Life ' by Moore, there is a statement of the
connection between Goethe and Byron. At the time of my inter-
views with Goethe, Byron's 'Life' was actually in preparation.
Goethe was by no means indifferent to the account which was to be
given to the world of his own relations to the English poet, and
was desirous of contributing all in his power to its completeness.
For that purpose he put into my hands the lithographic dedication
of ' Sardanapalus ' to himself, and all the original papers which had
passed between them. He permitted me to take these to my hotel,
and to do with them what I pleased ; in other words, I was to copy
them, and add such recollections as I was able to supply of Goethe's
remarks on Byron. These filled a very closely written folio letter,
which I despatched to England ; but Moore afterwards assured me
that he had never received it.
ii.] BYRON'S TRUE VOCATION. 517
" One or two of the following remarks will be found as signifi-
cant as anything Goethe has written of Byron. It was a satisfaction
to me to find that Goethe preferred, to all the other serious poems
of Byron, the ' Heaven and Earth,' though it seemed almost satire
when he exclaimed, ' A bishop might have written it ! ' He added,
' Byron should have lived to execute his vocation." ' And that
was?' I asked. 'To dramatize the Old Testament. What a
subject under his hands would the Tower of Babel have been ! '
He continued : ' You must not take it ill ; but Byron was indebted
for the profound views he took of the Bible to the ennui he suffered
from it at school.' ... It was with reference to the poems of the
Old Testament that Goethe praised the views which Byron took of
Nature ; they were equally profound and poetical. ' He had not,'
Goethe said, ' like me, devoted a long life to the study of Nature,
and yet, in all his works, I found but two or three passages I could
have wished to alter.'
' ' I had the courage to confess my inability to relish the serious
poems of Byron, and to intimate my dissatisfaction with the com-
parison generally made between Manfred and Faust. I remarked,
' Faust had nothing left but to sell his soul to the Devil when he
had exhausted all the resources of science in vain ; but Manfred's
was a poor reason — his passion for Astarte. He smiled and said,
'That is true.' But then he fell back on the indomitable spirit of
Manfred. Even at the last he was not conquered. Power in all
its forms Goethe had respect for. This he had in common with
Carlyle. And the impudence of Byron's satire he felt and enjoyed.
I pointed out ' The Deformed Transformed,' as being really an
imitation of ' Faust,' and was pleased to find that Goethe especially
praised this piece. I read to him the 'Vision of Judgment,' ex-
plaining the obscurer allusions. He enjoyed it as a child might,
but his criticisms scarcely went beyond the exclamations, ' Too
bad ! ' ' Heavenly ! " ' Unsurpassable ! ' He praised, however,
especially the speeches of Wilkes and Junius, and the concealment
of the countenance of the latter. 'Byron has surpassed himself.'
Goethe praised stanza ix. for its clear description. He repeated
stanza x., and emphatically the last two lines, recollecting that he
was himself eighty years of age. Stanza xxiv. he declared to be
sublime. . . . Goethe concurred in my suggested praise of stanzas
xiii., xiv., xv. . . . He did not reject the preference I expressed for
Byron's satirical poems, nor my suggestion that to Don Juan a
motto might have been taken from Mephistopheles' speech aside to
the student who asked his opinion of medicine —
" ' Ich bin des trockenen Zeugs doch satt,
Ich will den dchten Teufel spielen.'
Byron's verses on George IV., he said, were the sublime of hatred.
. . . He fully conceived the spirit of it [Milton's Samson Agonistes},
though he did not praise Milton with the warmth with which he
eulogized Byron, of whom he said that ' the like would never come
again : he was inimitable.' Ariosto was not so daring as Byron in
the Vision of Judgment."
5l8 GOETHE AND BYRON. [ll.
Crabb Robinson's view of The Deformed Transformed
is confirmed by Shelley and by Byron himself. " On my
" calling on him one morning," says Medwin {Conversations
of Lord Byron, vol. i. p. 217), "he produced The Deformed
" Transformed. Handing it to Shelley, as he was in the
" habit of doing his daily compositions, he said, ' Shelley,
" I have been writing a Faustish kind of drama : tell me
" what you think of it.' After reading it attentively, Shelley
"returned it. 'Well,' said Lord Byron, 'how do you like
" it ? ' ' Least,' replied he, ' of anything I ever saw of
" yours. It is a bad imitation of Faust.'"
Of Goethe's interest in Heaven and Earth — " die Sint-
" faith," as he called it — his papers give evidence. A
fragment of a translation of the speeches of Anah and
Aholibamah with their seraph-lovers exists in the hand-
writing of his daughter-in-law, and its preservation, together
with the alternative readings, suggests that the version may
have been prepared for Goethe's revision. The lines are
printed by Professor Brandl (Goethe- J ahrbuch, 1899, pp.
1 8-21).
Of B.yron's proposal to dedicate Marino Faliero to him
(see p. 100), Goethe had known nothing. The play was
published without the dedication, and a copy of the book
reached Goethe, July 18, 1821, without any hint of Byron's
intention. A similar fate prevented Byron from dedicating
Sardanapalus to Goethe. Byron's letter reached Murray
too late, and the book was published in December, 1821,
without the dedication. But, on this occasion, Byron sent
Goethe a copy of what he had proposed to write, which
Goethe caused to be lithographed. With Werner he was
more successful. In 1823 the work appeared with the
dedication, "To the illustrious Goethe." "I mean," said
Byron to Medwin, " to dedicate Werner to Goethe. I look
" upon him as the greatest genius the age has produced. I
" desired Murray to inscribe his name to a former work ;
" but he pretends my letter containing the order came too
" late. It would have been more worthy of him than this "
(Conversations, vol. ii. p. 130). In acknowledgment of the
dedication, Goethe, in June, 1823, for the first and only time,
wrote to Byron direct, sending him the lines, " Ein freundlich
II.] GOETHE ON BYRON'S POETRY. 519
" Wort kommt," u.s.w. A copy of the lines, dated, in Goethe's
own hand, Weimar den 22 Juni, 1823, iiber Lord Byron,
exists among the Goethe papers. The verses are translated
and embodied in the appreciation of Byron which Goethe
contributed, after the poet's death, to Medwin's Conversa-
tions (vol. ii. p. 145) ; they are given in the original in
Moore's Life (p. 594), and below. Byron's letter of acknow-
ledgment, dated July 24, 1823, addressed " a son Excellence
" Le Baron von Goethe, etc., etc., etc., Weimar, aux soins de
" Monsieur Sterling," and signed, " I have the honour to be,
" ever and most respectfully, your obliged admirer and ser-
"vant, Noel Byron," will be given in its place in vol. vi.
Goethe cut a small cardboard box to preserve the seal with
its motto, Crede Biron, and treasured the letter in his
famous red portfolio.
The news of Byron's death reached Goethe in May, 1824,
and in June he wrote down his impressions of Byron's poetry
and personality. The original draft of the note, dated
"W[eimarj, den 15 Juny, 1824," is printed by Professor
Brandl (Goethe- Jahrbitch, xx. 22, 23). Medwin prints
Goethe's " Beitrag " in an Appendix, and an English trans-
lation in the text, of his Conversations of Lord Byron, The
following version, as being more literal, is quoted from
Moore's Life (pp. 593, 594) :—
"The German poet, who, down to the latest period of his long
life, had been always anxious to acknowledge the merits of his
literary predecessors and contemporaries, because he has always
considered this to be the surest means of cultivating his own powers,
could not but have his attention attracted to the great talent of the
noble Lord almost from his earliest appearance, and uninterruptedly
watched the progress of his mind throughout the great works which
he unceasingly produced. It was immediately perceived by him
that the public appreciation of his poetical merits kept pace with
the rapid succession of his writings. The joyful sympathy of others
would have been perfect, had not the poet, by a life marked by
self-dissatisfaction, and the indulgence of strong passions, disturbed
the enjoyment which his infinite genius produced. But his German
admirer was not led astray by this, or prevented from following
with close attention both his works and his life in all their eccen-
tricity. These astonished him the more, as he found in the expe-
rience of past ages no element for the calculation of so eccentric
an orbit.
" These endeavours of the German did not remain unknown to
520 GOETHE AND BYRON. [ll.
the Englishman, of which his poems contain unambiguous proofs ;
and he also availed himself of the means afforded by various
travellers to forward some friendly salutation to his unknown
admirer. At length a manuscript Dedication of Sardanapalus, in
the most complimentary terms, was forwarded to him, with an
obliging inquiry whether it might be prefixed to the tragedy. The
German, who, at his advanced age, was conscious of his own powers
and of their effects, could only gratefully and modestly consider this
Dedication as the expression of an inexhaustible intellect, deeply
feeling and creating its own object. He was by no means dis-
satisfied when, after long delay, Sardanapalus appeared without the
Dedication ; and was made happy by the possession of a fac-simile
of it, engraved on stone, which he considered a precious memorial.
"The noble Lord, however, did not abandon his purpose of
proclaiming to the world his valued kindness towards his German
contemporary and brother poet, a precious evidence of which was
placed in front of the tragedy of Werner. It will be readily
believed, when so unhoped-for an honour was conferred upon the
German poet — one seldom experienced in life, and that too from
one himself so highly distinguished — he was by no means reluctant
to express the high esteem and sympathizing sentiment with which
his unsurpassed contemporary had inspired him. The task was
difficult, and was found the more so, the more it was contemplated ; —
for what can be said of one whose unfathomable qualities are not to
be reached by words ? But when a young gentleman, Mr. Sterling,
of pleasing person and excellent character, in the spring of 1823, on
a journey from Genoa to Weimar, delivered a few lines under the
hand of the great man as an introduction, and when the report was
soon after spread that the noble Peer was about to direct his great
mind and various power to deeds of sublime daring beyond the
ocean, there appeared to be no time left for further delay, and the
following lines were hastily written : —
" ' Ein freundlich Wort kommt eines nach dem andern
Von Siiden her und bringt uns frohe Stunden ;
Es ruft uns auf zum Edelsten zu wandern,
Nie ist der Geist, doch ist der Fuss gebunden.
" ' Wie soil ich dem, den ich so lang begleitet,
Nun etwas Traulich's in die Feme sagen ?
Ihm der sich selbst im Innersten bestreitet,
Stark angewohnt das tiefste Weh zu tragen.
" ' Wohl sey ihm doch, wenn er sich selbst empfindet !
Er wage selbst sich hoch begliickt zu nennen,
Wenn Musenkraft die Schmerzen iiberwindet,
Und wie ich ihn erkannt mog' er sich kennen.'
"The verses reached Genoa ; but the excellent friend to whom
they were addressed was already gone, and to a distance, as it
appeared, inaccessible. Driven back, however, by storms, he
II.]
AMONG HIS MOST PRECIOUS PAPERS.
landed at Leghorn, where these cordial lines reached him just as
he was about to embark, on the 24th of July, 1823. He had barely
time to answer by a well-filled page, which the possessor has
preserved, among his most precious papers, as the worthiest evi-
dence of the connection that had been formed. Affecting and
delightful as was such a document, and justifying the most lively
hopes, it has acquired now the greatest, though most painful value,
from the untimely death of the lofty writer, which adds a peculiar
edge to the grief felt generally throughout the whole moral and
poetical world at his loss ; for we were warranted in hoping that,
when his great deeds should have been achieved, we might person-
ally have greeted in him the pre-eminent intellect, the happily
acquired friend, and the most humane of conquerors.
"At present we can only console ourselves with the conviction
that his country will at last recover from that violence of invective
and reproach which has been so long raised against him, and will
learn to understand that the dross and lees of the age and the
individual, out of which even the best have to elevate themselves,
are but perishable and transient, while the wonderful glory to which
he in the present and through all future ages has elevated his
country, will be as boundless in its splendour as it is incalculable
in its consequences. Nor can there be any doubt that the nation,
which can boast of so many great names, will class BYRON among
the first of those through whom she has acquired such glory."
522 CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BYRON AND BOWLES, [ill.
APPENDIX III.
CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BYRON AND BOWLES
AS TO THE POETRY AND CHARACTER OF
POPE.
(See p. 1 08, note i.)
IN this Appendix are printed (i) Bowles's Invariable Prin-
ciples of Poetry (1819) ; and (2 and 3) Byron's Two Letters
to**** ****** [J0hn Murray] on Bowles's Strictures
on Pope. The following account of the controversy ex-
plains some of the allusions.
The Rev. William Lisle Bowles published, in 1806, an
edition of Pope's Works in ten volumes. As editor, he
criticized with some severity the character of Pope both as
a man and a poet. It was the criticism on Pope's morals
against which Byron protested in English Bards, and Scotch
Reviewers (lines 369-384) —
" Each fault, each failing scan ;
The first of poets was, alas ! but man.
Rake from each ancient dunghill ev'ry pearl,
Consult Lord Fanny, and confide in Curll ;
Let all the scandals of a former age
Perch on thy pen, and flutter o'er thy page," etc., etc.
Ten years later, Pope's poetical character was championed
by Thomas Campbell, in his " Essay on English Poetry,"
prefixed to his Specimens of the British Poets (7 vols., 1819 :
vol. i. pp. 262-271).
Bowles replied to Campbell's " Essay " in his Invariable
Principles of Poetry, in a Letter addressed to Thomas
Campbell, Esq., occasioned by some Critical Observations in
his " Specimens of British Poetry" particularly relating to
the Poetical Character of Pope (1819). As this pamphlet
in.] BYRON'S NAME INTRODUCED. 523
gives the key to the controversy, it is here reprinted in the
form in which it was published by Bowles in the third
edition (1822) of his Two Letters to the Right Honourable
Lord Byron, under the title of An Answer to some Obser-
vations of Thomas Campbell, Esq., in his Specimens of
British Poets.
So far, except by Byron, Pope's moral character had not
been defended. But the Quarterly Review for July, 1820,
contained an article by Isaac Disraeli, which was nominally
a review of Spence's Anecdotes of Books and Men. In this
article Disraeli not only supported Campbell, and ridiculed
the Invariable Principles of Poetry, but severely condemned
Bowles for his attack on the moral character of Pope. Pro-
fessing to quote from Bowles an "anecdote of exquisite
"naivete? Disraeli introduces Byron's name into the con-
troversy.
Byron, in English Bards, etc., had misunderstood and
misquoted Bowles's lines in The Spirit of Discovery (see
Poems, vol. i. p. 325, note i), and represents him as saying
that the woods of Madeira had " trembled to a kiss." Disraeli
thus quotes (p. 425) Bowles's account of his correction of
Byron's mistake —
" Soon after Lord Byron had published his vigorous satire called
" English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers," in which, alas ! pars
magna fui, I met his Lordship at our common friend's house, the
author of "The Pleasures of Memory," and the still more beautiful
poem, " Human Life." As the rest of the company were going into
another room, I said I wished to speak one word to his Lordship.
He came back with much apparent courtesy. I then said to him,
in a tone of seriousness, but that of perfectly good humour, ' My lord,
I should not have thought of making any observations on whatever
you might be pleased to give to the world as your opinion of any
part of my writings ; but I think if I can shew that you have done
me a palpable and public wrong, by charging me with having
written what I never wrote, or thought of, your own principles of
justice will not allow the impression to remain.' I then spoke of a
particular couplet which he had introduced into his satire —
" 'Thy woods, Madeira, trembled with a kiss.' — Byron.
And taking down the POEM, which was AT HAND, / pointed out the
passage, etc."
The allusion to Byron offered him the excuse to plunge
into the controversy, and to write the first and second Letter
524 CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BYRON AND BOWLES, [ill.
to * * * * * * * * * ^ Qn tjlg ggy^ wm, _£. Bowles's Stric-
tures on the Life and Writings of Pope. Only the first of
the letters was published at the time (1821). To it Bowles
replied with Two Letters to the Right Honoitrable Lord
Byron, in answer to His Lordships Letter to** * * * * * * * *?
on the Rev. Wm. L. Bowles's Strictures on the Life and
Writings of Pope : more particularly on the question,
whether POETRY be more immediately indebted to what is
SUBLIME or BEAUTIFUL in the Works of NATURE, or the
Works of ART (1821). With the publication of this pam-
phlet the controversy between Bowles and Byron ended.
Byron's second Letter was not printed till 1835.
Meanwhile the war of pamphlets had grown more bitter.
Bowles answered the Quarterly Review in A Reply to the
Charges brought by the Reviewer of Spencers Anecdotes in
the Quarterly Review for October, 1820, against the last
Editor of Pope's Works. This pamphlet, written for The
Pamphleteer, is dated October 25, 1820, and is published in
vol. xvii. of that periodical (pp. 73-96). In the course of his
reply (p. 96), Bowles attributes the Quarterly Review article
to Octavius Graham Gilchrist, a grocer at Stamford, and
a contributor both to the Quarterly and the London Maga-
zine. Bowles apparently knew that Gilchrist had reviewed
John Clare's Poems, descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery
in the preceding number of the Quarterly (May, 1820,
pp. 166-174). He also knew that Gilchrist, writing anony-
mously in the London Magazine for February, 1820, had
already defended Pope's moral character in a review of
Spence's Anecdotes, and had acknowledged the authorship
in the same periodical in July, 1821. On this supposed
evidence he attacks Gilchrist as the author of the Quarterly
article. "When I think," he says, "of the utter defiance of
" truth he has manifested, two lines from his favourite and
" much-injured poet rush irresistibly into my mind : —
" ' Honest and rough, your first son is a Squire,
The next a tradesman meek, and much a liar.' "
To this attack Gilchrist replied in a Letter to the Rev,
William Lisle Bowles, in Answer to a Pamphlet recently
Published ^lnder the title of "A Reply to an unsentimental
III.] CONTROVERSIAL AMENITIES. 525
" sort of Critic, the Reviewer of Spence's Anecdotes in the
" Quarterly Review for October, 1820." This pamphlet,
printed at Stamford, is dated December 2, 1820. In it, as
in the pamphlet which it answers, the writer lays about him
with a will. Bowles rejoined in Observations on the Poetical
Character of Pope: further elucidating the "Invariable
" Principles of Poetry? etc., with a Sequel addressed to
Octaviiis Gilchrist, Esq., F.A.S., dated February 17, 1821
(The Pamphleteer, xvii. 369-384, and xviii. 213-258). The
following lines, with which Bowles concludes the first part of
his rejoinder, partly quoted by Byron in his second Letter,
afford a fair example of the tone in which the controversy
was conducted (The Pamphleteer, vol. xvii. pp. 384, 385) : —
" But chiefly THEE, whose MANLY, GENEROUS mind,
So nobly-valiant, against woman-kind,
Thinks that the man of satire, unreprov'd,
Might stab the heart of Her he fondly lov'd,
And thus, malignantly as mean, apply
The ASSASSIN'S Vengeance, and the COWARD'S lye ; *
" THEE whose coarse fustian, strip'd with tinsel phrase,
Is ek'd with tawdry scraps, and tags of PLAYS ;
Whose pye-bald character so aptly suit
The two extremes of BANTAM and of BRUTE ; t
Compound grotesque of sullenness and show,
The chattering magpie, and the croaking craw ;
" Who, with sagacious nose, and leering eye,
Dost ' scent the TAINT ' of distant ' pruriency ','
Turn every object to one loathsome shape,
Hear but ' a laugh,' and cry, ' a RAPE, a RAPE ! '
Whose heart contends with thy Saturnian head,
A root of hemlock, and a lump of lead ;
Swelling vain Folly's self-applauding horn
Shall the indignant muse hold forth to scorn.
" GILCHRIST, proceed ! to other hearts impute,
The feelings that thy own foul spirit suit :
Round thy cold brain, let loathsome demons swarm,
Its native dulness into life to warm,
Then with a visage half-grimace, half-spite,
Run howling, ' Pope, Pope, Pope,' — and, howling, bite.
' oee observations on Pope's detestable lines about Lady Mary.
t See criticism and letter in his own name, in the London
Magazine.
526 CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BYRON AND BOWLES, [ill.
Reckless, thy hideous rancor I defy,
All which thy brain can brood, thy rage apply,
And thus stand forth, spite of thy venom'd foam,
To give thee BITE for BITE, or lash thee limping home."
(i) Bowles's In-variable Principles of Poetry.
" AN ANSWER TO SOME OBSERVATIONS OF THOMAS CAMPBELL,
ESQ., IN HIS SPECIMENS OF BRITISH POETS.
" A Letter, etc.
" SIR, — A short time since a friend of yours, and one of the
most distinguished poets of the present day, informed me that there
had appeared, in the Morning Chronicle, an extract from your
Specimens of British Poets, entitled, 'CAMPBELL'S Answer to
BOWLES.' I have since read, with much pleasure, the work from
which the extract was taken ; and I beg to return you my thanks,
for the kind manner with which my name is introduced, though you
profess to differ from me, and state at large the grounds of that differ-
ence, on a point of criticism. The criticism of mine, which you have
discussed, is that which appears in the last volume of the last edition
of Pope's Works, entitled, ' On the Poetical Character of Pope.'
"As the opinion pronounced by the editor of the Morning
Chronicle will probably be the opinion of all who read, without
much reflection, not my criticism, but your representation of it ; I
am bound, in justice to myself, to state the grounds of my proposi-
tion clearly ; to meet the arguments you have brought against it,
manfully, but respectfully ; and to make the public (at least that
part of the public which may be interested in such a discussion) a
judge between us !
" I feel it the more incumbent on me to do this, knowing the
deserved popularity of your name, and the impression which your
representation of my arguments must make on the public ; though
I must confess, it does appear to me that you could not have read
the criticism which you discuss.
" I do not think that any thing, Sir, you have advanced, at all
shakes the propositions I have laid down ; and, moreover, I do not
doubt I shall be able to prove that you have misconceived my
meaning ; ill-supported your own arguments ; confounded what I
had distinguished; and even given me grounds lo think you had
replied to propositions which you never read, or, at least, of which
you could have read only the first sentence, omitting that which
was integrally and essentially connected with it.
" In an article in the Edinburgh Review, the same mis-statement
was made, and the same course of argument pursued. I feel,
indeed, bound to thank Mr. JEFFREY, if he wrote the article, for
the liberal tribute he paid to my poetry, at the expense of my canons
of criticism. But in truth, from the coincidences here remarked,
I might be led to think Mr. CAMPBELL wrote the Review, were I
not more disposed to think he drew his knowledge of my criticism
on POPE, not from the criticism himself, but, at second-hand, from
III.]
BOWLES'S REPLY TO CAMPBELL. 527
the criticism on the criticism in that Review, inadvertently involving
himself in all its misconceptions and misrepresentations.
" For, I beg you to observe, Sir, that in my first proposition, I do ,l
not say that WORKS OF ART are in no instances poetical ; but only
that ' what is sublime or beautiful in works of nature is MORE so ! '
The very expression ' more so' is a proof that poetry belongs,
though not in the same degree, to both. I must also beg you to
remark, that, having laid down this position, I observe, in the very
next sentence, (lest it should be misunderstood as it now is, and
was by a writer in the Edinburgh Review,) substantially as follows,
— that the loftier passions of human nature are more poetical than
artificial manners; the one being eternal, the other local and
transitory. I think the mere stating of these circumstances will be
sufficient to shew, that both the Edinburgh Review and yourself
have completely misrepresented my meaning. With respect to the
images FROM ART, which you have adduced as a triumphant answer
to what I laid down, I shall generally observe, that your own
illustrations are against you. The Edinburgh Review, in the same
manner, had spoken of the Pyramids. Now the Pyramids of Egypt,
the Chinese Wall, etc., had occurred to me, at the time of writing,
as undoubtedly POETICAL in WORKS OF ART ; but I supposed that
any reflecting person would see that these were poetical, not
essentially as works of art, but from associations both with the
highest feelings of nature, and some of her sublimest external works.t
The generations swept away round the ancient base of the Pyramids,'
the ages that are past since their erection, the mysterious obscurity
of their origin, and many other complex ideas, enter into the
imagination at the thought of these wonderful structures, besides
the association with boundless deserts ; as the Wall of China is
associated with unknown rocks, mountains, and rivers. Build a
pyramid of ttew brick, of the same dimensions as the pyramids of
Egypt, in Lincoln's-Inn Fields, and then say how much of the
poetical sublimity of the immense and icanwtaljDiles m^the deserts i
of_Egypt is derived, not from art, but from moral associations 'j"*~ J
Place your own image of the 'GIANT OF THE WESTERN STAR r upon
such a pyramid, if it could be made as HIGH as the Andes, and say
whether it would be considered as poetical as now it appears,
' looking from its throne of clouds o'er half the world." I had often
considered these and such instances generally and specifically ; and
I think, if you reflect a moment, you will agree with me, that
though they are works of art, they are rendered POETICAL chiefly
by moral associations and physical circumstances. But to come
to your most interesting example. Let us examine the ship which
you have described so beautifully. On what does the poetical
beauty depend ? not on art, but NATURE, t Take away J the waves,
* A London critic, in the Quarterly Review, says, he knows
nothing of Nature, external, moral, or general 1 I believe him.
t As Mr. D'ISRAELI has taken such antipathy to "NATURE," I
have left out the word, where the sense could be understood without it.
J Lord BYRON'S argument is a verbal quibble on " Take away"
528 CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BYRON AND BOWLES, [ill.
the winds, the sun, that, in association with the streamer and sails,
make them look so beautiful ! take all poetical association away,
ONE will become a strip of blue bunting, and the other a piece of
coarse canvas on three tall poles ! !
"You speak also of the poetical effect of the drum and fife!
Are the drum and fife poetical, without other associations ? In the
quotation from Shakespeare which you adduce, the fife is ' ear
piercing,' and the drum is ' spirit stirring ; ' and both are associated,
by the consummate art of Shakespeare — with what? — with the
' PRIDE, POMP, and CIRCUMSTANCE of GLORIOUS WAR ! ' and
passions and pictures are called up ; those of fortitude, of terror,
of pity, etc., etc. ; arms glittering in the sun, and banners waving
in the AIR. It is these pictures and passions from NATURE,* and
these alone, which make a drum or fife poetical ; and let the same
dram or fife be heard before a booth in a fair, or in a regiment with
wooden guns, and this poetical effect will be lost. I therefore turn
your own instances against you.
" What I said respecting descriptive poetry, in my Essay on the
Poetical Character of POPE, was not with a view of shewing that
a poet should be a botanist, or even a Dutch painter ; but that no
one could be ' pre-eminent,^ as a great (descriptive) poet, without this
knowledge, which peculiarly distinguishes COWPER and THOMSON.
The objects I had in view, when I used the expressions objected to,
were Pop£s Pastorals and Windsor Forest. I will appeal to your
own quotation from the first of these poets. Why is COWPER so
eminent as a descriptive poet ? for I am now speaking of this part
of his poetical character alone. Because he is the most accurate
Idescriber of the works of external nature, and for that reason is
superior, as a descriptive poet, to POPE. Every tree, and every
peculiarity of colour and shape, are so described, that the reader
becomes a spectator, and is doubly interested with the truth of
colouring, and the beauty of the scene, so vividly and so delight-
fully painted ; and you yourself have observed the same in your
criticism on this exquisite poet, in WORDS AS DECISIVE AS MY OWN.
" Having thus merely stated my sentiments in general, as they
stand in order and connection in the Essay on the Poetic Character
of POPE, I shall now pursue your arguments more in detail.
"You say, 'as the subject of inspired fiction, nature includes
artificial forms and manners' ' RICHARDSON is no less a painter
of nature than HOMER ! ' I will not stoop to notice your vague
expression of ' inspired fiction ; ' but will admit that RICHARDSON is
not less a painter of nature than HOMER. For, indeed, RICHARDSON,
'"Irritat, mulcet, falsis terroribus implet,
Ut magus ! '
The sense will be obvious, though it is true, if there were no sea,
there would be no ships! ! But the chief poetical beauty is never-
theless derived from Nature, according to Mr. CAMPBELL'S OWN
description.
* To distinguish from local and artificial manners.
III.] HOMER ON NATURE AND ART. 529
But let us take Clarissa Harlowe, the most affecting of RICHARD-
SON'S ' inspired fictions ! ' Though Lovelace be a character in
ARTIFICIAL LIFE, the interest we take in the history of Clarissa is
derived from PASSIONS. Its great characteristic is PATHOS ; and
this I have distinguished as a far more essential property of poetry
than flowers and leaves ! The passions excited make RICHARDSON
so far, and no farther, poetical. There is nothing poetical in the
feathered hat or the sword-knot of Lovelace ; nor in the gallant but
artificial manners of this accomplished villain. In Sir Charles
Grandison the character of Clementina is poetical, and for the same
reasons ; but there is nothing very poetical in Sir Charles himself,
or ' the venerable Mrs. Shirley ! '
" I must here observe, that when I speak of passions as poetical,
I speak of those which are most elevated or pathetic ; for it is true,
passions are described * in TERENCE as well as SOPHOCLES ; but
I confine my definition to what is heroic, sublime, pathetic, or
beautiful, in human feelings ; and this distinction is kept in view
through the Essay on the Poetic Character of POPE. SHAKE-
SPEARE displays the same wonderful powers in Falstaff as in Lear,
but not the same poetical powers ; and the provinces of comedy and
tragedy will be always separate ; the one relating to the passions,
the other combined with the passing fashions, and incidental
variations of the 'Cynthia of the minute.1
" To proceed ; you say, ' HOMER himself is a minute describer
of the works of art ! ' But are his descriptions of works of art more
poetical than his descriptions of the great feelings of nature ? Nay,
the whole of the Odyssey derives its peculiar charm from the scenes
of NATURE ; as the Iliad does from its loftier passions. But do you
really think that the catalogue of the Grecian ships is as poetical as
the animated horses of Achilles ; and do you think HOMER would
have been so great a poet, if he had been only a minute describer of
works of art ? Jejune as the catalogue of the leaders and ships is,
how much more interesting and poetical is it rendered by the brief
interpositions of varied and natural landscape; and it is this very
circumstance that gives the dry account any interest at all. Besides,
was the age of HOMER an aera of refinement or artificial life ? by
whom not even such a poetical work of art as a bridge is mentioned ! f
* This is the reason why I used the expression of passions
derived from manners.
t Mr. CAMPBELL asks me if ye<f>vpas might not signify a bridge ?
I answer, it may signify any thing that connects the two banks of
a river : but he is very welcome to the bridge, and it shall be as
beautiful in architecture as Westminster bridge, if he likes : Yet
what will it serve him respecting the main argument, which was,
that HOMER lived in an age before the existence of works of the
highest perfection in art ; so his Jupiter, Apollo, and Neptune, and
his most exquisite delineations of scenes of nature, and forms of
gods, and passions of the heart, could not have been derived from
those secondary sources of intellectual delight.
VOL. V. 2 M
53° CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BYRON AND BOWLES, [ill.
" But RICHARDSON and HOMER are not sufficient to overwhelm
me and my hypothesis ; and it is remarked, as if the argument were
at once decisive, that MlLTON is full of imagery derived from art ;
'Satan's spear,' for example, is compared to the 'MAST OF SOME
GREAT AMMIRAL ! ' Supposing it is, do you really think that such
a comparison makes the description of Satan's spear a whit more
poetical? I think much less so. But MILTON was not so unpoetical
as you imagine, though I think his simile does not greatly add to
our poetical ideas of Satan's spear ! The ' mast of the great
admiral ' might have been left out ; but remark, in this image
MILTON DOES NOT compare Satan's spear ' with, the mast of some
great admiral? as you assert. The passage is,
" ' His spear, to equal which the TALLEST PINE
HEWN ON NORWEGIAN HILLS TO BE the mast
Of some great ammiral, were but a wand ! ! '
You leave out the chief, I might say the only, circumstance which
reconciles the ' mast ' to us ; and having detruncated MILTON'S
image, triumphantly say, ' MILTON is full of imagery derived from
art ! ! ' You then advance, ' dextraque sinistrdque, ' and say, not
only Satan's spear is compared to an 'admiral's mast,' but 'Ais
shield to the moon seen through a telescope! '
" My dear Sir, consider a little. You forget the passage ; or
have purposely left out more than half of its essential poetical
beauty. What reason have I to complain, when you use MILTON
thus ? I beseech you recollect MILTON'S image.
" ' His pond'rous shield
Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb
Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views
AT EVENING, FROM THE TOP OF FESOLE,
Or in VALDARNO, to DESCRY NEW LANDS,
RIVERS, or MOUNTAINS, IN HER SPOTTY GLOBE.'
" Who does not perceive the art of the poet in introducing,
besides the telescope, as if conscious how unpoetical it was in itself,
all the circumstances from NATURE, external nature, — the evening
— the top of Fesole— the scenes of Valdarno — and the LANDS,
\ MOUNTAINS, and RIVERS, in the moon's orb? It is these which
make the passage poetical, and not the telescope! !
" Whilst I am on this subject, let me point out a grand and
sublime passage of this great poet, in which images from art are
most successfully introduced, and made most highly poetical. The
passage I allude to is in the Paradise Regained — the picture of
Imperial Rome.
" ' On each side an Imperial city stood,
With TOW'RS and TEMPLES proudly elevate
On seven small hills, with PALACES adorn'd,
PORCHES, and THEATRES, BATHS, AQUEDUCTS,
STATUES, and TROPHIES, and TRIUMPHAL ARCS,
III.] THE LAUNCHING OF THE SHIP. 531
GARDENS, and GROVES, presented to his eyes,
Above the height of mountains interpos'd,' etc.
" ' The CITY which thou see'st, no other deem
Than GREAT and GLORIOUS Rome, QUEEN of the EARTH,
So far renowned, and with the spoils enrich'd
Of nations ; there the CAPITOL thou see'st,
Above the rest, lifting his stately head
On the Tarpeian rock, her citadel
Impregnable, and there Mount Palatine,
The Imperial palace, compass huge, and high,
The structure, skill of noblest architects,
With GILDED BATTLEMENTS, CONSPICUOUS far,
TURRETS, and TERRACES, and GLITTERING SPIRES,' etc.
" ' Thence to the gates cast round thine eye, and see
What conflux issuing forth, or ent'ring in,
PR^TORS, PROCONSULS to their provinces
Hasting, or on return, in robes of state,
LICTORS, and RODS, the ensigns of their power,
Legions, and cohorts, Turms of horse and wings,
Or embassies from regions far remote,
In various habits on the Appian road,
Or on th' Emilian,' etc.
" This truly grand and most poetical picture I here gratuitously
set before you, convinced as you must now, I think, be, of the
weakness of your telescope, and admiral's mast ! And with the
impression left on the imagination by this lofty and beautiful assem-
blage, drawn chiefly from art, but mixed up in a grand and impres-
sive picture, by MILTON'S consummate powers of painting, I will
still contend, that ' images drawn from what is BEAUTIFUL and
SUBLIME in NATURE, are more poetical than images drawn from art.'
" I cannot dismiss this part of the subject, and the ' launching
of the ship,' which I have already touched on, without quoting your
own animated description.
" ' Those who have ever witnessed the spectacle of the launching
of a ship of the line, will, perhaps, forgive me for adding this to the
examples of the sublime objects of artificial life. Of that spectacle
I can never forget the impression.
"'When the vast bulwark sprung from her cradle, the CALM
WATER on which she swung MAJESTICALLY round, gave the
IMAGINATION a contrast of the STORMY ELEMENT, on which she
was soon to ride. All the days of battle, and nights of danger,
she had to encounter ; all the ENDS of the EARTH which she had
to visit ; and all that she had to do and suffer for her country, rose
in awful presentiment before the mind ; and when the heart gave
her a benediction, it was like one pronounced on a living being'. /'
Now let me ask you, when you so beautifully described this ship,
why was it necessary to describe its LAUNCHING at all ? If images
derived from art are as beautiful and sublime as those derived from
532 CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BYRON AND BOWLES, [ill.
nature, why was it necessary to bring your ship off the stocks t It
was complete, as far as art was concerned, before ; it had the same
sails, the same streamers, and the same tackle. But surely your
own illustration is decidedly in my favour, when it appears, from
this animated description, to make the object of art so poetically
interesting, you are obliged to have recourse to NATURE !
"This circumstance confirms my doubt, whether you ever
really read my estimate of POPE'S Poetical Character. Even if I
had been less explicit, could you suppose that, when I used the
expression of general nature, I meant to confine the idea that
expression conveyed, to external nature alone ?
" You observe, in page 264 of your first volume of Specimens of
British Poets, that ' Nature is the poet's goddess ; but by nature no
one rightly understands her mere inanimate face, however charming
it may be ; or the simple landscape painting of trees, clouds,
precipices, and flowers. Why then try POPE, or any other poet
EXCLUSIVELY BY HIS POWERS OF DESCRIBING inanimate phseno-
mena ? Nature, in the wide and proper sense of the word, means
life in all its circumstances — nature MORAL as well as external.' —
CampbelFs Specimens.
"Have I ever tried POPE by the exclusive power of painting
inanimate phenomena ? Have I ever denied that Nature, in the
proper sense of the word, means Nature moral as well as external !
Have I not, in the very first sentences of the observations on POPE'S
Poetical Character, said nearly the same thing ? Could this utterly
escape your notice, if you had (I will not say read the criticism,) but
only looked at the two first sentences ?
"To- set before you, in one view, your palpable perversions
of my positions, I will briefly state the course of my argument,
and your representation of it. The plain course of my argu-
ment was simply this : — 1st. Works of Nature, speaking of those
more beautiful and sublime, are more sublime and beautiful than
works of Art j therefore more poetical. — ad. The passions of the
human heart, which are the same in all ages, and which are the
causes of the sublime and pathetic in sentiment, are more poetical
than artificial manners. — 3d. The great poet of human passions is
the most consummate master of his art ; and the heroic, the lofty,
and the pathetic, as belonging to this class, are distinguished. — 4th.
If these premises be true, the descriptive poet, who paints from an
intimate knowledge of external nature, is more poetical, supposing
the fidelity and execution equal, not than the painter of human
/•* ttk" ' passions, but the painter of external circumstances in artificial life ;
\ as COWPER paints a morning walk, and POPE a game of cards !
" This is the ground of my argument ; and your representation,
leaving out the most essential part, is this : ' He alone is a poet
who paints from works of external nature ; and his knowledge of
external nature must be as minute as that of a botanist and Dutch
painter ! ' * I appeal to your book ; and if this were not the
mutilated representation of my argument, you would never have
* Yet Mr. Campbell has not misrepresented me ! he says.
III.]
SOPHOCLES AS A POET OF NATURE. 533
thought it necessary to say that SOPHOCLES was a GREAT POET,
notwithstanding there is no minute painting of 'leaves,' etc., in
Philoctetes ! I have here given a short analysis of my argument,
and your mutilation of it ; on which mutilation alone you build
your answer. For, indeed, you have totally left out the middle of
my argument, and ludicrously joined the heads and the legs, like
the PICTURE of NOBODY in the London shops.
" If this be so, I ask you whether you do not think I have some
reason to make this remonstrance ? You leave out the most material
part of my proposition ; and, taking a sentence relating to another
point in another place, you separate it from its direct application,
and misapply it to that with which it had no relation; omitting
what was connected and even consecutive, and connecting what was
neither the one nor the other.
" The minute knowledge of external nature, which I laid down ,
as one essential of a great descriptive poet, you apply to tragedians,
in whose more elevated works (the subjects of which are the loftier
passions of general nature) descriptions of external nature ought
least of all to have place. But perhaps I ought to thank you for
thus bringing me back to the delightful remembrance of the most
interesting studies of my youth, — the tragedies of SOPHOCLES, and
particularly the Sperchian fountains, the Lemnian rock, and the
solitary cave of Philoctetes. Nor can I forget, that one of the
companions of my youthful studies, now in the dust, made this
melancholy abode the subject of one of the most beautiful, and
affecting, and picturesque sonnets in the English language : the
insertion of which in your next edition,* would be, I am persuaded,
far more acceptable than many specimens you have admitted.
" To return to SOPHOCLES. There is no minute description of
leaves and flowers ; but you have forgotten that the affecting story
of the desolate Philoctetes displays not only the higher passions,
but exhibits the interesting display of many of Nature's external
beauties, of her most romantic scenery, of her most secluded
solitudes. It is many years since I read the play ; but recollecting
its wild poetic scenery, and impassioned language, I repeated, with
a sigh,
" 'Nw 8", <a K.pi\va.i, yXvKiov re itorov,
A.fnro/J.(t> v/uos, \ftirofj.(v 77877,
Ao|rjy OU7TOT6 TT?<r5' tiriftavres,
Xa«p', (a ArifAVOv ireSov a.fjLfyia.Kov,' etc.
"It is the rocks, the caves, the wild and solitary scenery, the I
desert island, and the surrounding seas, all images of nature, that,
mixed with the language of human passions derived from the same
general nature, give this ancient and unique drama its peculiar
charm ; reminding us of the romantic imagery in the Tempest and
Midsummer Night's Dream, so beautifully interwoven by SHAKE-
SPEARE in those interesting dramas.
"The miserable abode of the lonely inhabitant of Lemnos is
Written by the Rev. THOS. RUSSELL, of New College, Oxford.
534 CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BYRON AND BOWLES, [ill.
marked by one image drawn from art, which is so minute, and sets
so strongly before us the wants and resources of the desolate exile
that none of the minute circumstances which render so natural the
narrative of Robinson Crusoe, can be imagined more affecting. I
allude to the
" ' AVTO£V\O>> 7' (KTru/jLa <f>av\ovpyov rivos
in the cave of Philoctetes. There is nothing poetical in an ill-
carved cup ; but in this place it is rendered poetical, and most
strikingly affecting, by the associated circumstances.
" In the quotation from SHAKESPEARE, where you triumphantly
appeal to the ' towers, and solemn temples, and gorgeous palaces ; '
recollect, Sir, the tower is ' cloud-capt ;' the temple is associated
with the ' solemnity ' of religious awe ; and ' palaces ' with the
splendour of earthly magnificence : and all these images are brought
into one grand and awful picture, to shew the mighty devastation
of final ruin ; and are associated with that leading idea of the
destruction of the globe itself, which will leave not a WRECK behind !
Thus the ' cloud-capt towers ' become highly poetical ; nor can I
leave this point without speaking a word of the particular object
of the tower. POPE himself has thought its image so pleasing, that,
in the catalogue of ships from HOMER, he sets before us the prospect
of English spires, not Grecian. If the ' cloud-capt tower ' itself be
a striking, and often a beautiful, object ; how much more poetical,
when, grey with years, or illumined by the setting sun, it carries
the thought to that worship with which it is connected, the sabbaths
of our forefathers ; or harmonizes with the soft, sinking landscape
of evening, and the ideas of another world !
" If ever I should have the pleasure of seeing you in this county,
in which I should sincerely rejoice, not far from my own house I
could shew you a tower which is 'cloud-capt,'* but not poetical;
though it is of the same size with other towers, and adorned with
pinnacles. It is what is called a sham tower, built in all respects
like other towers as to one side, but it is only a wall built in this
shape, and added to a cottage for the sake of a view, from the
poetical and picturesque terrace of an ancient Abbey. To take you
to scenes with which you are better acquainted. I would ask you,
what makes the venerable towers of Westminster Abbey, on the
side of the Thames, more poetical, as objects, than the tower for
the manufactory of patent shot, surrounded by the same scenery, and
towering amidst the smoke of the city f
" But, enough of this ! I have read your observations with
greater attention than you could have read mine ; and having so
read them, I must confess I do not find one point established against
those positions which I had distinctly laid down, unless your
* The evening or morning has the same effect on this tower as
any other ; but describe it in poetry, you must keep out of sight that
it is " sham," otherwise all poetical associations will be lost. — See
Letter to Lord Byron.
III.] SYLPH OR ARIEL. 535
observations may be called an answer, where, in refutation of such
plain positions, you repeat yourself.
" There is another circumstance, which almost persuades me
you never read my criticism on POPE'S Poetic Character. You say,
' He glows with passion in the Epistle of Eloisa ; and displays a
lofty feeling, much above that of the satirist and man of the world, in
his prologue to Cato, and his Epistle to Lord OXFORD.' — Campbell.
" This may be called an ' answer ! ' How complete an answer it
is, will be shewn by the following few lines of my criticism : ' We
regret that we have little more truly pathetic from his pen than the
Epistle of Eloisa ; and the Elegy to the unfortunate Lady ; yet let
me not forget one of the sweetest and most melodious of his pathetic
effusions, the Address to Lord OXFORD,
" ' Such were the notes my once-lov'd Poet sung.'
Bowles.
" I must again entreat pardon for shewing what I did say of a
poem founded on manners, and what I did not say of the Rape of
the Lock. 'In this composition POPE stands alone, unrivalled,
and possibly never to be rivalled. All his successful labour of -iWi
correct and musical versification, all his talents of accurate descrip- .
tion, though in an inferior province of poetry, are here consum- I
mately displayed; and as far as artificial life, that is, "manners,"
not PASSIONS, are capable of being rendered poetical, they are here
, rendered so by the fancy, the propriety, the elegance, and the
poetic beauty of the machinery.'
" Now I would put to you a few plain questions ; and I would
beseech you not to ask whether I mean this or that, for I think you
must now understand what I do mean. I would beseech you also
not to write beside the question, but answer simply and plainly,
whether you think that the sylph of POPE, ' trembling over the
fumes of a chocolate-pot,' be an image as poetical as that of delicate
and quaint Ariel, who sings, ' Where the bee sucks, there lurk I ? '
Or the elves of SHAKESPEARE :
\ &«'^*W€.c" •*-*&
'
Spirits of another sort,
That with the morning light make sport.'
Whether you think the description of a game of cards be as poetical,
supposing the execution in the artists equal, as a description of a
WALK in a FOREST ? Whether an age of refinement be as conducive
to pictures of poetry, as a period less refined ? Whether passions,
affections, etc., of the human heart be not a higher source of what
is pathetic or sublime in poetry, than habits or manners, that apply
only to artificial life ? If you agree with me, I am satisfied ; if not,
we differ, and always shall, on the principles of poetical criticism.
"Your last observation is this: 'I know not how to designate
the possessor of such gifts, but by the name of genuine poet.'
Nor do I, nor did I ever ; and I will venture to assert, that if you
examine well what I have here said on POPE'S several writings, you
will not think I ever shewed reluctance to attribute to him that
high name.
536 CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BYRON AND BOWLES, [ill.
" Again. You say, ' POPE'S discrimination lies in the lights
and shades of ''''human " manners, which are at least as interesting
as those of rocks and leaves /' Does it require more than the
commonest understanding to perceive the fallacy of this language ?
" I fear it would be thought impertinent to ask you at what
University you acquired your logic ; but I guess your knowledge of
the art was not acquired at Oxford. Your logic is this : ' Human
manners are the province of poets ; therefore, the general and
loftier passions are not more poetical than manners of artificial life.'
Shall I hint further, that the expression human manners is vague
and inapplicable ? Human manners may designate equally the red
Indian, in the forests of the Mississippi ; the plumed soldier, and
the grey-haired minstrel of chivalry ; or Beau Nash, in a Bath ball-
room. Every comedy, every farce, has human manners ; but my
proposition was confined to manners of a refined age, which I
called artificial ; and which you have artificially slurred over with
irrelevant expressions, that prove nothing. Artificial manners are
human, but ' human manners ' ARE NOT so ADAPTED TO POETRY
OF THE HIGHEST KIND AS HUMAN PASSIONS.
" I beg further to say, that there is not one passage, concerning
the poetical beauties of which you have so justly spoken, which I
have not expressly pointed out myself, as the reader may find in
turning to the passages ; particularly let him remember what I have
said respecting the PATHOS, and the PICTURES, and the SOLEMN
and SWEET HARMONIES, in the Epistle of Eloisa. And can I help
pointing out, not with triumph, but with regret, that you only agree
with me in some points,) and that where we differ, your criticism
conflictingly labours against your own argument : for when, nearly
in the last sentence, you say, ' he, POPE, glows with passion in the
Eloisa, and displays a LOFTY feeling, much ABOVE that of the
SATIRIST and man of the world, in his Prologue to Cato, and his
Epistle to Lord OXFORD ; ' what is that but to say, that ' glowing
passions and lofty feelings are much ABOVE those which distinguish
the SATIRIST and man of the world ! ! ' Q. E. D."
(2) Letter to* * * * ****** [John Murray], Esqre,
on the Rev. W. L. Bowles's Strictures on the Life and
Writings of Pope.1
" ' I'll play at Bowls with the Sun and Moon.'— Old Song.
" ' My mither's auld, Sir, and she has rather forgotten hersel in
speaking to my Leddy, that canna weel bide to be contradickit (as
I ken naebody likes it, if they could help themsels).' — Tales of My
Landlord: Old Mortality, p. 163, vol. 2nd.
"Ravenna, February 7th, 1821.
"DEAR SIR, — In the different pamphlets which you have had
the goodness to send me, on the Pope and Bowles controversy, I
1 Published in March, 1821.
III.] THE NESTOR OF LIVING POETS. 537
perceive that my name is occasionally introduced by both parties.
Mr. Bowles refers more than once to what he is pleased to consider
'a remarkable circumstance,' not only in his letter to Mr. Camp-
bell, but in his reply to the Quarterly. The Quarterly also and Mr.
Gilchrist have conferred on me the dangerous honour of a quotation j
and Mr. Bowles indirectly makes a kind of appeal to me personally,
by saying, ' Lord B., if he remembers the circumstance, will witness ' —
(witness IN ITALICS, an ominous character for a testimony at present).
" I shall not avail myself of a ' non mi ricordo,' * even after so
long a residence in Italy ; — I do c remember the circumstance,' — and
have no reluctance to relate it (since called upon so to do), as
correctly as the distance of time and the impression of intervening
events will permit me. In the year 1812, more than three years
after the publication of English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers, I had
the honour of meeting Mr. Bowles in the house of our venerable
host of Human Life, etc., the last Argonaut of classic English poetry,
and the Nestor of our inferior race of living poets. Mr. Bowles
calls this ' soon after ' the publication ; but to me three years appear
a considerable segment of the immortality of a modern poem. I
recollect nothing of ' the rest of the company going into another
room,' — nor, though I well remember the topography of our Host's
elegant and classically furnished mansion, could I swear to the very
room where the conversation occurred, though the ' taking down the
poem ' seems to fix it in the library. Had it been ' taking up,' it
would probably have been in the drawing-room. I presume also
that the ' remarkable circumstance ' took place after dinner ; as I
conceive that neither Mr. Bowles's politeness nor appetite would
have allowed him to detain ' the rest of the company ' standing
round their chairs in the ' other room,' while we were discussing
' the Woods of Madeira,' instead of circulating its vintage. Of Mr.
Bowles's ' good humour ' I have a full and not ungrateful recollec-
tion ; as also of his gentlemanly manners and agreeable conversation.
I speak of the whole, and not of particulars ; for whether he did or
did not use the precise words printed in the pamphlet, I cannot say,
nor could he with accuracy. Of ' the tone of seriousness ' I certainly
recollect nothing : on the contrary, I thought Mr. B. rather disposed
to treat the subject lightly ; for he said (I have no objection to be
contradicted if incorrect), that some of his good-natured friends had
come to him and exclaimed, ' Eh ! Bowles ! how came you to make
the Woods of Madeira ? ' etc., etc. ; and that he had been at some
pains and pulling down of the poem to convince them that he had
never made ' the Woods ' do any thing of the kind. He was right,
and / was -wrong, and have been wrong still up to this acknowledg-
ment ; for I ought to have looked twice before I wrote that which
I. At the trial of Queen Caroline, the answer, Non mi recordo,
was so frequently made by Majocchi, and other Italian witnesses,
that it became a cant phrase of the day. "Lady C. Lindsay,"
writes Jekyll (Letters, p. 103), "seems as prolific in 'Non mi
recordos' as Majocchi." Hone, in 1820, published a popular
pamphlet under this title.
538 CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BYRON AND BOWLES, [ill.
involved an inaccuracy capable of giving pain. The fact was, that,
although I had certainly before read The Spirit of Discovery r, I took
the quotation from the review. But the mistake was mine, and not
the review's, which quoted the passage correctly enough, I believe.
I blundered — God knows how — into attributing the tremors of the
lovers to the ' Woods of Madeira,' by which they were surrounded.
And I hereby do fully and freely declare and asseverate, that the
Woods did not tremble to a kiss, and that the Lovers did. I quote
from memory —
'A kiss
Stole on the listening silence, etc., etc.
They [the lovers] trembled, even as if the Power,' etc.
And if I had been aware that this declaration would have been in
the smallest degree satisfactory to Mr. B., I should not have waited
nine years to make it, notwithstanding that English Bards, and
Scotch Reviewers had been suppressed some time previously to my
meeting him at Mr. Rogers's. Our worthy host might indeed have
told him as much, as it was at his representation that I suppressed
it. A new edition of that lampoon was preparing for the press,
when Mr. Rogers represented to me, that ' I was now acquainted
with many of the persons mentioned in it, and with some on terms
of intimacy ; ' and that he knew ' one family in particular to whom
its suppression would give pleasure." I did not hesitate one moment,
— it was cancelled instantly ; and it is no fault of mine that it has
ever been republished. When I left England, in April, 1816, with
no very violent intentions of troubling that country again, and
amidst scenes of various kinds to distract my attention, — almost my
last act, 1 believe, was to sign a power of attorney, to yourself, to
prevent or suppress any attempts (of which several had been made)
at a republication. It is proper that I should state, that the persons
with whom I was subsequently acquainted, whose names had occurred
in that publication, were made my acquaintances at their own desire,
or through the unsought intervention of others. I never, to the best
of my knowledge, sought a personal introduction to any. Some of
them to this day I know only by correspondence ; and with one
of those it was begun by myself, in consequence, however, of a polite
verbal communication from a third person.
' ' I have dwelt for an instant on these circumstances, because it
has sometimes been made a subject of bitter reproach to me to have
endeavoured to suppress that Satire. I never shrunk, as those who
know me know, from any personal consequences which could be
attached to its publication. Of its subsequent suppression, as I
possessed the copyright, I was the best judge and the sole master.
The circumstances which occasioned the suppression I have now
stated ; of the motives, each must judge according to his candour or
malignity. Mr. Bowles does me the honour to talk of ' noble mind,'
and ' generous magnanimity ; ' and all this because ' the circumstance
would have been explained had not the book been suppressed.' I
see no ' nobility of mind ' in an act of simple Justice ; and I hate
the word ' Magnanimity ',' because I have sometimes seen it applied
III.] A REGRET QUALIFIED. 539
to the grossest of impostors by the greatest of fools ; but I would
have 'explained the circumstance,' notwithstanding 'the Suppres-
sion of the book,' if Mr. B. had expressed any desire that I should.
As the 'gallant Galbraith' says to 'Baillie Jarvie,' ' Well, the devil
take the mistake, and all that occasioned it.' * I have had as great
and greater mistakes made about me personally and poetically, once
a month for these last ten years, and never cared very much about
correcting one or the other, at least after the first eight and forty
hours had gone over them.
"I must now, however, say a word or two about Pope, of whom
you have my opinion more at large in the unpublished letter on or to
(for I forget which) the Editor of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine ; 2
— and here I doubt that Mr. Bowles will not approve of my
Sentiments.
" Although I regret having published English. Bards, and Scotch.
Reviewers, the part which I regret the least is that which regards
Mr. B. with reference to Pope. Whilst I was writing that publi-
cation, in 1807 and 1808, Mr. Hobhouse was desirous that I should
express our mutual opinion of Pope, and of Mr. B.'s edition of his
works. As I had completed my outline, and felt lazy, I requested
that he would do so. He did it. His fourteen lines on Bowles's
Pope are in the first edition of English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers ; *
and are quite as severe and much more poetical than my own in the
Second. On reprinting the work, as I put my name to it, I omitted
Mr. Hobhouse's lines, and replaced them with my own, by which
the work gained less than Mr. Bowles. I have stated this in the
preface to the 2d edition. It is many years since I have read that
poem ; but the Quarterly Review, Mr. Octavius Gilchrist, and Mr.
Bowles himself, have been so obliging as to refresh my memory,
and that of the public. I am grieved to say, that in reading over
those lines, I repent of their having so far fallen short of what I
meant to express upon the subject of B.'s edition of Papers Works.
Mr. B. says, that ' Ld. B. knows he does not deserve this character.'
I know no such thing. I have met Mr. B. occasionally, in the best
Society in London ; he appeared to me an amiable, well-informed,
and extremely able man. I desire nothing better than to dine in
company with such a mannered man every day in the week : but of
' his character ' I know nothing personally ; I can only speak to his
manners, and these have my warmest approbation. But I never
judge from manners, for I once had my pocket picked by the civilest
1. Rob Roy, chap, xxviii.
2. See Letters, vol. iv. Appendix IX. In the Preface to vol.
xi. (January, 1822) of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine the Editor
says, " Lord Byron, too, has written something about us — but
whether a satire or an eulogy seems doubtful. The Noble Lord —
great wits having short memories, and sometimes not very long
judgments — has told the public and Mr. Murray that he has
forgotten whether his letter is on or to the Editor of Blackwood's
Magazine," etc.
3. See Poems (ed. 1898), vol. i. p. 327.
54° CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BYRON AND BOWLES, [ill.
gentleman I ever met with ; and one of the mildest persons I ever
saw was Ali Pacha.1 Of Mr. B.'s 'character* I will not do him
the injustice to judge from the Edition of Pope, if he prepared it
heedlessly ; nor the justice, should it be otherwise, because I would
neither become a literary executioner nor a personal one. Mr.
Bowles the individual, and Mr. Bowles the editor, appear the two
most opposite things imaginable.
" ' And he himself one antithesis.'
I won't say 'vile,' because it is harsh ; nor 'mistaken,' because it
has two syllables too many : but every one must fill up the blank
as he pleases.*
" What I saw of Mr. B. increased my surprise and regret that
he should ever have lent his talents to such a task. If he had been
a fool, there would have been some excuse for him ; if he had been
a needy or a bad man, his conduct would have been intelligible :
but he is the opposite of all these ; and thinking and feeling as I do
of Pope, to me the whole thing is unaccountable. However, I
must call things by their right names. I cannot call his edition of
Pope a ' candid ' work ; and I still think that there is an affectation
of that quality not only in those volumes, but in the pamphlets lately
published.
" ' Why yet he doth deny his prisoners.' *
Mr. B. says that he 'has seen passages in his letters to Martha
Blount which were never published by me, and I hope never -will be
by others ; which are so gross as to imply the grossest licentiousness.'
Is this fair play ? It may, or it may not be that such passages exist ;
and that 'Pope, who was not a Monk, although a Catholic, may
have occasionally sinned in word and deed with woman in his youth :
but is this a sufficient ground for such a sweeping denunciation ?
Where is the unmarried Englishman of a certain rank of life, who
(provided he has not taken orders) has not to reproach himself
between the ages of sixteen and thirty with far more licentiousness
than has ever yet been traced to Pope ? Pope lived in the public
eye from his youth upwards ; he had all the dunces of his own time
1. For Ali Pasha, see Letters, vol. i. p. 246, note I. See also
Childe Harold, Canto II. stanza Ixii. —
11 Ali reclined, a man of war and woes :
Yet in his lineaments ye cannot trace,
While Gentleness her milder radiance throws
Along that aged venerable face,
The deeds that lurk beneath, and stain him with disgrace."
2. " His wit all seesaw, between that and this,
Now high, now low, now master up, now miss,
And he himself one vile antithesis."
Pope, Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, lines 323-325.
3. Henry IV., Part I. act i. sc. 3.
III.]
INVIDIOUS INQUESTS ON LIFE. 54!
for his enemies, and, I am sorry to say, some, who have not the
apology of dullness for detraction, since his death ; and yet to what
do all their accumulated hints and charges amount ? — to an equivocal
liaison with Martha Blount, which might arise as much from his
infirmities as from his passions ; to a hopeless flirtation with Lady
Mary W. Montagu ; l to a story of Gibber's ; and to two or three
coarse passages in his works. Who could come forth clearer from
an invidious inquest on a life of fifty-six years ? Why are we to be
officiously reminded of such passages in his letters, provided that
they exist ? Is Mr. B. aware to what such rummaging among
' letters ' and ' stories ' might lead ? I have myself seen a collection
of letters of another eminent, nay, pre-eminent, deceased poet, so
abominably gross, and elaborately coarse, that I do not believe that
they could be paralleled in our language. What is more strange is,
that some of these are couched as postscripts to his serious and senti-
mental letters, to which are tacked either a piece of prose, or some
verses, of the most hyperbolical indecency. He himself says, that
if ' obscenity ' (using a much coarser word) ' be the Sin against the
Holy Ghost, he must certainly not be saved.' 2 These letters are in
existence, and have been seen by many besides myself ; but would
his editor have been 'candid' in even alluding to them? Nothing
would have even provoked me, an indifferent spectator, to allude to
them, but this further attempt at the depreciation of Pope.
" What should we say to an editor of Addison, who cited the
following passage from Walpole's letters to George Montagu ? ' Dr.
Young has published a new book, etc.3 Mr. Addison sent for the
young Earl of Warwick, as he was dying, to show him in what
peace a Christian could die ; unluckily he died of brandy : nothing
makes a Christian die in peace like being maudlin ! but don't say
this in Gath where you are.' Suppose the editor introduced it with
this preface, ' One circumstance is mentioned by Horace Walpole,
which, if true, was indeed flagitious. Walpole informs Montagu
that Addison sent for the young Earl of Warwick, when dying, to
1. To this passage Byron intended his Note on Lady M. W.
Montagu (see the end of the letter) to be appended.
2. Robert Burns, writing to Cleghorn, October 25, 1793, says,
" There is — there must be some truth in original sin. My violent
propensity to * convinces me of it. Lack-a-day 1 If that species
of composition be the special sin never-to-be-forgotten in this world
nor in that which is to come, then I am the most offending soul
alive," etc. (See the note on p. 239 of W. E. Henley's "Life,
Genius, and Achievement " in Robert Burns' Poetry^ ed. Henley
and Henderson, vol. iv. 1897.)
3. " Dr Young has published a new book, on purpose, he says
himself, to have an opportunity of telling a story that he has known
these forty years. Mr. Addison sent for the young Lord Warwick,"
etc. (H. Walpole to G. Montagu, May 16, 1759, Letters, ed. Cun-
ningham, vol. iii. p. 227). Dr. Young's book was entitled Conjec-
tures on Original Composition : in a Letter to the Author of Sir
Charles Graudison.
542 CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BYRON AND BOWLES, [ill.
show him in what peace a Christian could die; but unluckily he
died drunk,' etc., etc. Now, although there might occur on the
subsequent, or on the same page, a faint show of disbelief, seasoned
with the expression of 'the same candour1 (the same exactly as
throughout the book), I should say that this editor was either foolish
or false to his trust ; such a story ought not to have been admitted,
except for one brief mark of crushing indignation, unless it were
completely proved. Why the words ' if true ? ' that ' if is not a
peacemaker. Why talk of ' Gibber's testimony ' to his licentious-
ness ? To what does this amount ? that Pope, when very young,
was once decoyed by some noblemen and the player to a house of
carnal recreation. Mr. Bowles was not always a clergyman ; and
when he was a very young man, was he never seduced into as much ?
If I were in the humour for story-telling, and relating little anec-
dotes, I could tell a much better story of Mr. B. than Gibber's, upon
much better authority, viz. that of Mr. B. himself. It was not
related by him in my presence, but in that of a third person, whom
Mr. B. names oftener than once in the course of his replies.1 This
gentleman related it to me as a humorous and witty anecdote ; and
so it was, whatever its other characteristics might be. But should
I, for a youthful frolic, brand Mr. B. with a ' libertine sort of love,'
or with ' licentiousness ? ' Is he the less now a pious or a good man,
for not having always been a priest ? No such thing ; I am willing
to believe him a good man, almost as good a man as Pope, but no
better.
"The truth is, that in these days the grand ' primum mobile* of
England is cant ; cant political, cant poetical, cant religious, cant
moral ; but always cant, multiplied through all the varieties of life.
It is the fashion, and while it lasts will be too powerful for those
who can only exist by taking the tone of the time. I say cant,
because it is a thing of words, without the smallest influence upon
human actions ; the English being no wiser, no better, and much
poorer, and more divided amongst themselves, as well as far less
moral, than they were before the prevalence of this verbal decorum.
This hysterical horror of poor Pope's not very well ascertained, and
never fully proved amours (for even Gibber owns that he prevented
the somewhat perilous adventure in which Pope was embarking),
sounds very virtuous in a controversial pamphlet : but all men of
the world who know what life is, or at least what it was to them in
their youth, must laugh at such a ludicrous foundation of the charge
of ' a libertine sort of love ; ' while the more serious will look upon
those who bring forward such charges upon an isolated fact as
fanatics or hypocrites, perhaps both. The two are sometimes
compounded in a happy mixture.
"Mr. Octavius Gilchrist speaks rather irreverently of a 'second
tumbler of hot white-wine negus.' What does he mean ? Is there
any harm in negus? or is it the worse for being hoti or does Mr.
B. drink negus? I had a better opinion of him. I hoped that
I . The story of Bowles's experience in Paris was tolc
. by Moore (see p. 278), but it cannot be repeated in print.
Paris was told to Byron
III.] INVARIABLE PRINCIPLES. 543
whatever wine he drank was neat ; or, at least, that, like the
Ordinary in Jonathan Wild, ' he preferred punch, the rather as there
was nothing against it in Scripture.' l I should be really sorry to
believe that Mr. B. was fond of negus ; it is such a ' candid ' liquor,
so like a wishy-washy compromise between the passion for wine and
the propriety of water. But different writers have divers tastes.
Judge Blackstone composed his Commentaries (he was a poet too
in his youth) with a bottle of port before him. Addison's conver-
sation was not good for much till he had taken a similar dose.
Perhaps the prescription of these two great men was not inferior to
the very different one of a soi-disant poet of this day, who, after
wandering amongst the hills, returns, goes to bed, and dictates his
verses, being fed by a bystander with bread and butter during the
operation.
"I now come to Mr. B.'s 'invariable principles of poetry.'
These Mr. Bowles and some of his correspondents pronounce ' un-
answerable ; ' and they are 'unanswered,' at least by Campbell, who
seems to have been astounded by the title : the Sultan of the time
being offered to ally himself to a King of France because ' he hated
the word League ; ' which proves that the Paaishaw (not Pacha)
understood French. Mr. Campbell has no need of my alliance, nor
shall I presume to offer it; but I do hate that word ' invariable.1
What is there of human, be it poetry, philosophy, wit, wisdom,
science, power, glory, mind, matter, life, or death, which is 'in-
variable ? ' Of course I put things divine out of the question. • Of
all arrogant baptisms of a book, this title to a pamphlet appears the
most complacently conceited. It is Mr. Campbell's part to answer
the contents of this performance, and especially to vindicate his own
' Ship," which Mr. B. most triumphantly proclaims to have struck
to his very first fire.
" ' Quoth he there was a Ship;
Now let me go, thou grey-haired loon,
Or my staff shall make thee skip.'
It is no affair of mine ; but having once begun, (certainly not by my
own wish, but called upon by the frequent recurrence to my name
in the pamphlets,) I am like an Irishman in a 'row,' 'any body's
customer." I shall therefore say a word or two on the 'Ship.'
" Mr. B. asserts that Campbell's ' Ship of the Line ' derives all
its poetry, not from 'art,' but from 'Nature.' 'Take away the
waves, the winds, the sun, etc., etc., etc., one will become a stripe of
blue bunting ; and the other a piece of coarse canvas on three tall
poles.' Very true; take away the 'waves,' 'the winds,' and there
will be no ship at all, not only for poetical, but for any other pur-
pose ; and take away ' the sun,' and we must read Mr. B.'s pamphlet
by candlelight. But the ' poetry ' of the ' Ship ' does not depend
on the 'waves,' etc. ; on the contrary, the ' Ship of the line ' confers
its own poetry upon the waters, and heightens theirs. I do not
deny, that the 'waves and winds,' and above all 'the sun,' are
i. Jonathan Wild, Bk. IV. chap. xiii.
544 CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BYRON AND BOWLES, [ill.
highly poetical ; we know it to our cost, by the many descriptions
of them in verse : but if the waves bore only the foam upon their
bosoms, if the winds wafted only the sea-weed to the shore, if the
sun shone neither upon pyramids, nor fleets, nor fortresses, would
its beams be equally poetical ? I think not : the poetry is at least
reciprocal.. Take away 'the Ship of the Line swinging round*
the 'calm water,' and the calm water becomes a somewhat mono-
tonous thing to look at, particularly if not transparently clear ;
witness the thousands who pass by without looking on it at all.
What was it attracted the thousands to the launch ? They might
have seen the poetical ' calm water ' at Wapping, or in the ' London
Dock,' or in the Paddington Canal, or in a horse -pond, or in a slop-
basin, or in any other vase. They might have heard the poetical
winds howling through the chinks of a pig-stye, or the garret
window ; they might have seen the sun shining on a footman's
livery, or on a brass warming pan; but could the 'calm water,' or
the ' wind,' or the ' sun,' make all, or any of these ' poetical ? ' I
think not. Mr. B. admits ' the Ship ' to be poetical, but only from
those accessaries : now if they confer poetry so as to make one thing
poetical, they would make other things poetical ; the more so, as
Mr. B. calls a ' ship of the line ' without them, — that is to say, its
'masts and sails and streamers,' — 'blue bunting,' and 'coarse
canvas,' and 'tall poles.' So they are; and porcelain is clay, and
man is dust, and flesh is grass, and yet the two latter at least are
the subjects of much poesy.
" Did Mr. B. ever gaze upon the sea ? I presume that he has,
at least upon a sea-piece. Did any painter ever paint the sea only,
without the addition of a ship, boat, wreck, or some such adjunct ?
Is the sea itself a more attractive, a more moral, a more poetical
object, with or without a vessel, breaking its vast but fatiguing
monotony ? Is a storm more poetical without a ship ? or, in the
poem of The Shipwreck,1 is it the storm or the ship which most
interests ? both much undoubtedly ; but without the vessel, what
should we care for the tempest ? It would sink into mere descrip-
tive poetry, which in itself was never esteemed a high order of that art.
" I look upon myself as entitled to talk of naval matters, at least
to poets : — with the exception of Walter Scott, Moore, and Southey,
perhaps, who have been voyagers, I have smum more miles than
all the rest of them together now living ever sailed, and have lived
for months and months on shipboard ; and, during the whole period
of my life abroad, have scarcely ever passed a month out of sight
of the Ocean : besides being brought up from two years till ten on
the brink of it. I recollect, when anchored off Cape Sigeum in
1810, in an English frigate, a violent squall coming on at sunset, so
violent as to make us imagine that the ship would part cable, or drive
from her anchorage. Mr. Hfobhouse] and myself, and some officers,
had been up the Dardanelles to Abydos, and were just returned in
time. The aspect of a storm in the Archipelago is as poetical as
need be, the sea being particularly short, dashing, and dangerous,
I. Falconer's Shipwreck was published in 1762.
III.] THE POETRY OF THE SEA. 545
and the navigation intricate and broken by the isles and currents.
Cape Sigeum, the tumuli of the Troad, Lemnos, Tenedos, all added
to the associations of the time. But what seemed the most ' poetical '
of all at the moment, were the numbers (about two hundred) of
Greek and Turkish craft, which were obliged to 'cut and run'
before the wind, from their unsafe anchorage, some for Tenedos,
some for other isles, some for the Main, and some it might be for
Eternity. The sight of these little scudding vessels, darting over
the foam in the twilight, now appearing and now disappearing
between the waves in the cloud of night, with their peculiarly white
sails, (the Levant sails not being of ' coarse canvas ,' but of white
cotton, ) skimming along as quickly, but less safely than the sea-mew
which hovered over them ; their evident distress, their reduction to
fluttering specks in the distance, their crowded succession, their
littlettess, as contending with the giant element, which made our
stout 44's teak timbers (she was built in India) creak again ; their
aspect and their motion, all struck me as something far more
'poetical' than the mere broad, brawling, shipless sea, and the
sullen winds, could possibly have been without them.
" The Euxine is a noble sea to look upon, and the port of Con-
stantinople the most beautiful of harbours ; and yet I cannot but
think that the twenty sail of the line, some of one hundred and forty
guns, rendered it more ' poetical ' by day in the sun, and by night
perhaps still more ; for the Turks illuminate their vessels of war in
a manner the most picturesque, and yet all this is artificial. As for
the Euxine,1 I stood upon the Symplegades — I stood by the broken
altar still exposed to the winds upon one of them — I felt all the
' poetry ' of the situation, as I repeated the first lines of Medea ; but
would not that 'poetry' have been heightened by the Argot* It
1. " The wind swept down the Euxine, and the wave
Broke foaming o'er the blue Symplegades ;
'T is a grand sight from off the ' Giant's Grave '
To watch the progress of those rolling seas
Between the Bosphorus, as they lash and lave
Europe and Asia, you being quite at ease ;
There 's not a sea the passenger e'er pukes in,
Turns up more dangerous breakers than the Euxine."
Don yuan, Canto V. stanza v.
2. " I scrambled up the Cyanean Symplegades with as great risk
as ever the Argonauts escaped in their hoy. You remember the
beginning of the nurse's dole in the Medea, of which I beg you to
take the following translation, done on the summit : —
" ' Oh how I wish that an embargo
Had kept in port the good ship Argo !
Who, still unlaunch'd from Grecian docks,
Had never passed the Azure rocks ;
But now I fear her trip will be a
Damn'd business for my Miss Medea, etc., etc.' "
Byron to H. Drury, June 17, 1810 (Letters, vol. i. p. 277).
VOL. V. 2 N
546 CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BYRON AND BOWLES, [ill.
was so even by the appearance of any merchant vessel arriving from
Odessa. But Mr. B. says, ' Why bring your ship off the stocks ? '
for no reason that I know, except that ships are built to be launched.
The water, etc., undoubtedly HEIGHTENS the poetical associations,
but it does not make them ; and the ship amply repays the obli-
gation : they aid each other ; the water is more poetical with the
ship — the ship less so without the water. But even a ship laid up
in dock is a grand and a poetical sight. Even an old boat, keel
upwards, wrecked upon the barren sand, is a ' poetical ' object, (and
Wordsworth, who made a poem about a washing-tub and a blind
boy,1 may tell you so as well as I,) whilst a long extent of sand and
unbroken water, without the boat, would be as like dull prose as
any pamphlet lately published.
" What makes the poetry in the image of the ' marble waste of
Tadtnor,' or Grainger's 'Ode to Solitude,' so much admired by
Johnson?2 Is it the ' marble1 or the 'waste,' the artificial or the
natural object ? The ' waste ' is like all other wastes ; but the
' marble1 of Palmyra makes the poetry of the passage as of the place.
" The beautiful but barren Hymettus, — the whole coast of Attica,
her hills and mountains, Pentelicus, Anchesmus, Philopappus, etc.,
etc. — are in themselves poetical, and would be so if the name of
Athens, of Athenians, and her very ruins, were swept from the
earth. But am I to be told that the ' Nature ' of Attica would be
more poetical without the ' Art ' of the Acropolis ? of the Temple
of Theseus ? and of the still all Greek and glorious monuments of
her exquisitely artificial genius ? Ask the traveller what strikes him
as most poetical, — the Parthenon, or the rock on which it stands ?
The COLUMNS of Cape Colonna, or the Cape itself ? 3 The rocks
1. "The Blind Highland Boy" and the turtle-shell.
2. Dr. Johnson "praised Grainger's ' Ode to Solitude,' in Dodsley's
Collection, and repeated with great energy the exordium —
'" O Solitude, romantick maid,
Whether by nodding towers you tread ;
Or haunt the desart's trackless gloom,
Or hover o'er the yawning tomb ;
Or climb the Andes' clifted side,
Or by the Nile's coy source abide ;
Or, starting from your half-year's sleep,
From Hecla view the thawing deep ;
Or, at the purple dawn of day,
Tadnor's marble waste survey ; '
observing, 'This, Sir, is very noble.' " — Boswell's Life, ed. G. B.
Hill, vol. Hi. p. 197.
3. The scene of the wreck in Falconer's Shipwreck (ed. 1811),
Canto III. lines 534-537, is thus described —
" But, now, Athenian mountains they descry,
And o'er the surge Colonna frowns on high ;
Whose marble Columns, long by Time defac'd,
Moss-covered on the lofty Cape are plac'd ; " etc., etc.
III.] THE POETRY OF ART. 547
at the foot of it, or the recollection that Falconer's ship was bulged
upon them? There are a thousand rocks and capes far more
picturesque than those of the Acropolis and Cape Sunium in them-
selves ; what are they to a thousand scenes in the wilder parts of
Greece, of Asia Minor, Switzerland, or even of Cintra in Portugal,
or to many scenes of Italy, and the Sierras of Spain ? But it is the
'art,' the columns, the temples, the wrecked vessel, which give
them their antique and their modern poetry, and not the spots them-
selves. Without them, the spots of earth would be unnoticed and
unknown : buried, like Babylon and Nineveh, in indistinct con-
fusion, without poetry, as without existence ; but to whatever spot
of earth these ruins were transported, if they were capable of trans-
portation, like the obelisk, and the sphinx, and the Memnon's head,
there they would still exist in the perfection of their beauty, and in
the pride of their poetry. I opposed, and will ever oppose, the
robbery of ruins from Athens, to instruct the English in sculpture
(who are as capable of sculpture as the Egyptians are of skating) ;
but why did I do so ? The ruins are as poetical in Piccadilly as
they were in the Parthenon ; but the Parthenon and its rock are less
so without them. Such is the Poetry of art.
" Mr. B. contends again that the Pyramids of ./Egypt are
poetical, because of 'the association with boundless deserts,' and
that a ' pyramid of the same dimensions ' would not be sublime in
' Lincoln's Inn Fields : ' not so poetical certainly ; but take away
the 'pyramids,' and what is the desert 1 Take away Stone-henge
from Salisbury Plain, and it is nothing more than Hounslow Heath,
or any other uninclosed down. It appears to me that St. Peter's,
the Coliseum, the Pantheon, the Palatine, the Apollo, the Laocoon,
the Venus di Medicis, the Hercules, the dying Gladiator, the Moses
Campbell, in his Pleasures of Hope, Part II., thus alludes to
Falconer's poem —
"Yes, at the dead of night, by Lonna's steep,
The seaman's cry was heard along the deep ;
There on his funeral waters, dark and wild,
The dying father bless'd his darling child ! "
"In all Attica," says Byron, in a note to the second canto of
Childe Harold (Poems, vol. ii. p. 169, note i), "if we except Athens
itself and Marathon, there is no scene more interesting than Cape
Colonna. To the antiquary and artist, sixteen columns are an in-
exhaustible source of observation and design ; to the philosopher,
the supposed scene of some of Plato's conversations will not be
unwelcome ; and the traveller will be struck with the beauty of the
prospect over ' Isles that crown the ./Egean deep ; ' but, for an
Englishman, Colonna has yet an additional interest, as the actual
spot of Falconer's shipwreck. Pallas and Plato are forgotten in
the recollection of Falconer and Campbell —
" ' Here in the dead of night, by Lonna's steep,
The seaman's cry was heard along the deep.' "
548 CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BYRON AND BOWLES, [ill.
of Michel Agnolo, and all the higher works of Canova, (I have
already spoken of those of antient Greece, still extant in that
country, or transported to England,) are as poetical as Mont Blanc
or Mount JEtna., perhaps still more so, as they are direct mani-
festations of mind, and presuppose poetry in their very conception ;
and have, moreover, as being such, a something of actual life,
which cannot belong to any part of inanimate nature, unless we
adopt the System of Spinosa, that the World is the deity. There
can be nothing more poetical in its aspect than the city of Venice ;
does this depend upon the sea, or the canals ? —
" ' The dirt and sea- weed whence proud Venice rose ? ' r
Is it the canal which runs between the palace and the prison, or the
'Bridge of Sighs,' which connects them, that render it poetical?
Is it the 'Canal Grande,' or Rialto which arches it, the churches
which tower over it, the palaces which line, and the gondolas which
glide over the waters, that render this city more poetical than Rome
itself? Mr. B. will say, perhaps, that the Rialto is but marble,
the palaces and churches only stone, and the gondolas a ' coarse '
black cloth, thrown over some planks of carved wood, with a
shining bit of fantastically formed iron at the prow, ' -without ' the
water. And I tell him that without these, the water would be
nothing but a clay-coloured ditch ; and whoever says the contrary,
deserves to be at the bottom of that, where Pope's heroes are
embraced by the mud nymphs.* There would be nothing to make
the Canal of Venice more poetical than that of Paddington, were it
not for the artificial adjuncts above mentioned, although it is a
perfectly natural canal, formed by the sea, and the innumerable
islands which constitute the site of this extraordinary city.
" The very Cloacae of Tarquin at Rome are as poetical as
Richmond Hill ; many will think more so : take away Rome, and
leave the Tybur and the seven Hills, in the Nature of Evander's
time.* Let Mr. Bowles or Mr. Wordsworth, or Mr. Southey, or
any of the other 'Naturals,' make a poem upon them, and then see
which is most poetical, — their production, or the commonest guide-
book, which tells you the road from St. Peter's to the Coliseum,
and informs you what you will see by the way. The Ground
interests in Virgil, because it will be Rome, and not because it is
Evander's rural domain.
" Mr. B. then proceeds to press Homer into his service, in
answer to a remark of Mr. Campbell's, that ' Homer was a great
describer of works of art.' Mr. B. contends that all his great
power, even in this, depends upon their connection with nature.
The ' shield of Achilles derives its poetical interest from the subjects
described on it.' And from what does the spear of Achilles derive
its interest ? and the helmet and the mail worn by Patroclus, and
the celestial armour, and the very brazen greaves of the well-booted
1. Pope's Essay on Man, Epist. iv. line 292.
2. Du/iciad, bk. ii. line 332.
3. Virgil, JEnddi viii. 360.
III.] THE POETRY OF SCULPTURE. 549
Greeks ? Is it solely from the legs, and the back, and the breast,
and the human body, which they enclose ? In that case, it would
have been more poetical to have made them fight naked ; and
Gulley and Gregson, as being nearer to a state of nature, are more
poetical boxing in a pair of drawers than Hector and Achilles in
radiant armour, and with heroic weapons.
" Instead of the clash of helmets, and the rushing of chariots,
and the whizzing of spears, and the glancing of swords, and the
cleaving of shields, and the piercing of breast-plates, why not
represent the Greeks and Trojans like two savage tribes, tugging
and tearing, and kicking and biting, and gnashing, foaming, grin-
ning, and gouging, in all the poetry of martial nature, unincum-
bered with gross, prosaic, artificial arms ; an equal superfluity to
the natural warrior and his natural poet? Is there any thing
unpoetical in Ulysses striking the horses of Rhesus with his bow l
(having forgotten his thong), or would Mr. B. have had him kick
them with his foot, or smack them with his hand, as being more
unsophisticated ?
"In Gray's Elegy, is there an image more striking than his
' shapeless sculpture ? ' * Of sculpture in general, it may be ob-
served, that it is more poetical than nature itself, inasmuch as it
represents and bodies forth that ideal beauty and sublimity which is
never to be found in actual Nature. This at least is the general
opinion. But, always excepting the Venus di Medicis, I differ from
that opinion, at least as far as regards female beauty ; for the head
of Lady Charlemont (when I first saw her nine years ago) seemed
to possess all that sculpture could require for its ideal. I recollect
seeing something of the same kind in the head of an Albanian girl,
who was actually employed in mending a road in the mountains,
and in some Greek, and one or two Italian, faces. But of sublimity,
I have never seen anything in human nature at all to approach the
expression of sculpture, either in the Apollo, the Moses, or other of
the sterner works of ancient or modern art.
" Let us examine a little further this ' Babble of green fields '
and of bare Nature in general as superior to artificial imagery, for
the poetical purposes of the fine arts. In landscape painting, the
great artist does not give you a literal copy of a country, but he
invents and composes one. Nature, in her natural aspect, does not
furnish him with such existing scenes as he requires. Even where
he presents you with some famous city, or celebrated scene from
mountain or other nature, it must be taken from some particular
point of view, and with such light, and shade, and distance, etc., as
serve not only to heighten its beauties, but to shadow its deformi-
ties. The poetry of Nature alone, exactly as she appears, is not
1. Iliad, x. 513, 514.
2. " Yet e'en these bones from insult to protect
Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck'd,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh."
550 CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BYRON AND BOWLES, [ill.
sufficient to bear him out. The very sky of his painting is not the
portrait of the sky of Nature ; it is a composition of different skies,
observed at different times, and not the whole copied from any
particular day. And why ? Because nature is not lavish of her
beauties ; they are widely scattered, and occasionally displayed, to
, be selected with care, and gathered with difficulty.
" Of sculpture I have already spoken. It is the great scope of
the Sculptor to heighten nature into heroic beauty ; i.e. in plain
English, to surpass his model. When Canova forms a statue, he
takes a limb from one, a hand from another, a feature from a third,
and a shape, it may be, from a fourth, probably at the same time
improving upon all, as the Greek of old did in embodying his
Venus.
" Ask a portrait painter to describe his agonies in accommodat-
ing the faces with which Nature and his sitters have crowded his
painting-room to the principles of his art : with the exception of
perhaps ten faces in as many millions, there is not one which he
can venture to give without shading much and adding more.
Nature, exactly, simply, barely, Nature, will make no great artist
of any kind, and least of all a poet — the most artificial, perhaps, of
all artists in his very essence. With regard to natural imagery, the
poets are obliged to take some of their best illustrations from art.
You say that a ' fountain is as clear or clearer than glass,' to
express its beauty : —
" ' O fons Bandusise, splendidior vitro ! ' *
In the speech of Mark Antony, the body of Caesar is displayed,
but so also is his mantle : —
" ' You all do know this mantle? etc.
' Look ! in this place ran Cassius' dagger through.' *
If the poet had said that Cassius had run Inisfat through the rent of
the mantle, it would have had more of Mr. Bowles's ' nature ' to
help it ; but the artificial dagger is more poetical than any natural
hand without it. In the sublime of sacred poetry, 'Who is this
that cometh from Edom ? with dyed garments from Bozrah ? ' 3
would ' the comer ' be poetical without his ' dyed garments ? '
which strike and startle the spectator, and identify the approaching
object.
"The mother of Sisera is represented listening for the 'wheels
of his chariot.' * Solomon, in his Song, compares the nose of his
beloved to 'a tower,' 4 which to us appears an eastern exaggeration.
1. Horace, Odes, iii. 13. I.
2. Julius Ccesar, act iii. sc. 2.
3. Isa. Ixiii. I.
4. Judg. v. 28.
5. Song of Solomon vii. 4, "Thy nose is as the tower of
Lebanon which looketh toward Damascus."
in.] FALCONER'S SHIPWRECK. 551
If he had said, that her stature was like that of a ' tower,' it would
have been as poetical as if he had compared her to a tree.
" ' The virtuous Marcia towers above her sex,' '
is an instance of an artificial image to express a moral superiority.
But Solomon, it is probable, did not compare his beloved's nose
to a ' tower ' on account of its length, but of its symmetry ; and
making allowance for eastern hyperbole, and the difficulty of rinding
a discreet image for a female nose in nature, it is perhaps as good a
figure as any other.
"Art is not inferior to nature for poetical purposes. What
makes a regiment of soldiers a more noble object of view than the
same mass of mob ? Their arms, their dresses, their banners, and
the art and artificial symmetry of their position and movements. A
Highlander's plaid, a Mussulman's turban, and a Roman toga, are
more poetical than the tattooed or untattooed buttocks of a New
Sandwich savage, although they were described by William Words-
worth himself like the ' idiot in his glory.'
" I have seen as many mountains as most men, and more fleets
than the generality of landsmen ; and, to my mind, a large convoy
with a few sail of the line to conduct them is as noble and as
poetical a prospect as all that inanimate nature can produce. I
prefer the 'mast of some great ammiral,' with all its tackle, to the
Scotch fir or the alpine tannen ; and think that more poetry has been
made out of it. In what does the infinite superiority of Falconer's
Shipwreck over all other shipwrecks consist ? In his admirable
application of the terms of his art ; in a poet-sailor's description of
the sailor's fate. These -very terms, by his application, make the
strength and reality of his poem. Why? because he was a poet,
and in the hands of a poet art will not be found less ornamental
than nature. It is precisely in general nature, and in stepping out
of his element, that Falconer fails ; where he digresses to speak of
Ancient Greece, and 'such branches of learning."
" In Dyer's ' Grongar Hill,' upon which his fame rests, the very
appearance of Nature herself is moralised into an artificial image —
" ' Thus is nature's -vesture wrought,
To instruct our wandering thought ;
Thus she dresses green and gay,
To disperse our cares away.'
" And here also we have the telescope : the misuse of which,
from Milton, has rendered Mr. Bowles so triumphant over Mr.
Campbell : —
" ' So we mistake the future's face,
Eyed through Hope's deluding glass.'
"And here a word en passant to Mr. Campbell : —
"'As yon summits, soft and fair,
Clad in colours of the air,
I. Addison's Cato, act i. sc. 4.
552 CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BYRON AND BOWLES, [ill
Which to those who journey near
Barren, brown, and rough appear,
Still we tread the same coarse way —
The present's still a cloudy day."
Is not this the original of the far-famed —
" "Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,
And robes the mountain in its azure hue? ' *
" To return once more to the sea. Let any one look on the
long wall of Malamocco, which curbs the Adriatic, and pronounce
between the sea and its master. Surely that Roman work (I mean
Roman in conception and performance), which says to the ocean,
' Thus far shalt thou come, and no further," 2 and is obeyed, is not
less sublime and poetical than the angry waves which vainly break
beneath it.
" Mr. Bowles makes the chief part of a ship's poesy depend upon
the ' wind : ' then why is a ship under sail more poetical than a hog
in a high wind ? The hog is all nature, the ship is all art, ' coarse
canvas,' 'blue bunting,' and 'tall poles;' both are violently acted
upon by the wind, tossed here and there, to and fro, and yet nothing
but excess of hunger could make me look upon the pig as the more
poetical of the two, and then only in the shape of a griskin.
"Will Mr. Bowles tell us that the poetry of an aqueduct consists
in the water which it conveys ? Let him look on that of Justinian,
on those of Rome, Constantinople, Lisbon, and Elvas, or even at
the remains of that in Attica.
" We are asked, ' What makes the venerable towers of West-
minster Abbey more poetical, as objects, than the tower for the
manufactory of patent shot, surrounded by the same scenery ? ' I
will answer — the architecture. Turn Westminster Abbey or Saint
Paul's into a powder magazine, their poetry, as objects, remains the
same ; the Parthenon was actually converted into one by the Turks,
during Morosini's Venetian siege, and part of it destroyed in con-
sequence. Cromwell's dragoons stabled their steeds in Worcester
cathedral ; was it less poetical as an object than before ? Ask a
foreigner on his approach to London, what strikes him as the most
poetical of the towers before him : he will point out Saint Paul's
and Westminster Abbey, without, perhaps, knowing the names or
associations of either, and pass over the 'tower for patent shot,' —
not that, for any thing he knows to the contrary, it might not be the
mausoleum of a monarch, or a Waterloo column, or a Trafalgar
monument, but because its architecture is obviously inferior.
"To the question, ' Whether the description of a game of cards
be as poetical, supposing the execution of the artists equal, as a
description of a walk in a forest ? ' it may be answered, that the
materials are certainly not equal ; but that ' the artist,' who has
rendered the 'game of cards poetical,' is by far the greater of the
1. Campbell's Pleasures of Hope, i. 7.
2. Job xxxviii. II.
III.]
THE ORDERING OF POETS. 553
two. But all this ' ordering ' of poets is purely arbitrary on the
part of Mr. B. There may or may not be, in fact, different ' orders '
of poetry, but the poet is always ranked according to his execution,
and not according to his branch of the art.
" Tragedy is one of the highest presumed orders. Hughes has
written a tragedy,1 and a very successful one; Fenton another;2
and Pope none. Did any man, however,— will even Mr. B. him-
self,—rank HupfJneb''o/3^T:i>T3feBD-as poets above Popel Was even
Addisrmji^ae author of Cato), or Rowe io*^of the higher order of
dramatists as far as success goes), or Young, or Cvn Qtway and
Southerne, ever raised for a moment to the same rank Wh pOpe
in the estimation of the reader or the critic, before his dea^ .-
since? If Mr. B. will contend for classifications of this kind, let
him recollect that descriptive poetry has been ranked as among the •
lowest branches of the art, and description as a mere ornament, but
which should never form ' the subject ' of a poem. The Italians,
with the most poetical language, and the most fastidious taste in
Europe, possess now five great poets, they say, Dante, Petrarch,
Ariosto, Tasso, and, lastly, Alfieri ; * and whom do they esteem one
1. The Siege of Damascus ; a tragedy, produced at the Theatre
Royal, Drury Lane, in 1720.
2. Mariamne ; a tragedy, produced at the theatre in Lincoln's
Inn Fields, in 1723.
* Of these there is one ranked with the others for his SONNETS,
and two for compositions which belong to no class at all. Where
is Dante? His poem is not an epic ; then what is it ? He himself
calls it a " divine comedy ;" and why? This is more than all his
thousand commentators have been able to explain. Ariosto's is not
an epic poem ; and if poets are to be classed according to the gen-us
of their poetry, where is he to be placed ? Of these five, Tasso and
Alfieri only come within Aristotle's arrangement, and Mr. Bowles's
class-book. But the whole position is false. Poets are classed by
the power of their performance, and not according to its rank in a
gradus. In the contrary case, the forgotten epic poets of all coun-
tries would rank above Petrarch, Dante, Ariosto, Burns, Gray,
Dryden, and the highest names of various countries. Mr. Bowles's
title of " invariable principles of poetry," is, perhaps, the most arro-
gant ever prefixed to a volume. So far are the principles of poetry
from being '•invariable^ that they never were nor ever will be
settled. These ' principles ' mean nothing more than the predilec-
tions of a particular age ; and every age has its own, and a different
from its predecessor. It is now Homer, and now Virgil ; once !
Dryden, and since Walter Scott ; now Corneille, and now Racine ;
now Crebillon, now Voltaire. The Homerists and Virgilians in
France disputed for half a century. Not fifty years ago the Italians
neglected Dante — Bettinelli reproved Monti for reading "that bar-
barian ; " at present they adore him. Shakspeare and Milton have
had their rise, and they will have their decline. Already they have
more than once fluctuated, as must be the case with all the dramatists
and poets of a living language. This does not depend upon their
554 CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BYRON AND BOWLES, [ill.
of the highest of these, and some of them the very highest ? Petrarch
the sonneteer; it is true that some of his Canzoni are not less
esteemed, but not more ; who ever dreams of his Latin Africa t
"Were Petrarch to be ranked according to the 'order' of his
compositions, where would the best of sonnets place him? with
Dante and the other ? no ; but, as I have before said, the poet who
executes best is the highest, whatever his department, and will ever
be so rated in the world's esteem.
" Had Gray written nothing but his Elegy, h'igh as fee stands,
I am not sure thp^'ne would not stand higher ; it is the corner-sone
of his glory ; without it, his odes would be insufficient for his fame.
The depreciation of Pope is partly founded upon a false idea of the
dignity of his order of poetry, to which he has partly contributed by
the ingenious boast,
" 'That not in fancy's maze he wandered long,
But stooped to Truth, and moralised his song.' *
He should have written 'rose to truth.' In my mind, the highest
of all poetry is ethical poetry, as the highest of all earthly objects
must be moral truth. Religion does not make a part of my subject ;
it is something beyond human powers, and has failed in all human
hands except Milton's and Dante's, and even Dante's powers are
involved in his delineation of human passions, though in super-
natural circumstances. What made Socrates the greatest of men ?
His moral truth — his ethics. What proved Jesus Christ the Son of
God hardly less than his miracles ? His moral precepts. And if
ethics have made a philosopher the first of men, and have not been
disdained as an adjunct to his Gospel by the Deity himself, are we
to be told that ethical poetry, or didactic poetry, or by whatever
name you term it, whose object is to make men better and wiser, is
I not the very first order of poetry ; and are we to be told this too by
one of the priesthood ? It requires more mind, more wisdom, more
power, than all the ' forests ' that ever were ' walked for their
description,' and all the epics that ever were founded upon fields
of battle. The Georgics are indisputably, and, I believe, undis-
putedly, even a finer poem than the yEneid. Virgil knew this ; he
did not order them to be burnt.
" ' The proper study of mankind is man.' 2
"It is the fashion of the day to lay great stress upon what they
call ' imagination ' and ' invention,' the two commonest of qualities :
an Irish peasant with a little whisky in his head will imagine and
invent more than would furnish forth a modern poem. If Lucretius
merits, but upon the ordinary vicissitudes of human opinions.
Schlegel and Madame de Stael have endeavoured also to reduce
poetry to two systems, classical and romantic. The effect is only
beginning.
1. Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, lines 340, 341.
2. Essay on Man, ii. z.
III.]
MILTON'S ARTILLERY. 555
had not been spoiled by the Epicurean system, we should have had
a far superior poem to any now in Existence. As mere poetry, it is
the first of Latin poems. What then has ruined it? His ethics.
Pope has not this defect ; his moral is as pure as his poetry is
glorious.
"In speaking of artificial objects, I have omitted to touch upon
one which I will now mention. Cannon may be presumed to be
as highly poetical as art can make her objects. Mr. B. will, per-
haps, tell me that this is because they resemble that grand natural
article of Sound in heaven, and Similie (sic) upon earth — thunder.
I shall be told triumphantly, that Milton made sad work with his
artillery, when he armed his devils therewithal.1 He did so ; and
this artificial object must have had much of the Sublime to attract
his attention for such a conflict. He has made an absurd use of it ;
but the absurdity consists not in using cannon against the angels of
God, but any material weapon. The thunder of the clouds would
have been as ridiculous and vain in the hands of the devils, as the
' villainous saltpetre : ' 2 the angels were as impervious to the one
as to the other. The thunderbolts become sublime in the hands of
the Almighty, not as such, but because he deigns to use them as a
means of repelling the rebel spirits ; but no one can attribute their
defeat to this grand piece of natural electricity : the Almighty willed,
and they fell ; his word would have been enough ; and Milton is as
absurd, (and, in fact, blasphemous,) in putting material lightnings
into the hands of the Godhead, as in giving him hands at all.
" The artillery of the demons was but the first step of his mistake,
the thunder the next, and it is a step lower. It would have been fit
for Jove, but not for Jehovah. The subject altogether was essen-
tially unpoetical ; he has made more of it than another could, but
it is beyond him and all men.
"In a portion of his reply, Mr. B. asserts that Pope 'envied
Phillips,' because he quizzed his pastorals in the Guardian,1 in that
most admirable model of irony, his paper on the subject. If there
was any thing enviable about Phillips, it could hardly be his
pastorals. They were despicable, and Pope expressed his con-
tempt. If Mr. Fitzgerald4 published a volume of sonnets, or a
1. Paradise Lost, vi. 482-491. Bowles, in his Answer to a Writer
in the Quarterly Review, speaking of Paradise Lost, says, ' ' There
are some passages which, without considering the cause, strike
almost every reader with a kind of instinctive and involuntary dis-
like. Some of these passages will perhaps instantly occur. Who
does not draw back with peculiar distaste from those passages where
the Satanic army bring their great guns charged with the gunpowder ? "
etc., etc.
2. Henry IV., Part I. act i. sc. 3.
3. The Guardian, No. 40.
4. For "hoarse Fitzgerald," Cobbett's " Small Beer Poet," see
Letters, vol. iii. p. 10, note i, and Poems, ed. 1898, vol. i. p. 297,
note 3.
556 CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BYRON AND BOWLES, [ill.
Spirit of Discovery, or a Missionary,1 and Mr. B. wrote in any
periodical journal an ironical paper upon them, would this be
' envy ? ' The authors of the Rejected Addresses have ridiculed the
sixteen or twenty ' first living poets ' of the day, but do they ' envy '
them ? ' Envy' writhes, it don't laugh. The authors of the R. A.
may despise some, but they can hardly ' envy ' any of the persons
whom they have parodied ; and Pope could have no more envied
Phillips than he did Welsted, or Theobald, or Smedley, or any
other given hero of the Dunciad. He could not have envied him,
even had he himself not been the greatest poet of his age. Did Mr.
Inge ' envy ' Mr. Phillips when he asked him, ' How came your
Pyrrhus to drive oxen and say, " I am goaded an. by love ? " ' * This
question silenced poor Phillips ; but it no more proceeded from
' envy ' than did Pope's ridicule. Did he envy Swift ? Did he
envy Bolingbroke ? Did he envy Gay the unparallelled success of
his Beggar's Opera? We may be answered that these were his
friends — true : but does friendship prevent envy ? Study the first
woman you meet with, or the first scribbler, let Mr. B. himself
(whom I acquit fully of such an odious quality) study some of his
own poetical intimates : the most envious man I ever heard of is a
poet, and a high one ; besides, it is an universal passion. Gold-
smith envied not only the puppets for their dancing, and broke his
shins in the attempt at rivalry, but was seriously angry because two
pretty women received more attention than he did.* This is envy ;
but where does Pope show a sign of the passion ? In that case
Dryden envied the hero of his MacFlecknoe. Mr. Bowles com-
pares, when and where he can, Pope with Cowper — (the same
Cowper whom in his edition of Pope he laughs at for his attach-
ment to an old woman, Mrs. Unwin ; search and you will find it ; 4
I remember the passage, though not the page) ; in particular he
requotes Cowper's Dutch delineation of a wood, drawn up, like a
1. Bowles published his Spirit of Discovery in 1804, and his
Missionary of the Andes in 1815.
2. "He had great sensibility of censure, if judgment may be
made by a single story which I heard long ago from Mr. Ing, a
gentleman of great eminence in Staffordshire. ' Phillips,' said he,
' was once at table, when I asked him, " How came thy king of
Epirus to drive oxen, and to say I'm goaded on by love? " After
whic,h question he never spoke again." " — Johnson's Lives of the
Poets,
3. The two young ladies were the Misses Horneck. (See Fors-
ter's Life of Goldsmith, 2nd ed., vol. ii. bk. iv. chap. xiv. pp.
348, 349-)
4. "Poor Cowper, being disgusted with the world, fell in love
with the first venerable gentlewoman he saw at Huntingdon, and
wondered all the world was not like her ; when probably he would
have met with a being just as good in the first respectable old lady
he saw on a Sunday going to church at Brentford ! " — Bowles,
Pope's Works, vol. ix. p. 60, note.
III.] POPE AND COWPER AS TRANSLATORS. 557
seedsman's catalogue,* with an affected imitation of Milton's style,
as burlesque as the Splendid Shilling. These two writers, for
Cowper is no poet, come into comparison in one great work, the
translation of Homer. Now, with all the great, and manifest, and
manifold, and reproved, and acknowledged, and uncontroverted
* I will submit to Mr. Bowles's own judgement a passage from
another poem of Cowper's, to be compared with the same writer's
Sylvan Sampler. In the lines " to Mary," —
" Thy needles, once a shining store,
For my sake restless heretofore,
Now rust disused, and shine no more ;
My Mary ! "
contain a simple, household, "indoor," artificial, and ordinary
image; I refer Mr. B. to the stanza, and ask if these three lines
about "needles" are not worth all the boasted twaddling about
trees, so triumphantly requoted ? and yet, in fact, what do they
convey ? A homely collection of images and ideas, associated with
the darning of stockings, and the hemming of shirts, and the mend-
ing of breeches ; but will any one deny that they are eminently
poetical and pathetic as addressed by Cowper to his nurse ? The
trash of trees reminds me of a saying of Sheridan's. Soon after the
" Rejected Address" scene in 1812, I met Sheridan. In the course
of dinner, he said, " L. B., did you know that, amongst the writers
of addresses, was Whitbread himself? " I answered by an enquiry of
what sort of an address he had made. " Of that," replied Sheridan,
"I remember little, except that there was a phoenix in it." — "A
phoenix 1 ! Well, how did he describe it?" — "Like a poulterer"
answered Sheridan : " It was green, and yellow, and red, and blue :
he did not let us off for a single feather." And just such as this
poulterer's account of a phoenix is Cowper's — a stick-picker's detail
of a wood, with all its petty minutiae of this, that, and the other.
One more poetical instance of the power of art, and even its
superiority over nature, in poetry ; and I have done : — the bust of
Antitunut Is there any thing in nature like this marble, excepting
the Venus ? Can there be more poetry gathered into existence than
in that wonderful creation of perfect beauty ? But the poetry of
this bust is in no respect derived from nature, nor from any asso-
ciation of moral exaltedness; for what is there in common with
moral nature, and the male minion of Adrian ? The very execution
is not natural, but J«/drnatural, or rather super-artificial, for nature
has never done so much.
Away, then, with this cant about nature, and "invariable
principles of poetry ! " A great artist will make a block of stone
as sublime as a mountain, and a good poet can imbue a pack of
cards with more poetry than inhabits the forests of America. It is
the business and the proof of a poet to give the lie to the proverb,
and sometimes to " make a silken purse out of a sow's ear," and to
conclude with another homely proverb, "a good workman will
not find fault with his tools."
55^ CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BYRON AND BOWLES, [ill.
faults of Pope's translation, and all the scholarship, and pains, and
time, and trouble, and blank verse of the other, who can ever read
Cowper ? and who will ever lay down Pope, unless for the original ?
Pope's was ' not Homer, it was Spondanus ; ' but Cowper's is not
Homer either, it is not even Cowper. As a child I first read
Pope's Homer with a rapture which no subsequent work could ever
afford, and children are not the worst judges of their own language.
As a boy I read Homer in the original, as we have all done, some
of us by force, and a few by favour ; under which description I
come is nothing to the purpose, it is enough that I read him. As
a man I have tried to read Cowper's version, and I found it
impossible. Has any human reader ever succeeded ?
"And now that we have heard the Catholic reproached with
envy, duplicity, licentiousness, avarice — what was the Calvinist ?
He attempted the most atrocious of crimes in the Christian code,
viz. suicide — and why ? because he was to be examined whether he
was fit for an office which he seems to wish to have made a sinecure.
His connection with Mrs. Unwin was pure enough, for the old lady
was devout, and he was deranged ; but why then is the infirm and
then elderly Pope to be reproved for his connection with Martha
Blount ? Cowper was the almoner of Mrs. Throgmorton ; but
Pope's charities were his own, and they were noble and extensive,
far beyond his future's warrant. Pope was the tolerant yet steady
adherent of the most bigoted of sects ; and Cowper the most
bigoted and despondent sectary that ever anticipated damnation
to himself or others. Is this harsh? I know it is, and I do not
assert it as my opinion of Cowper personally, but to show what
might be -said, with just as great an appearance of truth and candour,
as all the odium which has been accumulated upon Pope in similar
speculations. Cowper was a good man, and lived at a fortunate
time for his works.
"Mr. B., apparently not relying entirely upon his own argu-
ments, has, in person or by proxy, brought forward the names of
Southey and Moore. Mr. Southey ' agrees entirely with Mr.
B. in his invariable principles of poetry.' The least that Mr. B.
can do in return is to approve the 'invariable principles of Mr.
Southey.' I should have thought that the word 'invariable ' might
have stuck in Southey's throat, like Macbeth's ' Amen ! ' ' I am
sure it did in mine, and I am not the least consistent of the two, at
least as a voter. Moore (ft tu, Brute!) also approves, and Mr. I.
Scott. There is a letter also of two lines from a gentleman in
asterisks, who, it seems, is a poet of ' the highest rank : ' — who can
this be ? not my friend Sir Walter, surely. Campbell it can't be ;
Rogers it won't be.
"'You have hit the nail in the head, and * * * * [Pope, I
presume] on the head also.
" ' I remain, yours affectionately,
" ' (Four Asterisks):
I. Macbeth, act ii. sc. 2.
III.]
THE MOST PERFECT OF POETS. 559
And in asterisks let him remain. Whoever this person may be, he
deserves, for such a judgement of Midas, that ' the nail ' which Mr.
B. has 'hit in the head,' should be driven through his own ears ;
I am sure that 'they are long enough.
" The attempt of the poetical populace of the present day to
obtain an ostracism against Pope is as easily accounted for as the
Athenian's shell against Aristides ; they are tired of hearing him
always called ' the Just.' They are also fighting for life ; for, if he
maintains his station, they will reach their own — by falling. They
have raised a mosque by the side of a Grecian temple of the purest
architecture ; and, more barbarous than the barbarians from whose
practice I have borrowed the figure, they are not contented with
their own grotesque edifice, unless they destroy the prior, and
purely beautiful fabric which preceded, and which shames them and
theirs for ever and ever. I shall be told that amongst those I have
been (or it may be still am) conspicuous — true, and I am ashamed
of it. I have been amongst the builders of this Babel, attended by
a confusion of tongues, but never amongst the envious destroyers of
the classic temple of our predecessor. I have loved and honoured
the fame and name of that illustrious and unrivalled man, far more
than my own paltry renown, and the trashy jingle of the crowd of
' Schools ' and upstarts, who pretend to rival, or even surpass him.
Sooner than a single leaf should be torn from his laurel, it were
better that all which these men, and that I, as one of their set, have
ever written, should
" ' Line trunks, clothe spice, or, fluttering in a row,
Befringe the rails of Bedlam, or Soho ! ' 1
There are those who will believe this, and those who will not.
You, sir, know how far I am sincere, and whether my opinion, not
only in the short work intended for publication, and in private
letters which can never be published, has or has not been the same.
I look upon this as the declining age of English poetry ; no regard
for others, no selfish feeling, can prevent me from seeing this, and
expressing the truth. There can be no worse sign for the taste of
the times than the depreciation of Pope. It would be better to
receive for proof Mr. Cobbett's rough but strong attack upon
Shakespeare and Milton, than to allow this smooth and ' candid '
undermining of the reputation of the most perfect of our poets, and
the purest of our moralists. Of his power in the passions, in ,
description, in the mock heroic, I leave others to descant. I take i
him on his strong ground as an ethical poet : in the former, none ;
excel ; in the mock heroic and the ethical, none equal him ; and, in
my mind, the latter is the highest of all poetry, because it does that
in verse, which the greatest of men have wished to accomplish in
prose. If the essence of poetry must be a lie, throw it to the dogs,
or banish it from your republic, as Plato would have done.2 He
who can reconcile poetry with truth and wisdom, is the only true ,
1. Pope, Imitations of Horace, II. i. 418, 419.
2. Republic, iii. 398 (a).
560 CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BYRON AND BOWLES, [ill.
'poet' in its real sense, 'the maker,' 'the creator,1 — why must this
mean the ' liar,' the ' feigner,' the ' tale-teller ? ' A man may make
and create better things than these.
"I shall not presume to say that Pope is as high a poet as
Shakespeare and Milton, though his enemy, Warton, places him
immediately under them.* I would no more say this than I would
assert in the mosque (once Saint Sophia's), that Socrates was a
greater man than Mahomet. But if I say that he is very near them,
it is no more than has been asserted of Burns, who is supposed
" 'To rival all but Shakespeare's name below.'
I say nothing against this opinion. But of what ' order, ' according
to the poetical aristocracy, are Burns's poems ? There are his opus
magnum, 'Tarn O'Shanter,' a tale; the Cotter's Saturday Night, a
descriptive sketch ; some others in the same style : the rest are
songs. So much for the rank of his productions ; the rank of Burns
is the very first of his art. Of Pope I have expressed my opinion
elsewhere, as also of the effect which the present attempts at poetry
have had upon our literature. If any great national or natural
convulsion could or should overwhelm your country in such sort as
to sweep Great Britain from the kingdoms of the earth, and leave
only that, after all, the most living of human things, a dead language,
to be studied and read, and imitated by the wise of future and far
generations, upon foreign shores ; if your literature should become
the learning of mankind, divested of party cabals, temporary fashions,
and national pride and prejudice ; — an Englishman, anxious that
the posterity of strangers should know that there had been such a
thing as a .British Epic and Tragedy, might wish for the preservation
of Shakespeare and Milton ; but the surviving World would snatch
Pope from the wreck, and let the rest sink with the people. He is
the moral poet of all civilisation ; and as such, let us hope that he
will one day be the national poet of mankind. He is the only poet
that never shocks ; the only poet whose faultless ties s has been made
his reproach. Cast your eye over his productions ; consider their
extent, and contemplate their variety : — pastoral, passion, mock
heroic, translation, satire, ethics, — all excellent, and often perfect.
If his great charm be his melody, how comes it that foreigners adore
him even in their diluted translations ? But I have made this letter
too long. Give my compliments to Mr. Bowles.
" Yours ever very truly,
" BYRON.
" To John Murray, Esq.
* If the opinions cited by Mr. Bowles, of Dr. Johnson against
Pope, are to be taken as decisive authority, they will also hold good
against Gray, Milton, Swift, Thomson, and Dryden : in that case
what becomes of Gray's poetical, and Milton's moral character?
even of Milton's poetical character, or, indeed, of English poetry in
general ? for Johnson strips many a leaf from every laurel. Still
Johnson's is the finest critical work extant, and can never be read
without instruction and delight.
III.] POPE'S GENEROSITY. 561
" Post Scriptum. — Long as this letter has grown, I find it neces-
sary to append a postscript ; if possible, a short one. Mr. Bowles
denies that he has accused Pope of ' a sordid money-getting passion ; '
but, he adds, ' if I had ever done so, I should be glad to find any
testimony that might show he was not so.' This testimony he may
find to his heart's content in Spence and elsewhere. First, there is
Martha Blount, who, Mr. B. charitably says, ' probably thought he
did not save enough for her, as legatee.' Whatever she thought
upon this point, her words are in Pope's favour.1 Then there is
Alderman Barber ; see Spence's Anecdotes.* There is Pope's cold
answer to Halifax when he proposed a pension ; 3 his behaviour to
Craggs4 and to Addison upon like occasions, and his own two
lines —
1. " He did not know anything of the value of money ; and his
greatest delight was in doing good offices for his friends." — Martha
Blount, in Spence's Anecdotes, p. 357.
2. " Mr. Pope never flattered any body for money. . . . Alderman
Barber had a great inclination to have a stroke in his commendation
inserted in some part of Mr. Pope's writings. He did not want
money, and he wanted fame. He would probably have given four
or five thousand pounds to have been gratified in this desire, and
gave Mr. Pope to understand as much ; but Mr. Pope would never
comply with such a baseness." — Spence's Anecdotes, p. 308.
3. " In the beginning of George the First's reign, Lord Hallifax
sent for me of his own accord. He said he had often been concerned
that I had never been rewarded as I deserved : that he was very glad
it was now in his power to be of service to me, that a pension should
be settled on me, if I cared to accept it ; and that nothing should
be demanded of me for it. — I thanked his lordship, in general terms,
and seemed to want time to consider of it. — I heard nothing further
for some time ; and about three months after I wrote to Lord Halli-
fax, to thank him for his most obliging offer ; saying, that I had
considered the matter over fully, and that all the difference I could
find in having or not having a pension, was that if I had one, I
might live more at large in town ; and that if I had not, I might
live happily enough in the country. — There was something said too,
of the love of being quite free, and without any thing that might
even look like a bias laid on me. — So the thing dropped, and I had
my liberty without a coach." — Spence's Anecdotes, pp. 305, 306.
4. See Pope's Imitations of Horace, I. vi. 65-68 —
" Southsea subscriptions take who please,
Leave me but liberty and ease.
'Twas what I said to Craggs and Child,
Who praised my modesty and smiled."
Secretary Craggs once offered to pay the poet a pension of £300 a
year out of the secret service money at his command. Pope declined
the proposal with thanks, but said that he would apply to the Secre-
tary for 100 or even 500 pounds if his wants should ever press him
so far (see Courthope's Pope, vol. v. p. 187).
VOL. V. 2O
562 CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BYRON AND BOWLES, [ill.
" ' And, thanks to Homer, since I live and thrive,
Indebted to no prince or peer alive ; ' l
written when princes would have been proud to pension, and peers
to promote him, and when the whole army of dunces were in array
against him, and would have been but too happy to deprive him
of this boast of independence. But there is something a little more
serious in Mr. Bowles's declaration, that he ' would have spoken '
of his 'noble generosity to the outcast Richard Savage,' and other
instances of a compassionate and generous heart, ' had they occurred
to his recollection when he wrote.' z What! is it come to this?
Does Mr. B. sit down to write a minute and laboured life and
edition of a great poet ? Does he anatomize his character, moral
and poetical? Does he present us with his faults and with his
foibles ? Does he sneer at his feelings, and doubt of his sincerity ?
Does he unfold his vanity and duplicity ? and then omit the good
qualities which might, in part, have ' covered this multitude of sins ? '
and then plead that ' they did not occur to his recollection ? ' Is this
the frame of mind and of memory with which the illustrious dead
are to be approached ? If Mr. Bowles, who must have had access
to all the means of refreshing his memory, did not recollect these
facts, he is unfit for his task ; but if he did recollect and omit them,
I know not what he is fit for, but I know what would be fit for him.
Is the plea of ' not recollecting ' such prominent facts to be admitted ?
Mr. B. has been at a public school, and, as I have been publicly
educated also, I can sympathise with his predilection. When we
were in the third form even, had we pleaded on the Monday morn-
ing that we had not brought up the Saturday's exercise, because ' we
had forgotten it,' what would have been the reply? And is an
excuse, which would not be pardoned to a schoolboy, to pass current
in a matter which so nearly concerns the fame of the first poet of
his age, if not of his country? If Mr. B. so readily forgets the
virtues of others, why complain so grievously that others have a
better memory for his own faults ? They are but the faults of an
author ; while the virtues he omitted from his catalogue are essential
to the justice due to a man.
" Mr. B. appears, indeed to be susceptible beyond the privilege
of authorship. There is a plaintive dedication to Mr. Gifford, in
which he is made responsible for all the articles of the Quarterly.
Mr. Southey, it seems, ' the most able and eloquent writer in that
review,' approves of Mr. Bowles's publication. Now it seems to
me the more impartial, that notwithstanding that ' the great writer
of the Quarterly ' entertains opinions opposite to the able article on
Spence, nevertheless that essay was permitted to appear. Is a review
1. Pope, Imitations of Horace, II. ii. 68, 69.
2. " Mr. Pope desired Dr. Young to forward five guineas to poor
Savage, when he was in Newgate, for the death of Sinclair ; the
doctor was so good as to carry it himself, and Mr. Pope afterwards
told him that if Savage should be in want of necessaries, he had five
more ready for his service." — Spence's Anecdotes, p. 356.
III.] THE WHIMSICAL BOWLES. 563
to be devoted to the opinions of any one man ? Must it not vary
according to circumstances, and according to the subjects to be
criticised ? I fear that writers must take the sweets and bitters of
the public journals as they occur, and an author of so long a standing
as Mr. B. might have become accustomed to such incidents; he
might be angry, but not astonished. I have been reviewed in the
Quarterly almost as often as Mr. B., and have had as pleasant things
said, and some as wwpleasant, as could well be pronounced. In the
review of 'The Fall of Jerusalem,' it is stated, that I have devoted
1 my powers, etc., to the worst parts of Manicheism ;' which, being
interpreted, means that I worship the devil. Now, I have neither
written a reply, nor complained to Gifford. I believe that I
observed in a letter to you, that I thought 'that the critic might
have praised Milman without finding it necessary to abuse me ; ' but
did I not add at the same time, or soon after (apropos, of the note
in the book of Travels), that I would not, if it were even in my
power, have a single line cancelled on my account in that nor in
any other publication ? Of course, I reserve to myself the privilege
of response when necessary. Mr. B. seems in a whimsical state
about the author of the article on Spence. You know very well
that I am not in your confidence, nor in that of the conductors of
the Journal. The moment I saw that article, I was morally certain
that I knew the author ' by his style. ' You will tell me that I do
not know him : that is all as it should be ; keep the secret, so shall
I, though no one has ever entrusted it to me. He is not the person
whom Mr. B. denounces. Mr. B.'s extreme sensibility reminds me
of a circumstance which occurred on board of a frigate in which I
was a passenger and guest of the captain's for a considerable time.
The surgeon on board, a very gentlemanly young man, and remark-
ably able in his profession, wore a wig. Upon this ornament he
was extremely tenacious. As naval jests are sometimes a little
rough, his brother officers made occasional allusions to this delicate
appendage to the doctor's person. One day a young lieutenant, in
the course of a facetious discussion, said, ' Suppose now, doctor,
I should take off your Aat.' — ' Sir,' replied the doctor, ' I shall talk
no longer with you ; you grow scurrilous.' He would not even
admit so near an approach as to the hat which protected it. In like
manner, if any body approaches Mr. Bowles's laurels, even in his
outside capacity of an editor, ' they grow scurrilous.' You say
that you are about to prepare an edition of Pope ; you cannot
do better for your own credit as a publisher, nor for the redemp-
tion of Pope from Mr. B., and of the public taste from rapid
degeneracy.
" Additional note to Letter V.' to J. M., Esqr.e.
" In the composition of this letter I omitted to cite three very
celebrated passages in three different languages ancient and modern,
the whole of whose merit consists in artificial imagery. The first is
from Congreve — and Dr. Johnson pronounces the opinion upon it,
' If I were required to select from the whole mass of English poetry
564 CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BYRON AND BOWLES, [ill.
the most poetical paragraph, I know not what I could prefer to an
exclamation in the Mourning Bride ' —
" ' No — all is hushed and still as death : 'tis dreadful !
How reverend is the face of this tall pile,
Whose ancient pillars rear their marble heads,
To bear aloft its arched and ponderous roof,
By its own weight made steadfast and immoveable,
Looking tranquillity ! It strikes an awe
And terror on my aching sight : the tombs
And monumental caves of death look cold,
And shoot a chillness to my trembling heart.
Give me thy hand and let me hear thy voice ;
Nay — quickly speak to me, and let me hear
Thy voice — my own affrights me with its echoes.'
' ' ' He who reads those lines enjoys for a moment the powers of
a poet ; he feels what he remembers to have felt before, but he feels
it with great increase of Sensibility : he recognizes & familiar image,
but meets it again amplified and expanded, embellished with beauty
and enlarged with majesty.' — Johnson's Lives,* etc.
" Here is the finest piece of poetry in our language, so pro-
nounced by the noblest critical mind which our country has pro-
duced, and the whole imagery of this quintessence of poetry is
unborrowed from external nature. I presume that no one can
differ from Johnson that as description it is unequalled. For a
controversy upon the subject the reader is referred to Boswell's
Johnson,* Garrick attempted a parallel with Shakespeare's De-
scription of Dover Cliff, but Johnson stopped him (I quote from
Memory, not having the book) with ' Nay Sir,
" 'halfway down
Hangs one who gathers samphire — dreadful trade !
" ' I am speaking of a description in which nothing is intro-
duced from life to break the effect.1
"The other two passages of a familiar and celebrated image are,
first, in Lucretius4 —
1. Act ii. sc. 3.
2. Congreve, vol. iii. pp. 272, 273 (ed. 1790).
3. "What I mean is, that you can show me no passage," said
Johnson (Boswell's Life, ed. G. B. Hill, vol. ii. pp. 86, 87), " where
there is simply a description of material objects, without any
intermixture of moral notions, which produces such an effect." . . .
Some one mentioned the Description of Dover Cliff. JOHNSON.
' No, Sir ; it should be all precipice, — all vacuum. The crows
impede your fall. The diminished appearance of the boats, and
other circumstances, are all very good description ; but do not
impress the mind at once with the horrible idea of immense
height. The impression is divided : you pass on by computation,
from one stage of the tremendous space to another.' "
4. Lucretius, De Rerum Nat,, lib. i. lines 936-938.
III.] LADY M. W. MONTAGU. 565
" ' Sed veluti pueris abscinthia tsetra medentes
Cum dare conantur, prius eras pocula circum
Contingunt mellis dulci flavoque liquore,' etc.
And the second the same, closely copied by Tasso J —
" ' Cosi all'egro fanciul porgiamo aspersi
Di soave licor gli orli del vaso,' etc.
" A more familiar and household image can hardly be conceived
than that of a nurse sweetening the rim of a cup of physic to coax a
sickly brat into taking it, and yet there are few passages in poetry
more quoted and admired than the Italian lines.
"In Cowper (whom Mr. B. thinks a poet) ' the twanging horn
on yonder bridge,'2 and Toby 'banging the door' are quite as
effective as his laboured minutiae of the Wood or the Shrubbery.
" Note Second, on the lines on Lady M, W. Montague.
" In my opinion Pope has been more reproached for this couplet
than is justifiable. It is harsh but partly true, for ' libelled by her
Hate1 he was, and with regard to the supposed consequences of
' her Love ' he may be regarded as sufficiently punished in not
having been permitted to make the experiment. He would pro-
bably have run the risk with considerable courage. The coarseness
of the line is not greater than that of two lines which are easily
to be found in the great Moralist, Johnson's ' London : ' the one
detailing an accomplishment of a ' fasting Frenchman ' and the
other on the ' Monarch's air ' of Balbus. I forbear to quote the
lines of Johnson in all their extension, because as a young lady of
Trumpington used to say of the Gownsmen (when I was at College
and she was approached with too little respect) — they are so ' curst
undiliket.'
" Lady Mary appears to have been at least as much to blame as
Pope. Some of her reflections and repartees are recorded as
sufficiently exasperating. Pope in the whole of that business is
to be pitied. When he speaks of his ' miserable body ' let it be
recollected that he was at least aware of his deformity, as indeed
deformed persons have in general sufficient wit to be.
" It is also another unhappy dispensation of Nature that de-
formed persons, and more particularly those of Pope's peculiar
conformation, are born with very strong passions. I believe that
this is a physical fact, the truth of which is easily ascertained.
Montaigne has in his universal speculations written a chapter upon
it more curious than decent. So that these unhappy persons have
1. Tasso, Gerusalemme Liberata, Canto I. stanza iii.
2. Book iv. of Cowper's Task, " The Winter Evening," opens
with the lines —
" Hark ! 'tis the twanging horn o'er yonder bridge
That with its wearisome but needful length
Bestrides the wintry flood."
566 CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BYRON AND BOWLES, [ill.
to combat, not only against the passions which they feel, but the
repugnance they inspire. Pope was unfortunate in this respect by
being born in England ; there are climates where his Hump-back
would have made his (amatory) fortune. At least I know one
notorious instance of a hunch-back who is as fortunate as the ' grand
Chancelier' of the Grammont. To be sure, his climate and the
morals of his country are both of them favourable to the material
portion of that passion of which Buffon says that ' the refined senti-
ment is alike fictitious and pernicious.'
"I think that I could show if necessary that Lady Mary W>
Montague was also greatly to blame in that ground, not for having
rejected, but for having encouraged him ; but I would rather
decline the task, though she should have remembered her own line
' ht comes too near that comes to be denied. '
" I admire her so much, her beauty, her talents, that I should
do this reluctantly. I besides am so attached to the very name of
' Mary ' that, as Johnson once said, ' if you called a dog Hervey I
should love him,' so, if you were to call a female of the same species
' Mary,1 I should love it better than others (biped or quadruped)
of the same sex with a different appellation. She was an extra-
ordinary woman. She could translate Epictetus, and yet write a
song worthy of Aristippus. The lines
" ' And when the long hours of the Public are past,
And we meet with Champaigne and a Chicken at last,
May every fond pleasure that moment endear !
Be banished afar both discretion and fear !
•Forgetting or scorning the airs of the Crowd,
He may cease to be formal, and I to be proud,
Till lost in the Joy we confess that we live,
And he may be rude, and yet I may forgive.'
"There, Mr. Bowles, what say you to such a supper with such
a woman ? And her own description too ? Is not her ' Champaigne
and Chicken ' worth a forest or two ? Is it not poetry ? It appears
to me that this Stanza contains the * purte ' of the whole Philosophy
of Epicurus. I mean the practical philosophy of his School, not
the precepts of the Master ; for I have been too long at the Uni-
versity not to know that the Philosopher was [ ] a
moderate man. But after all, would not some of us have been as
great fools as Pope? For my part I wonder that with his quick
feelings, her coquetry, and his disappointment, he did no more,
instead of writing some lines which are to be condemned if false
and regretted if true."
1 A word or two torn off with the seal.
III.] BOWLES ON GILCHRIST. 567
(3) Observations upon " Observations? A Second Letter
to John Murray, Esq., on the Rev. W. L. Bowles's Strictures
on the Life and Writings of Popel
"Ravenna, March 25th, 1821.
"DEAR SIR, — In the further 'Observations' of Mr. B., in
rejoinder to the charges brought against his edition of Pope, it is
to be regretted that he has lost his temper. Whatever the language
of his antagonists may have been, 1 fear that his replies have
afforded more pleasure to them than to the public. That Mr.
Bowles should not be pleased is natural, whether right or wrong ;
but a temperate defence would have answered his purpose in the
former case — and, in the latter, no defence, however violent, can
tend to any thing but his discomfiture. I have read over this third
pamphlet, which you have been so obliging as to send me, and shall
venture a few observations, in addition to those upon the previous
controversy.
"Mr. B. sets out with repeating his ' confirmed conviction? that
' what he said of the moral part of Pope's character was (generally
speaking) true ; and that the principles of poetical criticism which
he has laid down are invariable and invulnerable,' etc. ; and that he
is the more persuaded of this by the ' exaggerations of his opponents.'
This is all very well, and highly natural and sincere. Nobody ever
expected that either Mr. B., or any other author, would be con-
vinced of human fallibility in their own persons. But it is nothing
to the purpose — for it is not what Mr. B. thinks, but what is to be
thought of Pope, that is the question. It is what he has asserted or
insinuated against a name which is the patrimony of Posterity, that
is to be tried ; and Mr. B., as a party, can be no judge. The more
he is persuaded, the better for himself, if it give him any pleasure ;
but he can only persuade others by the proofs brought out in his
defence.
"After these prefatory remarks of 'conviction,' etc., Mr. B.
proceeds to Mr. Gilchrist ; whom he charges with ' slang ' and
'slander,' besides a small subsidiary indictment of ' abuse, ignorance,
malice,' and so forth. Mr. Gilchrist has, indeed, shown some
anger ; but it is an honest indignation, which rises up in defence of
the illustrious dead. It is a generous rage which interposes between
our ashes and their disturbers. There appears also to have been
some slight personal provocation. Mr. Gilchrist, with a chivalrous
disdain of the fury of an incensed poet, put his name to a letter
avowing the production of a former essay in defence of Pope, and
consequently of an attack upon Mr. Bowles. Mr. B. appears to be
angry with Mr. G. for four reasons : — firstly, because he wrote an
article in ' The L. Magazine ; ' secondly, because he afterwards
avowed it ; thirdly, because he was the author of a still more ex-
tended article in ' The Quarterly Review ; ' and, fourthly, because
I. First published in 1835.
568 CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BYRON AND BOWLES, [ill.
he was NOT the author of the said Quarterly article, and had the
audacity to disavow it — for no earthly reason but because he had
NOT written it.
" Mr. B. declares, that he will not enter into a particular
examination of the pamphlet, which by a misnomer (in italics) is
called 'Gilchrist's Answer to Bowles,' when it should have been
called ' Gilchrist's Abuse of Bowles." On this error in the baptism
of Mr. G.'s pamphlet, it may be observed, that an answer may be
abusive and yet no less an answer, though indisputably a temperate
one might be the better of the two : but if abuse is to cancel
all pretensions to reply, what becomes of Mr. B.'s answers to
Gilchrist ?
" Mr. B. continues : — ' But, as Mr. G. derides my peculiar sensi-
tiveness to criticism, before I show how destitute of truth is this
representation, I will here explicitly declare the only grounds,' etc.,
etc., etc. — Mr. B.'s sensibility in denying his 'sensitiveness to
criticism ' proves, perhaps, too much. But if he has been so
charged, and truly — what then? There is no moral turpitude in
such acuteness of feeling : it has been, and may be, combined with
many good and great qualities. Is Mr. B. a poet, or is he not ? If
he be, he must, from his very essence, be sensitive to criticism ;
and even if he be not, he need not be ashamed of the common
repugnance to being attacked. All that is to be wished is, that he
had considered how disagreeable a thing it is, before he assailed the
greatest moral poet of any age, or in any language.
"Pope himself ' sleeps well,' l — nothing can touch him further ;
but those who love the honour of their country, the perfection of
her literature, the glory of her language — are not to be expected to
permit an atom of his dust to be stirred in his tomb, or a leaf to be
stripped from the laurel which grows over it.
" Mr. B. assigns several reasons why and when ' an author is
justified in appealing to every upright and honourable mind in the
kingdom." If Mr. B. limits the perusal of his defence to the ' up-
right and honourable ' only, I greatly fear that it will not be exten-
sively circulated. I should rather hope that some of the downright
and dishonest -will read and be converted or convicted. But the
whole of his reasoning is here superfluous — ' an author is justified in
appealing, etc., when and why he pleases. Let him make out a
tolerable case, and few of his readers will quarrel with his motives.
" Mr. B. 'will now plainly set before the literary public all the
circumstances which have led to his name and Mr. G.'s being
brought together,' etc. Courtesy requires, in speaking of others
and ourselves, that we should place the name of the former first —
— and not ' £go et Rex meus.' Mr. B. should have written 'Mr.
Gilchrist's name and his.'
"This point he wishes 'particularly to address to those most
respectable characters, who have the direction and management of
the periodical critical press.' That the press may be, in some
instances, conducted by respectable characters is probable enough ;
I. Macbeth, act iii. sc. 2.
in.] BOWLES'S INCONSISTENCIES. 569
but if they are so, there is no occasion to tell them of it ; and if
they are not, it is a base adulation. In either case, it looks like a
kind of flattery, by which those gentry are not very likely to be
softened ; since it would be difficult to find two passages in fifteen
pages more at variance, than Mr. B.'s prose at the beginning of
this pamphlet, and his verse at the end of it. In page 4. he speaks
of 'those most respectable characters who have the direction, etc.,
of the periodical press," and in page 16. we find —
" ' Ye dark inquisitors, a monk-like band,
Who o'er some shrinking victim-author stand,
A solemn, secret, and vindictive brood,
Only terrific in your cowl and hood.'
And so on — to 'bloody law' and 'red scourges,' with other similar
phrases, which may not be altogether agreeable to the above-
mentioned 'most respectable characters.' Mr. B. goes on, 'I con-
cluded my observations in the last Pamphleteer, with feelings not
unkind towards Mr. Gilchrist, or ' [it should be nor] ' to the author
of the review of Spence, be he whom he might.' — ' I was in hopes,
as I have always been ready to admit any errors I might have been led
into, or prejudice I might have entertained, that even Mr. Gilchrist
might be disposed to a more amicable mode of discussing what I had
advanced in regard to Pope's moral character.' As Major Sturgeon
observes, ' There never was a set of more amicable officers ' — with
the exception of a boxing-bout between Captain Shears and the
Colonel.'
"A page and a half — nay only a page before — Mr. B. re-affirms
his conviction, that ' what he has said of Pope's moral character is
(generally speaking) true, and that his ' poetical principles are invari-
able and invulnerable.'' He has also published three pamphlets, —
ay, four of the same tenor, — and yet, with this declaration and these
declarations staring him and his adversaries in the face, he speaks
of his ' readiness to admit errors or to abandon prejudices ! ! ! ' His
use of the word 'amicable' reminds me of the Irish Institution
(which I have somewhere heard or read of) called the ' Friendly
Society,' where the president always carried pistols in his pocket,
so that when one amicable gentleman knocked down another, the
difference might be adjusted on the spot, at the harmonious distance
of twelve paces.
"But Mr. Bowles 'has since read a publication by him (Mr.
G.) containing such vulgar slander, affecting private life and charac-
ter,' etc., etc. ; and Mr. Gilchrist has also had the advantage of
reading a publication by Mr. Bowles sufficiently imbued with per-
sonality ; for one of the first and principal topics of reproach is that
he is a grocer, that he has a ' pipe in his mouth, ledger-book, green
canisters, dingy shop-boy, half a hogshead of brown treacle,' etc.
Nay, the same delicate raillery is upon the very title-page. When
I. Foote's Mayor of Garratt, act i. : "There never was a set of
more amiable officers," etc.
570 CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BYRON AND BOWLES, [ill.
controversy has once commenced upon this footing, as Dr. Johnson
said to Dr. Percy, ' Sir, there is an end of politeness — we are to be
as rude as we please — Sir, you said that I was short-sighted.1 1 As
a man's profession is generally no more in his own power than his
person — both having been made out for him — it is hard that he
should be reproached with either, and still more that an honest
calling should be made a reproach. If there is anything more
honourable to Mr. Gilchrist than another, it is, that being engaged
in commerce he has had the taste, and found the leisure, to become
so able a proficient in the higher literature of his own and other
countries. Mr. Bowles, who will be proud to own Glover, Chatter-
ton, Burns, and Bloomfield for his peers, should hardly have
quarrelled with Mr. Gilchrist for his critic. Mr. G.'s station, how-
ever, which might conduct him to the highest civic honours, and to
boundless wealth, has nothing to require apology ; but even if it
had, such a reproach was not very gracious on the part of a clergy-
man, nor graceful on that of a gentleman. The allusion to ' Christian
criticism ' is not particularly happy, especially where Mr. G. is
accused of having 'set the first example of this mode in Europe?
What Pagan criticism may have been, we know but little ; the
names of Zoilus and Aristarchus survive, and the works of Aristotle,
Longinus, and Quintilian : but of ' Christian criticism ' we have
already had some specimens in the works of Philelphus, Poggius,
Scaliger, Milton, Salmasius, the Cruscanti (versus Tasso), the F.
Academy (against the Cid), and the antagonists of Voltaire and of
Pope — to say nothing of some articles in most of the reviews, since
their earliest institution in the person of their respectable and still
prolific parent, ' The Monthly.' Why, then, is Mr. Gilchrist to be
singled out ' as having set the first example ? ' A sole page of
Milton or Salmasius contains more abuse — rank, rancorous, un-
leavened abuse — than all that can be raked forth from the whole
works of many recent critics. There are some, indeed, who still
keep up the good old custom ; but fewer English than foreign. It
is a pity that Mr. B. cannot witness some of the Italian contro-
versies, or become the subject of one. He would then look upon
Mr. Gilchrist as a panegyrist.
"In the long sentence quoted from the article in 'The L. M.,'
there is one coarse image, the justice of whose application I shall
not pretend to determine : — ' The pruriency with which his nose is
laid to the ground ' is an expression which, whether founded or not,
might have been omitted. But the ' anatomical minuteness ' appears
to me justified even by Mr. B.'s own subsequent quotation. To the
point : — ' Many facts tend to prove the peculiar susceptibility of
his passions ; nor can we implicitly believe that the connexion
between him and Martha Blount was of a nature so pure and inno-
cent as his panegyrist RufThead would have us believe,' etc. — 'At
no time could she have regarded Pope personally with attachment,'
etc. — 'But the most extraordinary circumstance in regard to his
connexion with female society, was the strange mixture of indecent
i. BoswelFs Life, ed. G. B. Hill, vol. iii. p. 273.
III.] POPE'S MANY FRIENDS. 571
and even profane levity which his conduct and language often
exhibited. The cause of this particularity may be sought, perhaps,
in his consciousness of physical defect, which made him affect a
character uncongenial, and a language opposite to the truth.' — If
this is not 'minute moral anatomy,' I should be glad to know what
is ! It is dissection in all its branches. I shall, however, hazard
a remark or two upon this quotation.
' ' To me it appears of no very great consequence whether Martha
Blount was or was not Pope's mistress, though I could have wished
him a better. She appears to have been a cold-hearted, interested,
ignorant, disagreeable woman, upon whom the tenderness of Pope's
heart in the desolation of his latter days was cast away, not knowing
whither to turn as he drew towards his premature old age, childless
and lonely, — like the needle which, approaching within a certain
distance of the pole, becomes helpless and useless, and, ceasing to
tremble, rusts. She seems to have been so totally unworthy of
tenderness, that it is an additional proof of the kindness of Pope's
heart to have been able to love such a being. But we must love
something. I agree with Mr. B. that she ' could at no time have
regarded Pope personally with attachment,' because she was incapable
of attachment ; but I deny that Pope could not be regarded with
personal attachment by a worthier woman. It is not probable,
indeed, that a woman would have fallen in love with him as he
walked along the Mall, or in a box at the opera, nor from a balcony,
nor in a ball-room ; but in society he seems to have been as amiable
as unassuming, and, with the greatest disadvantages of figure, his
head and face were remarkably handsome, especially his eyes. He
was adored by his friends — friends of the most opposite dispositions,
ages, and talents — by the old and wayward Wycherley, by the
cynical Swift, the rough Atterbury, the gentle Spence, the stern
attorney-bishop Warburton, the virtuous Berkeley, and the ' cankered
Bolingbroke.' * Bolingbroke wept over him like a child ; 2 and
Spence's description of his last moments is at least as edifying as
the more ostentatious account of the deathbed of Addison. The
soldier Peterborough and the poet Gay, the witty Congreve and
the laughing Rowe, the eccentric Cromwell and the steady Bathurst,
were all his intimates. The man who could conciliate so many men
of the most opposite description, not one of whom but was a remark-
able or a celebrated character, might well have pretended to all the
1. Henry IV. , Part I. act i. sc. 3.
2. "When I was telling his Lordship that Mr. Pope, on every
catching and recovery of his mind, was always saying something
kindly either of his present or his absent friends ; and that this was
so surprising, that it seemed to me as if his humanity had outlasted
his understanding, Lord B. said, ' It has so ! ' and then added, ' I
never in my life knew a man that had so tender a heart for his
particular friends, or a more general friendship for mankind 1 ' —
' I have known him these thirty years, and value myself more for
that man's love, than ' [sinking his head, and losing his voice
in tears]." — Spence's Anecdotes, p. 321.
572 CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BYRON AND BOWLES, [ill.
attachment which a reasonable man would desire of an amiable
woman.
" Pope, in fact, wherever he got it, appears to have understood
the sex well. Bolingbroke, ' a judge of the subject,' says Warton,1
thought his ' Epistle on the Characters of Women ' his ' master-
piece.' And even with respect to the grosser passion, which takes
occasionally the name of ' romantic* accordingly as the degree of
sentiment elevates it above the definition of love by Buffon,2 it may
be remarked, that it does not always depend upon personal appear-
ance, even in a woman. Madame Cottin was a plain woman, and
might have been virtuous, it may be presumed, without much
interruption. Virtuous she was, and the consequences of this
inveterate virtue were that two different admirers (one an elderly
gentleman) killed themselves in despair (see Lady Morgan's
'France'*). I would not, however, recommend this rigour to
plain women in general, in the hope of securing the glory of two
suicides apiece. I believe that there are few men who, in the
course of their observations on life, may not have perceived that it
is not the greatest female beauty who forms the longest and the
strongest passions.
"But, apropos of Pope. — Voltaire tells us that the Marechal
Luxembourg4 (who had precisely Pope's figure) was not only
1. Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, section x. vol. ii.
p. 198.
2. " Amour ! desir inne ! ame de la Nature ! principe inepuisable
d'existence ! puissance souveraine qui peut tout, et centre laquelle
rien ne pent, par qui tout agit, tout respire et tout se renouvelle !
divine flamme ! germe de perpetuite que 1'^ternel a repandu dans
tout avec le souffle de vie ! precieux sentiment qui peux seul amollir
les cceurs feroces et glaces, en les penetrant d'une douce chaleur !
cause premiere de toute bien, de toute societe, qui reunis sans con-
trainte et par tes seuls attraits les natures sauvages et dispersees !
source unique et feconde de tout plaisir, de toute volupte ! amour !
pourquoi fais-tu 1'etat heureux de tous les etres et le malheur de
1'homme ! C'est qu'il n'y a que le physique de cette passion qui
soit bon ; c'est que, malgre ce que peuvent dire les gens epris, le
moral n'en vaut rien. Qu'est-ce en effet que le moral de 1'amour !
la vanite ! " etc., etc. — Buffon, Hisloire Naturelle, torn. iv. pp. 80,
81, ed. 4° 1753 (" Discours sur la nature des animaux ").
3. " Without beauty, almost without those graces which supply
its place, Madame de Cottin inspired two ardent and fatal passions,
which ceased only with the lives of her lovers. Her young kins-
man, Monsieur D * * *, shot himself in her garden : his unsuccessful
and sexagenary rival, Monsieur * * * *, poisoned himself, ashamed,
it is said, of a passion equally hopeless and unbecoming his years."
— Lady Morgan's France, bk. viii. 4th ed., 1818, vol. ii. p. 270,
note.
4. " Plonge dans les intrigues des femmes ; toujours amoureux,
et meme souvent aime, quoique contrefait et d'un visage peu agre-
able." — Voltaire, Siicle de Louis XIV., chap. xvi.
III.] INSPIRATION OF PASSION. 573
somewhat too amatory for a great man, but fortunate in his attach-
ments. La Valiere,1 the passion of Louis I4th, had an unsightly
defect. The princess of Eboli, the mistress of Philip the second of
Spain, and Maugiron, the minion of Henry the third of France, had
each of them lost an eye ; and the famous Latin epigram was
written upon them, which has, I believe, been either translated or
imitated by Goldsmith : —
" Lumine Aeon dextro, capta est Leonilla sinistro,
Et potis est forma vincere uterque Deos ;
Blande puer, lumen quod habes concede sorori,
Sic tu csecus Amor, sic erit ilia Venus."2
" Wilkes, with his ugliness, used to say that 'he was but a
quarter of an hour behind the handsomest man in England ; ' and
this vaunt of his is said not to have been disproved by circumstances.
Swift, when neither young, nor handsome, nor rich, nor even
amiable, inspired the two most extraordinary passions upon record,
Vanessa's and Stella's.
" ' Vanessa, aged scarce a score,
Sighs for a gown ol forty -four? 3
1. Louise-Fran9oise de la Valliere (1644-1710), whom Madame
de Sevigne contrasted with her bolder rival, Madame de Montes-
pan, as ' ' cette petite violette qui se cachait sous 1'herbe et qui
" etait honteuse d'etre maitresse, d'etre mere, d'etre duchesse,"
limped slightly. She became a Carmelite nun in 1675, and died
la Sceur Louise de la Misericorde in 1710.
2. The epigram is quoted by Voltaire, in "Notes du Chant
Premier de la Henriade" (CEuvres, ed. 1784, torn. x. p. 204).
Speaking of Louis de Maugiron, Baron d'Ampus, he says, " On le
comparait a la princesse d'Eboli, qui, etant borgne comme lui, etait
dans le meme temps maitresse de Philippe II., roi d'Espagne. On
dit que ce fut pour cette princesse et pour Maugiron, qu'un Italien
fit ces quatre beaux vers renouveles depuis :
" ' Lumine Aeon dextro,' etc., etc."
Another version of the epigram on the princess, published by
Forneron (Histoire de Philippe //., torn. iii. p. 55), entreats a pretty
boy, who had lost one eye, to give the other to the lady —
" Parve puer, lumen quod habes concede puellse,
Sic tu coccus Amor, sic erit ilia Venus."
Goldsmith's epigram, " On a Beautiful Youth struck Blind with
Lightning," professes to be an imitation —
" Sure 'twas by Providence design'd
Rather in pity than in hate,
That he should be, like Cupid, blind,
To save him from Narcissus' fate."
Works, vol. i. p. 8, ed. 1837.
3. Swift's " Cadenus and Vanessa," lines 524, 525.
574 CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BYRON AND BOWLES, [ill.
" He requited them bitterly ; for he seems to have broken the
heart of the one, and worn out that of the other ; and he had his
reward, for he died a solitary idiot in the hands of servants.
" For my own part, I am of the opinion of Pausanias, that
success in love depends upon Fortune.1 ' They particularly re-
verence Celestial Venus, into whose temple, etc., etc., etc. I
remember, too, to have seen a building in ./Egina in which there
is a statue of Fortune, holding a horn of Amalthea ; and near her
there is a winged Love. The meaning of this is that the success
of men in love affairs depends more on the assistance of Fortune
than the charms of beauty. I am persuaded, too, with Pindar (to
whose opinion I subscribe in other particulars), that Fortune is one
of the Fates, and that in a certain respect she is more powerful than
her sisters.' — See Pausanias, Achaics, book 7'.h, chap. 26'.", page
246. ' Taylor's Translation.'
" Grimm has a remark of the same kind on the different destinies
of the younger Crebillon and Rousseau. The former writes a
licentious novel, and a young English girl of some fortune and
family (a Miss Stratford) runs away, and crosses the sea to marry
him ; while Rousseau, the most tender and passionate of lovers, is
obliged to espouse his chambermaid. If I recollect rightly, this
remark was also repeated in the Edinburgh Review of Grimm's
Correspondence, seven or eight years ago.2
" In regard ' to the strange mixture of indecent, and sometimes
profane levity, which his conduct and language often exhibited,'
and which so much shocks Mr. Bowles, I object to the indefinite
word ' often ; ' and in the extenuation of the occasional occurrence
of such language, it is to be recollected that it was less the tone of
Pope than the tone of the time. With the exception of the corre-
spondence of Pope and his friends, not many private letters of
the period have come down to us ; but those, such as they are — a
few scattered scraps from Farquhar and others — are more indecent
and coarse than anything in Pope's letters. The comedies of
Congreve, Vanbrugh, Farquhar, Gibber, etc., which naturally
attempted to represent the manners and conversation of private
life, are decisive upon this point ; as are also some of Steele's
papers, and even Addison's. We all know what the conversation
of Sir R. Walpole, for seventeen years the prime minister of the
country, was at his own table, and his excuse for his licentious
language, viz. ' that everybody understood that, but few could talk
rationally upon less common topics.' 3 The refinement of latter
1. Pausanias, Achaica, VII. xxvi. (see Frazer's translation, vol.
i. pp. 369, 370).
2. "L'auteur d'un conte libertin inspire une belle passion a une
grande dame qui veut bien franchir les mers pour venir le chercher ;
et 1'amant de la Nou-velle Htloise, de tous les amans le plus
passionne, le plus fidele, est reduit a epouser sa servante " (Grimm,
Correspondance Litteraire, part ii. torn. i. 449 ; see also Edinburgh
Review, vol. xxi. p. 285, July, 1813).
3. " It was for this reason, Sir Robert Walpole said, he always
III.]
THE DELICACY OF THE DAY. 575
days, — which is perhaps the consequence of vice, which wishes to
mask and soften itself, as much as of virtuous civilisation — had not
yet made sufficient progress. Even Johnson, in his ' London,' has
two or three passages which cannot be read aloud, and Addison's
' Drummer ' some indelicate allusions.
"The expression of Mr. B., 'his consciousness of physical
defect,' is not very clear. It may mean deformity, or debility. If
it alludes to Pope's deformity, it has been attempted to be shown
that this was no insuperable objection to his being beloved. If it
alludes to debility, as a consequence of Pope's peculiar conformation,
I believe that it is a physical and known fact that hump -backed
persons are of strong and vigorous passions. Several years ago, at
Mr. Angelo's fencing rooms, when I was a boy and pupil of him
and of Mr. Jackson, who had the use of his rooms in Albany on
the alternate days, I recollect a gentleman named B — 11 — gh — m,
remarkable for his strength, and the fineness of his figure. His
skill was not inferior, for he could stand up to the great Captain
Barclay 1 himself, with the muffles on ; — a task neither easy nor
agreeable to a pugilistic aspirant. As the bye-standers were one
day admiring his athletic proportions, he remarked to us, that he
had five brothers as tall and strong as himself, and that their father
and mother were both crooked, and of very small stature ; — I think he
said, neither of them five feet high. It would not be difficult to
adduce similar instances ; but I abstain, because the subject is
hardly refined enough for this immaculate period, this moral mil-
lenium of expurgated editions in books, manners, and royal trials
of divorce.
"This laudable delicacy — this crying-out elegance of the day —
reminds me of a little circumstance which occurred when I was
about eighteen years of age. There was then (and there may be
still) a famous French ' entremetteuse,' who assisted young gentle-
men in their youthful pastimes. We had been acquainted for some
time, when something occurred in her line of business more than
ordinary, and the refusal was offered to me (and doubtless to many
others), probably because I was in cash at the moment, having
taken up a decent sum from the Jews, and not having spent much
above half of it. The adventure on the tapis, it seems, required
some caution and circumspection. Whether my venerable friend
doubted my politeness I cannot tell ; but she sent me a letter
couched in such English as a short residence of sixteen years in
England had enabled her to acquire. After several precepts and
instructions, the letter closed. But there was a postscript. It
contained these words : — ' Remember, Milor, that delicaci ensure
evert succh.' The delicacy of the day is exactly, in all its circum-
stances, like that of this respectable foreigner. ' It ensures every
succesj and is not a whit more moral than, and not half so honour-
able as, the coarser candour of our less polished ancestors.
talked bawdy at his table, because in that all could join." — Boswell's
Life of Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill, vol. iii. p. 57.
I, Robert Barclay Allardyce (1779-1854).
5?6 CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BYRON AND BOWLES, [ill.
" To return to Mr. B. ' If what is here extracted can excite in
the mind (I will not say of any "layman," of any "Christian,"
but) of any human being,' etc., etc. Is not Mr. Gilchrist a ' human
being? ' Mr. B. asks ' whether in attributing an article,1 etc., etc.,
' to the Critic, he had any reason for distinguishing him with that
courtesy,' etc., etc., etc. But Mr. B. was wrong in 'attributing the
article to Mr. Gilchrist at all ; and would not have been right in
calling him a dunce and a grocer, if he had written it.
"Mr. B. is here 'peremptorily called upon to speak of a
circumstance which gives him the greatest pain, — the mention of
a letter he received from the editor of The London Magazine.' Mr.
B. seems to have embroiled himself on all sides ; whether by editing,
or replying, or attributing, or quoting, — it has been an awkward
affair for him.
" Poor Scott is now no more.1 In the exercise of his vocation,
he contrived at last to make himself the subject of a coroner's
inquest. But he died like a brave man, and he lived an able one.
I knew him personally, though slightly. Although several years
my senior, we had been schoolfellows together at the 'grammar-
schule' (or, as the Aberdonians pronounce it, ' sgueel') of New
Aberdeen. He did not behave to me quite handsomely in his
capacity of editor a few years ago, but he was under no obligation
to behave otherwise. The moment was too tempting for many
friends and for all enemies. At a time when all my relations (save
one) fell from me like leaves from the tree in autumn winds, and
my few friends became still fewer, — when the whole periodical
press (I mean the daily and weekly, not the literary press) was let
loose against me in every shape of reproach, with the two strange
exceptions (from their usual opposition) of The Courier and The
Examiner, — the paper of which Scott had the direction was neither
the last nor the least vituperative. Two years ago I met him at
Venice, when he was bowed in grief by the loss of his son, and had
known, by experience, the bitterness of a domestic privation. He
was then earnest with me to return to England ; and on my telling
him, with a smile, that he was once of a different opinion, he
replied to me, ' that he and others had been greatly misled ; and
that some pains, and rather extraordinary means, had been taken to
excite them.' Scott is no more, but there are more than one
living who were present at this dialogue. He was a man of very
considerable talents, and of great acquirements. He had made his
way, as a literary character, with high success, and in a few years.
Poor fellow ! I recollect his joy at some appointment which he
had obtained, or was to obtain, through Sir Jas. Mackintosh, and
which prevented the further extension (unless by a rapid run to
Rome) of his travels in Italy. I little thought to what it would
conduct him. Peace be with him ! — and may all such other faults
as are inevitable to humanity be as readily forgiven him, as the
little injury which he had done to one who respected his talents,
and regrets his loss.
I. See p. 266, note I.
III.] A STEP BEYOND DECORUM. 577
" I pass over Mr. B.'s page of explanation, upon the corre-
spondence between him and Mr. S . It is of little importance
in regard to Pope, and contains merely a re-contradiction of a
contradiction of Mr. Gilchrist's. We now come to a point where
Mr. Gilchrist has, certainly, rather exaggerated matters ; and, of
course, Mr. Bowles makes the most of it. Capital letters, like
Kean's name, ' large upon the bills,' are made use of six or seven
times to express his sense of the outrage. The charge is, indeed,
very boldly made ; but, like ' Ranald of the Mist's ' practical joke
of putting the bread and cheese into a dead man's mouth, is, as
' Dugald Dalgetty ' says, ' somewhat too wild and sa/vage, besides
wasting the good victuals.' l
"Mr. G. charges Mr. B. with 'suggesting' that Pope 'at-
tempted ' to commit ' a rape ' upon Lady M. Wortley Montague.
There are two reasons why this could not be true. The first is,
that like the chaste Letitia's prevention of the intended ravishment
by 'Fireblood' (in Jonathan Wild*)t it might have been impeded
by a timely compliance. The second is, that however this might
be, Pope was probably the less robust of the two ; and (if the Lines
on Sappho were really intended for this lady) the asserted con-
sequences of her acquiescence in his wishes would have been a
sufficient punishment. The passage which Mr. B. quotes, however,
insinuates nothing of the kind ; it merely charges her with en-
couragement, and him with wishing to profit by it, — a slight
attempt at seduction, and no more. The phrase is, ' a step beyond
decorum.' Any physical violence is so abhorrent to human nature,
that it recoils in cold blood from the very idea. But, the seduction
of a woman's mind as well as person is not, perhaps, the least
heinous sin of the two in morality. Dr. Johnson commends a
gentleman who having seduced a girl who said, ' I am afraid we
have done wrong,' replied, ' Yes, we have done wrong,' — ' for I
would not pervert her mind also.' * Othello would not ' kill
Desdemona's sou/.' 4 Mr. B. exculpates himself from Mr. G.'s
charge ; but it is by substituting another charge against Pope. ' A
step beyond decorum ' has a soft sound, but what does it express ?
In all these cases, ' ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute.' Has
not the Scripture something upon ' the lusting after a woman '
being no less criminal than the crime ? ' A step beyond decorum, '
in short, any step beyond the instep, is a step from a precipice to
the lady who permits it. For the gentleman who makes it it is also
rather hazardous if he don't succeed, and still more so if he does.
1. Legend of Afontrose, chap. xiii.
2. Bk. 3, chap. vii.
3. "Dr. Johnson related, with very earnest approbation, a story
of a gentleman, who, in an impulse of passion, overcame the virtue
of a young woman. When she said to him, ' I am afraid we have
done wrong ! ' he answered, ' Yes, we have done wrong : — for I
would not debauch her mind.' " — Boswell's Life, ed. G. B. Hill,
vol. iv. p. 398, note.
4. Othello^ act v. sc. 2.
VOL. V. 2 P
57^ CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BYRON AND BOWLES, [ill.
"Mr. B. appeals to the 'Christian reader!' upon this ' Gil-
Christian criticism.' Is not this play upon such words 'a step
beyond decorum ' in a clergyman ? But I admit the temptation of
a pun to be irresistible.
" But ' a hasty pamphlet was published, in which some person-
alities respecting Mr. Gilchrist were suffered to appear.' If Mr. B.
will write ' hasty pamphlets,' why is he so surprised on receiving
short answers ? The grand grievance to which he perpetually returns
is a charge of ' hypochondriacism,' asserted or insinuated in the
Quarterly. I cannot conceive a man in perfect health being much
affected by such a charge, because his complexion and conduct must
amply refute it. But were it true, to what does it amount ? — to an
impeachment of a liver complaint. ' I will tell it to the world,'
exclaimed the learned Smelfungus. — ' You had better,' said I, ' tell
it to your physician.' * There is nothing dishonourable in such a
disorder, which is more peculiarly the malady of students. It has
been the complaint of the good, and the wise, and the witty, and
even of the gay. Regnard, the author of the last French comedy
after Moliere, was atrabilarious ; and Moliere himself, saturnine.
Dr. Johnson, Gray, and Burns, were all more or less affected by
it occasionally. It was the prelude to the more awful malady of
Collins, Cowper, Swift, and Smart ; but it by no means follows
that a partial affliction of this disorder is to terminate like theirs.
But even were it so, —
" ' Nor best, nor wisest, are exempt from thee ;
Folly— Folly's only free.' — PENROSE.*
If this 'be the criterion of exemption, Mr. B.'s last two pamphlets
form a better certificate of sanity than a physician's. Mendehlson
(sic) and Bayle were at times so overcome with this depression, as to
be obliged to recur to seeing ' puppet -shows, and counting tiles upon
the opposite houses,' to divert themselves. Dr. Johnson at times
'would have given a limb to recover his spirits.'3 Mr. B., who is
(strange to say) fond of quoting Pope, may perhaps answer, —
" 'Go on, obliging creatures, let me see
All which disgraced my betters met in me.' 4
But the charge, such as it is, neither disgraces them nor him. It
is easily disproved if false ; and even if proved true, has nothing in
it to make a man so very indignant. Mr. B. himself appears to be
a little ashamed of his ' hasty pamphlet ; ' for he attempts to excuse
it by the ' great provocation ; ' that is to say, by Mr. B.'s supposing
that Mr. G. was the writer of the article in the Quarterly, which he
was not.
1. Sentimental Journey : " In the Street : Calais."
2. Byron quotes from the second stanza of "Madness" in Poems,
by the Rev. Thomas Penrose (8vo, London, 1781).
3. " I would consent to have a limb amputated to recover my
spirits" (Boswell's Life, ed. G. B. Hill, vol. i. p. 483).
4. Epistlt to Dr. Arbuthnot) lines 119, 120.
III.]
MUD-CARTS AND SCAVENGERS. 579
'"But, in extenuation, not only the great provocation should
be remembered, but it ought to be said, that orders were sent to the
London booksellers, that the most direct personal passages should
be omitted entirely? etc. This is what the proverb calls ' breaking
a head and giving a plaister ; ' but, in this instance, the plaister
was not spread in time, and Mr. Gilchrist does not seem at present
disposed to regard Mr. Bowles's courtesies like the rust of the spear
of Achilles, which had such ' skill in surgery.' l
" But ' Mr. Gilchrist has no right to object, as the reader will
see.' I am a reader, a 'gentle reader,' and I see nothing of the
kind. Were I in Mr. Gilchrist's place, I should object exceedingly
to being abused ; firstly, for what I did write, and, secondly, for
what I did not write ; merely because it is Mr. B.'s will and pleasure
to be as angry with me for having written in the L[ondon Magazine],
as for not having written in the Qterly. Rev.
' ' ' Mr. G. has had ample revenge ; for he has, in his answer, said
so and so,' etc., etc. There is no great revenge in all this ; and I
presume that nobody either seeks or wishes it. What revenge?
Mr. B. calls names, and he is answered. But Mr. G. and the
Quarterly Reviewer are not poets, nor pretenders to poetry ; there-
fore they can have no envy nor malice against Mr. B. : they have
no acquaintance with Mr. B., and can have no personal pique ; they
do not cross his path of life, nor he theirs. There is no political
feud between them. What, then, can be the motive of their discus-
sion of his deserts as an editor ? — veneration for the genius of Pope,
love for his memory, and regard for the classic glory of their coun-
try. Why would Mr. Bowles edite ? Had he limited his honest
endeavours to poetry, very little would have been said upon the
subject, and nothing at all by his present antagonists.
"Mr. B. calls the pamphlet a 'mud-cart,' and the writer a
'scavenger.' Afterward he asks, 'Shall he fling dirt and receive
rose-water ? ' This metaphor, by the way, is taken from Mar-
montel's Memoirs ; who, lamenting to Chamfort the shedding of
blood during the French revolution, was answered, ' Do you think
that revolutions are to be made with rose-waler ? ' *
"For my own part, I presume that 'rose-water' would be
infinitely more graceful in the hands of Mr. B. than the substance
which he has substituted for that delicate liquid. It would also
more confound his adversary, supposing him a 'scavenger.' I
remember, (and do you remember, reader, that it was in my earliest
youth, ' Consule Planco,') — on the morning of the great battle, (the
second) — between Gulley and Gregson,3 — Cribb, who was matched
1. Henry IV., Part I. act v. sc. I.
2. " Mais, ajouta-t-il, je vois que mes esperances vous attristent :
vous ne voulez pas d'une liberte qui coutera beaucoup d'or et de
sang. Voulez-vous qu'on vous fasse des revolutions a 1'eau rose ? " —
Marmontel, Memoires d'tm Pere, etc., (Euvres completes, ed. 1818-
19, livre xiv. torn. 4, p. 84.
3. John Gully, Champion of England 1805-1808, beat Bob
Gregson twice, October 14, 1807, and May 10, 1808. On the
580 CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BYRON AND BOWLES, [ill.
against Horton for the second fight, on the same memorable day,
awaking me (a lodger at the inn in the next room) by a loud
remonstrance to the waiter against the abomination of his towels,
which had been laid in lavender. Cribb was a coal-heaver — and
was much more discomfited by this odoriferous effeminacy of fine
linen, than by his adversary Horton, whom he ' finished in style,'
though with some reluctance ; for I recollect that he said, ' he
disliked hurting him, he looked so pretty,' — Horton being a very
fine fresh-coloured young man.
" To return to ' rose-water ' — that is, to gentle means of rebuke.
Does Mr. B. know how to revenge himself upon a hackney-coach-
man, when he has overcharged his fare ? In case he should
not, I will tell him. It is of little use to call him 'a rascal, a
scoundrel, a thief, an impostor, a blackguard, a villain, a raga-
muffin, a — what you please ; ' all that he is used to — it is his mother-
tongue, and probably his mother's. But look him steadily and
quietly in the face, and say — ' Upon my word, I think you are the
ugliest fellow I ever saw in my life,' and he will instantly roll forth
the brazen thunders of the charioteer Salmoneus as follows : —
' Hugly ! what the H — 11 are you f You a gentleman I Why ! '
So much easier it is to provoke — and therefore to vindicate — (for
Passion punishes him who feels it more than those whom the pas-
sionate would excruciate) — by a few quiet words the aggressor, than
by retorting violently. The ' coals of fire ' of the Scripture are
benefits ; — but they are not the less 'coals of fire.'
" I pass over a page of quotation and reprobation — 'Sin up to
my song' — 'Oh let my little bark' — 'Arcades ambo' — 'Writer in
the Quarterly Review and himself — 'In-door avocations, indeed'
— ' Kings of Brentford ' — ' One nosegay ' — ' Perennial nosegay ' —
' Oh Juvenes,' — and the like.
"Page 12. produces 'more reasons,' — (the task ought not to
have been difficult, for as yet there were none) — ' to show why Mr.
B. attributed the critique in the Quarterly to Octavius Gilchrist.'
All these 'reasons' consist of surmises of Mr. B., upon the pre-
sumed character of his opponent. ' He did not suppose there could
exist a man in the kingdom so impudent, etc., etc., except Octavius
G.' — ' He did not think there was a man in the kingdom who
would pretend ignorance, etc., etc., except Octavius G.' — 'He did
not conceive that one man in the kingdom would utter such stupid
flippancy, etc., etc., except — Octavius G.' — ' He did not think there
was one man in the kingdom who, etc., etc., could so utterly show
his ignorance, combined with conceit, etc., as Octavius G.' — 'He
did not believe there was a man in the kingdom so perfect in Mr.
G.'s "old lunes,'" etc., etc. — 'He did not think the mean mind
of any one in the kingdom,' etc., and so on ; always beginning with
'any one in the kingdom,' and ending with 'Octavius Gilchrist,'
like the word in a catch. I am not 'in the kingdom,' and have not
second occasion the great fight, which took place in Sir John
Sebright's park in Hertfordshire, was preceded by a match between
Horton and Cribb. The latter \von easily.
III.] CHARGE OF LICENTIOUSNESS. 581
been much in the kingdom since I was one and twenty, (about five
years in the whole, since I was of age, ) and have no desire to be in
the kingdom again, whilst I breathe, nor to sleep there afterwards ;
and I regret nothing more than having ever been ' in the kingdom '
at all. But though no longer a man ' in the kingdom,' let me hope
that when I have ceased to exist, it may be said, as was answered
by the master of Clanronald's henchman, the day after the battle
of Sheriff-Muir, when he was found watching his chiefs body. He
was asked, 'who that was?' he replied — ' it was a Man yesterday.'
And in this capacity, 'in' or out of ' the kingdom,' I must own that
I participate in many of the objections urged by Mr. Gilchrist. I
participate in his love of Pope, and in his not always understanding,
and occasionally finding fault with, the last editor of our last truly
great poet.
" One of the reproaches against Mr. G. is, that he is (it is sneer-
ingly said) an F. S. A. If it will give Mr. B. any pleasure, I am
not an F. S. A., but a Fellow of the Royal Society at his service,1
in case there should be any thing in that association also which may
point a paragraph.
"'There are some other reasons,' but 'the author is now not
unknown.' Mr. Bowles has so totally exhausted himself upon
Octavius G. , that he has not a word left for the real Quarterer of
his edition, although now 'deterre.'
"The following page refers to a mysterious charge of 'duplicity,
in regard to the publication of Pope's letters.' Till this charge is
made in proper form, we have nothing to do with it : Mr. G. hints
it — Mr. Bowles denies it ; there it rests for the present. Mr. B.
professes his dislike to ' Pope's duplicity, not to Pope ' — a distinction
apparently without a difference. However, I believe that I under-
stand him. We have a great dislike to Mr. B.'s edition of Pope,
but not to Mr. Bowles ; nevertheless, he takes up the subject as
warmly as if it was personal. With regard to the fact of ' Pope's
duplicity,' it remains to be proved — like Mr. B.'s benevolence
towards his memory.
"In page 14. we have a large assertion, that 'the "Eloisa"
alone is sufficient to convict him of gross licentiousness.' Thus, out
it comes at last. Mr. B. does accuse Pope of 'gross licentiousness,'
and grounds the charge upon a poem. The licentiousness is a ' grand
peut-etre,' according to the turn of the times being. The grossness
I deny. On the contrary, I do believe that such a subject never
was, nor ever could be, treated by any poet with so much delicacy,
mingled, at the same time, with such true and intense passion. Is
the ' Atys ' of Catullus licentious ? No, nor even gross ; and yet
Catullus is often a coarse writer. The subject is nearly the same,
except that Atys was the suicide of his manhood, and Abelard the
victim.
" The ' licentiousness ' of the story was not Pope's — it was a fact.
All that it had of gross, he has softened ; — all that it had of indelicate,
I. Byron was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, January n,
1816.
582 CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BYRON AND BOWLES, [ill.
he has purified — all that it had of passionate, he has beautified ;
— all that it had of holy, he has hallowed. Mr. Campbell has
admirably marked this in a few words (I quote from memory), in
drawing the distinction between Pope and Dryden, and pointing
out where Dryden was wanting. ' I fear,' says he, ' that had the
subject of " Eloisa" fallen into his (Dryden's) hands, that he would
have given us but a coarse draft of her passion.' Never was the
delicacy of Pope so much shown as in this poem. With the facts
and the letters of ' Eloisa ' he has done what no other mind but
that of the best and purest of poets could have accomplished with
such materials. Ovid, Sappho (in the Ode called hers) — all that
we have of ancient, all that we have of modern poetry, sinks into
nothing compared with him in this production.
" Let us hear no more of this trash about ' licentiousness.' Is
not ' Anacreon ' taught in our schools ? — translated, praised, and
edited ? Are not his Odes the amatory praises of a boy ? Is not
Sappho's Ode on a girl ? Is not this sublime and (according to
Longinus l) fierce love for one of her own sex? And is not Phillips'
translation of it in the mouths of all your women ? And are the
English schools or the English women the more corrupt for all this ?
When you have thrown the ancients into the fire it will be time
to denounce the moderns. ' Licentiousness ! ' — there is more real
mischief and sapping licentiousness in a single French prose novel,
in a Moravian hymn, or a German comedy, than in all the actual
poetry that ever was penned or poured forth, since the rhapsodies
of Orpheus. The sentimental anatomy of Rousseau and Mad? de
S. are far more formidable than any quantity of verse. They are
so, because they sap the principles, by reasoning upon the passions ;
whereas poetry is in itself passion, and does not systematize. It
assails, but does not argue ; it may be wrong, but it does not
assume pretensions to Optimism.
"Mr. B. now has the goodness ' to point out the difference
between a traducer and him who sincerely states what he sincerely
believes.' He might have spared himself the trouble. The one is
a liar, who lies knowingly ; the other (I speak of a scandal-monger
of course) lies, charitably believing that he speaks truth, and very
sorry to find himself in falsehood ; — because he
" ' Would rather that the dean should die,
Than his prediction prove a lie.' 2
" After a definition of a ' traducer,' which was quite superfluous
(though it is agreeable to learn that Mr. B. so well understands the
character), we are assured, that 'he feels equally indifferent, Mr.
Gilchrist, for what your malice can invent, or your impudence
utter.' This is indubitable ; for it rests not only on Mr. B.'s
1. De Sublimitate, sect. x.
2. " He'd rather chuse that I should die
Than his prediction prove a lie."
Swift, "Lines on his own Death," lines 131, 132.
III.] MR. LOFTY IN REAL LIFE. 583
assurance, but on that of Sir Fretful Plagiary, and nearly in the
same words, — 'and I shall treat it with exactly the same calm
indifference and philosophical contempt, and so your servant." l
" ' One thing has given Mr. Bowles concern.' It is 'a passage
which might seem to reflect on the patronage a young man has
received.' MIGHT seem ! ! The passage alluded to expresses, that
if Mr. G. be the reviewer of ' a certain poet of nature," his praise
and blame are equally 'contemptible.' — Mr. B., who has a pecu-
liarly ambiguous style, where it suits him, comes off with a ' not to
the poet, but the critic ;' etc. In my humble opinion, the passage
referred to both. Had Mr. B. really meant fairly, he would have
said so from the first — he would have been eagerly transparent. —
' A certain poet of nature ' is not the style of commendation. It is
the very prologue to the most scandalous paragraphs of the news-
papers, when
" ' Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike.' *
' A certain high personage," — ' a certain peeress," — ' a certain illus-
trious foreigner," — what do these words ever precede, but defama-
tion ? Had he felt a spark of kindling kindness for John Clare,3 he
would have named him. There is a sneer in the sentence as it
stands. How a favourable review of a deserving poet can ' rather
injure than promote his cause ' is difficult to comprehend. The
article denounced is able and amiable, and it has ' served ' the poet,
as far as poetry can be served by judicious and honest criticism.
"With the two next paragraphs of Mr. B.'s pamphlet it is
pleasing to concur. His mention of ' Pennie,1 4 and his former
patronage of 'Shoel,'5 do him honour. I am not of those who
may deny Mr. B. to be a benevolent man. I merely assert, that he
is not a candid editor.
"Mr. B. has been 'a writer occasionally upwards of thirty
years,' and never wrote one word in reply in his life ' to criticisms,
merely as criticisms.' This is Mr. Lofty in Goldsmith's Good-
natured Man ; ' and I vow by all that's honourable, my resentment
has never done the men, as mere men, any manner of harm, — that
is, as mere men.1 '
" ' The letter to the editor of the newspaper ' is owned ; but ' it
was not on account of the criticism. It was because the criticism
came down in a frank directed to Mrs. Bowles I ! I ' — (the italics and
three notes of admiration appended to Mrs. Bowles are copied
verbatim from the quotation), and Mr. Bowles was not displeased
1. The Critic, act i. sc. I.
2. Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, line 203.
3. Gilchrist had reviewed John Clare's Poems in the Quarterly
Review for May, 1820.
4. For John Fitzgerald Pennie (" Sylvaticus "), see Bowles's
remarks in The Pamphleteer, vol. xvii. p. 383.
5. Thomas Shoel published Miles/till 1803, and Poems 1821.
6. Act ii.
584 CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BYRON AND BOWLES, [ill.
with the criticism, but with the frank and the address. I agree
with Mr. B. that the intention was to annoy him ; but I fear that
this was answered by his notice of the reception of the criticism.
An anonymous letter-writer has but one means of knowing the
effect of his attack. In this he has the superiority over the viper ;
he knows that his poison has taken effect, when he hears the victim
cry ; — the adder is deaf. The best reply to an anonymous intima-
tion is to take no notice directly nor indirectly. I wish Mr. B.
could see only one or two of the thousand which I have received in
the course of a literary life, which, though begun early, has not yet
extended to a third part of his existence as an author. I speak of
literary life only. Were I to add personal, I might double the
amount of anonymous letters. If he could but see the violence, the
threats, the absurdity of the whole thing, he would laugh, and so
should I, and thus be both gainers.
" To keep up the farce, — within the last month of this present
writing (1821), I have had my life threatened in the same way which
menaced Mr. B.'s fame, — excepting that the anonymous denunci-
ation was addressed to the Cardinal Legate of R., instead of to
Mrs. Bowles. The Cardinal is, I believe, the elder lady of the
two. I append the menace in all its barbaric but literal Italian,
that Mr. B. may be convinced ; and as this is the only ' promise to
pay,' which the Italians ever keep, so my person has been at least
as much exposed to a ' shot in the gloaming,' from 'John Heather-
blutter' (see Waverley^}, as ever Mr. B.'s glory was from an
editor. I am, nevertheless, on horseback and lonely for some
hours (one of them twilight) in the forest daily ; and this, because
it was my 'custom in the afternoon,'2 and that I believe if the
tyrant cannot escape amidst his guards (should it be so written ?),
so the humbler individual would find precautions useless.
" Mr. B. has here the humility to say, that ' he must succumb ;
for with Ld. B. turned against him, he has no chance,' — a declara-
tion of self-denial not much in unison with his 'promise,' five lines
afterwards, that 'for every 24 lines quoted by Mr. G., or his friend,
to greet him with as many from his unpublished poem of the
" Gilchrisiad " ;' but so much the better. Mr. B. has no reason to
' succumb ' but to Mr. Bowles. As a poet, the author of The
Missionary may compete with the foremost of his cotemporaries.
Let it be recollected that all my previous opinions of Mr. Bowles's
poetry were •written long before the publication of his last and best
poem ; and that a poet's last poem should be his best, is his highest
praise. But, however, he may duly and honourably rank with his
living rivals. There never was so complete a proof of the superi-
ority of Pope, as in the lines with which Mr. B. closes his ' to be
concluded in our next. '
" Mr. Bowles is avowedly the champion and the poet of nature.
Art and the arts are dragged some before, and others behind his
chariot. Pope, where he deals with passion, and with the nature
1. Chap. Ixiv.
2. Hamlet, act i. sc. 5.
III.] SUICIDE AT POPE'S SHRINE. 585
of the naturals of the day, is allowed even by themselves to be
sublime ; but they complain that too soon —
" ' He stooped to truth and moralized his song,' l
and there even they allow him to be unrivalled. He has succeeded,
and even surpassed them, when he chose, in their own pretended
province. Let us see what their Coryphoeus effects in Pope's. But
it is too pitiable, it is too melancholy, to see Mr. B. '•sinning'' not
' up ' but ' down ' as a poet to his lowest depth as an editor. By
the way, Mr. B. is always quoting Pope. I grant that there is no
poet — not Shakspeare himself — who can be so often quoted, with
reference to life ; — but his editor is so like the Devil quoting Scrip-
ture, that I could wish Mr. B. in his proper place, quoting in the
pulpit.
" And now for his lines. But it is painful — painful — to see
such a suicide, though at the shrine of Pope. I can't copy them
all:—
" ' Shall the rank, loathsome miscreant of the age,
Sit, like a nightmare, grinning o'er a page.'
" ' Whose pye-bald character so aptly suit
The two extremes of Bantam and of Brute,
Compound grotesque of sullenness and show,
The chattering magpie, and the croaking crow.'
" ' Whose heart contends with thy Saturnian head,
A root of hemlock, and a lump of lead.
'Gilchrist, proceed,' etc., etc.
" ' And thus stand forth, spite of thy venomed foam,
To give thee bite for bite, or lash thee limping home.'
With regard to the last line, the only one upon which I shall
venture for fear of infection, I would advise Mr. Gilchrist to keep
out of the way of such reciprocal morsure — unless he has more
faith in the ' Ormskirk medicine ' 2 than most people, or may wish
to anticipate the pension of the recent German professor, (I forget
his name, but it is advertised and full of consonants,) who presented
his memoir of an infallible remedy for the hydrophobia to the
German Diet last month, coupled with the philanthropic condition
of a large annuity, provided that his cure cured. Let him begin
with the editor of Pope, and double his demand.
"Yours ever,
"BYRON.
" To John Murray i Esq.
1. Epistle to Dr. Arlwthnot, line 341.
2. A cure for Hydrophobia, invented by Mr. Hill of Ormskirk.
586 CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BYRON AND BOWLES, [ill.
" P.S. — Amongst the above-mentioned lines there occurs the
following, applied to Pope —
" 'The assassin's vengeance, and the coward's lie.'
And Mr. B. persists that he is a well-wisher to Pope ! ! ! He has,
then, edited an ' assassin ' and a ' coward ' wittingly, as well as
lovingly. In my former letter I have remarked upon the editor's
forgetfulness of Pope's benevolence. But where he mentions his
faults it is ' with sorrow ' — his tears drop, but they do not blot them
out. The ' recording angel ' differs from the recording clergyman.
A fulsome editor is pardonable though tiresome, like a panegyrical
son whose pious sincerity would demi-deify his father. But a
detracting editor is a parricide. He sins against the nature of his
office, and connection — he murders the life to come of his victim.
If his author is not worthy to be remembered, do not edite at all :
if he be, edite honestly, and even flatteringly. The reader will
forgive the weakness in favour of mortality, and correct your
adulation with a smile. But to sit down 'mingere in patrios
cineres,'1 as Mr. B. has done, merits a reprobation so strong, that
I am as incapable of expressing as of ceasing to feel it.
" Further Addenda for insertion in the letter to jf. M., Esq., on
Bowles's Pope, etc.
" It is worthy of remark that, after all this outcry about ' in-door
nature' and 'artificial images,' Pope was the principal inventor of
that boast of the English, Modern Gardening. He divides this
honour with Milton. Hear Warton : — ' It hence appears that this
enchanting art of modern gardening, in which this kingdom claims
a preference over every nation in Europe, chiefly owes its origin
and its improvements to two great poets, Milton and Pope.' "
" Walpole 3 (no friend to Pope) asserts that Pope formed
Kenfs taste, and that Kent was the artist to whom the English are
chiefly indebted for diffusing ' a taste in laying out grounds.' The
design of the Prince of Wales's garden was copied from PopJs at
Twickenham. Warton applauds ' his singular effort of art and
taste, in impressing so much variety and scenery on a spot of five
acres.'4 Pope was theory/ who ridiculed the 'formal, French,
Dutch, false and unnatural taste in gardening,' both in prose and
verse. (See, for the former, The Guardian*)
" ' Pope has given not only some of our first but lest rules and
observations on Architecture and Gardening? (See Warton's Essay,
vol. 2d 237, etc., etc.)
"Now, is it not a shame, after this, to hear our Lakers in
1. Horace, Ars Poetica, 471.
2. Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, vol. ii. p. 243.
3. Walpole's Essay on Modern Gardening, ed. 1827, p. 268.
4. Warton's Essay, ibid. , p. 239.
5. No. 173.
III.] POPE'S TASTE FOR NATURE. 587
' Kendal Green,' and our Bucolical Cockneys, crying out (the
latter in a wilderness of bricks and mortar) about ' Nature ' and
Pope's ' artificial in-door habits ? ' Pope had seen all of nature that
England alone can supply. He was bred in Windsor Forest, and
amidst the beautiful scenery of Eton; he lived familiarly and
frequently at the country seats of Bathurst, Cobham, Burlington,
Peterborough, Digby, and Bolingbroke ; amongst whose seats was
to be numbered Stow. He made his own little ' five acres ' a model
to princes, and to the first of our artists who imitated nature.
Warton thinks ' that the most engaging of Kenfi, works was also
planned on the model of Pope's — at least in the opening and retiring
shades of Venus's Vale.'
"It is true that Pope was infirm and deformed ; but he could
walk, and he could ride (he rode to Oxford from London at a
stretch), and he was famous for an exquisite eye. On a tree at
Ld. Bathurst's is carved ' Here Pope sang,' — he composed beneath
it. Bolingbroke, in one of his letters, represents them both writing
in the hay-field. No poet ever admired Nature more, or used her
better, than Pope has done, as I will undertake to prove from his
works, prose and verse, if not anticipated in so easy and agreeable
a labour. I remember a passage in Walpole, somewhere, of a
gentleman who wished to give directions about some willows to
a man who had long served Pope in his grounds : ' I understand,
sir," he replied, ' you would have them hang down, sir, somewhat
poetical. ' Now, if nothing existed but this little anecdote, it would
suffice to prove Pope's taste for Nature, and the impression which
he had made on a common-minded man. But I have already
quoted Warton and Walpole (both his enemies), and, were it
necessary, I could amply quote Pope himself for such tributes to
Nature as no poet of the present day has even approached.
" His various excellence is really wonderful : architecture, paint-
ing, gardening, all are alike subject to his genius. Be it remembered
that English gardening is the purposed perfectioning of niggard
Nature, and that without it England is but a hedge-and-ditch,
double-post-and-rail, Hounslow Heath and Clapham Common sort
of country, since the principal forests have been felled. It is, in
general, far from a picturesque country. The case is different with
Scotland, Wales, and Ireland ; and I except also the Lake Counties
and Derbyshire, together with Eton, Windsor, and my own dear
Harrow on the Hill, and some spots near the coast. In the present
rank fertility of ' great poets of the age,' and ' schools of poetry ' — a
word which, like ' schools of eloquence ' and of ' philosophy,' is
never introduced till the decay of the art has increased with the
number of its professors — in the present day, then, there have sprung
up two sorts of Naturals ; — the Lakers, who whine about Nature
because they live in Cumberland ; and their under-sect (which some
one has maliciously called the ' Cockney School '), who are enthu-
siastical for the country because they live in London. It is to be
observed, that the rustical founders are rather anxious to disclaim
any connexion with their metropolitan followers, whom they un-
graciously review, and call cockneys, atheists, foolish fellows, bad
588 CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BYRON AND BOWLES, [ill.
writers, and other hard names not less ungrateful than unjust. I
can understand the pretensions of the aquatic gentlemen of Winder-
mere to what Mr. Braham terms ' entusymusy,' for lakes, and
mountains, and daffodils, and buttercups ; but I should be glad to
be apprized of the foundation of the London propensities of their
imitative brethren to the same 'high argument.' Southey, Words-
worth, and Coleridge have rambled over half Europe, and seen
Nature in most of her varieties (although I think that they have
occasionally not used her very well) ; but what on earth — of earth,
and sea, and Nature — have the others seen ? Not a half, nor a
tenth part so much as Pope. While they sneer at his Windsor
Forest, have they ever seen any thing of Windsor except its brick ?
" The most rural of these gentlemen is my friend Leigh Hunt,
who lives at Hampstead. I believe that I need not disclaim any
personal or poetical hostility against that gentleman. A more
amiable man in society I know not ; nor (when he will allow his
sense to prevail over his sectarian principles) a better writer. When
he was writing his Rimini, I was not the last to discover its beauties,
long before it was published. Even then I remonstrated against
its vulgarisms ; which are the more extraordinary, because the
author is any thing but a vulgar man. Mr. Hunt's answer was, that
he wrote them upon principle ; they made part of his system ! ! ' l
I then said no more. When a man talks of his system, it is like
a woman's talking of her virtue. I let them talk on. Whether
there are writers who could have written Rimini, as it might have
been written, I know not ; but Mr. Hunt is, probably, the only
poet who could have had the heart to spoil his own Capo d'Opera.
" With- the rest of his young people I have no acquaintance,
except through some things of theirs (which have been sent out
without my desire), and I confess that till I had read them I was
not aware of the full extent of human absurdity. Like Garrick's
' Ode to Shakspeare,'2 they 'defy criticism.1 These are of the per-
sonages who decry Pope. One of them, a Mr. John Ketch, has
written some lines against him, of which it were better to be the
subject than the author.3 Mr. Hunt redeems himself by occasional
1. See Letters, vol. iii. Appendix V. p. 421.
2. " Ode upon dedicating a Building and erecting a Statue to
Shakespeare at Stratford-on-Avon " (1769).
3. The following passage on Keats, sent to Murray by Byron for
1 . insertion, was suppressed on account of Keats's death : —
"Additions to the passages from Keats.
" Further on we have —
" ' The hearty grasp that sends a pleasant Sonnet
Into the brain ere one can think upon it,
The Silence when some rhymes are coming out,
And when they're come the very pleasant roitt ;
The Message certain to be done to-morrow.
'Tis perhaps as well that it should be to borrow
III.] A PASSAGE ON KEATS. 589
\ beauties ; but the rest of these poor creatures seem so far gone that
I would not ' march through Coventry with them, that's flat ! ' *
were I in Mr. Hunt's place. To be sure, he has 'led his raga-
muffins where they will be well peppered ; ' 2 but a system-maker
must receive all sorts of proselytes. When they have really seen
Some precious book from out its snug retreat,
To cluster round it when we next shall meet.
Scarce can I scribble on,' etc., etc.
" Now what does this mean ?
" Again —
" ' And with these airs came forms of elegance
Stooping their shoulders o'er a horses prance?
"Where did these 'forms of elegance'' learn to ride — with * stoop-
ing shoulders ' ?
"Again—
" ' Thus I remember all the pleasant flow
Of words at opening a Portfolio."
" Again —
" ' Yet I must not forget
Sleep, quiet with his poppy coronet :
For what there may be worthy in these rhymes
I partly owe to Aim, ' etc.
"This obligation is likely to be mutual. It may appear harsh
to accumulate passages of this kind from the work of a young man
in the outset of his career. But, if he will set out with assailing the
Poet whom of all others a young aspirant ought to respect and
honour and study — if he will hold forth in such lines his notions on
poetry, and endeavour to recommend them by terming such men
as Pope, Dryden, Swift, Addison, Congreve, Young, Gay, Gold-
smith, Johnson, etc., etc., * 9. School of dolts J he must abide by the
consequences of his unfortunate distortion of intellect. But like
Milbourne he is 'the fairest of Critics,' by enabling us to compare
his own compositions with those of Pope at the same age, and on
a similar subject, viz. Poetry.
" As Mr. K. does not want imagination nor industry, let those
who have led him astray look to what they have done. Surely
they must feel no little remorse in having so perverted the taste and
feelings of this young man, and will be satisfied with one such
victim to their Moloch of Absurdity.
" Pope little expected that the 'Art of sinking in Poetry ' would
become an object of serious Study, and supersede not only his own
but all that Horace, Vida, Boileau and Aristotle had left to
Posterity, of precept, and the greatest poets in all nations, of
example."
1. ffettry IV^ Part I. act iv. sc. 2.
2. Ibid., act v. sc. 3.
5QO CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BYRON AND BOWLES, [ill.
life — when they have felt it — when they have travelled beyond the
far distant boundaries of the wilds of Middlesex — when they have
overpassed the Alps of Highgate, and traced to its sources the Nile
of the New River — then, and not till then, can it properly be per-
mitted to them to despise Pope ; who had, if not in Wales, been
near it, when he described so beautifully the ' artificial ' works of
the Benefactor of Nature and mankind, the ' Man of Ross j ' whose
picture, still suspended in the parlour of the inn, I have so often
contemplated with reverence for his memory, and admiration of the
poet, without whom even his own still existing good works could
hardly have preserved his honest renown.
" I would also observe to my friend Hunt, that I shall be very
glad to see him at Ravenna, not only for my sincere pleasure in his
company, and the advantage which a thousand miles or so of travel
might produce to a ' natural ' poet, but also to point out one or two
little things in ' Rimini,' which he probably would not have placed
in his opening to that poem, if he had ever seen Ravenna ; — unless,
indeed, it made ' part of his system ! ! ' I must also crave his
indulgence for having spoken of his disciples — by no means an
agreeable or self-sought subject. If they had said nothing of Pope,
they might have remained 'alone with their glory,'1 for aught I
should have said or thought about them or their nonsense. But if
they interfere with the ' little Nightingale ' 2 of Twickenham, they
may find others who will bear it — / won't. Neither time, nor
distance, nor grief, nor age, can ever diminish my veneration for
him, who is the great moral poet of all times, of all climes, of all
feelings, and of all stages of existence. The delight of my boyhood,
the study of my manhood, perhaps (if allowed to me to attain it),
he may be the consolation of my age. His poetry is the Book of
Life. Without canting, and yet without neglecting religion, he has
assembled all that a good and great man can gather together of
moral wisdom cloathed in consummate beauty. Sir William Temple
observes, ' that of all the numbers of mankind that live within the
compass of a thousand years, for one man that is born capable of
making a great poet, there may be a thousand born capable of making
as great generals and ministers of state as any in story.' 3 Here is
a statesman's opinion of poetry : it is honourable to him, and to
the art. Such a ' poet of a thousand years ' was Pope. A thousand
years will roll away before such another can be hoped for in our
literature. But it can -want them — he himself is a literature.
" One word upon his so brutally abused translation of Homer.
' Dr. Clarke, whose critical exactness is well known, has not been
able to point out above three or four mistakes in the sense through
the whole Iliad. The real faults of the translation are of a different
kind.' So says Warton, himself a scholar. It appears by this,
I. " Burial of Sir John Moore."
•2.. "His voice, even in common discourse, was so naturally
musical, that he was called The Little Nightingale" (Ruffhead's
Life of Pope,?. 476).
3. Sir W. Temple, Of 'Poetry , ed. 1770, vol. iii. p. 404.
III.] SHABBY-GENTEEL POETS. 591
then, that he avoided the chief fault of a translator. As to its other
faults, they consist in his having made a beautiful English poem of
a sublime Greek one. It will always hold. Cowper and all the
rest of the blank pretenders may do their best and their worst : they
will never wrench Pope from the hands of a single reader of sense
and feeling.
"The grand distinction of the under forms of the new school
of poets is their vulgarity. By this I do not mean that they are
coarse, but 'shabby-genteel,' as it is termed. A man may be coarse
and yet not vulgar^ and the reverse. Burns is often coarse, but
never vulgar. Chatterton is never vulgar, nor Wordsworth, nor
the higher of the Lake school, though they treat of low life in all
its branches. It is in their finery that the new under school are
most vulgar, and they may be known by this at once ; as what we
called at Harrow ' a Sunday blood ' might be easily distinguished
from a gentleman, although his cloathes might be the better cut,
and his boots the best blackened, of the two : — probably because
he made the one, or cleaned the other, with his own hands.
" In the present case, I speak of writing, not of persons. Of
the latter I know nothing ; of the former, I judge as it is found.
Of my friend Hunt, I have already said, that he is any thing but
vulgar in his manners ; and of his disciples, therefore, I will not
judge of their manners from their verses. They may be honourable
and gentlemanly men, for what I know ; but the latter quality is
studiously excluded from their publications. They remind me of
Mr. Smith and the Miss Broughtons at the Hampstead Assembly,
in Evelina. In these things (in private life, at least,) I pretend to
some small experience ; because, in the course of my youth, I have
seen a little of all sorts of society, from the Christian prince and the
Mussulman sultan and pacha, and the higher ranks of their countries,
down to the London boxer, the 'flash and the swell? the Spanish
muleteer, the wandering Turkish dervise, the Scotch Highlander,
and the Albanian robber ; — to say nothing of the curious varieties
of Italian social life. Far be it from me to presume that there ever
was, or can be, such a thing as an aristocracy of poets ; but there is
a nobility of thought and of style, open to all stations, and derived
partly from talent, and partly from education, — which is to be
found in Shakespeare, and Pope, and Burns, no less than in Dante
and Alfieri, but which is nowhere to be perceived in the mock birds
and bards of Mr. Hunt's little chorus. If I were asked to define
what this gentlemanliness is, 1 should say that it is only to be
defined by examples — of those who have it, and those who have it
not. In life, I should say that most military men have it, and few
naval ; — that several men of rank have it, and few lawyers ; — that
it is more frequent among authors than divines (when they are not
pedants) ; that/ifwczVzf-masters have more of it than dancing-masters,
and singers than players ; and that (if it be not an Irishism to say
so) it is far more generally diffused among women than among men.
In poetry, as well as writing in general, it will never make entirely
a poet or a poem ; but neither poet nor poem will ever be good for
any thing without it. It is the salt of society, and the seasoning of
592 CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BYRON AND BOWLES, [ill.
composition. Vulgarity is far worse than downright blackguardism ;
for the latter comprehends wit, humour, and strong sense at times ;
while the former is a sad abortive attempt at all things, ' signifying
nothing.' It does not depend upon low themes, or even low
language, for Fielding revels in both ; — but is he ever vulgar t No.
You see the man of education, the gentleman, and the scholar,
sporting with his subject, — its master, not its slave. Your vulgar
writer is always most vulgar the higher his subject, as the man who
showed the menagerie at Pidcock's was wont to say, — ' This, gentle-
men, is the eagle of the sun, from Archangel, in Russia ; the otterer
it is the igherer he flies.' But to the proof. It is a thing to be felt
more than explained. Let any man take up a volume of Mr. Hunt's
subordinate writers, read (if possible) a couple of pages, and pro-
nounce for himself, if they contain not the kind of writing which
may be likened to ' shabby-genteel ' in actual life. When he has
done this, let him take up Pope ; and when he has laid him down,
take up the cockneys again — if he can."
IV.]
A DEFENCE OF CAIN. 593
APPENDIX IV.
THOMAS MULOCK'S LINES TO BYRON.
(See p. 131, note 3.)
"LORD BYRON.
"To THE EDITOR OF THE MORNING POST.
" SIR, — Whenever, to use an official phrase, 'a vacancy shall
occur ' in your crowded columns, I will thank you to give a place
to the lines which I send you. It will be gathered from them, that
I, who hold up Christianity somewhat higher than most of my
cotemporaries, do not join in the clamour now raging against Lord
BYRON, and the alleged impiety of his acknowledged works. I do
not perceive a single blasphemy, in Cain for example, the ascription
of which to the talking transgressors introduced in the so styled
Mystery, is not perfectly justified by the authority of Holy Writ.
Lord BYRON has given expression to the exceeding sinfulnas of sin ;
and where he errs, the error consists in his attributing a softened
sentiment of half-repentance to the first remorseless murderer. —
Gen. iv. 9.
" I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
"T. M.
"LINES TO LORD BYRON
ON NOTICING NUMEROUS PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE WROUGHT
INTO HIS UNRIVALLED POETRY.
"BY THOMAS MULOCK.
" Bard of the broken heart ! whose sovereign skill
Hath swept the chords that waken inmost woe !
Thou tuneful tracer of the streams that flow
In fitful tides from Nature's fount of ill,
Making life leprous — thence such plagues distil !
Thou who hast known, what all would madly know,
Pleasure's fierce throb, and Fame's exulting glow —
The cheating joys which through our being thrill,
Till HE who tames the tempest, saith ' Be still.'
VOL. V. 2 Q
594
THOMAS MULOCK'S LINES TO BYRON.
[IV.
Thou annalist of agonies that find
Their haunt, and their historian in the mind
Recording its own wretchedness — which seeks
A respite from the restlessness that wreaks
Such vengeance on the sinner — for within
Thought's desecrated temple, all is sin !
Come, eloquent expounder of the pangs
Which, in their wild succession, fix their fangs
In thy bared breast, and ever-burning brain —
Disclose thyself, dark mourner, in a strain
Not all despairing. — Say, if light divine
Dawn on thy soul, and lighten to thy view
That holy page where endlessly shall shine
The Godhead's glory ? If a ray of true
Intelligence, shall win thee to the mine
Of Gospel treasure — all that man e'er knew
Of bliss and wisdom, BYRON, will be thine ! "
AN INTERCEPTED ADDRESS. 595
APPENDIX V,
BYRON'S ADDRESS TO THE NEAPOLITAN
INSURGENTS.
(See p. 150, note 2.)
A DRAFT of the following Address, in Byron's own hand-
writing, was found among his papers. He is supposed to
have entrusted it to a professed agent of the Constitutional
Government of Naples, who had waited upon him secretly at
Ravenna, and, under the pretence of having been waylaid
and robbed, induced him to supply money for his return.
The man turned out afterwards to have been a spy ; and the
Address, if confided to him, fell most probably into the hands
of the Pontifical Government.
" Un Inglese amico della libertA avendo sentito che i Napolitani
permettono anche agli stranieri di contribuire alia buona causa,
bramerebbe Ponore di vedere accettata la sua offerta di mille luigi,
la quale egli azzarda di fare. Gia testimonio oculare non molto fa
della tirannia dei Barbari negli stati da loro occupati nelP Italia,
egli vede con tutto 1'entusiasmo di un uomo ben nato la generosa
determinazione dei Napolitani per confermare la loro bene acquistata
indipendenza. Membro della Camera dei Pari della nazione Inglese
egli sarebbe un traditore ai principii che hanno posto sul trono la
famiglia regnante d'Inghilterra se non riconoscesse la bella lezione
di bel nuovo data ai popoli ed ai Re. L' offerta che egli brama di
presentare e poca in se stessa, come bisogna che sia sempre quella
di un individuo ad una nazione, ma egli spera che non sara 1'ultima
dalla parte dei suoi compatriotti. La sua lontananza dalle fron-
tiere, e il sentimento della sua poca capacita personale di contri-
buire efficacimente a servire la nazione gl' impedisce di proporsi
come degno della piu piccola commissione che domanda dell'
esperienza e del talento. Ma, se come semplice volontario la sua
presenza non fosse un incomodo a quello che 1'accetasse egli riparebbe
a qualunque luogo indicate dal Governo Napolitano, per ubbidire
agli ordini e participare ai pericoli del suo superiore, senza avere
altri motivi che quello di dividere il destine di una brava nazione
596 ADDRESS TO THE NEAPOLITAN INSURGENTS. [v.
resistendo alia se dicente Santa Allianza la quale aggiunge 1'ippo-
crisia al despotismo."
The following is Moore's translation (Life, p. 468) : —
"An Englishman, a friend to liberty, having understood that the
Neapolitans permit even foreigners to contribute to the good cause,
is desirous that they should do him the honour of accepting a thou-
sand louis, which he takes the liberty of offering. Having already,
not long since, been an ocular witness of the despotism of the
Barbarians in the States occupied by them in Italy, he sees, with
the enthusiasm natural to a cultivated man, the generous determina-
tion of the Neapolitans to assert their well-won independence. As
a member of the English House of Peers, he would be a traitor to
the principles which placed the reigning family of England on the
throne, if he were not grateful for the noble lesson so lately given
both to people and to kings. The offer which he desires to make
is small in itself, as must always be that presented from an in-
dividual to a nation ; but he trusts that it will not be the last they
will receive from his countrymen. His distance from the frontier,
and the feeling of his personal incapacity to contribute efficaciously
to the service of the nation, prevents him from proposing himself as
worthy of the lowest commission, for which experience and talent
might be requisite. But if, as a mere volunteer, his presence were
not a burden to whomsoever he might serve under, he would repair
to whatever place the Neapolitan Government might point out,
there to obey the orders and participate in the dangers of his com-
manding officer, without any other motive than that of sharing the
destiny of a brave nation, defending itself against the self-called
Holy Alliance, which but combines the vice of hypocrisy with
despotism."
vi.] BACON'S INACCURACY. 597
APPENDIX VI.
BACON'S APOPHTHEGMS.
(See p. 153, note 3, and p. 154, note 2.)
ON the last line of stanza cxlvii. of Canto V. of Don Juan,
Byron has the following note : " It may not be unworthy of
" remark, that Bacon, in his essay on ' Empire,' hints that
" Solyman was the last of his line ; on what authority, I
" know not. These are his words : ' The destruction of
" Mustapha was so fatal to Solyman's line, as the succession
" of the Turks from Solyman, until this day, is suspected to
" be untrue, and of strange blood ; for that Solyman the
" Second was thought to be supposititious.' But Bacon, in
" his historical authorities, is often inaccurate. I could give
" half-a-dozen instances from his apophthegms only," etc.,
etc. The instances are those which follow.
BACON'S APOPHTHEGMS. OBSERVATIONS.
"Michael Angelo, the fa- "This was not the portrait
mous painter, painting in the of a cardinal, but of the pope's
pope's chapel the portraiture of master of the ceremonies.
hell and damned souls, made
one of the damned souls so like
a cardinal that was his enemy,
as everybody at first sight knew
it ; whereupon the cardinal
complained to Pope Clement,
humbly praying it might be
defaced. The pope said to him,
Why, you know very well I
have power to deliver a soul out
of purgatory, but not out of
hell.
598
BACON'S APOPHTHEGMS.
[VI.
155-
" Alexander, after the battle
of Granicum, had very great
offers made him by Darius.
Consulting with his captains
concerning them, Parmenio said,
Sure, I would accept of these
offers, if I were as Alexander.
Alexander answered, So would
I, if I were as Parmenio.
158-
" Antigonus, when it was
told him that the enemy had
such volleys of arrows, that they
did hide the sun, said, That
falls out well, for it is hot
weather, and so we shall fight
in the shade.
162.
" There was a philosopher
that disputed with Adrian the
Emperor, and did it but weakly.
One of his friends that stood by,
afterwards said unto him, Me-
thinks you were not like your-
self last day, in argument with
the Emperor : I could have
answered better myself. Why,
said the philosopher, would you
have me contend with him that
commands thirty legions ?
164.
"There was one that found
a great mass of money digged
under ground in his grandfather's
house, and being somewhat
doubtful of the case, signified it
to the emperor that he had
found such treasure. The em-
peror made a rescript thus :
Use it. He writ back again
that the sum was greater than
his state or condition could use.
The emperor writ a new rescript,
thus : Abuse it.
" It was after the battle of
Issus, and during the siege of
Tyre, and not immediately after
the passage of the Granicus,
that this is said to have occurred.
" This was not said by An-
tigonus, but by a Spartan, pre-
viously to the battle of Ther-
mopylae.
"This happened under Au-
gustus Csesar, and not during
the reign of Adrian.
' ' This happened to the father
of Herodes Atticus, and the
answer was made by the Em-
peror Nerva, who deserved that
his name should have been
stated by the 'greatest — wisest
— meanest of mankind.'
VI.]
VOLTAIRE'S SUPERFICIALITY.
599
178.
" One of the seven was
wont to say, that laws were like
cobwebs : where the small flies
were caught, and the great
brake through.
209.
" An orator of Athens said
to Demosthenes, The Athenians
will kill you if they wax mad.
Demosthenes replied, And they
will kill you, if they be in good
sense.
221.
"There was a philosopher
about Tiberius that, looking
into the nature of Caius, said of
him, That he was mire mingled
with blood.
97-
" There was a king of Hun-
gary took a bishop in battle,
and kept him prisoner ; where-
upon the pope writ a monitory
to him, for that he bad broken
the privilege of holy church,
and taken his son : the king
sent an embassage to him, and
sent withal the armour wherein
the bishop was taken, and this
only in writing — Vide num hcec
sit vestis jilii tuit Know now
whether this be thy son's coat ?
267.
" Demetrius, King of Mace-
don, had a petition offered him
divers times by an old woman,
and answered he had no leisure ;
whereupon the woman said
aloud, Why then give over to
be king."
1 ' This was said by Anachar-
sis the Scythian, and not by a
Greek.
"This was not said by De-
mosthenes but to Demosthenes
by Phocion.
" This was not said of Caius
(Caligula, I presume, is in-
tended by Cams,) but of Ti~
bmus himself.
" This reply was not made by
a king of Hungary, but sent by
Richard the first, Coeur de Lion,
of Engknd to the Pope, with
the breastplate of the bishop of
Beauvais.
" This did not happen to De-
metrius, but to Philip King of
Macedon."
VOLTAIRE.
"Having stated that Bacon was frequently incorrect in his
citations from history, I have thought it necessary in what regards
6oo BACON'S APOPHTHEGMS. [vi.
so great a name (however trifling, ) to support the assertion by such
facts as more immediately occur to me. They are but trifles, and
yet for such trifles a schoolboy would be whipped (if still in the
fourth form) ; — and Voltaire for half a dozen similar errors has been
treated as a superficial writer, notwithstanding the testimony of the
learned Wart on : — ' Voltaire, a writer of much deeper research than
is imagined, and the first who has displayed the literature and
customs of the dark ages with any degree of penetration and com-
prehension.' For another distinguished testimony to Voltaire's
merits in literary research, see also Lord Holland's excellent Ac-
count of the Life and Writings of Lope de Vega, vol. i. p. 215,
edition of 1817.
"Voltaire has even been termed 'a shallow fellow,' by some of
the same school who called Dryden's Ode ' a drunken song ; ' — a
school (as it is called, I presume, from their education being still
incomplete) the whole of whose filthy trash of Epics, Excursions,
etc., etc., etc., is not worth the two words in Za'ire, ' Vous pleurezj
or a single speech of Tancred : — a school, the apostate lives of whose
renegadoes, with their tea-drinking neutrality of morals, and their
convenient treachery in politics — in the record of their accumulated
pretences to virtue can produce no actions (were all their good
deeds drawn up in array) to equal or approach the sole defence of
the family of Galas, by that great and unequalled genius — the
universal Voltaire.
" I have ventured to remark on these little inaccuracies of ' the
greatest genius that England or perhaps any other country ever
produced,'1 merely to show our national injustice in condemning
generally, the greatest genius of France for such inadvertencies as
these, of which the highest of England has been no less guilty.
Query, was Bacon a greater intellect than Newton ? "
I. Pope, in Spence's Anecdotes, p. 158, Malone's edition.
VII.] ACROSS THE HELLESPONT. 6oi
APPENDIX VII.
REPLY OF WILLIAM TURNER TO BYRON'S
LETTER.
(See pp. 246-251.)
" EIGHT months after the publication of my ' Tour in the Levant,'
there appeared in the London Magazine, and subsequently in most
of the newspapers, a letter from the late Lord Byron to Mr. Murray.
" I naturally felt anxious at the time to meet a charge of error
brought against me in so direct a manner : but I thought, and
friends whom I consulted at the time thought with me, that I had
better wait for a more favourable opportunity than that afforded by
the newspapers of vindicating my opinion, which even so distin-
guished an authority as the letter of Lord Byron left unshaken, and
which, I will venture to add, remains unshaken still.
"I must ever deplore that I resisted my first impulse to reply
immediately. The hand of Death has snatched Lord Byron from
his kingdom of literature and poetry, and I can only guard myself
from the illiberal imputation of attacking the mighty dead, whose
living talent I should have trembled to encounter, by scrupulously
confining myself to such facts and illustrations as are strictly neces-
sary to save me from the charges of error, misrepresentation, and
presumptuousness, of which every writer must wish to prove himself
undeserving.
"Lord Byron began by stating, 'The tide was not in our
favour ; ' and added, ' neither I nor any person on board the frigate
had any notion of a difference of the current on the Asiatic side ;
I never heard of it till this moment.' His Lordship had probably
forgotten that Strabo distinctly describes the difference in the
following words : —
" ' Alb Kal fvirerfffTfpov IK TTJS 'Sijcrrov $ta(povffiirapa\-
\a£d/j.evoi /jLiKpbv firl rbv TTJS 'Hpovs irvpyov, KaKfWff a<piet>res TO
Tr\o?a (rv/jLirpdrrovros rov pov irpbs r^v irtpaloxriv. Tots
8' «'£ 'AftvSou TTtpaiovfifvois trapa\\aKTtov \<rr\v eis ravavrla, O/CTCO irov
ffrafttovi fTrl irvpyov riva /car' avrtKpu TTJS ^riffrov, firejra Siaipfiv
ir\d.yiov, Kal /A)) T«\«WS I \ovffiv ivavriov T&V povv.' — ' Ideoque
facilius a Sesto, trajiciunt paululum deflexa navigatione ad Herus
turrim, atque inde navigia dimittentes adjuvante etiam fiuxu ira-
jectum. Qui ab Abydo trajiciunt, in contrariam 'flectunt partem
602 TURNER'S REPLY TO BYRON'S LETTER. [vn.
ad octo stadia ad turrim quandam e regione Sesti : hinc oblique
trajiciunt, non prorsus contrario fluxu.' l
"Here it is clearly asserted, that the current assists the crossing
from Sestos, and the words ta.<pitvrfs TO. irXoTa,' — * navigia dimit-
tentes,' — ' letting the vessels go of themselves? prove how considerable
the assistance of the current was; while the words 'IT \dyiov,' —
' oblique? and ' Te\«'«s,' — 'prorszisj show distinctly that those who
crossed from Abydos were obliged to do so in an oblique direction,
or they would have the current entirely against them.
"From this ancient authority, which, I own, appears to me
unanswerable, let us turn to the moderns. Baron de Tott, who,
having been for some time resident on the spot, employed as an
engineer in the construction of batteries, must be supposed well
cognisant of the subject, has expressed himself as follows : —
" ' La surabondance des eaux que la Mer Noire re9oit, et qu'elle
ne peut evaporer, versee dans la Mediterranee par le Bosphore de
Thrace et La Propontide, forme aux Dardanelles des courans si
violens, que souvent les batimens, toutes voiles dehors, ont peine a
les vaincre. Les pilotes doivent encore observer, lorsque le vent
suffit, de diriger leur route de maniere a presenter le moins de
resistance possible a 1'effort des eaux. On sent que cette etude a
pour base la direction des courans, qui, renvoyts (Pune pointe d.
Fautre, forment des obstacles a la navigation, et feroient courir les
plus grands risques si 1'on negligeoit ces connoissances hydrogra-
phiques.' — Mbnoires de Tott, 3"" par -tie.
" To the above citations, I will add the opinion of Tournefort,
who, in his description of the strait, expresses with ridicule his
disbelief -of the truth of Leander's exploit ; and to show that the
latest travellers agree with the earlier, I will conclude my quota-
tion with a statement of Mr. Madden, who is just returned from the
spot. ' It was from the European side Lord Byron swam -with
the current, which runs about four miles an hour. But I believe
he would have found it totally impracticable to have crossed from
Abydos to Europe.' — Madderfs Travels, vol. i.
"There are two other observations in Lord Byron's letter on
which I feel it necessary to remark.
" ' Mr. Turner says, " Whatever is thrown into the stream on
this part of the European bank must arrive at the Asiatic shore."
This is so far from being the case, that it must arrive in the Archi-
pelago, if left to the current, although a strong wind from the
Asiatic 2 side might have such an effect occasionally.'
1. Strabo, bk. xiii., Oxford edition.
2. "This is evidently a mistake of the writer or printer. His
Lordship must here have meant a strong wind from the European
side, as no wind from the Asiatic side could have the effect of
driving an object to the Asiatic shore."
" I think it right to remark, that it is Mr. Turner himself who has
here originated the inaccuracy of which he accuses others ; the
words used by Lord Byron being, not as Mr. Turner says, ' from
the Asiatic side,' but ' in the Asiatic direction ' " (Moore).
vii.] LEANDER'S EXPLOIT DOUBTED. 603
" Here Lord Byron is right, and I have no hesitation in con-
fessing that I was wrong. But I was wrong only in the letter of
my remark, not in the spirit of it. Any thing thrown into the
stream on the European bank would be swept into the Archipelago,
because, after arriving so near the Asiatic shore as to be almost, if
not quite, within a man's depth, it would be again floated off from
the coast by the current that is dashed from the Asiatic promontory.
But i this would not affect a swimmer, who, being so near the land,
would of course, if he could not actually walk to it, reach it by a
slight effort.
"Lord Byron adds, in his P.S., 'The strait is, however, not
extraordinarily wide, even where it broadens above and below the
forts.' From this statement I must venture to express my dissent,
with diffidence indeed, but with diffidence diminished by the ease
with which the fact may be established. The strait is widened so
considerably above the forts by the Bay of Maytos, and the bay
opposite to it on the Asiatic coast, that the distance to be passed
by a swimmer in crossing higher up would be, in my poor judgment,
too great for any one to accomplish from Asia to Europe, having
such a current to stem.
" I conclude by expressing it as my humble opinion that no one
is bound to believe in the possibility of Leander's exploit, till the
passage has been performed by a swimmer, at least from Asia to
Europe. The sceptic is even entitled to exact, as the condition
of his belief, that the strait be crossed, as Leander crossed it, both
ways within at most fourteen hours.
"W. TURNER."
604 THE LATE GEORGE RUSSELL. [vill.
APPENDIX VIII.
SOME ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE AND WRITINGS
OF THE LATE GEORGE RUSSELL OF A.
BY HENRY FERGUSON.
(See p. 266, note i.)
IT is possible that this fragment may have been suggested
by the death of John Scott, who had been Byron's school-
fellow at Aberdeen. But no external evidence exists to
support this conjecture. Scott was born in 1783.
" SOME ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE AND WRITINGS
OF THE LATE GEORGE RUSSELL OF A.
BY
HENRY FERGUSON.
"Dec? Is.1 (ora1.1) 1821.
"In the present age of innumerable authors, I know not how
far one, who never aspired to that title in his lifetime, may be
permitted to obtrude a name upon the public, which as yet merely
forms part of a brief and obscure epitaph. Indeed, such an attempt
in its behalf on the part of surviving friendship may give rise to
suspicions (from the total ignorance of the World with the name
of him who has lately left it), that the subject of the following
pages has not ceased to exist, but that he has never existed at all.
The poems of the celebrated Thomas Little, and the more facetious
remains of Ensign Odoherty might sanction such a notion, while
the relics of Henry Kirke White, and other young men,
" ' Whose sleepless souls have perished ere their prime,'
show that many Spirits pass early, and almost unknown, from the
Earth, whose longer Life might have extorted the gratitude of
Mankind, from which their blighted youth must now be content
to implore a transient recollection.
"Perhaps it is imprudent in surviving friends to attempt these
things ; but on such points it is difficult to reason. The worst
result of a dull book to the author can be but oblivion ; and, when
VIII.] THE GRAVE OF A DEAD FRIEND. 605
he himself is where 'nothing can touch him further,' those who
loved him are apt to think (or dream) that his thoughts may claim
something of the sympathy, which even the ashes of a stranger
obtain from all men in their better moods of mind. The costly
monument, like the simple stone — the voluminous biography, as
the brief notice — are all to be traced upon the whole to our better
feelings. Both, but especially the former, have been made subjects
of contempt and reproach, as oftentimes exhibiting falsehood for
the sake of ostentation, or the exaggeration of a blind and selfish
sorrow. But surely that Ostentation, which labours for the dead,
is the most harmless of our vices : it cannot hurt them — it can injure
no one but ourselves, and that but slightly ; whereas a real, however
blind, regard for the departed, if not a virtue, at least may tend to
virtue. I know not whether that indefinable veneration for that,
which was yesterday with us and to-day is no longer by our side,
does not induce a greater desire to do well, than the approbation,
even though it should swell to applause, of the living. Sure I am
that the Grave of a dead friend, at any distance of time, has deeper
eloquence than the Orator or the preacher. I have walked away
from the Graves of Fox, Pitt, and Grattan (and I had heard and
admired them all), with a feeling deeper than their words ever
impressed, higher than their words could express ; and, of course,
I shall not attempt to give it utterance in mine.
' ' But I must return to my purpose, which is to give an outline
of the life and writings of a dead friend, who, I think, perhaps
erroneously, deserved that part of what he has written should
survive him.
"George Russell was born in the year 1791, in the town of
A in Scotland, of a respectable family of some antiquity, but
1 have reason to believe in no respect related to their more illus-
trious namesakes of England. Being a second son, he was intended
for the Sea service — a destination which was afterwards changed
for family reasons. My acquaintance with him began at the Gram-
mar School of A. , where we both received our education. As his
Senior I was two classes above him, being in the third when he
entered the first — then under the direction of Mr. L. My own
family being intimate with his, he was naturally recommended to
my notice as the Senior boy. I mention these little particulars
' en passant,' to account for the commencement of the interest,
which I took in his welfare, and retain for his memory.
"His progress in his classical studies was fair, but not remark-
able : he was like most other boys — idle, when he could contrive
to be so without punishment, and sometimes at the head of his
class, and sometimes in the lowest faction of it; for in Scotland,
or at least in this part of it, it was then the custom (as it may still
be) to take places according to immediate merit, so that every lesson
is a renewed contest, and a boy must have singular perseverance
as well as powers to remain long in the same station.
"The word 'faction' may be only intelligible to a Southern
reader in its newspaper sense, viz. the appellation given to every
party which is not your own ; but in our Scotch Schools it has a
606 THE LATE GEORGE RUSSELL. [vill.
less invidious meaning, being simply the bench which contains a
certain number of boys. Every class may contain twenty, more or
less, of these ' factions ' ; whereas a Nation can hardly sustain two
in any comfort.
" Through all the varieties of these did George Russell wind
his way, not without some application of the ' taws,' a word as well
as instrument of no pleasing recollection. Here, I again doubt
that I must recur to interpretation for the benefit of the ' Southron,'
although with more difficulty than in the former instance.
"The 'taws,' then, is supposed to answer all the purposes of
the English ' Rod,' although very different, and, I think, more
formidable in its appearance. It is composed of leather, of greater
or less thickness according to the disposition of the pastor and
master. This long strap (for such it is) is divided at the end into
several smaller straps or tails, of greater or less number according
to the humour of the preceptor already referred to. The upper
part contains a hole, through which is past the finger of the Exerci-
tator, that it may not slip during the operation. By a timely and
not infrequent application of this instrument to the hands, and else-
where, of our Scottish youth, may be fairly attributed that general
superiority in the Latin tongue over our Neighbours, which, whether
admitted or not, should never cease to be claimed by all true
lovers of Truth as well as of their Country. Having had, also, the
advantage of dividing my own education between Scotland and
England, my opportunities of comparison between the two great
instruments of discipline have not been neglected, my personal
experiences having led to a frequent acquaintance and lively recol-
lection of -both. I shall therefore say, that, if I had to go to School
again, my personal preference would be given to the Rod of the
Saxon ; but if I had children to place there, I should remit them
to the domain and dominion of the ' Taws ' — not only because it is
my native land, and that the education is fifty times cheaper ; but
from a firm conviction, that, by that Instrument, more Latin is
administered in a less time.
" At a very early period of his life, my deceased friend began
to manifest a strong poetical propensity. I do not mean by this,
in the vulgar way of making verses, or indeed of reading them —
for, excepting Pope's Homer and blind Harry's William Wallace,
together with Chevy Chace, Gil Morice, and some warlike Scottish
Ballads, he betrayed an utter detestation of all poesy whatsoever.
But, nevertheless, the observer of the human Mind might discover
in his a natural poetical bias. He had an aversion from learning
his letters, a partiality for Gingerbread, for kicking shins when he
was whipt, and for not telling the truth when it was inconvenient,
which evinced a determined spirit and a lively imagination.
"After passing through the usual quantum of infantine woes
and pleasures ; having enjoyed his holidays, and toiled through his
tasks ; having fought a reasonable number of battles, and got the
better of a considerable quantity of black eyes, he was sent to
College, which is done much earlier in Caledonia than in the
Southern Country.
VIII.] SIMPLE COINCIDENCE. 607
"Amidst his feats of youthful emprize, I cannot recollect that
he was addicted to robbing of Orchards ; but this circumstance may
possibly be attributed rather to a Scarcity of the fruit than a want
of the Propensity. Indeed I had occasion to observe, that, in
general, the Organ of Covetiveness was considerably developed in
my friend, although, as far as my experience enabled me to decide,
it seemed rather to be exhibited in his hands than in his head. His
very first indication of a strong poetical bias was displayed in the
Abstraction of a ' Gradus ad Parnassum ' belonging to myself, with
the aid of which he composed his first copy of Nonsense Verses.
On my manifesting an inclination to reclaim my property, he
knocked me down with it ; but, as I was the Senior and the
Stronger, this piece of superfluous valour on his part was severely
retaliated by a considerable beating. But the Castigation was not
attended by any permanent effect ; for, the very next week, he
conveyed ('the Wise convey it call'), and converted to his poetical
purposes a copy (mine also) of George Buchanan's Latin Psalms ;
and having thus become master of the book, he conceived naturally
that he was no less proprietor of the author, one of whose Psalms
he shortly after showed up as a Version of his own. Upon being
charged with this, he denied the plagiarism, and made out, with
considerable plausibility, a claim of simple coincidence, which left
a very doubtful title of originality to George Buchanan."
END OF VOL. V.
LONDON I PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
PR
-4351
G5
1898
v.12
Byron, George Gordon Noe'l
Byron, 6th baron
Works A new, rev. and
enl . ed •
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