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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And
+Journals, Vol. 5, by (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5
+
+Author: (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
+
+Editor: Thomas Moore
+
+Release Date: August 27, 2005 [EBook #16609]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WRITINGS OF LORD BYRON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Taavi Kalju and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+LIFE
+
+OF
+
+LORD BYRON:
+
+WITH HIS LETTERS AND JOURNALS.
+
+BY THOMAS MOORE, ESQ.
+
+IN SIX VOLUMES.--VOL. V.
+
+NEW EDITION.
+
+
+LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 1854.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF VOL. V.
+
+LETTERS AND JOURNALS OF LORD BYRON, WITH NOTICES OF HIS LIFE, from
+October, 1820, to November, 1822.
+
+
+
+
+NOTICES
+
+OF THE
+
+LIFE OF LORD BYRON.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER 394. TO MR. 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 _Gail_, 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 received the French of
+     mine. Only think of being _traduced_ 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? 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, it seems, whom they have
+     christened 'Dieu-donné;'--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 'Little's Poems' or
+     'Don Juan.' If you don't write soon, I will 'make you a speech.'
+     Yours," &c.
+
+[Footnote 1: I had mistaken the name of the lady he enquired 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.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 395. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, 8bre 25°, 1820.
+
+     "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 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,
+     fourthly, 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 he gives of her admirers (as unfortunate) at the close of
+     'The Abbot.'
+
+     "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
+     O'Trigger's, most of whom are to be found in the old Scotch
+     Chronicles, Spalding, &c. 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.
+
+     "Yours.
+
+     "You had better not publish Blackwood and the Roberts' prose,
+     except what regards Pope;--you have let the time slip by."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Pamphlet in answer to Blackwood's Magazine, here mentioned, was
+occasioned by an article in that work, entitled "Remarks on Don Juan,"
+and though put to press by Mr. Murray, was never published. The writer
+in the Magazine having, in reference to certain passages in Don Juan,
+taken occasion to pass some severe strictures on the author's
+matrimonial conduct, Lord Byron, in his reply, enters at some length
+into that painful subject; and the following extracts from his
+defence,--if defence it can be called, where there has never yet been
+any definite charge,--will be perused with strong interest:--
+
+     "My learned brother proceeds to observe, that 'it is in vain for
+     Lord B. to attempt in any way to justify his own behaviour in that
+     affair: and now that he has so _openly_ and _audaciously_ invited
+     enquiry and reproach, we do not see any good reason why he should
+     not be plainly told so by the voice of his countrymen.' How far the
+     'openness' of an anonymous poem, and the 'audacity' of an imaginary
+     character, which the writer supposes to be meant for Lady B. may be
+     deemed to merit this formidable denunciation from their 'most sweet
+     voices,' I neither know nor care; but when he tells me that I
+     cannot 'in any way _justify_ my own behaviour in that affair,' I
+     acquiesce, because no man can '_justify_' himself until he knows of
+     what he is accused; and I have never had--and, God knows, my whole
+     desire has ever been to obtain it--any specific charge, in a
+     tangible shape, submitted to me by the adversary, nor by others,
+     unless the atrocities of public rumour and the mysterious silence
+     of the lady's legal advisers may be deemed such.[2] But is not the
+     writer content with what has been already said and done? Has not
+     'the general voice of his countrymen' long ago pronounced upon the
+     subject--sentence without trial, and condemnation without a
+     charge? Have I not been exiled by ostracism, except that the shells
+     which proscribed me were anonymous? Is the writer ignorant of the
+     public opinion and the public conduct upon that occasion? If he is,
+     I am not: the public will forget both long before I shall cease to
+     remember either.
+
+     "The man who is exiled by a faction has the consolation of thinking
+     that he is a martyr; he is upheld by hope and the dignity of his
+     cause, real or imaginary: he who withdraws from the pressure of
+     debt may indulge in the thought that time and prudence will
+     retrieve his circumstances: he who is condemned by the law has a
+     term to his banishment, or a dream of its abbreviation; or, it may
+     be, the knowledge or the belief of some injustice of the law or of
+     its administration in his own particular: but he who is outlawed by
+     general opinion, without the intervention of hostile politics,
+     illegal judgment, or embarrassed circumstances, whether he be
+     innocent or guilty, must undergo all the bitterness of exile,
+     without hope, without pride, without alleviation. This case was
+     mine. Upon what grounds the public founded their opinion, I am not
+     aware; but it was general, and it was decisive. Of me or of mine
+     they knew little, except that I had written what is called poetry,
+     was a nobleman, had married, became a father, and was involved in
+     differences with my wife and her relatives, no one knew why,
+     because the persons complaining refused to state their grievances.
+     The fashionable world was divided into parties, mine consisting of
+     a very small minority; the reasonable world was naturally on the
+     stronger side, which happened to be the lady's, as was most proper
+     and polite. The press was active and scurrilous; and such was the
+     rage of the day, that the unfortunate publication of two copies of
+     verses rather complimentary than otherwise to the subjects, of
+     both, was tortured into a species of crime, or constructive petty
+     treason. I was accused of every monstrous vice by public rumour and
+     private rancour: my name, which had been a knightly or a noble one
+     since my fathers helped to conquer the kingdom for William the
+     Norman, was tainted. I felt that, if what was whispered, and
+     muttered, and murmured, was true, I was unfit for England; if
+     false, England was unfit for me. I withdrew: but this was not
+     enough. In other countries, in Switzerland, in the shadow of the
+     Alps, and by the blue depth of the lakes, I was pursued and
+     breathed upon by the same blight. I crossed the mountains, but it
+     was the same; so I went a little farther, and settled myself by the
+     waves of the Adriatic, like the stag at bay, who betakes him to the
+     waters.
+
+     "If I may judge by the statements of the few friends who gathered
+     round me, the outcry of the period to which I allude was beyond all
+     precedent, all parallel, even in those cases where political
+     motives have sharpened slander and doubled enmity. I was advised
+     not to go to the theatres, lest I should be hissed, nor to my duty
+     in parliament, lest I should be insulted by the way; even on the
+     day of my departure, my most intimate friend told me afterwards
+     that he was under apprehensions of violence from the people who
+     might be assembled at the door of the carriage. However, I was not
+     deterred by these counsels from seeing Kean in his best characters,
+     nor from voting according to my principles; and, with regard to the
+     third and last apprehensions of my friends, I could not share in
+     them, not being made acquainted with their extent till some time
+     after I had crossed the Channel. Even if I had been so, I am not of
+     a nature to be much affected by men's anger, though I may feel hurt
+     by their aversion. Against all individual outrage, I could protect
+     or redress myself; and against that of a crowd, I should probably
+     have been enabled to defend myself, with the assistance of others,
+     as has been done on similar occasions.
+
+     "I retired from the country, perceiving that I was the object of
+     general obloquy; I did not indeed imagine, like Jean Jacques
+     Rousseau, that all mankind was in a conspiracy against me, though I
+     had perhaps as good grounds for such a chimera as ever he had; but
+     I perceived that I had to a great extent become personally
+     obnoxious in England, perhaps through my own fault, but the fact
+     was indisputable; the public in general would hardly have been so
+     much excited against a more popular character, without at least an
+     accusation or a charge of some kind actually expressed or
+     substantiated; for I can hardly conceive that the common and
+     every-day occurrence of a separation between man and wife could in
+     itself produce so great a ferment. I shall say nothing of the usual
+     complaints of 'being prejudged,' 'condemned unheard,' 'unfairness,'
+     'partiality,' and so forth, the usual changes rung by parties who
+     have had, or are to have, a trial; but I was a little surprised to
+     find myself condemned without being favoured with the act of
+     accusation, and to perceive in the absence of this portentous
+     charge or charges, whatever it or they were to be, that every
+     possible or impossible crime was rumoured to supply its place, and
+     taken for granted. This could only occur in the case of a person
+     very much disliked, and I knew no remedy, having already used to
+     their extent whatever little powers I might possess of pleasing in
+     society. I had no party in fashion, though I was afterwards told
+     that there was one--but it was not of my formation, nor did I then
+     know of its existence--none in literature; and in politics I had
+     voted with the Whigs, with precisely that importance which a Whig
+     vote possesses in these Tory days, and with such personal
+     acquaintance with the leaders in both houses as the society in
+     which I lived sanctioned, but without claim or expectation of
+     anything like friendship from any one, except a few young men of my
+     own age and standing, and a few others more advanced in life, which
+     last it had been my fortune to serve in circumstances of
+     difficulty. This was, in fact, to stand alone: and I recollect,
+     some time after, Madame de Staël said to me in Switzerland, 'You
+     should not have warred with the world--it will not do--it is too
+     strong always for any individual: I myself once tried it in early
+     life, but it will not do.' I perfectly acquiesce in the truth of
+     this remark; but the world had done me the honour to begin the war;
+     and, assuredly, if peace is only to be obtained by courting and
+     paying tribute to it, I am not qualified to obtain its countenance.
+     I thought, in the words of Campbell,
+
+        "'Then wed thee to an exil'd lot,
+        And if the world hath loved thee not,
+          Its absence may be borne.'
+
+     "I have heard of, and believe, that there are human beings so
+     constituted as to be insensible to injuries; but I believe that the
+     best mode to avoid taking vengeance is to get out of the way of
+     temptation. I hope that I may never have the opportunity, for I am
+     not quite sure that I could resist it, having derived from my
+     mother something of the '_perfervidum ingenium Scotorum_.' I have
+     not sought, and shall not seek it, and perhaps it may never come in
+     my path. I do not in this allude to the party, who might be right
+     or wrong; but to many who made her cause the pretext of their own
+     bitterness. She, indeed, must have long avenged me in her own
+     feelings, for whatever her reasons may have been (and she never
+     adduced them to me at least), she probably neither contemplated nor
+     conceived to what she became the means of conducting the father of
+     her child, and the husband of her choice.
+
+     "So much for 'the general voice of his countrymen:' I will now
+     speak of some in particular.
+
+     "In the beginning of the year 1817, an article appeared in the
+     Quarterly Review, written, I believe, by Walter Scott, doing great
+     honour to him, and no disgrace to me, though both poetically and
+     personally more than sufficiently favourable to the work and the
+     author of whom it treated. It was written at a time when a selfish
+     man would not, and a timid one dared not, have said a word in
+     favour of either; it was written by one to whom temporary public
+     opinion had elevated me to the rank of a rival--a proud
+     distinction, and unmerited; but which has not prevented me from
+     feeling as a friend, nor him from more than corresponding to that
+     sentiment. The article in question was written upon the third Canto
+     of Childe Harold, and after many observations, which it would as
+     ill become me to repeat as to forget, concluded with 'a hope that I
+     might yet return to England.' How this expression was received in
+     England itself I am not acquainted, but it gave great offence at
+     Rome to the respectable ten or twenty thousand English travellers
+     then and there assembled. I did not visit Rome till some time
+     after, so that I had no opportunity of knowing the fact; but I was
+     informed, long afterwards, that the greatest indignation had been
+     manifested in the enlightened Anglo-circle of that year, which
+     happened to comprise within it--amidst a considerable leaven of
+     Welbeck Street and Devonshire Place, broken loose upon their
+     travels--several really well-born and well-bred families, who did
+     not the less participate in the feeling of the hour. 'Why should he
+     return to England?' was the general exclamation--I answer _why_? It
+     is a question I have occasionally asked myself, and I never yet
+     could give it a satisfactory reply. I had then no thoughts of
+     returning, and if I have any now, they are of business, and not of
+     pleasure. Amidst the ties that have been dashed to pieces, there
+     are links yet entire, though the chain itself be broken. There are
+     duties, and connections, which may one day require my presence--and
+     I am a father. I have still some friends whom I wish to meet again,
+     and, it may be, an enemy. These things, and those minuter details
+     of business, which time accumulates during absence, in every man's
+     affairs and property, may, and probably will, recall me to England;
+     but I shall return with the same feelings with which I left it, in
+     respect to itself, though altered with regard to individuals, as I
+     have been more or less informed of their conduct since my
+     departure; for it was only a considerable time after it that I was
+     made acquainted with the real facts and full extent of some of
+     their proceedings and language. My friends, like other friends,
+     from conciliatory motives, withheld from me much that they could,
+     and some things which they _should_ have unfolded; however, that
+     which is deferred is not lost--but it has been no fault of mine
+     that it has been deferred at all.
+
+     "I have alluded to what is said to have passed at Rome merely to
+     show that the sentiment which I have described was not confined to
+     the English in England, and as forming part of my answer to the
+     reproach cast upon what has been called my 'selfish exile,' and my
+     'voluntary exile.' 'Voluntary' it has been; for who would dwell
+     among a people entertaining strong hostility against him? How far
+     it has been 'selfish' has been already explained."
+
+[Footnote 2: While these sheets are passing through the press, a printed
+statement has been transmitted to me by Lady Noel Byron, which the
+reader will find inserted in the Appendix to this volume. (_First
+Edition_.)]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The following passages from the same unpublished pamphlet will be found,
+in a literary point of view, not less curious.
+
+     "And here I wish to say a few words on the present state of English
+     poetry. That this is the age of the decline of English poetry will
+     be doubted by few who have calmly considered the subject. That
+     there are men of genius among the present poets makes little
+     against the fact, because it has been well said, that 'next to him
+     who forms the taste of his country, the greatest genius is he who
+     corrupts it.' No one has ever denied genius to Marino, who
+     corrupted not merely the taste of Italy, but that of all Europe for
+     nearly a century. The great cause of the present deplorable state
+     of English poetry is to be attributed to that absurd and systematic
+     depreciation of Pope, in which, for the last few years, there has
+     been a kind of epidemical concurrence. Men of the most opposite
+     opinions have united upon this topic. Warton and Churchill began
+     it, having borrowed the hint probably from the heroes of the
+     Dunciad, and their own internal conviction that their proper
+     reputation can be as nothing till the most perfect and harmonious
+     of poets--he who, having no fault, has had REASON made his
+     reproach--was reduced to what they conceived to be his level; but
+     even they dared not degrade him below Dryden. Goldsmith, and
+     Rogers, and Campbell, his most successful disciples; and Hayley,
+     who, however feeble, has left one poem 'that will not be willingly
+     let die' (the Triumphs of Temper), kept up the reputation of that
+     pure and perfect style; and Crabbe, the first of living poets, has
+     almost equalled the master. Then came Darwin, who was put down by a
+     single poem in the Antijacobin; and the Cruscans, from Merry to
+     Jerningham, who were annihilated (if _Nothing_ can be said to be
+     annihilated) by Gifford, the last of the wholesome English
+     satirists. * * *
+
+     "These three personages, S * *, W * *, and C * *, had all of them a
+     very natural antipathy to Pope, and I respect them for it, as the
+     only original feeling or principle which they have contrived to
+     preserve. But they have been joined in it by those who have joined
+     them in nothing else: by the Edinburgh Reviewers, by the whole
+     heterogeneous mass of living English poets, excepting Crabbe,
+     Rogers, Gifford, and Campbell, who, both by precept and practice,
+     have proved their adherence; and by me, who have shamefully
+     deviated in practice, but have ever loved and honoured Pope's
+     poetry with my whole soul, and hope to do so till my dying day. I
+     would rather see all I have ever written lining the same trunk in
+     which I actually read the eleventh book of a modern Epic poem at
+     Malta in 1811, (I opened it to take out a change after the paroxysm
+     of a tertian, in the absence of my servant, and found it lined with
+     the name of the maker, Eyre, Cockspur-street, and with the Epic
+     poetry alluded to,) than sacrifice what I firmly believe in as the
+     Christianity of English poetry, the poetry of Pope.
+
+     "Nevertheless, I will not go so far as * * in his postscript, who
+     pretends that no great poet ever had immediate fame, which, being
+     interpreted, means that * * is not quite so much read by his
+     contemporaries as might be desirable. This assertion is as false
+     as it is foolish. Homer's glory depended upon his present
+     popularity: he recited,--and without the strongest impression of
+     the moment, who would have gotten the Iliad by heart, and given it
+     to tradition? Ennius, Terence, Plautus, Lucretius, Horace, Virgil,
+     Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Sappho, Anacreon, Theocritus, all
+     the great poets of antiquity, were the delight of their
+     contemporaries.[3] The very existence of a poet, previous to the
+     invention of printing, depended upon his present popularity; and
+     how often has it impaired his future fame? Hardly ever. History
+     informs us, that the best have come down to us. The reason is
+     evident: the most popular found the greatest number of transcribers
+     for their MSS.; and that the taste of their contemporaries was
+     corrupt can hardly be avouched by the moderns, the mightiest of
+     whom have but barely approached them. Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, and
+     Tasso, were all the darlings of the contemporary reader. Dante's
+     poem was celebrated long before his death; and, not long after it,
+     States negotiated for his ashes, and disputed for the sites of the
+     composition of the Divina Commedia. Petrarch was crowned in the
+     Capitol. Ariosto was permitted to pass free by the public robber
+     who had read the Orlando Furioso. I would not recommend Mr. * * to
+     try the same experiment with his Smugglers. Tasso, notwithstanding
+     the criticisms of the Cruscanti, would have been crowned in the
+     Capitol, but for his death.
+
+     "It is easy to prove the immediate popularity of the chief poets of
+     the only modern nation in Europe that has a poetical language, the
+     Italian. In our own, Shakspeare, Spenser, Jonson, Waller, Dryden,
+     Congreve, Pope, Young, Shenstone, Thomson, Johnson, Goldsmith,
+     Gray, were all as popular in their lives as since. Gray's Elegy
+     pleased instantly, and eternally. His Odes did not, nor yet do they
+     please like his Elegy. Milton's politics kept him down; but the
+     Epigram of Dryden, and the very sale of his work, in proportion to
+     the less reading time of its publication, prove him to have been
+     honoured by his contemporaries. I will venture to assert, that the
+     sale of the Paradise Lost was greater in the first four years after
+     its publication than that of 'The Excursion,' in the same number,
+     with the difference of nearly a century and a half between them of
+     time, and of thousands in point of general readers.
+
+     "It may be asked, why, having this opinion of the present state of
+     poetry in England, and having had it long, as my friends and others
+     well know--possessing, or having possessed too, as a writer, the
+     ear of the public for the time being--I have not adopted a
+     different plan in my own compositions, and endeavoured to correct
+     rather than encourage the taste of the day. To this I would answer,
+     that it is easier to perceive the wrong than to pursue the right,
+     and that I have never contemplated the prospect 'of filling (with
+     Peter Bell, see its Preface,) permanently a station in the
+     literature of the country.' Those who know me best, know this, and
+     that I have been considerably astonished at the temporary success
+     of my works, having flattered no person and no party, and expressed
+     opinions which are not those of the general reader. Could I have
+     anticipated the degree of attention which has been accorded,
+     assuredly I would have studied more to deserve it. But I have lived
+     in far countries abroad, or in the agitating world at home, which
+     was not favourable to study or reflection; so that almost all I
+     have written has been mere passion,--passion, it is true, of
+     different kinds, but always passion: for in me (if it be not an
+     Irishism to say so) my _indifference_ was a kind of passion, the
+     result of experience, and not the philosophy of nature. Writing
+     grows a habit, like a woman's gallantry: there are women who have
+     had no intrigue, but few who have had but one only; so there are
+     millions of men who have never written a book, but few who have
+     written only one. And thus, having written once, I wrote on;
+     encouraged no doubt by the success of the moment, yet by no means
+     anticipating its duration, and I will venture to say, scarcely even
+     wishing it. But then I did other things besides write, which by no
+     means contributed either to improve my writings or my prosperity.
+
+     "I have thus expressed publicly upon the poetry of the day the
+     opinion I have long entertained and expressed of it to all who have
+     asked it, and to some who would rather not have heard it; as I told
+     Moore not very long ago, 'we are all wrong except Rogers, Crabbe,
+     and Campbell.'[4] Without being old in years, I am in days, and do
+     not feel the adequate spirit within me to attempt a work which
+     should show what I think right in poetry, and must content myself
+     with having denounced what is wrong. There are, I trust, younger
+     spirits rising up in England, who, escaping the contagion which has
+     swept away poetry from our literature, will recall it to their
+     country, such as it once was and may still be.
+
+     "In the mean time, the best sign of amendment will be repentance,
+     and new and frequent editions of Pope and Dryden.
+
+     "There will be found as comfortable metaphysics and ten times more
+     poetry in the 'Essay on Man,' than in the 'Excursion.' If you
+     search for passion, where is it to be found stronger than in the
+     epistle from Eloisa to Abelard, or in Palamon and Arcite? Do you
+     wish for invention, imagination, sublimity, character? seek them in
+     the Rape of the Lock, the Fables of Dryden, the Ode on Saint
+     Cecilia's Day, and Absalom and Achitophel: you will discover in
+     these two poets only, _all_ for which you must ransack innumerable
+     metres, and God only knows how many _writers_ of the day, without
+     finding a tittle of the same qualities,--with the addition, too, of
+     wit, of which the latter have none. I have not, however, forgotten
+     Thomas Brown the Younger, nor the Fudge Family, nor Whistlecraft;
+     but that is not wit--it is humour. I will say nothing of the
+     harmony of Pope and Dryden in comparison, for there is not a living
+     poet (except Rogers, Gifford, Campbell, and Crabbe) who can write
+     an heroic couplet. The fact is, that the exquisite beauty of their
+     versification has withdrawn the public attention from their other
+     excellences, as the vulgar eye will rest more upon the splendour of
+     the uniform than the quality of the troops. It is this very
+     harmony, particularly in Pope, which has raised the vulgar and
+     atrocious cant against him:--because his versification is perfect,
+     it is assumed that it is his only perfection; because his truths
+     are so clear, it is asserted that he has no invention; and because
+     he is always intelligible, it is taken for granted that he has no
+     genius. We are sneeringly told that he is the 'Poet of Reason,' as
+     if this was a reason for his being no poet. Taking passage for
+     passage, I will undertake to cite more lines teeming with
+     _imagination_ from Pope than from any two living poets, be they who
+     they may. To take an instance at random from a species of
+     composition not very favourable to imagination--Satire: set down
+     the character of Sporus, with all the wonderful play of fancy which
+     is scattered over it, and place by its side an equal number of
+     verses, from any two existing poets, of the same power and the same
+     variety--where will you find them?
+
+     "I merely mention one instance of many in reply to the injustice
+     done to the memory of him who harmonised our poetical language. The
+     attorneys clerks, and other self-educated genii, found it easier to
+     distort themselves to the new models than to toil after the
+     symmetry of him who had enchanted their fathers. They were besides
+     smitten by being told that the new school were to revive the
+     language of Queen Elizabeth, the true English; as every body in the
+     reign of Queen Anne wrote no better than French, by a species of
+     literary treason.
+
+     "Blank verse, which, unless in the drama, no one except Milton ever
+     wrote who could rhyme, became the order of the day,--or else such
+     rhyme as looked still blanker than the verse without it. I am aware
+     that Johnson has said, after some hesitation, that he could not
+     'prevail upon himself to wish that Milton had been a rhymer.' The
+     opinions of that truly great man, whom it is also the present
+     fashion to decry, will ever be received by me with that deference
+     which time will restore to him from all; but, with all humility, I
+     am not persuaded that the Paradise Lost would not have been more
+     nobly conveyed to posterity, not perhaps in heroic couplets,
+     although even _they_ could sustain the subject if well balanced,
+     but in the stanza of Spenser, or of Tasso, or in the terza rima of
+     Dante, which the powers of Milton could easily have grafted on our
+     language. The Seasons of Thomson would have been better in rhyme,
+     although still inferior to his Castle of Indolence; and Mr.
+     Southey's Joan of Arc no worse, although it might have taken up six
+     months instead of weeks in the composition. I recommend also to the
+     lovers of lyrics the perusal of the present laureate's odes by the
+     side of Dryden's on Saint Cecilia, but let him be sure to read
+     _first_ those of Mr. Southey.
+
+     "To the heaven-born genii and inspired young scriveners of the day
+     much of this will appear paradox; it will appear so even to the
+     higher order of our critics; but it was a truism twenty years ago,
+     and it will be a re-acknowledged truth in ten more. In the mean
+     time, I will conclude with two quotations, both intended for some
+     of my old classical friends who have still enough of Cambridge
+     about them to think themselves honoured by having had John Dryden
+     as a predecessor in their college, and to recollect that their
+     earliest English poetical pleasures were drawn from the 'little
+     nightingale' of Twickenham.
+
+     "The first is from the notes to a Poem of the 'Friends[5],' pages
+     181, 182.
+
+     "'It is only within the last twenty or thirty years that those
+     notable discoveries in criticism have been made which have taught
+     our recent versifiers to undervalue this energetic, melodious, and
+     moral poet. The consequences of this want of due esteem for a
+     writer whom the good sense of our predecessors had raised to his
+     proper station have been NUMEROUS AND DEGRADING ENOUGH. This is not
+     the place to enter into the subject, even as far as it _affects our
+     poetical numbers alone_, and there is matter of more importance
+     that requires present reflection.'
+
+     "The second is from the volume of a young person learning to write
+     poetry, and beginning by teaching the art. Hear him[6]:
+
+                        "'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[7]
+        Of _dolts_ to _smooth_, _inlay_, and _chip_, 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
+        Mark'd with most flimsy mottos, and in large
+        The name of _one_ Boileau.'
+
+     "A little before the manner of Pope is termed
+
+                        "'A _scism_[8],
+        Nurtured by _foppery_ and barbarism,
+        Made great Apollo blush for this his land.'
+
+     "I thought '_foppery_' was a consequence of _refinement_; but
+     _n'importe_.
+
+     "The above will suffice to show the notions entertained by the new
+     performers on the English lyre of him who made it most tunable,
+     and the great improvements of their own _variazioni_.
+
+     "The writer of this is a tadpole of the Lakes, a young disciple of
+     the six or seven new schools, in which he has learnt to write such
+     lines and such sentiments as the above. He says, 'easy was the
+     task' of imitating Pope, or it may be of equalling him, I presume.
+     I recommend him to try before he is so positive on the subject, and
+     then compare what he will have _then_ written and what he has _now_
+     written with the humblest and earliest compositions of Pope,
+     produced in years still more youthful than those of Mr. K. when he
+     invented his new 'Essay on Criticism,' entitled 'Sleep and Poetry'
+     (an ominous title), from whence the above canons are taken. Pope's
+     was written at nineteen, and published at twenty-two.
+
+     "Such are the triumphs of the new schools, and such their scholars.
+     The disciples of Pope were Johnson, Goldsmith, Rogers, Campbell,
+     Crabbe, Gifford, Matthias, Hayley, and the author of the Paradise
+     of Coquettes; to whom may be added Richards, Heber, Wrangham,
+     Bland, Hodgson, Merivale, and others who have not had their full
+     fame, because 'the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle
+     to the strong,' and because there is a fortune in fame as in all
+     other things. Now of all the new schools--I say _all_, for, 'like
+     Legion, they are many'--has there appeared a single scholar who has
+     not made his master ashamed of him? unless it be * *, who has
+     imitated every body, and occasionally surpassed his models. Scott
+     found peculiar favour and imitation among the fair sex: there was
+     Miss Holford, and Miss Mitford, and Miss Francis; but with the
+     greatest respect be it spoken, none of his imitators did much
+     honour to the original except Hogg, the Ettrick shepherd, until the
+     appearance of 'The Bridal of Triermain,' and 'Harold the
+     Dauntless,' which in the opinion of some equalled if not surpassed
+     him; and lo! after three or four years they turned out to be the
+     Master's own compositions. Have Southey, or Coleridge, or
+     Wordsworth, made a follower of renown? Wilson never did well till
+     he set up for himself in the 'City of the Plague.' Has Moore, or
+     any other living writer of reputation, had a tolerable imitator, or
+     rather disciple? Now it is remarkable that almost all the followers
+     of Pope, whom I have named, have produced beautiful and standard
+     works, and it was not the number of his imitators who finally hurt
+     his fame, but the despair of imitation, and the _ease_ of _not_
+     imitating him sufficiently. This, and the same reason which induced
+     the Athenian burgher to vote for the banishment of Aristides,
+     'because he was tired of always hearing him called _the Just_,'
+     have produced the temporary exile of Pope from the State of
+     Literature. But the term of his ostracism will expire, and the
+     sooner the better; not for him, but for those who banished him, and
+     for the coming generation, who
+
+        "Will blush to find their fathers were his foes."
+
+[Footnote 3: As far as regards the poets of ancient times, this
+assertion is, perhaps, right; though, if there be any truth in what
+Ælian and Seneca have left on record, of the obscurity, during their
+lifetime, of such men as Socrates and Epicurus, it would seem to prove
+that, among the ancients, contemporary fame was a far more rare reward
+of literary or philosophical eminence than among us moderns. When the
+"Clouds" of Aristophanes was exhibited before the assembled deputies of
+the towns of Attica, these personages, as Ælian tells us, were
+unanimously of opinion, that the character of an unknown person, called
+Socrates, was uninteresting upon the stage; and Seneca has given the
+substance of an authentic letter of Epicurus, in which that philosopher
+declares that nothing hurt him so much, in the midst of all his
+happiness, as to think that Greece,--"illa nobilis Græcia,"--so far
+from knowing him, had scarcely even heard of his existence.--Epist. 79.]
+
+[Footnote 4: I certainly ventured to differ from the judgment of my
+noble friend, no less in his attempts to depreciate that peculiar walk
+of the art in which he himself so grandly trod, than in the
+inconsistency of which I thought him guilty, in condemning all those who
+stood up for particular "schools" of poetry, and yet, at the same time,
+maintaining so exclusive a theory of the art himself. How little,
+however, he attended to either the grounds or degrees of my dissent from
+him, will appear by the following wholesale report of my opinion, in his
+"Detached Thoughts:"
+
+"One of my notions different from those of my contemporaries, 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 age of British
+poesy."]
+
+[Footnote 5: Written by Lord Byron's early friend, the Rev. Francis
+Hodgson.]
+
+[Footnote 6: The strange verses that follow are from a poem by
+Keats.--In a manuscript note on this passage of the pamphlet, dated
+November 12. 1821, Lord Byron says, "Mr. Keats died at Rome about a year
+after this was written, of a decline produced by his having burst a
+blood-vessel on reading the article on his 'Endymion' in the Quarterly
+Review. I have read the article before and since; and, although it is
+bitter, I do not think that a man should permit himself to be killed by
+it. But a young man little dreams what he must inevitably encounter in
+the course of a life ambitious of public notice. My indignation at Mr.
+Keats's depreciation of Pope has hardly permitted me to do justice to
+his own genius, which, malgrè all the fantastic fopperies of his style,
+was undoubtedly of great promise. His fragment of 'Hyperion' seems
+actually inspired by the Titans, and is as sublime as Æschylus. He is a
+loss to our literature; and the more so, as he himself, before his
+death, is said to have been persuaded that he had not taken the right
+line, and was reforming his style upon the more classical models of the
+language."]
+
+[Footnote 7: "It was at least a _grammar_ 'school.'"]
+
+[Footnote 8: "So spelt by the author."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 396. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, 9bre 4. 1820.
+
+     "I have received from Mr. Galignani the enclosed letters,
+     duplicates and receipts, which will explain themselves.[9] As the
+     poems are your property by purchase, right, and justice, _all
+     matters of publication, &c. &c. are for you to decide upon_. I know
+     not how far my compliance with Mr. Galignani'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 farther, except, in my answer to
+     Mr. Galignani, to state that the letters, &c. &c. are sent to you,
+     and the causes thereof.
+
+     "If you can check these foreign pirates, do; if not, put the
+     permissive papers in the fire. I can have no view nor object
+     whatever, but to secure to you your property.
+
+     "Yours, &c.
+
+     "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
+     English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. They support Pope, I see, in
+     the Quarterly; let them continue to do so: it is a sin, and a
+     shame, and a _damnation_ to think that _Pope!!_ 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."
+
+[Footnote 9: Mr. Galignani had applied to Lord Byron with the view of
+procuring from him such legal right over those works of his Lordship of
+which he had hitherto been the sole publisher in France, as would enable
+him to prevent others, in future, from usurping the same privilege.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 397. TO MR. 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 producing so
+     little!
+
+     "Galignani sends me, post haste, a permission _for him, from me,_
+     to publish, &c. &c. 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 both let our
+     wits run away with our sentiments; for I am sure that we are both
+     Queen's men at bottom. 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 understand
+     me?--which is about to blow up the whole alphabet. 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' to any of your acquaintance, make a Melody of it,
+     that his ghost, like poor Yorick's, may have the satisfaction of
+     being plaintively pitied--or still more nobly commemorated, like
+     'Oh breathe not his name.' 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.
+
+        "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 the Deed of Separation, in the 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 _five_ since we were _two_.
+
+     "Pray excuse all this nonsense; for I must talk nonsense 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 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 _murdered me_--he has carried away my fine jubilee clothes.'
+
+     "So Bowles has been telling a story, too ('tis 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," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 393. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, 9bre 9°, 1820.
+
+     "The talent you approve of is an amiable one, and 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 enough to make a
+     _Gallery_. If '_the_ parson' 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 election
+        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 would not disrelish a sight of these light little humorous
+     things, and may be indulged now and then.
+
+     "Why, I do like one or two vices, to be sure; but I can back a
+     horse and fire a pistol 'without thinking or blinking' like Major
+     Sturgeon; I have fed at times for 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, as
+     at Venice, in 1818, or at least I _could do_, and have done it
+     ONCE.
+
+     "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.[10]
+
+     "Last week I sent you a correspondence with Galignani, and some
+     documents on your property. You have now, I think, an opportunity
+     of _checking_, or at least _limiting_, those _French
+     republications_. You may let all your authors publish what they
+     please _against me_ and _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
+     authenticated_ ('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.[11] She always appeared on
+     particular occasions, before the deaths of the family, &c. &c. I
+     heard Madame 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
+     of 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."
+
+[Footnote 10: Here follow some details respecting his friend Charles S.
+Matthews, which have already been given in the first volume of this
+work.]
+
+[Footnote 11: The ghost-story, in which he here professes such serious
+belief, forms the subject of one of Mr. Rogers's beautiful Italian
+sketches.--See "Italy," p. 43. edit. 1830.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 399. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, 9bre 18°, 1820.
+
+     "The death of Waite is a shock to the--teeth, as well as to the
+     feelings of all who knew him. Good God, he and _Blake_[12] 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 greatness, as
+     he who preserves the hair and the teeth is preferable to 'the
+     bloody blustering warrior' 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 clearing
+     _roots_ and _brushes_ now to be obtained? Pray obtain what
+     information you can upon these '_Tusc_ulan questions.' 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 with 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 tailor 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?
+
+     "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 tiger (in poesy), if I miss the
+     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 'The 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_ accordingly. I would rather give them
+     away than hack and hew them. I don't say that you are not right: I
+     merely repeat that I cannot better them. I must 'either make a
+     spoon, or spoil a horn;' and there's an end.
+
+     "Yours.
+
+     "P.S. Of the praises of that little * * * Keats. 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 praise of the Edinburgh than I was,
+     or more alive to their censure, as I showed in English Bards and
+     Scotch Reviewers. 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?' it is better sense and as much
+     poetry as Johnny Keats.
+
+     "Bowles must be _bowled_ down. 'Tis a sad match at cricket if he
+     can get any notches at Pope's expense. If he once get into
+     '_Lord's_ ground,' (to continue 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 Lord Ipswich and Brookman, on
+     our side."
+
+[Footnote 12: A celebrated hair-dresser.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 400. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, 9bre 23°, 1820.
+
+     "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. Whatever 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
+     Juan, they identify Don Juan as mine, which I don't think worth a
+     Chancery suit about my daughter's guardianship, as in your present
+     code a facetious poem is sufficient to take away a man's rights
+     over his family.
+
+     "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 BARBARIANS, and THEIR EMPEROR a FOOL, and themselves more fools
+     than he; all which they may send to Vienna for any thing I care.
+     They have got themselves masters of the Papal police, and are
+     bullying away; but some day or other they will pay for all: it may
+     not be very soon, because these unhappy Italians have no
+     consistency among themselves; but I suppose that Providence will
+     get tired of them at last, * *
+
+     "Yours," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 401. TO MR. 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 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 _now_, 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 discretionary
+     power[13]; 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 all, contradict_
+     any thing, if I have _mis_-stated; for my first object is the
+     truth, even at my own expense.
+
+     "I have some knowledge of your countryman Muley Moloch, the
+     lecturer. He wrote to me several letters 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 * * * but they
+     _won't_ 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, &c. &c. 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 * * * for the top of
+     Parnassus.
+
+     "These rogues are right--_we do_ laugh at _t'others_--eh?--don't
+     we?[14] You shall see--you shall see what things 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," &c.
+
+[Footnote 13: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 14: 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.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 402. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Ravenna, Dec. 9. 1820.
+
+     "I open my letter to tell you a fact, which will show the state of
+     this country better than I can. The commandant 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. 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
+     hinder us from going, as it is the custom for every body here, it
+     seems, to run 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 profession--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 up
+     stairs into my own quarter. 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. Every body conjectures 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, 'O Dio!' and 'Gesu!' two or three times, and
+     appeared to have suffered little. Poor fellow! he was a brave
+     officer, but had made himself much disliked by the people. I knew
+     him personally, and had met 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, &c.
+
+     "P.S. The lieutenant on duty by the body is smoking his pipe with
+     great composure.--A queer people this."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 403. TO MR. 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 quâ 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.
+
+     "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 blackguards, 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 _Spectator_ and a
+     newspaper, why not?--only not on a _Sunday_. 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 'Gli,' or 'I 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!'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The year 1820 was an era signalised, as will be remembered, by the many
+efforts of the revolutionary spirit which, at that time, broke forth,
+like ill-suppressed fire, throughout the greater part of the South of
+Europe. In Italy, Naples had already raised the Constitutional standard,
+and her example was fast operating through the whole of that country.
+Throughout Romagna, secret societies, under the name of Carbonari, had
+been organised, which waited but the word of their chiefs to break out
+into open insurrection. We have seen from Lord Byron's Journal in 1814,
+what intense interest he took in the last struggles of Revolutionary
+France under Napoleon; and his exclamations, "Oh for a
+Republic!--'Brutus, thou sleepest!'" show the lengths to which, in
+theory at least, his political zeal extended. Since then, he had but
+rarely turned his thoughts to politics; the tame, ordinary vicissitude
+of public affairs having but little in it to stimulate a mind like his,
+whose sympathies nothing short of a crisis seemed worthy to interest.
+This the present state of Italy gave every promise of affording him;
+and, in addition to the great national cause itself, in which there was
+every thing that a lover of liberty, warm from the pages of Petrarch and
+Dante, could desire, he had also private ties and regards to enlist him
+socially in the contest. The brother of Madame Guiccioli, Count Pietro
+Gamba, who had been passing some time at Rome and Naples, was now
+returned from his tour; and the friendly sentiments with which,
+notwithstanding a natural bias previously in the contrary direction, he
+at length learned to regard the noble lover of his sister, cannot better
+be described than in the words of his fair relative herself.
+
+"At this time," says Madame Guiccioli, "my beloved brother, Pietro,
+returned to Ravenna from Rome and Naples. He had been prejudiced by some
+enemies of Lord Byron against his character, and my intimacy with him
+afflicted him greatly; nor had my letters succeeded in entirely
+destroying the evil impression which Lord Byron's detractors had
+produced. No sooner, however, had he seen and known him, than he became
+inspired with an interest in his favour, such as could not have been
+produced by mere exterior qualities, but was the result only of that
+union he saw in him of all that is most great and beautiful, as well in
+the heart as mind of man. From that moment every former prejudice
+vanished, and the conformity of their opinions and studies contributed
+to unite them in a friendship, which only ended with their lives."[15]
+
+The young Gamba, who was, at this time, but twenty years of age, with a
+heart full of all those dreams of the regeneration of Italy, which not
+only the example of Naples, but the spirit working beneath the surface
+all around him, inspired, had, together with his father, who was still
+in the prime of life, become enrolled in the secret bands now organising
+throughout Romagna, and Lord Byron was, by their intervention, admitted
+also among the brotherhood. The following heroic Address to the
+Neapolitan Government (written by the noble poet in Italian,[16] and
+forwarded, it is thought, by himself to Naples, but intercepted on the
+way,) will show how deep, how earnest, and expansive was his zeal in
+that great, general cause of Political Freedom, for which he soon after
+laid down his life among the marshes of Missolonghi.
+
+"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 thousand
+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 determination 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 individual 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 commanding 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."[17]
+
+It was during the agitation of this crisis, while surrounded by rumours
+and alarms, and expecting, every moment, to be summoned into the field,
+that Lord Byron commenced the Journal which I am now about to give; and
+which it is impossible to peruse, with the recollection of his former
+Diary of 1814 in our minds, without reflecting how wholly different, in
+all the circumstances connected with them, were the two periods at which
+these records of his passing thoughts were traced. The first he wrote at
+a time which may be considered, to use his own words, as "the most
+poetical part of his whole life,"--_not_ certainly, in what regarded the
+powers of his genius, to which every succeeding year added new force and
+range, but in all that may be said to constitute the poetry of
+character,--those fresh, unworldly feelings of which, in spite of his
+early plunge into experience, he still retained the gloss, and that
+ennobling light of imagination, which, with all his professed scorn of
+mankind, still followed in the track of his affections, giving a lustre
+to every object on which they rested. There was, indeed, in his
+misanthropy, as in his sorrows, at that period, to the full as much of
+fancy as of reality; and even those gallantries and loves in which he at
+the same time entangled himself partook equally, as I have endeavoured
+to show, of the same imaginative character. Though brought early under
+the dominion of the senses, he had been also early rescued from this
+thraldom by, in the first place, the satiety such excesses never fail to
+produce, and, at no long interval after, by this series of half-fanciful
+attachments which, though in their moral consequences to society,
+perhaps, still more mischievous, had the varnish at least of refinement
+on the surface, and by the novelty and apparent difficulty that invested
+them served to keep alive that illusion of imagination from which such
+pursuits derive their sole redeeming charm.
+
+With such a mixture, or rather predominance, of the ideal in his loves,
+his hates, and his sorrows, the state of his existence at that period,
+animated as it was, and kept buoyant, by such a flow of success, must be
+acknowledged, even with every deduction for the unpicturesque
+associations of a London life, to have been, in a high degree, poetical,
+and to have worn round it altogether a sort of halo of romance, which
+the events that followed were but too much calculated to dissipate. By
+his marriage, and its results, he was again brought back to some of
+those bitter realities of which his youth had had a foretaste. Pecuniary
+embarrassment--that ordeal, of all others, the most trying to delicacy
+and high-mindedness--now beset him with all the indignities that usually
+follow in its train; and he was thus rudely schooled into the advantages
+of _possessing_ money, when he had hitherto thought but of the generous
+pleasure of _dispensing_ it. No stronger proof, indeed, is wanting of
+the effect of such difficulties in tempering down even the most
+chivalrous pride, than the necessity to which he found himself reduced
+in 1816, not only of departing from his resolution never to profit by
+the sale of his works, but of accepting a sum of money, for copyright,
+from his publisher, which he had for some time persisted in refusing
+for himself, and, in the full sincerity of his generous heart, had
+destined for others.
+
+The injustice and malice to which he soon after became a victim had an
+equally fatal effect in disenchanting the dream of his existence. Those
+imaginary, or, at least, retrospective sorrows, in which he had once
+loved to indulge, and whose tendency it was, through the medium of his
+fancy, to soften and refine his heart, were now exchanged for a host of
+actual, ignoble vexations, which it was even more humiliating than
+painful to encounter. His misanthropy, instead of being, as heretofore,
+a vague and abstract feeling, without any object to light upon, and
+losing therefore its acrimony in diffusion, was now, by the hostility he
+came in contact with, condensed into individual enmities, and narrowed
+into personal resentments; and from the lofty, and, as it appeared to
+himself, philosophical luxury of hating mankind in the gross, he was now
+brought down to the self-humbling necessity of despising them in detail.
+
+By all these influences, so fatal to enthusiasm of character, and
+forming, most of them, indeed, a part of the ordinary process by which
+hearts become chilled and hardened in the world, it was impossible but
+that some material change must have been effected in a disposition at
+once so susceptible and tenacious of impressions. By compelling him to
+concentre himself in his own resources and energies, as the only stand
+now left against the world's injustice, his enemies but succeeded in
+giving to the principle of self-dependence within him a new force and
+spring which, however it added to the vigour of his character, could not
+fail, by bringing Self so much into action, to impair a little its
+amiableness. Among the changes in his disposition, attributable mainly
+to this source, may be mentioned that diminished deference to the
+opinions and feelings of others which, after this compulsory rally of
+all his powers of resistance, he exhibited. Some portion, no doubt, of
+this refractoriness may be accounted for by his absence from all those
+whose slightest word or look would have done more with him than whole
+volumes of correspondence; but by no cause less powerful and revulsive
+than the struggle in which he had been committed could a disposition
+naturally diffident as his was, and diffident even through all this
+excitement, have been driven into the assumption of a tone so
+universally defying, and so full, if not of pride in his own pre-eminent
+powers, of such a contempt for some of the ablest among his
+contemporaries, as almost implied it. It was, in fact, as has been more
+than once remarked in these pages, a similar stirring up of all the best
+and worst elements of his nature, to that which a like rebound against
+injustice had produced in his youth;--though with a difference in point
+of force and grandeur, between the two explosions, almost as great as
+between the outbreaks of a firework and a volcano.
+
+Another consequence of the spirit of defiance now roused in him, and one
+that tended, perhaps, even more fatally than any yet mentioned, to sully
+and, for a time, bring down to earth the romance of his character, was
+the course of life to which, outrunning even the licence of his youth,
+he abandoned himself at Venice. From this, as from his earlier excesses,
+the timely warning of disgust soon rescued him; and the connection with
+Madame Guiccioli which followed, and which, however much to be
+reprehended, had in it all of marriage that his real marriage wanted,
+seemed to place, at length, within reach of his affectionate spirit that
+union and sympathy for which, through life, it had thirsted. But the
+treasure came too late;--the pure poetry of the feeling had vanished;
+and those tears he shed so passionately in the garden at Bologna flowed
+less, perhaps, from the love which he felt at that moment, than from the
+saddening consciousness how differently he could have felt formerly. It
+was, indeed, wholly beyond the power, even of an imagination like his,
+to go on investing with its own ideal glories a sentiment which,--more
+from daring and vanity than from any other impulse,--he had taken such
+pains to tarnish and debase in his own eyes. Accordingly, instead of
+being able, as once, to elevate and embellish all that interested him,
+to make an idol of every passing creature of his fancy, and mistake the
+form of love, which he so often conjured up, for its substance, he now
+degenerated into the wholly opposite and perverse error of depreciating
+and making light of what, intrinsically, he valued, and, as the reader
+has seen, throwing slight and mockery upon a tie in which it was evident
+some of the best feelings of his nature were wrapped up. That foe to all
+enthusiasm and romance, the habit of ridicule, had, in proportion as he
+exchanged the illusions for the realities of life, gained further empire
+over him; and how far it had, at this time, encroached upon the loftier
+and fairer regions of his mind may be seen in the pages of Don
+Juan,--that diversified arena, on which the two Genii, good and evil,
+that governed his thoughts, hold, with alternate triumph, their
+ever-powerful combat.
+
+Even this, too, this vein of mockery,--in the excess to which, at last,
+he carried it,--was but another result of the shock his proud mind had
+received from those events that had cast him off, branded and
+heart-stricken, from country and from home. As he himself touchingly
+says,
+
+    "And if I laugh at any mortal thing,
+    'Tis that I may not weep."
+
+This laughter,--which, in such temperaments, is the near neighbour of
+tears,--served as a diversion to him from more painful vents of
+bitterness; and the same philosophical calculation which made the poet
+of melancholy, Young, declare that "he preferred laughing at the world
+to being angry with it," led Lord Byron also to settle upon the same
+conclusion; and to feel, in the misanthropic views he was inclined to
+take of mankind, that mirth often saved him the pain of hate.
+
+That, with so many drawbacks upon all generous effusions of sentiment,
+he should still have preserved so much of his native tenderness and
+ardour as is conspicuous, through all disguises, in his unquestionable
+love for Madame Guiccioli, and in the still more undoubted zeal with
+which he now entered, heart and soul, into the great cause of human
+freedom, wheresoever or by whomsoever asserted[18],--only shows how rich
+must have been the original stores of sensibility and enthusiasm which
+even a career such as his could so little chill or exhaust. Most
+consoling, too, is it to reflect that the few latter years of his life
+should have been thus visited with a return of that poetic lustre,
+which, though it never had ceased to surround the bard, had but too much
+faded away from the character of the man; and that while
+Love,--reprehensible as it was, but still Love,--had the credit of
+rescuing him from the only errors that disgraced his maturer years, for
+Liberty was reserved the proud but mournful triumph of calling the last
+stage of his glorious course her own, and lighting him, amidst the
+sympathies of the world, to his grave.
+
+Having endeavoured, in this comparison between his present and former
+self, to account, by what I consider to be their true causes, for the
+new phenomena which his character, at this period, exhibited, I shall
+now lay before the reader the Journal by which these remarks were more
+immediately suggested, and from which I fear they will be thought to
+have too long detained him.
+
+[Footnote 15: "In quest' epoca venne a Ravenna di ritorno da Roma e
+Napoli il mio diletto fratello Pietro. Egli era stato prevenuto da dei
+nemeci di Lord Byron contro il di lui carattere; molto lo affligeva la
+mia intimità con lui, e le mie lettere non avevano riuscito a bene
+distruggere la cattiva impressione ricevuta dei detrattori di Lord
+Byron. Ma appena lo vidde e lo conobbe egli pure ricevesse quella
+impressione che non può essere prodotta da dei pregi esteriori, ma
+solamente dall unione di tuttociò che vi è di più bello e di più grande
+nel cuore e nella mente dell uomo. Svani ogni sua anteriore prevenzione
+contro di Lord Byron, e la conformità della loro idee e dei studii loro
+contribuì a stringerli in quella amicizia che non doveva avere fine che
+colla loro vita."]
+
+[Footnote 16: A draft of this Address, in his own handwriting, was found
+among his papers. He is supposed to have intrusted 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 his Lordship to supply him with money for his
+return. This man turned out afterwards to have been a spy, and the above
+paper, if confided to him, fell most probably into the hands of the
+Pontifical Government.]
+
+[Footnote 17: "Un Inglese amico della libertà avendo sentito che i
+Napolitani permettono anche agli stranieri di contribuire alia buona
+causa, bramerebbe l'onore di vedere accettata la sua offerta di mille
+luigi, la quale egli azzarda di fare. Già testimonio oculare non molto
+fa della tirannia dei Barbari negli stati da loro occupati nell' Italia,
+egli vede con tutto l'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 è poca
+in se stessa, come bisogna che sia sempre quella di un individuo ad una
+nazione, ma egli spera che non sarà l'ultima dalla parte dei suoi
+compatriotti. La sua lontananza dalle frontiere, e il sentimento della
+sua poca capacità personale di contribuire efficacimente a servire la
+nazione gl' impedisce di proporsi come degno della più piccola
+commissione che domanda dell' esperienza e del talento. Ma, se come
+semplice volontario la sua presenza non fosse un incomodo a quello che
+l'accetasse egli riparebbe a qualunque luogo indicato dal Governo
+Napolitano, per ubbidire agli ordini e participare ai pericoli del suo
+superiore, senza avere altri motivi che quello di dividere il destino di
+una brava nazione resistendo alla se dicente Santa Allianza la quale
+aggiunge l'ippocrisia al despotismo."]
+
+[Footnote 18: Among his "Detached Thoughts" I find this general passion
+for liberty thus strikingly expressed. After saying, in reference to his
+own choice of Venice as a place of residence, "I remembered General
+Ludlow's domal inscription, 'Omne solum forti patria,' and sat down free
+in a country which had been one of slavery for centuries," he adds, "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 deserts, and look on upon the first dance of
+their freedom.
+
+"As to political slavery, so general, it is men'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 _first_ spring, she is
+cowardly as the tiger, and retires to be hunted."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY OF LORD BYRON. 1821.
+
+"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 d----d 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. Wych, grocer, at Tunbridge, sold
+some bacon, flour, cheese, and, it is believed, some plums, to some
+gipsy woman accused. He had on his counter (I quote faithfully) a
+_book_, the Life of _Pamela_, which he was _tearing_ for _waste_ paper,
+&c. &c. In the cheese was found, &c. and a _leaf_ of _Pamela wrapt round
+the bacon._' What would Richardson, the vainest and luckiest of _living_
+authors (_i.e._ while alive)--he who, with Aaron Hill, used to prophesy
+and chuckle over the presumed fall of Fielding (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 bookseller'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 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 Filippo--well received.
+
+"Two days ago the King of Naples passed through Bologna on his way to
+congress. My servant Luigi 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--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, &c. &c. here is nothing
+but spirits of wine, coloured accordingly. Did _not_ eat two apples,
+which were placed by way of dessert. Fed the two cats, the hawk, and the
+tame (but _not tamed_) _crow_. Read Mitford's History of
+Greece--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. 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 practicable to-morrow. Sent
+the papers to Alli.--grand events coming.
+
+"11 o' the clock and nine minutes. Visited La Contessa G. Nata G.G.
+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, patriotism,
+Alfieri, Madame Albany, and other branches of learning. Also Sallust's
+Conspiracy of Catiline, and the War of Jugurtha. At 9 came in her
+brother, Il Conte Pietro--at 10, her father, Conte Ruggiero.
+
+"Talked of various modes of warfare--of the Hungarian 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 7th 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.' One must not be particular, 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 afternoon) to copy out
+seven or eight apophthegms of Bacon, in which I have detected such
+blunders as a school-boy 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.
+
+
+"January 6. 1821.
+
+"Mist--thaw--slop--rain. No stirring out on horseback. 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 Guinguené--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 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 chivalry 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--drawing--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 hay-making 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
+_ennuyé?_ 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 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 inebriation, 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 _ennuyé_ 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. 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 incalculable combinations
+of a climate where heat and cold struggle for mastery. Head Spence, and
+turned over Roscoe, 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, Betti V. and her husband, and others.
+Pretty black-eyed woman that--_only_ nineteen--same age as Teresa, who
+is prettier, though.
+
+"The Count Pietro G. 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.' 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 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
+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.
+
+
+"January 8. 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 Il 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 (_I_ doubt him--_they_
+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. Tore a button in my new coat.
+
+"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. Difficulties 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, &c. considering all things.
+
+"Dined. Read Johnson's 'Vanity of Human 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 superfluous, and that Pope (the best of poets, _I_ think) would
+have begun at once, only changing the punctuation--
+
+    "'Survey mankind from China to Peru.'
+
+The former line, 'Let observation,' &c. is certainly heavy and useless.
+But 'tis a grand poem--and _so true!_--true as the 10th 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. 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, &c.
+&c. and that the Austrian barbarians are placed again on _war_ pay, and
+will march. Let them--'they come like sacrifices in their trim,' 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 visiters--news, _war_, or rumours
+of war. Consulted with P.G. &c. &c. 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
+unquenchedly 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 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. 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 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 11. 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.
+
+"Alli. 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!
+
+"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 'suma 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.' '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 Bryant had impugned its veracity. It is true
+I read 'Homer Travestied' (the first twelve books), because Hobhouse 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 _inaccuracy_ in
+costume and description is, that his Gertrude, &c. 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 any thing 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 (but with one day's interval), chequered with snow or heavy
+rain only, since the 30th 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 numberless 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 _melo_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 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,
+because 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 Contesse G. this evening,
+who will be curious to have the effigies of a man so celebrated.
+
+"How strange are our thoughts, &c. &c. &c.[19]
+
+[Footnote 19: Here follows a long passage, already extracted, relative
+to his early friend, Edward Noel Long.]
+
+
+"Midnight.
+
+"Read the Italian translation by Guido Sorelli of the German
+Grillparzer--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, 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 Müllner'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, and Italian translations. Of the _real_ language I know
+absolutely nothing,--except oaths learnt from postilions and officers in
+a squabble. I can _swear_ in German potently, when I
+like--'Sacrament--Verfluchter--Hundsfott'--and so forth; but I have
+little of their less 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 Staël_ish_, 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 the ninth vol.
+octavo, of Mitford's Greece, where he rather vindicates the memory of
+this last of the Assyrians.
+
+"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 the 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 _if_ 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 (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 important 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, the Capo Politico of the
+remaining 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 disputing
+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 the painter, 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 1st 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 descriptions of Ossian, are somewhat tiresome in real, prosaic
+perspective. Politics still mysterious.
+
+
+"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
+_unpaid_ 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 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 Staël, with 'the Cossack,' towards
+the end of 1813, were the exhibitions of the succeeding year.
+
+"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. 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 bog-trotter,' &c. &c. Now I, who know Dr. Parr,
+and who know (_not_ by experience--for I never should have presumed so
+far as to contend with him--but by hearing him _with_ others, and _of_
+others) 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 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 remember 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 _sub_scribed and _circum_scribed
+'for the recall of Mr. Edgeworth to Ireland.'[20]
+
+"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 Staël.
+
+"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
+postilion. However, the impression of intellect and prudence is
+profound--and may be useful.
+
+[Footnote 20: In this, I rather think he was misinformed; whatever merit
+there may be in the jest, I have not, as far as I can recollect, the
+slightest claim to it.]
+
+
+"January 20. 1821.
+
+"Rode--fired pistols. Read from Grimm's Correspondence. 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 pistols--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
+walking-stick, at twelve paces, with a single bullet--and all by _eye_
+and calculation; for my hand is not steady, 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 plûpart des poëtes
+comiques étaient gens bilieux et mélancoliques; et que M. de Voltaire,
+qui est très gai, n'a jamais fait que des tragedies--et que la comedie
+gaie est le seul genre où il n'ait point réussi. C'est que celui qui rit
+et celui qui fait rire sont deux hommes fort différens.'--Vol. VI.
+
+"At this moment I feel as bilious as the best comic writer of them all,
+(even as Regnard himself, the next to Molière, 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
+Sardanapalus, 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.
+
+"It is three minutes past twelve.--'Tis the middle of night by the
+castle clock,' 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.
+
+
+"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.' The Cari. 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 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.'
+
+"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 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 individual 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 Ga. Gi. in despite of
+all I said and did to prevent it, _would_ separate from her husband, Il
+Cavalier Commendatore Gi. &c. &c. &c. and all on the account of 'P.P.
+clerk of this parish.' 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, &c. &c. &c.--
+
+    Many small articles make up a sum,
+    And hey ho for Caleb Quotem, oh!"
+
+
+"January 25. 1821.
+
+"Received a letter from Lord S.O. state secretary of the Seven
+Islands--a fine fellow--clever--dished in England 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. 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. Two thousand years since
+that sage's declaration of ignorance have not enlightened us more upon
+this important point; for, according 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 'grand
+peut-être'--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 '_Trecroci_.' 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_ ninety-five years old,
+she must recollect the Cardinal Alberoni, 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 _turbot_, (Friday, fast regularly and religiously,)
+which I wanted to eat all myself. Ate it.
+
+"Went out--found T. as usual--music. The gentlemen, 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,
+buffooning, 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 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 themselves, 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, _old_, and the master of the
+world.
+
+"_Memoranda._
+
+"What is Poetry?--The feeling of a Former world and Future.
+
+"_Thought 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 retrospect 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 -------------------------------------------------------------
+--------------------------------------------------------------------
+--------------------------------------------------------------------[21]
+
+"_Thought for a speech of Lucifer, in the tragedy of Cain:_--
+
+    "Were _Death_ an _evil_, would _I_ let thee _live_?
+    Fool! live as I live--as thy father lives,
+    And thy son's sons shall live for evermore.
+
+[Footnote 21: Thus marked, with impatient strokes of the pen, by himself
+in the original.]
+
+
+"Past Midnight. One o' the clock.
+
+"I have been reading W.F.S * * (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 pimples_--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, S * *,) 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. F. S * *. 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
+Wakefield, who found out that all the good things had been said already
+on the right side, and therefore 'dressed up some paradoxes' upon the
+wrong side--ingenious, but false, as he himself says--to which 'the
+learned world said nothing, nothing at all, sir.' The 'learned world,'
+however, _has_ said something to the brothers S * *.
+
+"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 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 yesterday. 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 risen--_ça ira!_
+
+"Read S * *. 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
+ridiculous, but that he deserves it.
+
+"In the same style this German talks of gondolas on the Arno--a precious
+fellow to dare to speak of Italy!
+
+"He says also that Dante's chief defect is a want, in 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
+gentleness 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 S * *. 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 * * *--* * *.[22] Things
+seem fast coming to a crisis--_ça ira!_
+
+"We talked over various matters of moment and movement. These I
+omit;--if they come to any thing, they will speak for themselves. After
+these, we spoke of Kosciusko. 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 letters and papers are
+stopped. Nobody knows any thing, 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.
+
+[Footnote 22: In the original MS. these watch-words are blotted over so
+as to be illegible.]
+
+
+"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 Contesse 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'--speaking of the _passions_. If this
+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 Correspondence. He repeats frequently, in
+speaking of a poet, or a man of genius in any department, even in music,
+(Gretry, for instance,) that he must have 'une ame qui se tourmente, un
+esprit violent.' How far this may be true, I know not; but if it were, I
+should be a poet 'per eccellenza;' for I have always had 'une ame,'
+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 form the annals of the literary part of that age of
+France, with much of her politics; and, still more, of her 'way of
+life.' He is as valuable, and far more entertaining than Muratori or
+Tiraboschi--I had almost said, than Ginguené--but there we should pause.
+However, 'tis a great man in its line.
+
+"Monsieur St. Lambert has
+
+    "'Et lorsqu'à ses regards la lumière est ravie,
+    Il n'a plus, en mourant, à 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.
+
+
+"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 over-flowing 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 England, 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. It I rouse, 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[23].
+
+[Footnote 23: In this little incident of the music in the streets thus
+touching so suddenly upon the nerve of memory, and calling away his mind
+from its dark bodings to a recollection of years and scenes the
+happiest, perhaps, of his whole life, there is something that appears to
+me peculiarly affecting.]
+
+
+"February 5. 1821.
+
+"At last, 'the kiln's in a low.' 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.
+Returned--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 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 15th inst.
+Instead of this, from some previous information or otherwise, 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 15th.
+
+"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.
+
+
+"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 commotion at Paris.
+
+"Rode out between four and six--finished my letter to Murray on Bowles's
+pamphlets--added postscript. Passed the evening as usual--out till
+eleven--and subsequently at home.
+
+
+"February 11. 1821.
+
+"Wrote--had a copy taken of an extract from Petrarch's Letters, with
+reference to the conspiracy of the Doge, M. Faliero, containing the
+poet's opinion of the matter. Heard a heavy firing of cannon towards
+Comacchio--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. 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 without, 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 Romēo and Giulietta--_not_ Roměo,
+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
+_fact_, 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 Sardanapalus. To-night, or
+to-morrow, I ought to answer letters.
+
+
+"February 16. 1821.
+
+"Last night Il Conte P.G. sent a man with a bag full of bayonets, some
+muskets, and some hundreds of cartridges to my house, without apprizing
+me, though I had seen him not half an hour before. About ten days ago,
+when there was to be a rising here, the Liberals and my brethren Ci.
+asked me to purchase some arms for a certain few of our ragamuffins. I
+did so immediately, and ordered ammunition, &c. 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, &c. &c. shall
+be liable to,' &c. &c.--and what do my friends, the patriots, do two
+days afterwards? 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 carabiniers 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 towards the Barbarians. If it be even so, in a
+short time 'there will be news o' thae craws,' as Mrs. Alison Wilson
+says of Jenny Blane's 'unco cockernony' in the 'Tales of my Landlord.'
+
+"In turning over Grimm's Correspondence to-day, I found a thought of
+Tom Moore's in a song of Maupertuis to a female Laplander.
+
+    "'Et tous les lieux,
+    Où sont ses yeux,
+    Font la Zone brûlante.'
+
+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
+    Bientôt il nous destine;
+    Mais ces longs jours
+    Seront trop courts,
+    Passés près des 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'll 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 depôt,
+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 Cæsar (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.
+
+
+"February 19. 1821.
+
+"Came home solus--very high wind--lightning--moonshine--solitary
+stragglers muffled in cloaks--women in mask--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
+Ci. It is to be in _the Forest_ of Boccacio's and Dryden's 'Huntsman'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 [24] degli Onesti' (Dryden has turned 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.
+
+[Footnote 24: In Boccacio, the name is, I think, Nastagio.]
+
+
+"February 21, 1821.
+
+"As usual, rode--visited, &c. 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, &c.--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 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, &c. as usual. The secret intelligence arrived this morning from
+the frontier to the Ci. 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 Northern 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.
+But, as Squire Sullen says, 'My head aches consumedly: Scrub, bring me a
+dram!' Drank some Imola wine, and some punch.
+
+
+"_Log-book continued_[25].
+
+[Footnote 25: In another paper-book.]
+
+
+"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, &c.--dined--wrote down an additional stanza for the 5th canto of
+D.J. which I had composed in bed this morning. Visited _l'Amica_. We are
+invited, on the night of the Veglione (next Domenica) with the Marchesa
+Clelia Cavalli and the Countess Spinelli Rusponi. I promised to go. Last
+night there was a row at the ball, of which I am a 'socio.' The
+Vice-legate had the imprudent 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 farther, and the
+whole city would have been in arms, and the government driven out of it.
+
+"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.
+
+"Last night I suffered horribly--from an indigestion, I believe. I
+_never_ sup--that is, never at home. But, last 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 somewhat 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 should believe that it was married to the body, if they did
+not sympathise 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+During the two months comprised in this Journal, some of the Letters of
+the following series were written. The reader must, therefore, be
+prepared to find in them occasional notices of the same train of events.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 404. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Ravenna, January 2. 1821.
+
+     "Your entering into my project for the Memoir is pleasant to me.
+     But I doubt (contrary to my dear Made Mac F * *, 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 although Made. de S.'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 * *, 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, M * * L * *[26], 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 * * was
+     open-_mouthed_ 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, Rousseau, &c. &c. 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 Lissa in 1811. He was brave, but a
+     disciplinarian. 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 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[27],'but it 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,' we may perhaps meet, in France or England, within
+     the year.
+
+     "Yours, &c.
+
+     "Of course, I cannot explain to you existing circumstances, as they
+     open all letters.
+
+     "Will you set me right about your curst 'Champs Elysées?'--are they
+     'és' or 'ées' 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."
+
+[Footnote 26: Of this gentleman, the following notice occurs in the
+"Detached Thoughts:"--"L * * was a good man, a clever man, but a bore.
+My only revenge or consolation used to be setting him by the ears with
+some vivacious person who hated bores especially,--Madame de S---- or
+H----, for example. But I liked L * *; 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 M * * 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 _terra_fied by the
+charge; thrice did I lose him in the grey 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'd give the lands of Deloraine
+    Dark Musgrave were alive again!'
+
+that is,--
+
+    "I would give many a sugar cane
+    M * * L * * were alive again!"]
+
+[Footnote 27: The following passage from the letter of mine, to which
+the above was an answer, will best explain what follows:--With respect
+to the newspaper, it is odd enough that Lord * * * * and myself had been
+(about a week or two before I received your letter) speculating upon
+your assistance in a plan somewhat similar, but more literary and less
+regularly-periodical in its appearance. Lord * *, 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 être _obligé_!' 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."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 405. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, January 4. 1821.
+
+     "I just see, by the papers of Galignani, that there is a new
+     tragedy of great expectation, by Barry Cornwall. Of what I have
+     read of his works Hiked the _Dramatic_ Sketches, but thought his
+     Sicilian Story and Marcian Colonna, in rhyme, quite spoilt, by I
+     know not what affectation of Wordsworth, 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 (Barry Cornwall is not
+     his _true_ name) was a schoolfellow 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 Marino Faliero. 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 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,' &c. and do not
+     judge me by your old mad 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
+     Ben Jonson, who was a scholar and a classic. Or, take up a
+     translation of Alfieri, and try the interest, &c. 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_ tailors' yards. Nothing so easy as intricate confusion of
+     plot and rant. Mrs. Centlivre, in comedy, has _ten times the bustle
+     of Congreve_; but are they to be compared? and yet she drove
+     Congreve from the theatre."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 406. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, January 19. 1821.
+
+     "Yours of the 29th ultimo 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[28] 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 thousands of
+     worthy 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 _I_ 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.[29]
+
+     "The _third_ canto of Don Juan is 'dull,' but you must really put
+     up with it: if the two first and the two following are tolerable,
+     what do you expect? particularly as I neither dispute with you on
+     it as a matter of criticism, nor as a matter of business.
+
+     "Besides, what am I to understand? you and Douglas Kinnaird, and
+     others, write to me, that the two first published cantos are among
+     the best that I ever wrote, and are reckoned so; Augusta 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 ostentation, 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.[30] 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 those
+     plaguy 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."
+
+[Footnote 28: To the letter which enclosed this protest, and which has
+been omitted to avoid repetitions, he had subjoined a passage from
+Spence's Anecdotes (p. 197. of Singer's edition), where Pope says,
+speaking of himself, "I had taken such strong resolutions against any
+thing of that kind, from seeing how much every body that _did_ write for
+the stage was obliged to subject themselves to the players and the
+town."--_Spence's Anecdotes_, p. 22.
+
+In the same paragraph, Pope is made to say, "After I had got acquainted
+with the town, I resolved never to write any thing for the stage, though
+solicited by many of my friends to do so, and particularly Betterton."]
+
+[Footnote 29: No further step was ever taken in this affair; and the
+documents, which were of no use whatever, are, I believe, still in Mr.
+Murray's possession.]
+
+[Footnote 30: The self-will of Lord Byron was in no point more
+conspicuous than in the determination with which he thus persisted in
+giving the preference to one or two works of his own which, in the eyes
+of all other persons, were most decided failures. Of this class was the
+translation from Pulci, so frequently mentioned by him, which appeared
+afterwards in the Liberal, and which, though thus rescued from the fate
+of remaining unpublished, roust for ever, I fear, submit to the doom of
+being unread.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 407. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "January 20. 1821.
+
+     "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 Lord Byron has a tragedy coming out,' &c. &c. &c. and
+     that the Courier and Morning Chronicle, &c. &c. are pulling one
+     another to pieces about it and him, &c.
+
+     "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 to my
+     judgment_. If you do not wish to drive me mad altogether, you will
+     hit upon some way to prevent this.
+
+     "Yours, &c.
+
+     "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 Aeschylus. I speak of course humbly, and with the
+     greatest sense of the distance of time and merit between the two
+     performances; 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 408. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, January 20. 1821.
+
+     "If Harris or Elliston persist, after the remonstrance which I
+     desired you and Mr. 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_, because 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 preventing this cursed attempt at
+     representation.
+
+     "God help me! at this distance, I am treated like a corpse or a
+     fool by the few people that I thought I could rely upon; and I
+     _was_ a fool to think any better of them than of the rest of
+     mankind.
+
+     "Pray write. Yours, &c.
+
+     "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 altogether_, and only _forty
+     copies struck off privately_ for presents to my friends. What curst
+     fools those speculating buffoons must be _not_ to see that it is
+     unfit for their fair--or their booth!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 409. TO MR. 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, &c. &c.[31]
+
+     "Have you heard that the 'Braziers' Company have, or mean to
+     present an address at Brandenburgh House, '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 * * * *, 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 embarked, 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, 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 hisses, nor
+     the insolence of their applause. I write only for the _reader_, and
+     care for nothing but the _silent_ approbation 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," &c.
+
+[Footnote 31: Already given in his Journal.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 410. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, January 27. 1821.
+
+     "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 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.
+
+     "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 law-suit--and the trustees of
+     Lady Byron refusing to allow of an advantageous loan to be made
+     from my property to Lord Blessington, &c. &c. 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 _here_, else I should have taken the liberty of
+     Hannibal's ring.
+
+     "Pray thank Gifford for all his goodnesses. The winter is as cold
+     here as Parry's polarities. I must now take a canter in the forest;
+     my horses are waiting.
+
+     "Yours ever and truly."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 411. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, February 2. 1821.
+
+     "Your letter of excuses has arrived. I receive the letter, but do
+     not admit the excuses, except 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, 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. * * 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 acknowledge 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 I 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 the English booksellers, and I desire no interest out of that
+     country.
+
+     "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 crum of the old
+     loaf. You have no right to act suspiciously with me, for I have
+     given you no reason. I shall always be frank with you; as, for
+     instance, whenever you talk with the votaries of Apollo
+     arithmetically, 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, &c.
+
+     "P.S. If you venture, as you say, to Ravenna this year, 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,' which are rather frequent here of late
+     among the native parties. But perhaps your visit may be
+     anticipated; 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 412. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, February 16, 1821.
+
+     "In the month of March will arrive from Barcelona _Signor Curioni_,
+     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.
+
+     "The fifth is so far from being the last of Don Juan, 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 'Werter-faced man' in Germany, so as to
+     show the different ridicules of the society in each of those
+     countries, and to have displayed him gradually _gâté_ and _blasé_
+     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 tradition says hell: but
+     it is probably only an allegory of the other state. You are now in
+     possession of my notions on the subject.
+
+     "You say the Doge will not be popular: did I ever write for
+     _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 succeded the older writers. It
+     appears to me, that good English, and a severer approach to the
+     rules, might combine something not dishonourable 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 its
+     popularity, but does not persuade me that it is _therefore_ faulty.
+     Whatever faults it has will arise from deficiency in the conduct,
+     rather than in the conception, which is simple and severe.
+
+     "So _you epigrammatise_ upon _my epigram_? I will _pay_ you for
+     _that_, mind if I don't, some day. I never let any one off in the
+     long run (_who first begins_). Remember * * *, 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
+     English pirates did not begin their attempts till after I had left
+     England the second time. Pray attend to this. Let me know what you
+     and your synod think on Bowles.
+
+     "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 Morghen's, and _Ovid_'s (I don't _mean
+     poetry_),--are as low as need be: look at the seal which I gave to
+     William Bankes, and own it. How came George Bankes to quote
+     'English Bards' in the House of Commons? All the world keep
+     flinging that poem in my face.
+
+     "Belzoni _is_ a grand traveller, and his English is very prettily
+     broken.
+
+     "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 row, 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," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 413. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, February 21. 1821.
+
+     "In the forty-fourth page, volume first, of Turner's Travels (which
+     you lately sent me), it is stated that 'Lord Byron, when he
+     expressed such confidence of its practicability, seems to have
+     forgotten that Leander swam both ways, with and against the tide;
+     whereas _he_ (Lord Byron) only performed the easiest part of the
+     task by swimming with it from Europe to Asia.' I certainly could
+     not have forgotten, what is known to every schoolboy, 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 into 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 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, 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 _must_ 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 possible, 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 _four_, 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
+     probability. It is not quite fair in him to infer, that because
+     _he_ failed, Leander could not succeed. There are still four
+     instances 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 perceived none;
+     it is favourable to the swimmer on neither 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 practicable. Any young
+     man, in good 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
+     Hellespont. Of what may be done in swimming, I will mention one
+     more instance. In 1818, the Chevalier Mengaldo (a gentleman of
+     Bassano), a good swimmer, wished to swim with my friend Mr.
+     Alexander Scott and myself. As he seemed particularly 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 consequence, as there was
+     a gondola to hold his clothes and pick him up. Scott swam 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, comprising 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 its
+     performance, Mr. Hoppner, 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. He tried to swim
+     directly across, instead of going higher up to take the vantage: he
+     might as well have tried to _fly_ 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. Whether 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. Turner, '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,
+     however, is not so 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 perceiving the greater strength of the opposite stream by
+     which the diplomatic traveller palliates his own failure. Our
+     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 greater 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 and
+     Captain 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. Turner'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. Turner 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."[32]
+
+[Footnote 32: To the above letter, which was published at the time, Mr.
+Turner wrote a reply, but, for reasons stated by himself, did not print
+it. At his request, I give insertion to his paper in the Appendix.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 414. TO MR. 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 particularly 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_,
+     notwithstanding 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. If not, let me have my
+     francs. They were paid by Missiaglia, the _W_enetian 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, &c.
+
+     "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.
+
+        BOWLES. "Why, how now, saucy Tom,
+                  If you thus must ramble,
+                I will publish some
+                  Remarks on Mr. Campbell.
+
+        CAMPBELL. "Why, how now, Billy Bowles,
+                    &c. &c. &c."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 415. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "March 2. 1821.
+
+     "This was the beginning of a letter which I meant for Perry, but
+     stopped 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+TO MR. PERRY.
+
+     "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,' &c. which was never intended for such an
+     exhibition, and I trust will never undergo it. It is 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 the buzzing of the other.
+
+     "This may not seem a courteous comparison, but I have no other
+     ready; and it occurs naturally."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 416. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, Marzo, 1821.
+
+     "Dear Moray,
+
+     "In my packet of the 12th instant, in the last sheet (_not_ the
+     _half_ sheet), last page, _omit_ the sentence which (defining, or
+     attempting to define, what and who are gentlemen) 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,' &c. &c. I say,
+     omit the whole of that sentence, because, like the 'cosmogony, or
+     creation of the world,' in the 'Vicar of Wakefield,' 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 _parle
+     euphuism_; but there is a _nobility_ of thought and expression to
+     be found no less in Shakspeare, Pope, and Burns, than in Dante,
+     Alfieri,' &c. &c. 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 on 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_.
+       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.
+      11. _Prompter. Puppet squeaks._
+      12. _The ear of Eve._
+      13. _Familiar toad._
+      14. _Half froth, half venom, splits_ himself abroad.
+      15. _Fop_ at the _toilet_.
+      16. _Flatterer_ at the _board_.
+      17. _Amphibious thing_.
+      18. Now _trips a lady_.
+      19. Now _struts a lord_.
+      20. A _cherub's face_.
+      21. A _reptile_ all the rest.
+      22. The _Rabbins_.
+      23. Pride that _licks 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_ 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 fellows are
+     trying against Pope.
+
+     "Ask Mr. Gifford if, in the fifth act of 'The Doge,' you could not
+     contrive (where the sentence of the _Veil_ is passed) 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.[33]
+
+     "Yours, truly, &c.
+
+     "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 Naples by these fellows.
+
+     "I wish to propose to _Holmes_, the miniature painter, to come out
+     to me this spring. I will pay his expenses, 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 face while it lasts. Madame
+     G. is also very handsome, but it is quite in a different
+     style--completely 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."
+
+[Footnote 33: These lines--perhaps from some difficulty in introducing
+them--were never inserted in the Tragedy.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 417. TO MR. 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; and as she was
+     now four years old complete, and quite above the control of the
+     servants--and as a _man_ living without 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.[34] 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.
+
+     "P.S. There is a report here of a change in France; 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. Afterwards, 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."
+
+[Footnote 34: With such anxiety did he look to this essential part of
+his daughter's education, that notwithstanding the many advantages she
+was sure to derive from the kind and feminine superintendence of Mrs.
+Shelley, his apprehensions, lest her feeling upon religious subjects
+might be disturbed by the conversation of Shelley himself, prevented him
+from allowing her to remain under his friend's roof.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 418. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, April 21. 1821.
+
+     "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. Upon this point you can consult
+     with Mr. Gifford, and think twice before you publish it at all.
+
+     Yours truly,
+
+     B.
+
+     "P.S. You may make my subscription for Mr. Scott's widow, &c.
+     _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, it would look indelicate. I
+     would give more, but my disappointments last year about Rochdale
+     and the transfer from the funds render me more economical for the
+     present."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 419. TO MR. SHELLEY.
+
+     "Ravenna, April 26. 1821.
+
+     "The child continues doing well, and the accounts are regular and
+     favourable. It is gratifying to me that you 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--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 unnecessary 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 inordinate 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 poetry. You
+     also know my high opinion of your own poetry,--because it is of
+     _no_ school. I read Cenci--but, besides that I think the _subject_
+     essentially _un_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 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.
+
+     "P.S. Could not you and I contrive to meet this summer? Could not
+     you take a run here _alone_?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 420. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, April 26. 1821.
+
+     "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 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 suburbing, 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 (which produced
+     the English Bards, &c.) 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.
+
+     "Yours, &c.
+
+     "P.S. Your latest packet of books is on its way here, but not
+     arrived. Kenilworth excellent. Thanks for the pocket-books, of
+     which 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?--_conditionally, recollect_; not
+     to be published before decease. _He_ has the permission to dispose
+     of them, and I advised him to do so."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 421. TO MR. 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 ran write but little, as all
+     letters are opened. 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 nowhere now
+     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," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 422. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Ravenna, May 3. 1821.
+
+     "Though I wrote to you on the 28th ultimo, I must acknowledge yours
+     of this day, with the lines[35]. 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[36]? I do not recollect to
+     have said any thing of _you_ that could offend,--certainly, nothing
+     intentionally. As for * *, 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. And did you _not_ approve, as he says? Would
+     I had known that before! I would have given him some more
+     gruel.[37] 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 barbarians. 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."
+
+[Footnote 35: "Aye, down to the dust with them, slaves as they are," &c.
+&c.]
+
+[Footnote 36: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 37: 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 partisanship 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.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was at this time that he began, under the title of "Detached
+Thoughts," that Book of Notices or Memorandums, from which, in the
+course of these pages, I have extracted so many curious illustrations of
+his life and opinions, and of which the opening article is as follows:--
+
+"Amongst various Journals, Memoranda, Diaries, &c. 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 proclamations, 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 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 necessarily 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 its
+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.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 423. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, May 10. 1821.
+
+     "I have just got your packet. I am obliged to Mr. Bowles, and Mr.
+     Bowles is obliged to me, for having restored him to good-humour. He
+     is to write, 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. Bowles, you will _not_ publish my
+     _defence of Gilchrist_: it would be brutal to do so after his
+     urbanity, for it is rather too rough, like his own attack upon
+     Gilchrist. 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 first Letter to you. Upon this consult Gifford; and, above all,
+     don't let any thing be added which can _personally_ affect Mr.
+     Bowles.
+
+     "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.
+
+     "I hope and trust that Elliston _won't_ be permitted to act the
+     drama. Surely _he_ 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,
+     Oxford, nor Scott's novels among them. Why don't you republish
+     Hodgson's Childe Harold's Monitor and Latino-mastix? They are
+     excellent. Think of this--they are all for _Pope_.
+
+     "Yours," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The controversy, in which Lord Byron, with so much grace and
+good-humour, thus allowed himself to be disarmed by the courtesy of his
+antagonist, it is not my intention to run the risk of reviving by any
+enquiry into its origin or merits. In all such discussions on matters of
+mere taste and opinion, where, on one side, it is the aim of the
+disputants to elevate the object of the contest, and on the other, to
+depreciate it, Truth will usually be found, like Shakspeare's gatherer
+of samphire on the cliff, "halfway down." Whatever judgment, however,
+may be formed respecting the controversy itself, of the urbanity and
+gentle feeling on both sides, which (notwithstanding some slight trials
+of this good understanding afterwards) led ultimately to the result
+anticipated in the foregoing letter, there can be but one opinion; and
+it is only to be wished that such honourable forbearance were as sure of
+imitators as it is, deservedly, of eulogists. In the lively pages thus
+suppressed, when ready fledged for flight, with a power of self-command
+rarely exercised by wit, there are some passages, of a general nature,
+too curious to be lost, which I shall accordingly proceed to extract for
+the reader.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Pope himself 'sleeps well--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. * * *
+
+"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; 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 remarkable or a
+celebrated character, might well have pretended to all the 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, thought his
+'Epistle on the Characters of Women' his 'masterpiece.' 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, it may be remarked, that it does not
+always depend upon personal appearance, 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 Luxembourg
+(who had precisely Pope's figure) was not only somewhat too amatory for
+a great man, but fortunate in his attachments. La Valière, the passion
+of Louis XIV. 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 Acon dextro, capta est Leonilla sinistro,
+      Et potis est forma vincere uterque Deos:
+    Blande puer, lumen quod habes concede sorori,
+      Sic tu cæcus Amor, sic erit illa Venus.'
+
+"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 of _forty-four_.'
+
+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. 'They particularly renounce Celestial Venus, into
+whose temple, &c. &c. &c. I remember, too, to have seen a building in
+Ægina in which there is a statue of Fortune, holding a horn of Amalthea;
+and near here 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 submit 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 vii. 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 Strafford)
+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.
+
+"In regard 'to the strange mixture of indecent, and sometimes _profane_
+levity, which his conduct and language _often_ exhibited,' and which so
+much shocks the tone of _Pope_, than the tone of the _time_. With the
+exception of the correspondence 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 any thing in Pope's letters. The comedies of
+Congreve, Vanbrugh, Farquhar, Gibber, &c. 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 every body
+understood _that_, but few could talk rationally upon less common
+topics.' The refinement of latter 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To the extract that follows I beg to call the particular attention of
+the reader. Those who at all remember the peculiar bitterness and
+violence with which the gentleman here commemorated assailed Lord Byron,
+at a crisis when both his heart and fame were most vulnerable, will, if
+I am not mistaken, feel a thrill of pleasurable admiration in reading
+these sentences, such as alone can convey any adequate notion of the
+proud, generous pleasure that must have been felt in writing them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Poor Scott is now no more. 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, '_squeel_') 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 griefs by the loss of his son, and had known, by experience, the
+bitterness of 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 James 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In reference to some complaints made by Mr. Bowles, in his Pamphlet, of
+a charge of "hypochondriacism" which he supposed to have been brought
+against him by his assailant, Mr. Gilchrist, the noble writer thus
+proceeds:--
+
+"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 Molière, was atrabilarious, and Molière 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.
+
+"Mendelsohn 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.'
+
+"In page 14. we have a large assertion, that 'the Eloisa alone is
+sufficient to convict him (Pope) 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-être,' 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 with,
+at the same time, 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 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? 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 systematise. It assails, but does not argue; it may be
+wrong, but it does not assume pretensions to optimism."
+
+Mr. Bowles having, in his pamphlet, complained of some anonymous
+communication which he had received, Lord Byron thus comments on the
+circumstance.
+
+"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 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 intimation 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 denunciation was addressed to
+the Cardinal Legate of Romagna, instead of to * * * *. 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 Heatherblutter' (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,' 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."
+
+The following just tribute to my Reverend Friend's merits as a poet I
+have peculiar pleasure in extracting:--
+
+"Mr. Bowles has no reason to 'succumb' but to Mr. Bowles. As a poet, the
+author of 'The Missionary' may compete with the foremost of his
+contemporaries. 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 honorably rank with
+his living rivals," &c. &c. &c.
+
+Among various Addenda for this pamphlet, sent at different times to Mr.
+Murray, I find the following curious passages:--
+
+"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 (no friend to Pope) asserts that Pope formed _Kent's_ 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 _Pope's_ at Twickenham. Warton
+applauds 'his singular effort of art and taste, in impressing so much
+variety and scenery on a spot of five acres.' Pope was the _first_ 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 _best_ rules and
+observations on _Architecture_ and _Gardening_.' (See Warton's Essay,
+vol. ii. p. 237, &c.&c.)
+
+"Now, is it not a shame, after this, to hear our Lakers in '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 _Stowe_. 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 _Kent's_ 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 Lord Bathurst's is carved,
+'Here Pope sang,'--he composed beneath it. Bolingbroke, in one of his
+letters, represents them both writing in a hayfield. 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, painting,
+_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 a
+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 enthusiastical for the country because they live in
+London. It is to be observed, that the rustical founders are rather
+anxious to disclaim any connection with their metropolitan followers,
+whom they ungraciously review, and call cockneys, atheists, foolish
+fellows, bad writers, and other hard names, not less ungrateful than
+unjust. I can understand the pretensions of the aquatic gentlemen of
+Windermere to what Mr. B * * terms '_entusumusy_' for lakes, and
+mountains, and daffodils, and buttercups; but I should be glad to be
+apprised of the foundation of the London propensities of their imitative
+brethren to the same' high argument.' Southey, Wordsworth, 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_?
+
+"When they have really seen 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 permitted 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,' 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.
+
+"If they had said nothing of _Pope_, they might have remained 'alone
+with their glory' for aught I should have said or thought about them or
+their nonsense. But if they interfere with the little 'Nightingale' of
+Twickenham, they may find others who will bear it--_I_ 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 clothed in
+consummate beauty. Sir William Temple observes, 'That of all the members
+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.' 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, 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 clothes
+might be 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. * * 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 are now, 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 Shakspeare,
+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, I 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 _fencing_-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 composition. _Vulgarity_ is far worse than downright
+_black-guardism_; 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_? 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, gentlemen,
+is the _Eagle_ of the _Sun_, from Archangel in Russia: the _otterer_ it
+is, the _igherer_ he flies.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In a note on a passage relative to Pope's lines upon Lady Mary W.
+Montague, he says--
+
+"I think that I could show, if necessary, that Lady Mary W. Montague was
+also greatly to blame in that quarrel, _not_ for having rejected, but
+for having encouraged him; but I would rather decline the task--though
+she should have remembered her own line, '_He 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 _Harvey_, I
+should love him;' so, if you were to call a female of the same species
+'Mary,' I should love it better than others (biped or quadruped) of the
+same sex with a different appellation. She was an extraordinary 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 banish'd 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,' &c. &c.
+
+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 '_purée_' 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 university not to know that the
+philosopher was himself 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 424. TO MR. HOPPNER.
+
+     "Ravenna, May 11. 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, 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, 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 throwing 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 attachment: this is, I believe, the case also in France.
+     And after all, what is the higher society of England? According 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, &c.
+
+     "P.S. I gave to a musician_er_ a letter for you some time ago--has
+     he presented himself? Perhaps you could introduce him to the
+     Ingrains and other dilettanti. He is simple and unassuming--two
+     strange things in his profession--and he fiddles like Orpheus
+     himself or Amphion: 'tis a pity that he can't make Venice dance
+     away from the brutal tyrant who tramples upon it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 425. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "May 14. 1821.
+
+     "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 manager. It is
+     a pity that you did not show them its _unfitness_ for the stage
+     before the play was _published_, and exact a promise from the
+     managers not to act it. In case of their refusal, we would not have
+     published it at all. But this is too late.
+
+     "Yours.
+
+     "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 I '_brought forward the
+     play!!!_' This is 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 426. TO MR. 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, notwithstanding all my remonstrances
+     through all my friends (and yourself among the rest), the managers
+     persisted in attempting the tragedy, and that it has been
+     'unanimously 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 _I_ '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 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 30th. They must have been in a _hell_ of
+     a hurry for this damnation, 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 assassination, 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.' 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 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, &c.
+
+     "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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 427. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, May 19. 1821.
+
+     "By the papers of Thursday, and two letters of Mr. Kinnaird, I
+     perceive that the Italian gazette had lied most _Italically_, and
+     that the drama had _not_ been hissed, and that my friends _had_
+     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 expenses. 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, &c. I wrote to you a week ago on the subject.
+
+     "Now I should be glad to know what compensation Mr. Elliston would
+     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 _I_ '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 my brains out 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[38].
+
+     "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
+     Fourteenth, who insisted upon buying at any price Algernon Sydney's
+     horse, and, on his 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 (intending 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 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
+     torchlight, but by _lightning_ light: 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
+     the 'Bold Thunder' and 'Brisk Lightning' in person.--_Three_ of us
+     would be too many. There it goes--_flash_ again! but
+
+        "I tax not you, ye elements, with unkindness;
+        I never gave ye _franks_, nor _call'd_ upon you;
+
+     as I have done by and upon Mr. Elliston.
+
+     "Why do you not write? You should at least send me a line of
+     particulars: I know nothing yet but by Galignani and the Honourable
+     Douglas.
+
+     "Well, and how does our Pope controversy go on? and the pamphlet?
+     It is impossible to write any news: the Austrian scoundrels rummage
+     all letters.
+
+     "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."
+
+[Footnote 38: The account given, by Madame Guiccioli, of his anxiety on
+this occasion, fully corroborates his own:--"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 those 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
+relative 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 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_; for _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!!!--here, probably, at Ravenna?--and to whom? perhaps to
+Fletcher!!!--that illustrious literary character,'" &c. &c.--"Ma però la
+sua tranquillità era suo malgrado sovente alterata dalle publiche
+vicende, e dagli attachi che spesso si direggevano a lui nei giornali
+come ad autore principalmente. Era invano che egli protestava
+indifferenza per codesti attachi. L'impressione non era é vero che
+momentanea, e purtroppo per una nobile fierezza sdegnava sempre di
+rispondere ai suoi dettratori. Ma per quanto fosse breve quella
+impressione era però assai forte per farlo molto soffrire e per
+affliggere quelli che lo amavano. Tuttociò che ebbe luogo per la
+rappresentazione del suo Marino Faliero lo inquictò pure moltissimo e
+dietro ad un articolo di una Gazetta di Milano in cui si parlava di
+quell' affare egli mi scrisse così--'Ecco la verità di ciò che io vi
+dissi pochi giorni fa, come vengo sacrificato in tutte le maniere seza
+sapere il _perché_ e il _come_. La tragedia di cui si parla non è (e non
+era mai) nè scritta nè adattata al teatro; ma non è però romantico il
+disegno, è piuttosto regolare--regolarissimo per l' unità del tempo, c
+mancando poco a quella del sito. Voi sapete bene se io aveva intenzione
+di farla rappresentare, poichè era scritta al vostro fianco e nei
+momenti per certo più _tragici_ per me come _uomo_ che come
+_autore_,--perchè _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 _l'autore ne fece la
+letlura!!!_--quì forse? a Ravenna?--ed a chi? forse a Fletcher!!!--quel
+illustre litterato,'" &c. &c.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 428. TO ME. 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 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 429. TO MR. HOPPNER.
+
+     "Ravenna, May 25. 1821.
+
+     "I am very much pleased with what you say of Switzerland, 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.
+
+     "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, &c.
+     &c. All this was more fomented by the barbarian agents, who are
+     numerous here (one of them was stabbed yesterday, 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 430. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, May 25. 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 _un_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_), while all this kick-up has been going on about the
+     play? You SHABBY fellow!!! Were it not for two letters from Douglas
+     Kinnaird, I should have been as ignorant as you are negligent.
+
+     "So, I hear Bowles has been abusing Hobhouse? If that's the case,
+     he has broken the truce, like Morillo's successor, and I will cut
+     him out, as Cochrane did the Esmeralda.
+
+     "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 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 shabby
+     correspondent! N."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 431. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, May 28. 1821.
+
+     "Since my last of the 26th or 25th, I have dashed off my fifth act
+     of the tragedy called 'Sardanapalus.' 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 six times sans answer, which
+     proves you to be a--bookseller. I pray you to send me a copy of Mr.
+     _Wrangham_'s reformation of '_Langhorne_'s Plutarch.' 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 Apollonius_ of Tyana. It is in English,
+     and I think edited or written by what Martin Marprelate calls '_a
+     bouncing priest_.' I shall trouble you no farther with this sheet
+     than with the postage. Yours, &c. N.
+
+     "P.S. Since I wrote this, I determined to enclose it (as a half
+     sheet) to Mr. Kinnaird, who will have the goodness to forward it.
+     Besides, it saves sealing-wax."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 432. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, May 30. 1821.
+
+     "Dear Moray,
+
+     "You say you have written often: I have only received yours of the
+     eleventh, which is very short. By this post, _five_ packets, I send
+     you the tragedy of Sardanapalus, which is written in a rough hand:
+     perhaps Mrs. Leigh can help you to decipher 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 sun-rise. 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. The trait is perhaps too
+     familiar, but it is historical, (of _Otho_, at least,) and natural
+     in an effeminate character."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 433. TO MR. 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, however, but doubt that you will be singular
+     in your opinion. My _new_ tragedy is completed.
+
+     "The B * * is _right_,--I ought to have mentioned her _humour_ and
+     _amiability_, but I thought at her _sixty_, beauty would be most
+     agreeable or least likely. However, 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 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, &c.
+
+     "P.S. Did you receive two letters of Douglas Kinnaird's in an
+     endorse from me? Remember me to Mengaldo, Soranzo, 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 information 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?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 434. TO MR. 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 * *:'--
+
+        "Behold the blessings of a lucky lot--
+        My play is damn'd, and Lady * * _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, &c.;
+     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 somewhat 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 printing 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[39]? You see what comes of being familiar 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_ 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 discharge 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 * * * *--a fine old Visigoth name, or Ostrogoth.
+
+     "The Greeks! what think you? They are my old acquaintances--but
+     what to think I know not. Let us hope howsomever.
+
+     "Yours,
+
+     "B."
+
+[Footnote 39: In their eagerness, like true controversialists, to avail
+themselves of every passing advantage, and convert even straws into
+weapons on an emergency, my two friends, during their short warfare,
+contrived to place me in that sort of embarrassing position, the most
+provoking feature of which is, that it excites more amusement 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 be stated, by
+"a gentleman of the highest literary," &c. &c., 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 authoritatively 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 designating 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 conversation, 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.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 435. TO MR. 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 panegyric in the
+     correspondence of Mrs. Waterhouse and Colonel Berkeley? 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 mayn't 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? I have sent Murray a new
+     tragedy, ycleped 'Sardanapalus,' writ according to Aristotle--all,
+     save the chorus--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 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.
+
+     "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, &c.
+
+     "B."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 436. TO MR. 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 _me_? 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 deliver'd.
+
+     "I have had a friend of your Mr. Irving's--a very pretty lad--a Mr.
+     Coolidge, 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 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, &c. &c. &c. 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 _Norway_ (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, &c.
+
+     "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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the Journal entitled "Detached Thoughts," I find the tribute to his
+genius which he here mentions, as well as some others, thus
+interestingly dwelt upon.
+
+"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, &c. &c. It is
+still somewhere amongst my papers. In the same month I received an
+invitation into _Holstein_ from a Mr. Jacobsen (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.
+Jacobsen'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. Jacobsen 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 mansion 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."
+
+Of the visit, too, of the American gentleman, he thus speaks in the same
+Journal.
+
+"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 appearances; 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 Thorwaldsen 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 rased from
+the street called after him in Dublin); I say that I was more flattered
+by it, because it was _single, unpolitical_, 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;--_I_ would not pay the
+price of a 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 sat for
+my own?--Answer, that it was at the particular request of J.C. Hobhouse,
+Esq. 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 something of a hankering for _public_ fame rather
+than private remembrance.
+
+"Whenever an American requests to see me (which is not unfrequently), I
+comply, firstly, because I respect a people who acquired their freedom
+by their firmness without excess; and, secondly, 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
+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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 437. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, July 6. 1821.
+
+     "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. I mention this in case you are, or
+     intend to be, the publisher of the remaining Cantos.
+
+     "At the particular request of the Contessa G. I have promised _not_
+     to continue Don Juan. You will therefore look upon these three
+     Cantos as the last of the 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 Grammont, Gil Bias, and all the comedy of the passions, when
+     brought out naturally. But 'king's blood must keep word,' as
+     Serjeant Bothwell says."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER, 438. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "July 14. 1821.
+
+     "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 dramatise, like the Greeks (a _modest_
+     phrase), striking passages of history, as they did of history and
+     mythology. You will find all this very _un_like Shakspeare; and so
+     much the better in one sense, for I look upon him to be the _worst_
+     of models[40], 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 unpleasant scenes
+     here: they have, without trial or process, 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."
+
+[Footnote 40: In venturing this judgment upon Shakspeare, Lord Byron but
+followed in the footsteps of his great idol Pope. "It was mighty simple
+in Rowe," says this poet, "to write a play now professedly in
+Shakspeare's style, that is, professedly in the style of a bad
+age."--Spence, sect. 4. 1734-36. Of Milton, too, Pope seems to have held
+pretty nearly the same opinion as that professed by Lord Byron in some
+of these letters. See, in Spence, sect. 5 1737-39, a passage on which
+his editor remarks--"Perhaps Pope did not relish Shakspeare more than he
+seems to have done Milton."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 439. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, July 22. 1821.
+
+     "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 theatres_ are _closed_, 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 character: but, for that
+     matter, so is Richard the Third. Mind the _unities_, which are my
+     great object of research. I am glad that Gifford likes it: as for
+     'the million,' you see I have carefully consulted any thing but the
+     _taste_ of the day for extravagant 'coups de théâtre.' Any probable
+     loss, as I said before, will be allowed for in our accompts. The
+     reviews (except one or two--Blackwood's, for instance) are cold
+     enough; but never mind those fellows: I shall send them to the
+     right about, if I take it into my head. I 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 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. The captain has been
+     reprimanded, the servant released, and the business at present
+     rests there."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Among the victims of the "black sentence and proscription" by which the
+rulers of Italy were now, as appears from the above letters, avenging
+their late alarm upon all who had even in the remotest degree
+contributed to it, the two Gambas were, of course, as suspected Chiefs
+of the Carbonari of Romagna, included. About the middle of July, Madame
+Guiccioli, in a state of despair, wrote to inform Lord Byron that her
+father, in whose palazzo she was at that time residing, had just been
+ordered to quit Ravenna within twenty-four hours, and that it was the
+intention of her brother to depart the following morning. The young
+Count, however, was not permitted to remain even so long, being arrested
+that very night, and conveyed by soldiers to the frontier; and the
+Contessa herself, in but a few days after, found that she also must join
+the crowd of exiles. The prospect of being again separated from her
+noble friend seems to have rendered banishment little less fearful, in
+her eyes, than death. "This alone," she says in a letter to him, "was
+wanting to fill up the measure of my despair. Help me, my dear Byron,
+for I am in a situation most terrible; and without you, I can resolve
+upon nothing. * * has just been with me, having been sent by * * to
+tell me that I must depart from Ravenna before next Tuesday, as my
+husband has had recourse to Rome, for the purpose of either forcing me
+to return to him, or else putting me in a convent; and the answer from
+thence is expected in a few days. I must not speak of this to any
+one,--I roust escape by night; for, if my project should be discovered,
+it will be impeded, and my passport (which the goodness of Heaven has
+permitted me, I know not how, to obtain) will be taken from me. Byron! I
+am in despair!--If I must leave you here without knowing when I shall
+see you again, if it is your will that I should suffer so cruelly, I am
+resolved to remain. They may put me in a convent; I shall die,--but--but
+then you cannot aid me, and I cannot reproach you. I know not what they
+tell me, for my agitation overwhelms me;--and why? Not because I fear my
+present danger, but solely, I call Heaven to witness, solely because I
+must leave you."
+
+Towards the latter end of July, the writer of this tender and truly
+feminine letter found herself forced to leave Ravenna,--the home of her
+youth, as it was, now, of her heart,--uncertain whither to go, or where
+she should again meet Lord Byron. After lingering for a short time at
+Bologna, under a faint expectation that the Court of Rome might yet,
+through some friendly mediation [41], be induced to rescind its order
+against her relatives, she at length gave up all hope, and joined her
+father and brother at Florence.
+
+It has been already seen, from Lord Byron's letters, that he had himself
+become an object of strong suspicion to the Government, and it was,
+indeed, chiefly in their desire to rid themselves of his presence, that
+the steps taken against the Gamba family had originated;--the constant
+benevolence which he exercised towards the poor of Ravenna being likely,
+it was feared, to render him dangerously popular among a people unused
+to charity on so enlarged a scale. "One of the principal causes," says
+Madame Guiccioli, "of the exile of my relatives, was in reality the idea
+that Lord Byron would share the banishment of his friends. Already the
+Government were averse to Lord Byron's residence at Ravenna; knowing his
+opinions, fearing his influence, and also exaggerating the extent of his
+means for giving effect to them. They fancied that he provided money for
+the purchase of arms, &c. and that he contributed pecuniarily to the
+wants of the Society. The truth is, that, when called upon to exercise
+his beneficence, he made no enquiries as to the political and religious
+opinions of those who required his aid. Every unhappy and needy object
+had an equal share in his benevolence. The Anti-Liberals, however,
+insisted upon believing that he was the principal support of Liberalism
+in Romagna, and were desirous of his departure; but, not daring to exact
+it by any direct measure, they were in hopes of being able indirectly to
+force him into this step."[42]
+
+After stating the particulars of her own hasty departure, the lady
+proceeds:--"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 embittered 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[43]."
+
+[Footnote 41: Among the persons applied to by Lord Byron for their
+interest on this occasion was the late Duchess of Devonshire, whose
+answer, dated from Spa, I found among his papers. With the utmost
+readiness her Grace undertakes to write to Rome on the subject, and
+adds, "Believe me also, my Lord, that there is a character of justice,
+goodness, and benevolence, in the present Government of Rome, which, if
+they are convinced of the just claims of the Conte de Gamba and his son,
+will make them grant their request."]
+
+[Footnote 42: "Una delle principali 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. Già da qualche tempo la permanenza
+di Lord Byron in Ravenna era mal gradita dal Governo conoscendosile sue
+opinione e temendosila sua influenza, ed essaggiandosi anche i suoi
+mezzi per esercitarìa. Si credeva che egli somministrasse danaro per
+provvedere armi, e che provvedesse ai bisogni della Società. La veritÃ
+era che nello spargere le sue beneficenze egli non s'informava delle
+opinioni politiche e religiose di quello che aveva bisogno del suo
+soccorso; ogni misero ed ogni infelice aveva un eguale diviso alia sua
+generosità. 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."]
+
+[Footnote 43: "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 può dunque pensare cosa dovesse essere qual
+viaggio per me e cosa io dovessi soffrire nella sua lontananza. Le sue
+lettere avrebbero potuto essermi di conforto; ma quando io le riceveva
+era già trascorso lo spazio di due giorni dal momenta in cui furono
+scritte, e questo pensiero distruggeva tutto il bene che esse potevano
+farmi, e la mia anima era lacerata dai più crudeli timori. Frattanto era
+necessario per la di lui convenienza che egli restasse ancora qualche
+tempo in Ravenna affinchè non avesse a dirsi che egli pure ne era
+esigliato; ed oltreciò egli si era sominamente affezionato a quel
+soggiorno e voleva innanzi di partire vedere esausiti tutti i tentativi
+e tutte le speranze del ritorno dei miei parenti."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 440. TO MR. 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 _convent_, as her father is _not_
+     here,) I have determined 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 confined others, without _trial_,
+     _process_, or even _accusation_!! Every body says they would have
+     done the same by me if they dared proceed openly. My motive,
+     however, for remaining, is because _every one_ of my acquaintance,
+     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, &c.
+
+     "P.S. Can you give me an idea of the comparative expenses of
+     Switzerland and Italy? which I have forgotten. I speak merely of
+     those of decent _living, horses_, &c. 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
+     transmigration, &c. &c. &c."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 441. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, July 30. 1821.
+
+     "Enclosed is the best account of the Doge Faliero, which was only
+     sent to me from an old MS. 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. You will see also that' he spoke very
+     little, and those only words of rage and disdain,' _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 MS. than in the play. I wish that I had met with it
+     in time. Do not forget this note, with a translation.
+
+     "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 pleures_.' Recollect this.
+
+     "I am so busy here about those poor proscribed exiles, 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, &c.
+
+     "P.S. Please to append the letter about _the Hellespont_ as a note
+     to your next opportunity of the verses on Leander, &c. &c. &c. in
+     Childe Harold. Don't forget it amidst your multitudinous
+     avocations, which I think of celebrating in a Dithyrambic Ode to
+     Albemarle Street.
+
+     "Are you aware that Shelley has written an Elegy on Keats, and
+     accuses the Quarterly of killing him?
+
+        "'Who kill'd 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;--you Review
+     people have no more right to kill than any other footpads. However,
+     he who would die of an article in a Review would probably have died
+     of something else equally trivial. The same thing nearly happened
+     to Kirke White, who died afterwards of a consumption."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 442. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Ravenna, August 2. 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 disputants. Did you receive this letter? It imports me
+     to know that our letters are not intercepted or mislaid.
+
+     "Your Berlin drama [44] is an honour, unknown since the days of
+     Elkanah Settle, whose 'Emperor 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
+     frontispiece, which he dared to put before his play.
+
+     "Was not your showing the Memoranda to * * somewhat perilous? Is
+     there not a facetious allusion or two which might as well be
+     reserved for posterity?
+
+     "I know S * * 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 S * *'s on Rome,
+     from which they say that I _might_ have taken some ideas. I give
+     you my honour that I never saw it except in that criticism, which
+     gives, I think, three or four stanzas, sent them (they say) for the
+     nonce by a correspondent--perhaps himself. The fact is easily
+     proved; for I don't understand German, and there was, I believe, no
+     translation--at least, it was the first time that I ever heard of,
+     or saw, either translation or original.
+
+     "I remember having some talk with S * * 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 Molière is no poet[45].'
+
+     "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 anyone--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 _you_! I
+     know no man who looks so well for his years, or who deserves to
+     look better and 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. 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. 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 will come to that he had never been
+     hurt. Pray, let me hear from you, and excuse haste and hot weather.
+
+     "Yours, &c.
+
+     "You may have probably seen all sorts of attacks upon me in some
+     gazettes in England some months ago. 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? 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."
+
+[Footnote 44: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 45: This threat has been since acted upon;--the critic in
+question having, to the great horror of the French literati, pronounced
+Molière to be a "farceur."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+About this time Mr. Shelley, who had now fixed his residence at Pisa,
+received a letter from Lord Byron, earnestly requesting to see him, in
+consequence of which he immediately set out for Ravenna; and the
+following extracts from letters, written during his stay with his noble
+friend, will be read with that double feeling of interest which is
+always sure to be excited in hearing one man of genius express his
+opinions of another.
+
+     "Ravenna, August 7. 1821.
+
+     "I arrived last night at ten o'clock, and sat up talking with Lord
+     Byron until five this morning: I then went to sleep, and now awake
+     at eleven; and having despatched my breakfast as quick as possible,
+     mean to devote the interval until twelve, when the post departs, to
+     you.
+
+     "Lord Byron is very well, and was delighted, to see me. He has in
+     fact completely recovered his health, and lives a life totally the
+     reverse of that which he led at Venice. He has a permanent sort of
+     liaison with the Contessa Guiccioli, who is now at Florence, and
+     seems from her letters to be a very amiable woman. She is waiting
+     there until something shall be decided as to their emigration to
+     Switzerland or stay in Italy, which is yet undetermined on either
+     side. She was compelled to escape from the Papal territory in great
+     haste, as measures had already been taken to place her in a
+     convent, where she would have been unrelentingly confined for
+     life. The oppression of the marriage contract as existing in the
+     laws and opinions of Italy, though less frequently exercised, is
+     far severer than that of England.
+
+     "Lord Byron had almost destroyed himself at Venice. His state of
+     debility was such that he was unable to digest any food: he was
+     consumed by hectic fever, and would speedily have perished but for
+     this attachment, which reclaimed him from the excesses into which
+     he threw himself, from carelessness and pride, rather than taste.
+     Poor fellow I he is now quite well, and immersed in politics and
+     literature. He has given me a number of the most interesting
+     details on the former subject; but we will not speak of them in a
+     letter. Fletcher is here, and--as if, like a shadow, he waxed and
+     waned with the substance of his master--has also revived his good
+     looks, and from amidst the unseasonable grey hairs, a fresh harvest
+     of flaxen locks has put forth.
+
+     "We talked a great deal of poetry and such matters last night; and,
+     as usual, differed--and I think more than ever. He affects to
+     patronise a system of criticism fit only for the production of
+     mediocrity; and, although all his finer poems and passages have
+     been produced in defiance of this system, yet I recognise the
+     pernicious effects of it in the Doge of Venice; and it will cramp
+     and limit his future efforts, however great they may be, unless he
+     gets rid of it. I have read only parts of it, or rather he himself
+     read them to me, and gave me the plan of the whole.
+
+     "Ravenna, August 15. 1821.
+
+     "We ride out in the evening through the pine forests which divide
+     the city from the sea. Our way of life is this, and I have
+     accommodated myself to it without much difficulty:--Lord Byron gets
+     up at two--breakfasts--we talk, read, &c. until six--then we ride
+     at eight, and after dinner sit talking until four or five in the
+     morning. I get up at twelve, and am now devoting the interval
+     between my rising and his to you.
+
+     "Lord Byron is greatly improved in every respect--in genius, in
+     temper, in moral views, in health and happiness. His connection
+     with La Guiccioli has been an inestimable benefit to him. He lives
+     in considerable splendour, but within his income, which is now
+     about four thousand a year, one thousand of which he devotes to
+     purposes of charity. He has had mischievous passions, but these he
+     seems to have subdued; and he is becoming, what he should be, a
+     virtuous man. The interest which he took in the politics of Italy,
+     and the actions he performed in consequence of it, are subjects not
+     fit to be written, but are such as will delight and surprise you.
+
+     "He is not yet decided to go to Switzerland, a place, indeed,
+     little fitted for him: the gossip and the cabals of those
+     Anglicised coteries would torment him as they did before, and might
+     exasperate him into a relapse of libertinism, which, he says, he
+     plunged into not from taste, but from despair. La Guiccioli and her
+     brother (who is Lord Byron's friend and confidant, and acquiesces
+     perfectly in her connection with him) wish to go to Switzerland,
+     as Lord Byron says, merely from the novelty and pleasure of
+     travelling. Lord Byron prefers Tuscany or Lucca, and is trying to
+     persuade them to adopt his views. He has made _me_ write a long
+     letter to her to engage her to remain. An odd thing enough for an
+     utter stranger to write on subjects of the utmost delicacy to his
+     friend's mistress--but it seems destined that I am always to have
+     some active part in every body's affairs whom I approach. I have
+     set down, in tame Italian, the strongest reasons I can think of
+     against the Swiss emigration. To tell you the truth, I should be
+     very glad to accept as my fee his establishment in Tuscany. Ravenna
+     is a miserable place: the people are barbarous and wild, and their
+     language the most infernal _patois_ that you can imagine. He would
+     be in every respect better among the Tuscans.
+
+     "He has read to me one of the unpublished cantos of Don Juan, which
+     is astonishingly fine. It sets him not only above, but far above
+     all the poets of the day. Every word has the stamp of immortality.
+     This canto is in a style (but totally free from indelicacy, 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 degree, what I have long preached,--of
+     producing something wholly new, and relative to the age, and yet
+     surpassingly beautiful. It may be vanity, but I think I see the
+     trace of my earnest exhortations to him, to create something wholly
+     new. * * * *
+
+     "I am sure, if I asked, it would not be refused; yet there is
+     something in me that makes it impossible. Lord Byron and I are
+     excellent friends; and were I reduced to poverty, or were I a
+     writer who had no claim to a higher station than I possess, or did
+     I possess a higher than I deserve, we should appear in all things
+     as such, and I would freely ask him any favour. Such is not now the
+     case: the demon of mistrust and of pride lurks between two persons
+     in our situation, poisoning the freedom of our intercourse. This is
+     a tax, and a heavy one, which we must pay for being human. I think
+     the fault is not on my side; nor is it likely,--I being the weaker.
+     I hope that in the next world these things will be better managed.
+     What is passing in the heart of another rarely escapes the
+     observation of one who is a strict anatomist of his own. * * *
+
+     "Lord Byron here has splendid apartments in the palace of Count
+     Guiccioli, who is one of the richest men in Italy. She is divorced,
+     with an allowance of twelve thousand crowns a year;--a miserable
+     pittance from a man who has a hundred and twenty thousand a year.
+     There are two monkeys, five cats, eight dogs, and ten horses, all
+     of whom (except the horses) walk about the house like the masters
+     of it. Tita, the Venetian, is here, and operates as my valet--a
+     fine fellow, with a prodigious black beard, who has stabbed two or
+     three people, and is the most good-natured-looking fellow I ever
+     saw.
+
+     "Wednesday, Ravenna.
+
+     "I told you I had written, by Lord Byron's desire, to La
+     Guiccioli, to dissuade her and her family from Switzerland. Her
+     answer is this moment arrived, and my representation seems to have
+     reconciled them to the unfitness of the step. At the conclusion of
+     a letter, full of all the fine things she says she has heard of me,
+     is this request, which I transcribe:--'Signore, la vostra bontà mi
+     fa ardita di chiedervi un favore, me lo accorderete voi? _Non
+     partite da Ravenna senza Milord._' Of course, being now, by all the
+     laws of knighthood, captive to a lady's request, I shall only be at
+     liberty on _my parole_ until Lord Byron is settled at Pisa. I shall
+     reply, of course, that the boon is granted, and that if Lord Byron
+     is reluctant to quit Ravenna after I have made arrangements for
+     receiving him at Pisa, I am bound to place myself in the same
+     situation as now, to assail him with importunities to rejoin her.
+     Of this there is fortunately no need; and I need not tell you that
+     there is no fear that this chivalric submission of mine to the
+     great general laws of antique courtesy, against which I never
+     rebel, and which is my religion, should interfere with my soon
+     returning, and long remaining with you, dear girl. * *
+
+     "We ride out every evening as usual, and practise pistol-shooting
+     at a pumpkin, and I am not sorry to observe that I approach towards
+     my noble friend's exactness of aim. I have the greatest trouble to
+     get away, and Lord Byron, as a reason for my stay, has urged, that
+     without either me or the Guiccioli, he will certainly fall into his
+     old habits. I then talk, and he listens to reason; and I earnestly
+     hope that he is too well aware of the terrible and degrading
+     consequences of his former mode of life, to be in danger from the
+     short interval of temptation that will be left him."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 443. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, August 10. 1821.
+
+     "Your conduct to Mr. Moore is certainly very handsome; 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, &c. 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 find easy 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 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 correspondence 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. _I_ 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 444. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, August 16. 1821.
+
+     "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 *
+     * more. One meets with none else among the English.
+
+     "I wait the proofs of the MSS. with proper impatience.
+
+     "So you have published, or mean to publish, the new Juans? Ar'n't
+     you afraid of the Constitutional Assassination of Bridge Street?
+     When first I saw the name of _Murray_, I thought it had been yours;
+     but was solaced by seeing that your synonyme is an attorneo, and
+     that you are not one of that atrocious crew.
+
+     "I am in a great discomfort about the probable war, and with my
+     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 robbing 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, &c.
+
+     "P.S. I restore Smith's letter, whom thank for his good opinion. Is
+     the bust by Thorwaldsen arrived?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 445. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, August 23. 1821.
+
+     "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[46]. 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 third, is
+     taken from _Tully's Tripoli_ (pray _note this_), and the rest from
+     my own observation. Remember, 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. _I_ 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) 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 16th instant.
+
+     "Your friend, like the public, is not aware, that my dramatic
+     simplicity is _studiously_ Greek, and must continue so: _no_ reform
+     ever succeeded at first[47]. 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 theatre_.
+
+     "Yours.
+
+     "P.S. Can't accept your courteous offer.
+
+        "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 cramm'd,
+        So, if _you will_, _I_ sha'n't be shamm'd,
+        And if you _won't_, _you_ may be damn'd,
+                              My Murray.
+
+     "These matters must be arranged with Mr. Douglas Kinnaird. 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'--deduction for the trade'--'make very
+     little'--'generally lose by him'--'pirated edition'--'foreign
+     edition'--'severe criticisms,' &c. with other hints and howls for
+     an oration, which I leave Douglas, who is an orator, to answer.
+
+     "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, and that's more than you are."
+
+[Footnote 46: One of the charges of plagiarism brought against him by
+some scribblers of the day was founded (as I have already observed in
+the first volume of this work) on his having sought in the authentic
+records of real shipwrecks those materials out of which he has worked
+his own powerful description in the second Canto of Don Juan. With as
+much justice might the Italian author, (Galeani, if I recollect right,)
+who wrote a Discourse on the Military Science displayed by Tasso in his
+battles, have reproached that poet with the sources from which he drew
+his knowledge:--with as much justice might Puysegur and Segrais, who
+have pointed out the same merit in Homer and Virgil, have withheld their
+praise because the science on which this merit was founded must have
+been derived by the skill and industry of these poets from others.
+
+So little was Tasso ashamed of those casual imitations of other poets
+which are so often branded as plagiarisms, that, in his Commentary on
+his Rime, he takes pains to point out and avow whatever coincidences of
+this kind occur in his own verses.
+
+While on this subject, I may be allowed to mention one single instance,
+where a thought that had lain perhaps indistinctly in Byron's memory
+since his youth, comes out so improved and brightened as to be, by every
+right of genius, his own. In the Two Noble Kinsmen of Beaumont and
+Fletcher (a play to which the picture of passionate friendship,
+delineated in the characters of Palamon and Arcite, would be sure to
+draw the attention of Byron in his boyhood,) we find the following
+passage:--
+
+           "Oh never
+    Shall we two exercise, like twins of Honour,
+    Our arms again, and _feel our fiery horses
+    Like proud seas under us_."
+
+Out of this somewhat forced simile, by a judicious transposition of the
+comparison, and by the substitution of the more definite word "waves"
+for "seas" the clear, noble thought in one of the Cantos of Childe
+Harold has been produced:--
+
+    "Once more upon the waters! yet once more!
+    And the waves bound beneath me, as a steed
+    That knows his rider."]
+
+[Footnote 47: "No man ever rose (says Pope) to any degree of perfection
+in writing but through obstinacy and an inveterate resolution against
+the stream of mankind."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 446. TO MR. 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 _you_, 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 himself (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 survivorship. 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 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, &c.
+
+     "The argument of the above is, that he wanted to 'stint me of my
+     sizings,' as Lear says,--that is to say, _not_ to propose an
+     extravagant price for an extravagant poem, as is becoming. Pray
+     take his guineas, by all means--_I_ 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, &c.
+
+     "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 I but perhaps it is for the best, if Herodotus's
+     anecdote is to be believed.
+
+     "Remember me to any friendly Angles of our mutual 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!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 447. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, August 31. 1821.
+
+     "I have received the Juans, which are printed so _carelessly_,
+     especially the fifth 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 squad don't approve of it; but I tell you that
+     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 MS.
+
+     "I never saw such stuff as is printed:--Gu_ll_eyaz instead of
+     Gu_lb_eyaz, &c. Are you aware that Gulbeyaz is a real name, and the
+     other nonsense? I copied the _Cantos_ out carefully, so that there
+     is _no_ excuse, as the printer read, or at least _prints_, the MS.
+     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, _it 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 reason 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, &c.
+
+     Also '_precarious_' for '_precocious_;' and this line, stanza 133.
+
+        "_And this strong extreme effect to tire no longer._
+
+     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'); let it, and see if
+     they sha'n't have enough of it. I do not allude to Gifford, who has
+     always been my friend, and whom I do not consider as responsible
+     for the articles written by others.
+
+     "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.
+
+     "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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 448.[48] TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "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
+     publications) 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 can't."
+
+[Footnote 48: Written in the envelope of the preceding Letter.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 449. TO MR. 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, containing the _Giaour_-nal, 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 syllables, which make but a cacophonous rhythmus. Put the pen
+     through the said, as I would mine through * *'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 _here_, till
+     further notice. Yours ever," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One of the "paper-books" mentioned in this letter as intrusted to Mr.
+Mawman for me, contained a portion, to the amount of nearly a hundred
+pages, of a prose story, relating the adventures of a young Andalusian
+nobleman, 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
+     château 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.
+     On her arrival at the château, I received another still more
+     affectionate, pressing me, in very fond, and rather foolish, terms,
+     to join her immediately. As I was preparing to set out from
+     Seville, I received a third--this was from her father, Don Jose di
+     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
+     replied, by express, that as reason had nothing to do with the
+     matter, it was unnecessary to give any--but that she was an injured
+     and excellent woman. I then enquired why she had written to me 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.
+
+     "I 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 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 blamable. My case was
+     supposed to comprise all the crimes which could, and several which
+     could not, be committed, and little less than an auto-da-fé was
+     anticipated as the result. But let no man say that we are abandoned
+     by our friends in adversity--it was just the reverse. Mine thronged
+     around me to condemn, advise, and console me with their
+     disapprobation.--They told me all that was, would, or could be said
+     on the subject. They shook their heads--they exhorted me--deplored
+     me, with tears in their eyes, and--went to dinner."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 450. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, September 4. 1821.
+
+     "By Saturday's post, I sent you a fierce and furibund 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.
+
+     "Yesterday I received Mr. ----, 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[49] 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[50], 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; that is to say,
+     to the _popular_ part, the _troops_ of the Carbonari. They are
+     originally a society of hunters in the forest, who took the name of
+     Americans, but at present comprise some thousands, &c.; 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
+     would 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.
+
+     "What think'st 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 squad are quite
+     wrong; and so you will find by and by. 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[51], 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 _Longitude_,' that you were trying to discover it.
+
+     "Let me hear that Gifford is _better_. He can't be spared either by
+     you or me."
+
+[Footnote 49: It will be observed, from this and a few other instances,
+that notwithstanding the wonderful purity of English he was able to
+preserve in his writings, while living constantly with persons speaking
+a different language, he had already begun so far to feel the influence
+of this habit as to fall occasionally into Italianisms in his familiar
+letters.--"I am in the case to know"--"I have caused write"--"It regrets
+me," &c.]
+
+[Footnote 50: An anonymous letter which he had received, threatening him
+with assassination.]
+
+[Footnote 51: In this note, so highly honourable to the fair writer, she
+says, "Remember, my Byron, the promise you have made me. Never shall I
+be able to tell you the satisfaction I feel from it, so great are the
+sentiments of pleasure and confidence with which the sacrifice you have
+made has inspired me." In a postscript to the note she adds, "I am only
+sorry that Don Juan was not left in the infernal regions."--"Ricordati,
+mio Byron, della promessa che mi hai fatta. Non potrei mai dirti la
+satisfazione ch' io ne provo!--sono tanti i sentimenti di piacere e di
+confidenza che il tuo sacrificio m'inspira."--"Mi reveresce solo che Don
+Giovanni non resti all' Inferno."
+
+In enclosing the lady's note to Mr. Murray, July 4th, Lord B. says,
+"This is the note of acknowledgment for the promise not to continue Don
+Juan. She says, in the postscript, that she is only sorry that D.J. does
+not _remain_ in Hell (or go there)".]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 451. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, September 12. 1821.
+
+     "By Tuesday's post, I forwarded, in three packets, the drama of
+     Cain in three acts, of which I request the acknowledgment 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
+     starting too many of your vagabonds at once. You may give them the
+     start, for any thing I care.
+
+     "Why don't you publish my _Pulci_--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
+     sha'n't, though,) I will write a poem to which 'English Bards,' &c.
+     shall be new milk, in comparison. 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--S * * twaddling--W * * drivelling--C * * muddling--* *
+     piddling--B * * quibbling, squabbling, and snivelling. * * 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. B * * C * *
+     will do better by-and-by, I dare say, if he don't get spoiled by
+     green tea, and the praises of Pentonville and Paradise Row. The
+     pity of these men is, that they never lived in _high life_, nor in
+     _solitude_: 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, _quarum partes fuimus_. Both of us have
+     learnt by this much which nothing else could have taught us.
+
+     "Yours.
+
+     "P.S. I saw one of your brethren, another of the allied sovereigns
+     of Grub Street, the other day, Mawman the Great, by whom I sent due
+     homage to your imperial self. To-morrow'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, parsons, scribblers, and loungers.
+     Some day I will give you a poetical catalogue of them."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 452. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Ravenna, September 17. 1821.
+
+     "The enclosed lines[52], 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 heart-breaking to see such things in a people as
+     the reception of that unredeemed * * * * * * 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, &c. &c. &c."
+
+[Footnote 52: "The Irish Avatar." In this copy the following sentence
+(taken from a letter of Curran, in the able Life of that true Irishman,
+by his son) is prefixed as a motto to the Poem,--"And Ireland, like a
+bastinadoed elephant, kneeling to receive the paltry rider."--_Letter of
+Curran, Life_, 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."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 453. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Ravenna, September 19, 1821.
+
+     "I am in all the sweat, dust, and blasphemy of an universal packing
+     of all my things, furniture, &c. for 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,' 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 preparing 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 English
+     visiters; for which reason, after writing for some information
+     about houses, upon hearing that there was a colony of English all
+     over the cantons of Geneva, &c. 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.' Be_case_ as _how_,
+     'spoke' is not grammar, except in the House of Commons; 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 regard, 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 licentiousness of Verb and Noun as may tend to 'disparage my
+     parts of speech' 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.'
+     Therefore, 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--'Cain' by name--making three in 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.
+     pers. 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," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 454. TO MR. 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! &c. &c. &c.
+
+     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 prodigality!'--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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 455 TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, September 20. 1821.
+
+     "You need not send 'The Blues,' which is a mere buffoonery, never
+     meant for publication.[53]
+
+     "The papers to which I allude, in case of survivorship, are
+     collections of letters, &c. 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 correspondents living, nor 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 Hobhouse 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, &c.--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 grandfather (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 addicted to any unhinging vice. It
+     was, however, but a strong suspicion, owing to the manner of his
+     death and 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 afterwards. I think, then, that
+     I may call this dejection _constitutional_. I had always been told
+     that I resembled more my maternal grandfather than any of my
+     _father's_ 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 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.
+
+     "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 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_ passions, rather than the rant of the present day. For
+     that matter--
+
+                      "Nay, if thou'lt mouth,
+        I'll rant as well as thou--
+
+     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 that 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, &c.
+
+     "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."
+
+[Footnote 53: This short satire, which is wholly unworthy of his pen,
+appeared afterwards in the Liberal.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 456. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, September 24. 1821.
+
+     "I have been thinking over our late correspondence, and wish to
+     propose to you the following articles for our future:--
+
+     "1stly. 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.
+
+     "2dly. 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 reimbursed for the same.
+
+     "3dly. 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 farther which I desire to know about them.--No other
+     English works whatsoever.
+
+     "4thly. That you send me no periodical works whatsoever--_no_
+     Edinburgh, Quarterly, Monthly, nor any review, magazine, or
+     newspaper, English or foreign, of any description.
+
+     "5thly. That you send 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.
+
+     "6thly. That all negotiations in matters of business between you
+     and me pass through the medium of the Hon. 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 legal friends. For the rest, I merely request to be left
+     in ignorance.
+
+     "The same applies to opinions, _good_, _bad_, or _indifferent_, 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 _troubled_; 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 channels 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 do of Italy, and God knows _that_ is
+     little enough, with all your travels, &c. &c. &c. The English
+     travellers _know Italy as you_ know Guernsey: how much is _that_?
+
+     "If any thing occurs so violently gross or personal as requires
+     notice, Mr. Douglas 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 mind _free 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 _cannot_ observe these
+     conditions, we shall cease to be correspondents,--but not
+     _friends_, for I shall always be yours ever and truly,
+
+     "BYRON.
+
+     "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 there!_--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, &c. 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."[54]
+
+[Footnote 54: It would be difficult to describe more strongly or more
+convincingly than Lord Byron has done in this letter the sort of petty,
+but thwarting obstructions and distractions which are at present thrown
+across the path of men of real talent by that swarm of minor critics and
+pretenders with whom the want of a vent in other professions has crowded
+all the walks of literature. Nor is it only the writers of the day that
+suffer from this multifarious rush into the mart;--the readers also,
+from having (as Lord Byron expresses it in another letter) "the
+superficies of too many things presented to them at once," come to lose
+by degrees their powers of discrimination; and, in the same manner as
+the palate becomes confused in trying various wines, so the public taste
+declines in proportion as the impressions to which it is exposed
+multiply.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 457. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "September 27. 1821.
+
+     "It was not Murray's fault. I did not send the MS. _overture_, but
+     I send it now[55], 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 * * *. 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;--but I hope still that I have done justice to
+     his great men and his good heart. As for * * *, you will find it
+     laid on with a trowel. I delight in your 'fact historical'--is it a
+     fact?
+
+     "Yours, &c.
+
+     "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!"
+
+[Footnote 55: 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.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 458. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "September 28. 1821.
+
+     "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 Melbourne'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 refers to the two periods (1812 and 1814) when my
+     marriage with her niece was in contemplation, and will tend to show
+     what my real views and feelings were upon that subject.
+
+     "You need not be alarmed; the 'fourteen years[56]' will hardly
+     elapse without some mortality amongst us; it is a long lease of
+     life to speculate upon. So your 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 Moore 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 Lady ----, (* * * * * * *), 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.
+
+     "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 a year or two more 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 of Charles Gordon, now of
+     Dulwich; and some few to Mrs. Chaworth; but these latter are
+     probably destroyed or inaccessible.
+
+     "I mention these people and particulars merely as _chances_. Most
+     of them have probably destroyed the letters, which in fact are of
+     little import, many of them written when very young, and several at
+     school and college.
+
+     "Peel (the _second_ brother of the Secretary) was a correspondent
+     of mine, and also Porter, the son of the Bishop of Clogher; Lord
+     Clare a very voluminous one; William Harness (a friend of Milman's)
+     another; Charles Drummond (son of the banker); William Bankes (the
+     voyager), your friend: R.C. Dallas, Esq.; Hodgson; Henry Drury;
+     Hobhouse you were already aware of.
+
+     "I have gone through this long list[57] 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, &c. &c. &c. 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, in
+     very English Etruscan; for I _speak_ Italian very fluently, but
+     write it carelessly and incorrectly to a degree."
+
+[Footnote 56: He here adverts to a passing remark, in one of Mr.
+Murray's letters, that, as his Lordship's "Memoranda" were not to be
+published in his lifetime, the sum now paid for the work, 2100_l_. would
+most probably, upon a reasonable calculation of survivorship, amount
+ultimately to no less than 8000_l_.]
+
+[Footnote 57: To all the persons upon this list who were accessible,
+application 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 correspondent 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 accumulate 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 distinguished
+associate and intimate of the noble poet, from the very outset to the
+close of his extraordinary career, have come forward cordially to
+communicate whatever memorials they possessed of him,--trusting, as I am
+willing to flatter myself, that they 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.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 459. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "September 29. 1821.
+
+     "I send you two rough things, prose and verse, not much in
+     themselves, but which will show, one of them, 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, mentioned in the foregoing note, one was a letter
+intended to be sent to Lady Byron relative to his money invested in the
+funds, of which the following are extracts:--
+
+     "Ravenna, Marza 1mo, 1821.
+
+     "I have received your message, through my sister's letter, about
+     English security, &c. &c. 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 consequence 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.
+
+     "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 without 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 in the note consisted of some verses, written by
+him, December 10th, 1820, on seeing the following paragraph in a
+newspaper:--"Lady Byron is this year the lady patroness at the annual
+Charity Ball given at the Town Hall at Hinckley, Leicestershire, and Sir
+G. Crewe, Bart, the principal steward." These verses are full of strong
+and indignant feeling,--every stanza concluding pointedly with the words
+"Charity Ball,"--and the thought that predominates through the whole may
+be collected from a few of the opening lines:--
+
+    "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,'" &c. &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 460. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "September--no--October 1. 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 intermittent
+     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, provided you raised your price upon
+     him--as what Lady Holderness (my sister's grandmother, a
+     Dutchwoman) used to call Augusta, her _Residee Legatoo_--so as to
+     provide for us all: _my_ bones with a splendid and larmoyante
+     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 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 'The
+     Vision of 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 Apotheosis 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 Emancipation, 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.
+
+     "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.'
+
+     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 mountain of lead upon my heart,' which I believe to be
+     constitutional, and that nothing will remove it but the same
+     remedy."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 461. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "October 6. 1821.
+
+     "By this post I have sent my nightmare to balance the incubus of *
+     * *'s impudent anticipation of the Apotheosis of George the Third.
+     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 _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. Laudanum has a similar effect; but I can take much of
+     _it_ without any effect at all. The thing that gives me the
+     highest spirits (it seems absurd, but true) is a close of
+     _salts_--I mean in the afternoon, after their effect.[58] 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," &c.
+
+[Footnote 58: It was, no doubt, from a similar experience of its effects
+that Dryden always took physic when about to write any thing of
+importance. His caricature, Bayes, is accordingly made to say, "When I
+have a grand design, I ever take physic and let blood; for, when you
+would have pure swiftness of thought and fiery flights of fancy, you
+must have a care of the pensive part;--in short," &c. &c.
+
+On this subject of the effects of medicine upon the mind and spirits,
+some curious facts and illustrations have been, with his usual research,
+collected by Mr. D'Israeli, in his amusing "Curiosities of Literature."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 462. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, October 9. 1821.
+
+     "You will please to present or convey the enclosed poem to Mr.
+     Moore. I sent him another copy to Paris, but he has probably left
+     that city.
+
+     "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 Harriet Lee's 'German's Tale' from the 'Canterbury Tales,'
+     and send it in a letter also. I began that tragedy in 1815.
+
+     "By the way, you have a good deal of my prose tracts in MS.? 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 Mystères 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 Crabbe,
+     Moore, and the Elect; but none of your curst common-place
+     trash,--unless something starts up of actual merit, which may very
+     well be, for 'tis time it should."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 463. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "October 20. 1821.
+
+     "If the errors _are_ in the MS. 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 MS. too?
+
+     "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.' It is so with all men. If I come to a
+     friend, and say, 'Friend, 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, &c. &c. &c. &c. &c. honestly
+     worth a thousand pounds, you shall have them for five hundred,'
+     what does Ditto say? why, he looks at them, he _hums_, he
+     _ha's_,--he _humbugs_, 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.
+
+     "I am filling another book for you with little anecdotes, to my own
+     knowledge, or well authenticated, of Sheridan, Curran, &c. 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.
+
+     "Yours," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 464. TO MR. ROGERS.
+
+     "Ravenna, October 21. 1821.
+
+     "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 winter, to which all my chattels, furniture, horses,
+     carriages, and live stock are already removed, and I am preparing
+     to follow.
+
+     "The cause of this removal is, shortly, the exile or proscription
+     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, &c. to precede me. I
+     have not here a seat or a bed hardly, except some jury chairs, and
+     tables, and a mattress 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, 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
+     could 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 climes.
+
+     "It is better than a lustre (five years and six months and some
+     days, more or less) since we met; and, like the man from Tadcaster
+     in the farce ('Love laughs at Locksmiths'), 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, Sheridan,
+     Curran, &c. &c. almost every body of much name of the old school.
+     But 'so am not I, said the foolish fat scullion,' therefore let us
+     make the most of our remainder.
+
+     "Let me find two lines from you at 'the hostel or inn.'
+
+     "Yours ever, &c.
+
+     "B."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 465. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Ravenna, Oct. 28. 1821.
+
+     "''Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,' and in three hours
+     more I have to set out on my way to Pisa--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. He is
+     trying to 'pound' me, too; 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' is agreeable, for more reasons
+     than one. Hobhouse is pleased to think as you do of it, and so do
+     some others--but the 'Arimaspian,' whom, like 'a Gryphon in the
+     wilderness,' 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 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 _min_ded 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 Brunswick blarney. I am of
+     Longman's opinion, that you should allow your friends to liquidate
+     the Bermuda claim. 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![59] &c. &c.' it is all very fine and very well,
+     but, till you can persuade me that there is _no 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 _species_, which I do
+     of our friend Ms. Spe_cie_."
+
+[Footnote 59: 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.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the month of August, Madame Guiccioli had joined her father at Pisa,
+and was now superintending the preparations at the Casa Lanfranchi,--one
+of the most ancient and spacious palaces of that city,--for the
+reception of her noble friend. "He left Ravenna," says this lady, "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 displeasure at this step. 'If your father should be
+recalled,' he said, '_I immediately return_ to Ravenna; and if he is
+recalled _previous_ to my departure, _I remain_.' 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!"[60]
+
+After describing his mode of life while at Ravenna, the lady thus
+proceeds:--
+
+"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 actions he was
+continually performing. Many families (in Ravenna principally) owed to
+him the few prosperous days they ever enjoyed. His arrival in that town
+was spoken of as a piece of public good fortune, and his departure as a
+public calamity; and this is the life which many attempted to asperse as
+that of a libertine. 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 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 excessive 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 contradictions 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."[61]
+
+At Bologna, according to the appointment made between them, Lord Byron
+and Mr. Rogers met; and the record which this latter gentleman has, in
+his Poem on Italy, preserved of their meeting, conveys so vivid a
+picture of the poet at this period, with, at the same time, so just and
+feeling a tribute to his memory, that, narrowed as my limits are now
+becoming, I cannot refrain from giving the sketch entire.
+
+[Footnote 60: "Egli era partito 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 dispiacere di lasciare Ravenna. 'Se papà è richiamato
+(mi scriveva egli) io torno in quel istante a Ravenna, e se è richiamato
+_prima_ della mia partenza, _io non parto_.' In questa speranza egli
+differi varii mesi a partire. Ma, finalmente, non potendo più sperare il
+nostro ritorno prossimo, egli mi scriveva--'Io parto molto mal
+volontieri prevedendo dei mali assai grandi per voi altri e massime per
+voi; altro non dico,--lo vedrete.' E in un altra lettera, 'Io lascio
+Ravenna così mal volontieri, e così persuaso che la mia partenza non può
+che condurre da un male ad un altro più 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!]
+
+[Footnote 61: The leaf that contains the original of this extract I have
+unluckily mislaid.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"BOLOGNA.
+
+    "'Twas night; the noise and bustle of the day
+    Were o'er. The mountebank no longer wrought
+    Miraculous cures--he and his stage were gone;
+    And he who, when the crisis of his tale
+    Came, and all stood breathless with hope and fear,
+    Sent round his cap; and he who thrumm'd his wire
+    And sang, with pleading look and plaintive strain
+    Melting the passenger. Thy thousand cries [62],
+    So well portray'd and by a son of thine,
+    Whose voice had swell'd the hubbub in his youth,
+    Were hush'd, BOLOGNA, silence in the streets,
+    The squares, when hark, the clattering of fleet hoofs;
+    And soon a courier, posting as from far,
+    Housing and holster, boot and belted coat
+    And doublet stain'd with many a various soil,
+    Stopt and alighted. 'Twas where hangs aloft
+    That ancient sign, the Pilgrim, welcoming
+    All who arrive there, all perhaps save those
+    Clad like himself, with staff and scallop-shell,
+    Those on a pilgrimage: and now approach'd
+    Wheels, through the lofty porticoes resounding,
+    Arch beyond arch, a shelter or a shade
+    As the sky changes. To the gate they came;
+    And, ere the man had half his story done,
+    Mine host received the Master--one long used
+    To sojourn among strangers, every where
+    (Go where he would, along the wildest track)
+    Flinging a charm that shall not soon be lost,
+    And leaving footsteps to be traced by those
+    Who love the haunts of Genius; one who saw,
+    Observed, nor shunn'd the busy scenes of life,
+    But mingled not; and mid the din, the stir,
+    Lived as a separate Spirit.
+                                "Much had pass'd
+    Since last we parted; and those five short years--
+    Much had they told! His clustering locks were turn'd
+    Grey; 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
+    Flash'd 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.
+      "Well I remember how the golden sun
+    Fill'd with its beams the unfathomable gulfs
+    As on we travell'd, and along the ridge,
+    'Mid groves of cork, and cistus, and wild fig,
+    His motley household came.--Not last nor least,
+    Battista, who upon the moonlight-sea
+    Of Venice had so ably, zealously
+    Served, and at parting, thrown his oar away
+    To follow through the world; who without stain
+    Had worn so long that honourable badge[63],
+    The gondolier's, in a Patrician House
+    Arguing unlimited trust.--Not last nor least,
+    Thou, though declining in thy beauty and strength,
+    Faithful Moretto, to the latest hour
+    Guarding his chamber-door, and now along
+    The silent, sullen strand of MISSOLONGHI
+    Howling in grief.
+                      "He had just left that Place
+    Of old renown, once in the ADRIAN sea[64],
+    RAVENNA; where from DANTE'S sacred tomb
+    He had so oft, as many a verse declares[65],
+    Drawn inspiration; where at twilight-time,
+    Through the pine-forest wandering with loose rein,
+    Wandering and lost, he had so oft beheld[66]
+    (What is not visible to a poet's eye?)
+    The spectre-knight, the hell-hounds, and their prey,
+    The chase, the slaughter, and the festal mirth
+    Suddenly blasted. 'Twas a theme he loved,
+    But others claim'd their turn; and many a tower,
+    Shatter'd uprooted from its native rock,
+    Its strength the pride of some heroic age,
+    Appear'd and vanish'd (many a sturdy steer[67]
+    Yoked and unyoked), while, as in happier days,
+    He pour'd his spirit forth. The past forgot,
+    All was enjoyment. Not a cloud obscured
+    Present or future.
+                       "He is now at rest;
+    And praise and blame fall on his ear alike,
+    Now dull in death. Yes, BYRON, thou art gone,
+    Gone like a star that through the firmament
+    Shot and was lost, in its eccentric course
+    Dazzling, perplexing. Yet thy heart, methinks,
+    Was generous, noble--noble in its scorn
+    Of all things low or little; nothing there
+    Sordid or servile. If imagined wrongs
+    Pursued thee, urging thee sometimes to do
+    Things long regretted, oft, as many know,
+    None more than I, thy gratitude would build
+    On slight foundations: and, if in thy life
+    Not happy, in thy death thou surely wert,
+    Thy wish accomplish'd; dying in the land
+    Where thy young mind had caught ethereal fire,
+    Dying in GREECE, and in a cause so glorious!
+      "They in thy train--ah, little did they think,
+    As round we went, that they so soon should sit
+    Mourning beside thee, while a Nation mourn'd,
+    Changing her festal for her funeral song;
+    That they so soon should hear the minute-gun,
+    As morning gleam'd on what remain'd of thee,
+    Roll o'er the sea, the mountains, numbering
+    Thy years of joy and sorrow.
+                                 "Thou art gone;
+    And he who would assail thee in thy grave,
+    Oh, let him pause! For who among us all,
+    Tried as thou wert--even from thine earliest years,
+    When wandering, yet unspoilt, a highland boy--Tried
+    as thou wert, and with thy soul of flame;
+    Pleasure, while yet the down was on thy cheek,
+    Uplifting, pressing, and to lips like thine,
+    Her charmed cup--ah, who among us all
+    Could say he had not err'd as much, and more?"
+
+[Footnote 62: "See the Cries of Bologna, as drawn by Aunibal Caracci. He
+was of very humble origin; and, to correct his brother's vanity, once
+sent him a portrait of their father, the tailor, threading his needle."]
+
+[Footnote 63: "The principal gondolier, il fante di poppa, was almost
+always in the confidence of his master, and employed on occasions that
+required judgment and address."]
+
+[Footnote 64: "Adrianum mare.--CICERO."]
+
+[Footnote 65: "See the Prophecy of Dante."]
+
+[Footnote 66: "See the tale as told by Boccaccio and Dryden."]
+
+[Footnote 67: "They wait for the traveller's carriage at the foot of
+every hill."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the road to Bologna he had met with his early and dearest friend,
+Lord Clare, and the following description of their short interview is
+given in his "Detached Thoughts."
+
+"Pisa, November 5. 1821.
+
+"'There is a strange coincidence sometimes in the little things of this
+world, Sancho,' says Sterne in a letter (if I mistake not), and so I
+have often found it.
+
+"Page 128. article 91. of this collection, 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 was 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 on 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 Bologna, 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After remaining a day at Bologna, Lord Byron crossed the Apennines with
+Mr. Rogers; and I find the following note of their visit together to the
+Gallery at Florence:--
+
+"I revisited the Florence Gallery, &c. My former impressions were
+confirmed; but there were too many visiters there to allow one 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 Rogers that it 'felt like being in the watchhouse.' I
+left him to make his obeisances to some of his acquaintances, and
+strolled on alone--the only four minutes I could snatch of any feeling
+for the works around me. I do not mean to apply this to a _tête-à-tête_
+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 prescription 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.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 466. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Pisa, November 3. 1821.
+
+     "The two passages cannot be altered without making Lucifer talk
+     like the Bishop of Lincoln, which would not be in the character of
+     the former. The notion is from Cuvier (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,' &c. do you really think such
+     things ever led any body astray? Are these people more impious than
+     Milton's Satan? or the Prometheus of Æschylus? or even than the
+     Sadducees of * *, the 'Fall of Jerusalem' * *? 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 kingdom, &c. 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_ premeditation, 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.
+
+     "Either dedicate it to Walter Scott, or, if you think he 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 grumbling back to my jungle again;
+     but if I do _hit_, it is crushing. * * * 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 _Hobhouse_'s. I addressed it to
+     you as an Admiralty man, great at the Custom-house. Pray deduct the
+     expenses of the same, and all others.
+
+     "Yours," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 467. TO MR. 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.
+
+     "Enclosed is a lyrical drama, (entitled 'A Mystery,' from its
+     subject,) which, perhaps may arrive in time for the volume. 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, &c.
+
+     "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, including the prose and the Don Juans, &c. I have at least
+     sent you _variety_ during the last year or two."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 468. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Pisa, November 16. 1821.
+
+     "There is here Mr. * *, an Irish genius, with whom we are
+     acquainted. He hath written a really _excellent_ Commentary on
+     Dante, 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
+     ventured 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 than there are in his
+     original. Indeed, the _Notes_ are well worth publication; but he
+     insists upon the translation 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,' &c.
+
+     "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.[68] 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, &c.
+
+     "P.S. What I wrote to you about low spirits is, however, very true.
+     At present, owing to the climate, &c. (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
+     proprietorship,) my spirits are much better. You seem to think that
+     I could not have written the 'Vision,' &c. under the influence of
+     low spirits; but I think there you err.[69] A man's poetry is a
+     distinct faculty, or Soul, and has no more to do with the every-day
+     individual than the Inspiration with the Pythoness when removed
+     from her tripod."
+
+[Footnote 68: Having discovered that, while I was abroad, a kind friend
+had, without any communication with myself, placed at the disposal 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 explanation, such passages as
+the above would be unintelligible.]
+
+[Footnote 69: 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. The
+author of the Night Thoughts was a "fellow of infinite jest;" and of the
+pathetic Rowe, Pope says--"He would laugh all day long--he would do
+nothing else but laugh."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The correspondence which I am now about to insert, though long since
+published by the gentleman with whom it originated[70], will, I have no
+doubt, even by those already acquainted with all the circumstances, be
+reperused with pleasure; as, among the many strange and affecting
+incidents with which these pages abound, there is not one, perhaps, so
+touching and singular as that to which the following letters refer.
+
+TO LORD BYRON.
+
+     "Frome, Somerset, November 21. 1821.
+
+     "My Lord,
+
+     "More than two years since, a lovely and beloved wife was taken
+     from me, by lingering disease, after a very short union. She
+     possessed unvarying gentleness and fortitude, and a piety so
+     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 mention 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
+     transcendant 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 procure! 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
+     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,
+     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,
+     deprived of the grand fountain of good, (a deep conviction of
+     inborn sin, and firm belief in the efficacy of Christ's death for
+     the salvation of those who trust in him, and really wish to serve
+     him,) would soon dry up, and leave us barren of 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 reflection how deep and expansive a concern for the
+     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. Delamartine; 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, showed 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."
+
+[Footnote 70: See "Thoughts on Private Devotion," by Mr. Sheppard.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+However romantic, in the eyes of the cold and worldly, the piety of this
+young person may appear, it were to be wished that the truly Christian
+feeling which dictated her prayer were more common among all who profess
+the same creed; and that those indications of a better nature, so
+visible even through the clouds of his character, which induced this
+innocent young woman to pray for Byron, while living, could have the
+effect of inspiring others with more charity towards his memory, now
+that he is dead.
+
+The following is Lord Byron's answer to this affecting communication.
+
+LETTER 469. TO MR. SHEPPARD.
+
+     "Pisa, December 8. 1821.
+
+     "Sir,
+
+     "I have received your letter. I need not say, that the extract
+     which it contains has affected me, because 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 the life and demeanour of the excellent
+     person whom I trust you will again meet, cannot be contemplated
+     without 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 reading 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 believers 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
+     comprehend. 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 this point of view, I would not
+     exchange the prayer of the deceased in my behalf for the united
+     glory of Homer, Cæsar, 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 clergyman; 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 470. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Pisa, December 4. 1821.
+
+     "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, &c. the noble poet,'meaning your
+     humble servant, 'poor guiltless I.'
+
+     "Poor Napoleon! he little dreamed to what vile comparisons the turn
+     of the wheel would reduce him!
+
+     "I have got here into a famous old feudal palazzo, on 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
+     mentioned by Ugolino in his dream, as his persecutor with
+     Sismondi,) and has had a fierce owner or two in its time. The
+     staircase, &c. is said to have been built by Michel Agnolo. 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," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 471. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Pisa, December 10. 1821.
+
+     "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.
+
+     "I have remarked a curious coincidence, which almost looks like a
+     fatality.
+
+     "My _mother_, my _wife_, my _daughter_, my _half-sister_, my
+     _sisters mother_, my _natural daughter_ (as far at least as _I_ 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 an only
+     child, an only child again. Lady Byron, as you know, was one also,
+     and so is my daughter, &c.
+
+     "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.
+
+     "Yours, &c. B."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 472. TO MR. 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.[71] I
+     wish _you_ would undertake 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, 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, &c. are as 'german
+     to the matter' as Mr. Maturin could desire for his novels. * * * *
+
+     "The consummation you mentioned for poor * * was near taking place
+     yesterday. Riding pretty sharply 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 a-head 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 * *
+     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, &c.
+
+     "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 harmless.[72] 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 * * 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 _burnt_. 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. * * is gone
+     to see what can be done.
+
+     "B."
+
+[Footnote 71: 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 he but a fair satire on the disposition
+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 been yet related
+or believed of him, and leaving even Goethe's story of the double murder
+in Florence far behind.]
+
+[Footnote 72: The following are the lines enclosed in this letter. In
+one of his Journals, where they are also given, he has subjoined to them
+the following note:--"I composed these stanzas (except the fourth, added
+now) a few days ago, on the road from Florence to Pisa.
+
+    "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.
+
+    "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?
+
+    "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.
+
+    "_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."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 473. TO MR. 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_ remonstrance 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 interfere.
+     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," &c
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 474. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "I send you the two notes, which will tell you the story I allude
+     to of the Auto da Fè. Shelley's allusion to his 'fellow-serpent' 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.
+
+     "My 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 _every
+     way_ that I can imagine may have any success. Be assured of this.
+
+     "Your Lordship's most truly,
+
+     "* *.
+
+     "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 in 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 475. TO SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART.
+
+     "Pisa, January 12. 1822.
+
+     "My dear Sir Walter,
+
+     "I need not say how grateful I am for your letter, but I must own
+     my ingratitude in not having written to you again long ago. Since I
+     left England (and it is not for all the usual term of
+     transportation) I have scribbled to five hundred blockheads on
+     business, &c. without difficulty, though with no great pleasure;
+     and yet, with the notion of addressing you a hundred times in my
+     head, and always in my heart, I have not done what I ought to have
+     done. I can only account for it on the same principle of tremulous
+     anxiety with which one sometimes makes love to a beautiful woman of
+     our own degree, with whom one is enamoured in good earnest;
+     whereas, we attack a fresh-coloured housemaid without (I speak, of
+     course, of earlier times) any sentimental remorse or mitigation of
+     our virtuous purpose.
+
+     "I owe to you far more than the usual obligation for the courtesies
+     of literature and common friendship; for you went out of your way
+     in 1817 to do me a service, when it required not merely kindness,
+     but courage to do so: to have been recorded by you in such a
+     manner, would have been a proud memorial at any time, but at such a
+     time when 'all the world and his wife,' as the proverb goes, were
+     trying to trample upon me, was something still higher to my
+     self-esteem,--I allude to the Quarterly Review of the Third Canto
+     of Childe Harold, which Murray told me was written by you,--and,
+     indeed, I should have known it without his information, as there
+     could not be two who _could_ and _would_ have done this at the
+     time. Had it been a common criticism, however eloquent or
+     panegyrical, I should have felt pleased, undoubtedly, and grateful,
+     but not to the extent which the extraordinary good-heartedness of
+     the whole proceeding must induce in any mind capable of such
+     sensations. The very _tardiness_ of this acknowledgment will, at
+     least, show that I have not forgotten the obligation; and I can
+     assure you that my sense of it has been out at compound interest
+     during the delay. I shall only add one word upon the subject, which
+     is, that I think that you, and Jeffrey, and Leigh Hunt were the
+     only literary men, of numbers whom I know (and some of whom I had
+     served), who dared venture even an anonymous word in my favour just
+     then: and that, of those three, I had never seen _one_ at all--of
+     the second much less than I desired--and that the third was under
+     no kind of obligation to me, whatever; while the other _two_ had
+     been actually attacked by me on a former occasion; _one_, indeed,
+     with some provocation, but the other wantonly enough. So you see
+     you have been heaping 'coals of fire, &c.' in the true gospel
+     manner, and I can assure you that they have burnt down to my very
+     heart.
+
+     "I am glad that you accepted the Inscription. I meant to have
+     inscribed 'The Foscarini' to you instead; but first, I heard that
+     'Cain' was thought the least bad of the two as a composition; and,
+     2dly, I have abused S * * like a pickpocket, in a note to the
+     Foscarini, and I recollected that he is a friend of yours (though
+     not of mine), and that it would not be the handsome thing to
+     dedicate to one friend any thing containing such matters about
+     another. However, I'll work the Laureate before I have done with
+     him, as soon as I can muster Billingsgate therefor. I like a row,
+     and always did from a boy, in the course of which propensity, I
+     must needs say, that I have found it the most easy of all to be
+     gratified, personally and poetically. You disclaim 'jealousies;'
+     but I would ask, as Boswell did of Johnson, 'of _whom could_ you be
+     _jealous_?'--of none of the living certainly, and (taking all and
+     all into consideration) of which of the dead? I don't like to bore
+     you about the Scotch novels, (as they call them, though two of them
+     are wholly English, and the rest half so,) but nothing can or could
+     ever persuade me, since I was the first ten minutes in your
+     company, that you are _not_ the man. To me those novels have so
+     much of 'Auld lang syne' (I was bred a canny Scot till ten years
+     old) that I never move without them; and when I removed from
+     Ravenna to Pisa the other day, and sent on my library before, they
+     were the only books that I kept by me, although I already have them
+     by heart.
+
+     "January 27. 1822.
+
+     "I delayed till now concluding, in the hope that I should have got
+     'The Pirate,' who is under way for me, but has not yet hove in
+     sight. I hear that your daughter is married, and I suppose by this
+     time you are half a grandfather--a young one, by the way. I have
+     heard great things of Mrs. Lockhart's personal and mental charms,
+     and much good of her lord: that you may live to see as many novel
+     Scotts as there are Scots' novels, is the very bad pun, but sincere
+     wish of
+
+     "Yours ever most affectionately, &c.
+
+     "P.S. Why don't you take a turn in Italy? You would find yourself
+     as well known and as welcome as in the Highlands among the natives.
+     As for the English, you would be with them as in London; and I need
+     not add, that I should be delighted to see you again, which is far
+     more than I shall ever feel or say for England, or (with a few
+     exceptions 'of kith, kin, and allies') any thing that it contains.
+     But my 'heart warms to the tartan,' or to any thing of Scotland,
+     which reminds me of Aberdeen and other parts, not so far from the
+     Highlands as that town, about Invercauld and Braemar, where I was
+     sent to drink goat's _fey_ in 1795-6, in consequence of a
+     threatened decline after the scarlet fever. But I am gossiping, so,
+     good night--and the gods be with your dreams!
+
+     "Pray, present my respects to Lady Scott, who may, perhaps,
+     recollect having seen me in town in 1815.
+
+     "I see that one of your supporters (for like Sir Hildebrand, I am
+     fond of Guillin) is a _mermaid_; it is my _crest_ too, and with
+     precisely the same curl of tail. There's concatenation for you:--I
+     am building a little cutter at Genoa, to go a cruising in the
+     summer. I know _you_ like the sea too."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 476. TO ----.[73]
+
+     "Pisa, February 6. 1822.
+
+     "'Try back the deep lane,' till we find a publisher for the
+     'Vision;' and if none such is to be found, print fifty copies at my
+     expense, distribute them amongst my acquaintance, and you will soon
+     see that the booksellers _will_ publish them, even if we opposed
+     them. That they are now afraid is natural, but I do not see that I
+     ought to give way on that account. I know nothing of Rivington's
+     'Remonstrance' by the 'eminent Churchman;' but I suppose he wants a
+     living. I once heard of a preacher at Kentish Town against 'Cain.'
+     The same outcry was raised against Priestley, Hume, Gibbon,
+     Voltaire, and all the men who dared to put tithes to the question.
+
+     "I have got S----'s pretended reply, to which I am surprised that
+     you do not allude. What remains to be done is to call him out. The
+     question is, would he come? for, if he would not, the whole thing
+     would appear ridiculous, if I were to take a long and expensive
+     journey to no purpose.
+
+     "You must be my second, and, as such, I wish to consult you.
+
+     "I apply to you, as one well versed in the duello, or monomachie.
+     Of course I shall come to England as privately as possible, and
+     leave it (supposing that I was the survivor) in the same manner;
+     having no other object which could bring me to that country except
+     to settle quarrels accumulated during my absence.
+
+     "By the last post I transmitted to you a letter upon some Rochdale
+     toll business, from which there are moneys in prospect. My agent
+     says two thousand pounds, but supposing it to be only one, or even
+     one hundred, still they may be moneys; and I have lived long enough
+     to have an exceeding respect for the smallest current coin of any
+     realm, or the least sum, which, although I may not want it myself,
+     may do something for others who may need it more than I.
+
+     "They say that 'Knowledge is Power:'--I used to think so; but I now
+     know that they meant '_money_:' and when Socrates declared, 'that
+     all he knew was, that he knew nothing,' he merely intended to
+     declare, that he had not a drachm in the Athenian world.
+
+     "The _circulars_ are arrived, and circulating like the vortices (or
+     vortexes) of Descartes. Still I have a due care of the needful, and
+     keep a look out ahead, as my notions upon the score of moneys
+     coincide with yours, and with all men's who have lived to see that
+     every guinea is a philosopher's stone, or at least his
+     _touch_-stone. You will doubt me the less, when I pronounce my firm
+     belief, that _Cash_ is _Virtue_.
+
+     "I cannot reproach myself with much expenditure: my only extra
+     expense (and it is more than I have spent upon myself) being a loan
+     of two hundred and fifty pounds to ----; and fifty pounds worth of
+     furniture, which I have bought for him; and a boat which I am
+     building for myself at Genoa, which will cost about a hundred
+     pounds more.
+
+     "But to return. I am determined to have all the moneys I can,
+     whether by my own funds, or succession, or lawsuit, or MSS. or any
+     lawful means whatever.
+
+     "I will pay (though with the sincerest reluctance) my remaining
+     creditors, and every man of law, by instalments from the award of
+     the arbitrators.
+
+     "I recommend to you the notice in Mr. Hanson's letter, on the
+     demands of moneys for the Rochdale tolls.
+
+     "Above all, I recommend my interests to your honourable worship.
+
+     "Recollect, too, that I expect some moneys for the various MSS. (no
+     matter what); and, in short, 'Rem _quocunque modo_, Rem!'--the
+     noble feeling of cupidity grows upon us with our years.
+
+     "Yours ever," &c.
+
+[Footnote 73: This letter has been already published, with a few others,
+in a periodical work, and is known to have been addressed to the late
+Mr. Douglas Kinnaird.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 477. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Pisa, February 8. 1822.
+
+     "Attacks upon me were to be expected, but I perceive one upon _you_
+     in the papers, which I confess that I did not expect. How, or in
+     what manner, _you_ can be considered responsible for what _I_
+     publish, I am at a loss to conceive.
+
+     "If 'Cain' be 'blasphemous,' Paradise Lost is blasphemous; and the
+     very words of the Oxford gentleman, 'Evil, be thou my good,' are
+     from that very poem, from the mouth of Satan, and is there any
+     thing more in that of Lucifer in the Mystery? Cain is nothing more
+     than a drama, not a piece of argument. If Lucifer and Cain speak as
+     the first murderer and the first rebel may be supposed to speak,
+     surely all the rest of the personages talk also according to their
+     characters--and the stronger passions have ever been permitted to
+     the drama.
+
+     "I have even avoided introducing the Deity as in Scripture, (though
+     Milton does, and not very wisely either,) but have adopted his
+     angel as sent to Cain instead, on purpose to avoid shocking any
+     feelings on the subject by falling short of what all uninspired men
+     must fall short in, viz. giving an adequate notion of the effect of
+     the presence of Jehovah. The old Mysteries introduced him liberally
+     enough, and all this is avoided in the new one.
+
+     "The attempt to _bully you_, because they think it won't succeed
+     with me, seems to me as atrocious an attempt as ever disgraced the
+     times. What! when Gibbon's, Hume's, Priestley's, and Drummond's
+     publishers have been allowed to rest in peace for seventy years,
+     are you to be singled out for a work of _fiction_, not of history
+     or argument? There must be something at the bottom of this--some
+     private enemy of your own: it is otherwise incredible.
+
+     "I can only say, 'Me, me; en adsum qui feci;'--that any proceedings
+     directed against you, I beg, may be transferred to me, who am
+     willing, and _ought_, to endure them all;--that if you have lost
+     money by the publication, I will refund any or all of the
+     copyright;--that I desire you will say that both _you_ and _Mr.
+     Gifford_ remonstrated against the publication, as also Mr.
+     Hobhouse;--that _I_ alone occasioned it, and I alone am the person
+     who, either legally or otherwise, should bear the burden. If they
+     prosecute, I will come to England--that is, if, by meeting it in my
+     own person, I can save yours. Let me know. You sha'n't suffer for
+     me, if I can help it. Make any use of this letter you please.
+
+     "Yours ever, &c.
+
+     "P.S. I write to you about all this row of bad passions and
+     absurdities with the _summer_ moon (for here our winter is clearer
+     than your dog-days) lighting the winding Arno, with all her
+     buildings and bridges,--so quiet and still!--What nothings are we
+     before the least of these stars!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 478. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Pisa, February 19. 1822.
+
+     "I am rather surprised not to have had an answer to my letter and
+     packets. Lady Noel is dead, and it is not impossible that I may
+     have to go to England to settle the division of the Wentworth
+     property, and what portion Lady B. is to have out of it; all which
+     was left undecided by the articles of separation. But I hope not,
+     if it can be done without,--and I have written to Sir Francis
+     Burdett to be my referee, as he knows the property.
+
+     "Continue to address here, as I shall not go if I can avoid it--at
+     least, not on that account. But I may on another; for I wrote to
+     Douglas Kinnaird to convey a message of invitation to Mr. Southey
+     to meet me, either in England, or (as less liable to interruption)
+     on the coast of France. This was about a fortnight ago, and I have
+     not yet had time to have the answer. However, you shall have due
+     notice; therefore continue to address to Pisa.
+
+     "My agents and trustees have written to me to desire that I would
+     take the name directly, so that I am yours very truly and
+     affectionately,
+
+     "NOEL BYRON.
+
+     "P.S. I have had no news from England, except on business; and
+     merely know, from some abuse in that faithful _ex_ and _de_-tractor
+     Galignani, that the clergy are up against 'Cain.' There is (if I am
+     not mistaken) some good church preferment on the Wentworth estates;
+     and I will show them what a good Christian I am, by patronising and
+     preferring the most pious of their order, should opportunity occur.
+
+     "M. and I are but little in correspondence, and I know nothing of
+     literary matters at present. I have been writing on business only
+     lately. What are _you_ about? Be assured that there is no such
+     coalition as you apprehend."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 479. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Pisa, February 20. 1822.[74]
+
+     "Your letter arrived since I wrote the enclosed. It is not likely,
+     as I have appointed agents and arbitrators for the Noel estates,
+     that I should proceed to England on that account,--though I may
+     upon another, within stated. At any rate, _continue_ you to address
+     here till you hear further from me. I could wish _you_ still to
+     arrange for me, either with a London or Paris publisher, for the
+     things, &c. I shall not quarrel with any arrangement you may please
+     to make.
+
+     "I have appointed Sir Francis Burdett my arbitrator to decide on
+     Lady Byron's allowance out of the Noel estates, which are estimated
+     at seven thousand a year, and _rents_ very well paid,--a rare thing
+     at this time. It is, however, owing to their _consisting_ chiefly
+     in pasture lands, and therefore less affected by corn bills, &c.
+     than properties in tillage.
+
+     "Believe me yours ever most affectionately,
+
+     "NOEL BYRON.
+
+     "Between my own property in the funds, and my wife's in land, I do
+     not know which _side_ to cry out on in politics.
+
+     "There is nothing against the immortality of the soul in 'Cain'
+     that I recollect. I hold no such opinions;--but, in a drama, the
+     first rebel and the first murderer must be made to talk according
+     to their characters. However, the parsons are all preaching at it,
+     from Kentish Town and Oxford to Pisa;--the scoundrels of priests,
+     who do more harm to religion than all the infidels that ever forgot
+     their catechisms!
+
+     "I have not seen Lady Noel's death announced in Galignani.--How is
+     that?"
+
+[Footnote 74: The preceding letter came enclosed in this.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 480. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Pisa, February 28. 1822.
+
+     "I begin to think that the packet (a heavy one) of five acts of
+     'Werner,' &c. can hardly have reached you, for your letter of last
+     week (which I answered) did not allude to it, and yet I insured it
+     at the post-office here.
+
+     "I have no direct news from England, except on the Noel business,
+     which is proceeding quietly, as I have appointed a gentleman (Sir
+     F. Burdett) for my arbitrator. They, too, have said that they will
+     recall the _lawyer_ whom _they_ had chosen, and will name a
+     gentleman too. This is better, as the arrangement of the estates
+     and of Lady B.'s allowance will thus be settled without quibbling.
+     My lawyers are taking out a licence for the name and arms, which it
+     seems I am to endue.
+
+     "By another, and indirect, quarter, I hear that 'Cain' has been
+     pirated, and that the Chancellor has refused to give Murray any
+     redress. Also, that G.R. (_your_ friend 'Ben') has expressed great
+     personal indignation at the said poem. All this is curious enough,
+     I think,--after allowing Priestley, Hume, and Gibbon, and
+     Bolingbroke, and Voltaire to be published, without depriving the
+     booksellers of their rights. I heard from Rome a day or two ago,
+     and, with what truth I know not, that * * *.
+
+     "Yours," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 481. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Pisa, March 1. 1822.
+
+     "As I still have no news of my 'Werner,' &c. packet, sent to you on
+     the 29th of January, I continue to bore you (for the fifth time, I
+     believe) to know whether it has not miscarried. As it was fairly
+     copied out, it will be vexatious if it be lost. Indeed, I insured
+     it at the post-office to make them take more care, and directed it
+     regularly to you at Paris.
+
+     "In the impartial Galignani I perceive an extract from Blackwood's
+     Magazine, in which it is said that there are people who have
+     discovered that you and I are no poets. With regard to one of us, I
+     know that this north-west passage to _my_ magnetic pole had been
+     long discovered by some sages, and I leave them the full benefit of
+     their penetration. I think, as Gibbon says of his History, 'that,
+     perhaps, a hundred years hence it may still continue to be abused.'
+     However, I am far from pretending to compete or compare with that
+     illustrious literary character.
+
+     "But, with regard to _you_, I thought that you had always been
+     allowed to be _a poet_, even by the stupid as well as the
+     envious--a bad one, to be sure--immoral, florid, Asiatic, and
+     diabolically popular,--but still always a poet, _nem. con._ This
+     discovery therefore, has to me all the grace of novelty, as well as
+     of consolation (according to Rochefoucault), to find myself
+     _no_-poetised in such good company. I am content to 'err with
+     Plato;' and can assure you very sincerely, that I would rather be
+     received a _non_-poet with you, than be crowned with all the bays
+     of (the _yet_-uncrowned) Lakers in their society. I believe you
+     think better of those worthies than I do. I know them * * * * * *
+     *.
+
+     "As for Southey, the answer to my proposition of a meeting is not
+     yet come. I sent the message, with a short note, to him through
+     Douglas Kinnaird, and Douglas's response is not arrived. If he
+     accepts, I shall have to go to England; but if not, I do not think
+     the Noel affairs will take me there, as the arbitrators can settle
+     them without my presence, and there do not seem to be any
+     difficulties. The licence for the new name and armorial bearings
+     will be taken out by the regular application, in such cases, to the
+     Crown, and sent to me.
+
+     "Is there a hope of seeing you in Italy again ever? What are you
+     doing?--_bored_ by me, I know; but I have explained _why_ before. I
+     have no correspondence now with London, except through relations
+     and lawyers and one or two friends. My greatest friend, Lord Clare,
+     is at Rome: we met on the road, and our meeting was quite
+     sentimental--_really_ pathetic on both sides. I have always loved
+     him better than any _male_ thing in the world."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The preceding was enclosed in that which follows.
+
+LETTER 482. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Pisa, March 4. 1822.
+
+     "Since I wrote the enclosed, I have waited another post, and now
+     have your answer acknowledging the arrival of the packet--a
+     troublesome one, I fear, to you in more ways than one, both from
+     weight external and internal.
+
+     "The unpublished things in your hands, in Douglas K.'s, and Mr.
+     John Murray's, are, 'Heaven and Earth, a lyrical kind of Drama upon
+     the Deluge, &c.;'--'Werner,' _now with you_;--a translation of the
+     First Canto of the Morgante Maggiore;--_ditto_ of an Episode in
+     Dante;--some stanzas to the Po, June 1st, 1819;--Hints from Horace,
+     written in 1811, but a good deal, _since_, to be omitted;--several
+     prose things, which may, perhaps, as well remain unpublished;--'The
+     Vision, &c. of Quevedo Redivivus' in verse.
+
+     "Here you see is 'more matter for a May morning;' but how much of
+     this can be published is for consideration. The Quevedo (one of my
+     best in that line) has appalled the Row already, and must take its
+     chance at Paris, if at all. The new Mystery is less speculative
+     than 'Cain,' and very pious; besides, it is chiefly lyrical. The
+     Morgante is the _best_ translation that ever was or will be made;
+     and the rest are--whatever you please to think them.
+
+     "I am sorry you think Werner even _approaching_ to any fitness for
+     the stage, which, with my notions upon it, is very far from my
+     present object. With regard to the publication, I have already
+     explained that I have no exorbitant expectations of either fame or
+     profit in the present instances; but wish them published because
+     they are written, which is the common feeling of all scribblers.
+
+     "With respect to 'Religion,' can I never convince you that I have
+     no such opinions as the characters in that drama, which seems to
+     have frightened every body? Yet _they_ are nothing to the
+     expressions in Goethe's Faust (which are ten times hardier), and
+     not a whit more bold than those of Milton's Satan. My ideas of a
+     character may run away with me: like all imaginative men, I, of
+     course, embody myself with the character while I draw it, but not a
+     moment after the pen is from off the paper.
+
+     "I am no enemy to religion, but the contrary. As a proof, I am
+     educating my natural daughter a strict Catholic in a convent of
+     Romagna; for I think people can never have _enough_ of religion, if
+     they are to have any. I incline, myself, very much to the Catholic
+     doctrines; but if I am to write a drama, I must make my characters
+     speak as I conceive them likely to argue.
+
+     "As to poor Shelley, who is another bugbear to you and the world,
+     he is, to my knowledge, the _least_ selfish and the mildest of
+     men--a man who has made more sacrifices of his fortune and feelings
+     for others than any I ever heard of. With his speculative opinions
+     I have nothing in common, nor desire to have.
+
+     "The truth is, my dear Moore, you live near the _stove_ of society,
+     where you are unavoidably influenced by its heat and its vapours. I
+     did so once--and too much--and enough to give a colour to my whole
+     future existence. As my success in society was _not_
+     inconsiderable, I am surely not a prejudiced judge upon the
+     subject, unless in its favour; but I think it, as now constituted,
+     _fatal_ to all great original undertakings of every kind. I never
+     courted it _then_, when I was young and high in blood, and one of
+     its 'curled darlings;' and do you think I would do so _now_, when I
+     am living in a clearer atmosphere? One thing _only_ might lead me
+     back to it, and that is, to try once more if I could do any good in
+     _politics_; but _not_ in the petty politics I see now preying upon
+     our miserable country.
+
+     "Do not let me be misunderstood, however. If you speak your _own_
+     opinions, they ever had, and will have, the greatest weight with
+     _me_. But if you merely _echo_ the 'monde,' (and it is difficult
+     not to do so, being in its favour and its ferment,) I can only
+     regret that you should ever repeat any thing to which I cannot pay
+     attention.
+
+     "But I am prosing. The gods go with you, and as much immortality of
+     all kinds as may suit your present and all other existence.
+
+     "Yours," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 483. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Pisa, March 6. 1822.
+
+     "The enclosed letter from Murray hath melted me; though I think it
+     is against his own interest to wish that I should continue his
+     connection. You may, therefore, send him the packet of _Werner,_
+     which will save you all further trouble. And pray, _can you_
+     forgive me for the bore and expense I have already put upon you? At
+     least, _say_ so--for I feel ashamed of having given you so much for
+     such nonsense.
+
+     "The fact is, I cannot _keep_ my _resentments,_ though violent
+     enough in their onset. Besides, now that all the world are at
+     Murray on my account, I neither can nor ought to leave him; unless,
+     as I really thought, it were better for _him_ that I should.
+
+     "I have had no other news from England, except a letter from Barry
+     Cornwall, the bard, and my old school-fellow. Though I have
+     sickened you with letters lately, believe me
+
+     "Yours, &c.
+
+     "P.S. In your last letter you say, speaking of Shelley, that you
+     would almost prefer the 'damning bigot' to the 'annihilating
+     infidel.'[75] Shelley believes in immortality, however--but this by
+     the way. Do you remember Frederick the Great's answer to the
+     remonstrance of the villagers whose curate preached against the
+     eternity of hell's torments? It was thus:--'If my faithful subjects
+     of Schrausenhaussen prefer being eternally damned, let them.'
+
+     "Of the two, I should think the long sleep better than the agonised
+     vigil. But men, miserable as they are, cling so to any thing like
+     life, that they probably would prefer damnation to quiet. Besides,
+     they think themselves so _important_ in the creation, that nothing
+     less can satisfy their pride--the insects!"
+
+[Footnote 75: It will be seen from the extract I shall give presently of
+the passage to which he refers, that he wholly mistook my meaning.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is Dr. Clarke, I think, who gives, in his Travels, rather a striking
+account of a Tartar whom he once saw exercising a young, fiery horse,
+upon a spot of ground almost surrounded by a steep precipice, and
+describes the wantonness of courage with which the rider, as if
+delighting in his own peril, would, at times, dash, with loose rein,
+towards the giddy verge. Something of the same breathless apprehension
+with which the traveller viewed that scene, did the unchecked daring of
+Byron's genius inspire in all who watched its course,--causing them, at
+the same moment, to admire and tremble, and, in those more especially
+who loved him, awakening a sort of instinctive impulse to rush forward
+and save him from his own headlong strength. But, however natural it was
+in friends to give way to this feeling, a little reflection upon his now
+altered character might have forewarned them that such interference
+would prove as little useful to him as safe for themselves; and it is
+not without some surprise I look back upon my own temerity and
+presumption in supposing that, let loose as he was now, in the full
+pride and consciousness of strength, with the wide regions of thought
+outstretching before him, any representations that even friendship could
+make would have the power--or _ought_ to have--of checking him. As the
+motives, however, by which I was actuated in my remonstrances to him may
+be left to speak for themselves, I shall, without dwelling any further
+upon the subject, content myself with laying before the reader a few
+such extracts from my own letters at this period[76] as may serve to
+explain some allusions in those just given.
+
+In writing to me under the date January 24th, it will be recollected
+that he says--"be assured that there is no such coalition as you
+apprehend." The following extracts from my previous communication to him
+will explain what this means:--"I heard some days ago that Leigh Hunt
+was on his way to you with all his family; and the idea seems to be,
+that you and Shelley and he are to conspire together in the Examiner. I
+cannot believe this,--and deprecate such a plan with all my might. Alone
+you may do any thing; but partnerships in fame, like those in trade,
+make the strongest party answerable for the deficiencies or
+delinquencies of the rest, and I tremble even for you with such a
+bankrupt >i>Co._--* * *. They are both clever fellows, and Shelley I
+look upon as a man of real genius; but I must again say, that you could
+not give your enemies (the * * *'s, 'et hoc genus omne') a greater
+triumph than by forming such an unequal and unholy alliance. You are,
+single-handed, a match for the world,--which is saying a good deal, the
+world being, like Briareus, a very many-handed gentleman,--but, to be
+so, you must stand alone. Recollect that the scurvy buildings about St.
+Peter's almost seem to overtop itself."
+
+[Footnote 76: It should have been mentioned before, that to the courtesy
+of Lord Byron's executor, Mr. Hobhouse, who had the kindness to restore
+to me such letters of mine as came into his hands, I am indebted for the
+power of producing these and other extracts.]
+
+The notices of Cain, in my letters to him, were, according to their
+respective dates, as follow:--
+
+
+"September 30. 1821.
+
+"Since writing the above, I have read Foscari and Cain. The former does
+not please me so highly as Sardanapalus. It has the fault of all those
+violent Venetian stories, being unnatural and improbable, and therefore,
+in spite of all your fine management of them, appealing but remotely to
+one's sympathies. But Cain 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 Æschylus and his
+Prometheus!--here is the true spirit both of the Poet--and the Devil."
+
+
+"February 9. 1822.
+
+"Do not take it into your head, my dear B. that the tide is at all
+turning against you in England. Till I see some symptoms of people
+_forgetting_ you a little, I will not believe that you lose ground. As
+it is, 'te veniente die, te, decedente,'--nothing is hardly talked of
+but you; and though good people sometimes bless themselves when they
+mention you, it is plain that even _they_ think much more about you
+than, for the good of their souls, they ought. Cain, to be sure, _has_
+made a sensation; and, grand as it is, I regret, for many reasons, you
+ever wrote it. * * For myself, I would not give up the _poetry_ of
+religion for all the wisest results that _philosophy_ will ever arrive
+at. Particular sects and creeds are fair game enough for those who are
+anxious enough about their neighbours to meddle with them; but our faith
+in the Future is a treasure not so lightly to be parted with; and the
+dream of immortality (if philosophers will have it a dream) is one that,
+let us hope, we shall carry into our last sleep with us."[77]
+
+[Footnote 77: It is to this sentence Lord Byron refers at the conclusion
+of his letter, March 4.]
+
+
+"February 19. 1822.
+
+"I have written to the Longmans to try the ground, for I do _not_ think
+Galignani the man for you. The only thing he can do is what we can do,
+ourselves, without him,--and that is, employ an English bookseller.
+Paris, indeed, might be convenient for such refugee works as are set
+down in the _Index Expurgatorius_ of London; and if you have any
+political catamarans to explode, this is your place. But, _pray_, let
+them be only political ones. Boldness, and even licence, in politics,
+does good,--actual, present good; but, in religion, it profits neither
+here nor hereafter; and, for myself, such a horror have I of both
+extremes on this subject, that I know not _which_ I hate most, the bold,
+damning bigot, or the bold, annihilating infidel. 'Furiosa res est in
+tenebris impetus;'--and much as we are in the dark, even the wisest of
+us, upon these matters, a little modesty, in unbelief as well as belief,
+best becomes us. You will easily guess that, in all this, I am thinking
+not so much of you, as of a friend and, at present, companion of yours,
+whose influence over your mind (knowing you as I do, and knowing what
+Lady B. _ought_ to have found out, that you are a person the most
+tractable to those who live with you that, perhaps, ever existed) I own
+I dread and deprecate most earnestly."[78]
+
+[Footnote 78: This passage having been shown by Lord Byron to Mr.
+Shelley, the latter wrote, in consequence, a letter to a gentleman with
+whom I was then in habits of intimacy, of which the following is an
+extract. The zeal and openness with which Shelley always professed his
+unbelief render any scruple that might otherwise be felt in giving
+publicity to such avowals unnecessary; besides which, the testimony of
+so near and clear an observer to the state of Lord Byron's mind upon
+religious subjects is of far too much importance to my object to be,
+from any over-fastidiousness, suppressed. We have here, too strikingly
+exemplified,--and in strong contrast, I must say, to the line taken by
+Mr. Hunt in similar circumstances,--the good breeding, gentle temper,
+and modesty for which Shelley was so remarkable, and of the latter of
+which Dualities in particular the undeserved compliment to myself
+affords a strong illustration, as showing how little this true poet had
+yet learned to know his own place.
+
+"Lord Byron has read me one or two letters of Moore to him, in which
+Moore speaks with great kindness of me; and of course I cannot but feel
+flattered by the approbation of a man, my inferiority to whom I am proud
+to acknowledge. Amongst other things, however, Moore, after giving Lord
+B, much good advice about public opinion, &c. seems to deprecate my
+influence on his mind on the subject of religion, and to attribute the
+tone assumed in Cain to my suggestions. Moore cautions him against any
+influence on this particular with the most friendly zeal, and it is
+plain that his motive springs from a desire of benefiting Lord B.
+without degrading me. I think you know Moore. Pray assure him that I
+have not the smallest influence over Lord Byron in this particular; if I
+had, I certainly should employ it to eradicate from his great mind the
+delusions of Christianity, which, in spite of his reason, seem
+perpetually to recur, and to lay in ambush for the hours of sickness and
+distress. Cain was _conceived_ many years ago, and begun before I saw
+him last year at Ravenna. How happy should I not be to attribute to
+myself, however indirectly, any participation in that immortal work!"]
+
+
+"March 16. 1822.
+
+"With respect to our Religious Polemics, I must try to set you right
+upon one or two points. In the first place, I do _not_ identify you with
+the blasphemies of Cain no more than I do myself with the impieties of
+my Mokanna,--all I wish and implore is that you, who are such a powerful
+manufacturer of these thunderbolts, would not _choose_ subjects that
+make it necessary to launch them. In the next place, were you even a
+decided atheist, I could not (except, perhaps, for the _decision_ which
+is always unwise) blame you. I could only pity,--knowing from experience
+how dreary are the doubts with which even the bright, poetic view I am
+myself inclined to take of mankind and their destiny is now and then
+clouded. I look upon Cuvier's book to be a most desolating one in the
+conclusions to which it may lead some minds. But the young, the
+simple,--all those whose hearts one would like to keep unwithered,
+trouble their heads but little about Cuvier. _You_, however, have
+embodied him in poetry which every one reads; and, like the wind,
+blowing 'where you list,' carry this deadly chill, mixed up with your
+own fragrance, into hearts that should be visited only by the latter.
+This is what I regret, and what with all my influence I would deprecate
+a repetition of. _Now_, do you understand me?
+
+"As to your solemn peroration, 'the truth is, my dear Moore, &c. &c.'
+meaning neither more nor less than that I give into the cant of the
+world, it only proves, alas! the melancholy fact, that you and I are
+hundreds of miles asunder. Could you hear me speak my opinions instead
+of coldly reading them, I flatter myself there is still enough of
+honesty and fun in this face to remind you that your friend Tom
+Moore--whatever else he may be,--is no Canter."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 484. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Pisa, March 6. 1822.
+
+     "You will long ago have received a letter from me (or should),
+     declaring my opinion of the treatment you have met with about the
+     recent publication. I think it disgraceful to those who have
+     persecuted _you_. I make peace with you, though our war was for
+     other reasons than this same controversy. I have written to Moore
+     by this post to forward to you the tragedy of' Werner.' I shall not
+     make or propose any present bargain about it or the new Mystery
+     till we see if they succeed. If they don't sell (which is not
+     unlikely), you sha'n't pay; and I suppose this is fair play, if you
+     choose to risk it.
+
+     "Bartolini, the celebrated sculptor, wrote to me to desire to take
+     my bust: I consented, on condition that he also took that of the
+     Countess Guiccioli. He has taken both, and I think it will be
+     allowed that _hers_ is beautiful. I shall make you a present of
+     them both, to show that I don't bear malice, and as a compensation
+     for the trouble and squabble you had about Thorwaldsen's. Of my own
+     I can hardly speak, except that it is thought very like what I _now
+     am_, which is different from what I was, of course, since you saw
+     me. The sculptor is a famous one; and as it was done by _his own_
+     particular request, will be done well, probably.
+
+     "What is to be done about * * and his Commentary? He will die if he
+     is _not_ published; he will be damned, if he _is_; but that _he_
+     don't mind. We must publish him.
+
+     "All the _row_ about _me_ has no otherwise affected me than by the
+     attack upon yourself, which is ungenerous in Church and State: but
+     as all violence must in time have its proportionate re-action, you
+     will do better by and by. Yours very truly,
+
+     "NOEL BYRON."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 485. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Pisa, March 8. 1822.
+
+     "You will have had enough of my letters by this time--yet one word
+     in answer to your present missive. You are quite wrong in thinking
+     that your '_advice_' had offended me; but I have already replied
+     (if not answered) on that point.
+
+     "With regard to Murray, as I really am the meekest and mildest of
+     men since Moses (though the public and mine 'excellent wife' cannot
+     find it out), I had already pacified myself and subsided back to
+     Albemarle Street, as my yesterday's _ye_pistle will have informed
+     you. But I thought that I had explained my causes of bile--at least
+     to you. Some instances of vacillation, occasional neglect, and
+     troublesome sincerity, real or imagined, are sufficient to put your
+     truly great author and man into a passion. But reflection, with
+     some aid from hellebore, hath already cured me 'pro tempore;' and,
+     if it had not, a request from you and Hobhouse would have come upon
+     me like two out of the 'tribus Anticyris,'--with which, however,
+     Horace despairs of purging a poet. I really feel ashamed of having
+     bored you so frequently and fully of late. But what could I do? You
+     are a friend--an absent one, alas!--and as I trust no one more, I
+     trouble you in proportion.
+
+     "This war of 'Church and State' has astonished me more than it
+     disturbs; for I really thought 'Cain' a speculative and hardy, but
+     still a harmless, production. As I said before, I am really a great
+     admirer of tangible religion; and am breeding one of my daughters a
+     Catholic, that she may have her hands full. It is by far the most
+     elegant worship, hardly excepting the Greek mythology. What with
+     incense, pictures, statues, altars, shrines, relics, and the real
+     presence, confession, absolution,--there is something sensible to
+     grasp at. Besides, it leaves no possibility of doubt; for those who
+     swallow their Deity, really and truly, in transubstantiation, can
+     hardly find any thing else otherwise than easy of digestion.
+
+     "I am afraid that this sounds flippant, but I don't mean it to be
+     so; only my turn of mind is so given to taking things in the absurd
+     point of view, that it breaks out in spite of me every now and
+     then. Still, I do assure you that I am a very good Christian.
+     Whether you will believe me in this, I do not know; but I trust you
+     will take my word for being
+
+     "Very truly and affectionately yours, &c.
+
+     "P.S. Do tell Murray that one of the conditions of peace is, that
+     he publisheth (or obtaineth a publisher for) * * *'s Commentary on
+     Dante, against which there appears in the trade an unaccountable
+     repugnance. It will make the man so exuberantly happy. He dines
+     with me and half-a-dozen English to-day; and I have not the heart
+     to tell him how the bibliopolar world shrink from his
+     Commentary;--and yet it is full of the most orthodox religion and
+     morality. In short, I make it a point that he shall be in print. He
+     is such a good-natured, heavy-* * Christian, that we must give him
+     a shove through the press. He naturally thirsts to be an author,
+     and has been the happiest of men for these two months, printing,
+     correcting, collating, dating, anticipating, and adding to his
+     treasures of learning. Besides, he has had another fall from his
+     horse into a ditch the other day, while riding out with me into the
+     country."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 486. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Pisa, March 15. 1822.
+
+     "I am glad that you and your friends approve of my letter of the
+     8th ultimo. You may give it what publicity you think proper in the
+     circumstances. I have since written to you twice or thrice.
+
+     "As to 'a Poem in the old way,' I shall attempt of that kind
+     nothing further. I follow the bias of my own mind, without
+     considering whether women or men are or are not to be pleased; but
+     this is nothing to my publisher, who must judge and act according
+     to popularity.
+
+     "Therefore let the things take their chance: if _they pay,_ you
+     will pay me in proportion; and if they don't, I must.
+
+     "The Noel affairs, I hope, will not take me to England. I have no
+     desire to revisit that country, unless it be to keep you out of a
+     prison (if this can be effected by my taking your place), or
+     perhaps to get myself into one, by exacting satisfaction from one
+     or two persons who take advantage of my absence to abuse me.
+     Further than this, I have no business nor connection with England,
+     nor desire to have, _out_ of my own family and friends, to whom I
+     wish all prosperity. Indeed, I have lived upon the whole so little
+     in England (about five years since I was one-and-twenty), that my
+     habits are too continental, and your climate would please me as
+     little as the society.
+
+     "I saw the Chancellor's Report in a French paper. Pray, why don't
+     they prosecute the translation of _Lucretius_? or the original with
+     its
+
+        "'Primus in orbe Deos fecit Timor,'
+
+     or
+
+        "'Tantum Religio potuit suadere malorum?'
+
+     "You must really get something done for Mr. * *'s Commentary: what
+     can I say to him?
+
+     "Yours," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 487. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Pisa, April 13. 1822.
+
+     "Mr. Kinnaird writes that there has been an 'excellent Defence' of
+     'Cain,' against 'Oxoniensis;' you have sent me nothing but a not
+     very excellent _of_-fence of the same poem. If there be such a
+     'Defender of the Faith,' you may send me his thirty-nine articles,
+     as a counterbalance to some of your late communications.
+
+     "Are you to publish, or not, what Moore and Mr. Kinnaird have in
+     hand, and the 'Vision of Judgment?' If you publish the latter in a
+     very cheap edition, so as to baffle the pirates by a low price, you
+     will find that it will do. The 'Mystery' I look upon as good, and
+     'Werner' too, and I expect that you will publish them speedily. You
+     need not put your name to _Quevedo,_ but publish it as a foreign
+     edition, and let it make its way. Douglas Kinnaird has it still,
+     with the preface, I believe.
+
+     "I refer you to him for documents on the late row here. I sent them
+     a week ago.
+
+     "Yours," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 488. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Pisa, April 18. 1822.
+
+     "I have received the Defence of 'Cain.' Who is my Warburton?--for
+     he has done for me what the bishop did for the poet against
+     Crousaz. His reply seems to me conclusive; and if you understood
+     your own interest, you would print it together with the poem.
+
+     "It is very odd that I do not hear from you. I have forwarded to
+     Mr. Douglas Kinnaird the documents on a squabble here, which
+     occurred about a month ago. The affair is still going on; but they
+     make nothing of it hitherto. I think, what with home and abroad,
+     there has been hot water enough for one while. Mr. Dawkins, the
+     English minister, has behaved in the handsomest and most
+     gentlemanly manner throughout the whole business.
+
+     "Yours ever, &c.
+
+     "P.S. I have got Lord Glenbervie's book, which is very amusing and
+     able upon the topics which he touches upon, and part of the preface
+     pathetic. Write soon."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 489. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Pisa, April 22. 1822.
+
+     "You will regret to hear that I have received intelligence of the
+     death of my daughter Allegra of a fever in the convent of Bagna
+     Cavallo, where she was placed for the last year, to commence her
+     education. It is a heavy blow for many reasons, but must be borne,
+     with time.
+
+     "It is my present intention to send her remains to England for
+     sepulture in Harrow church (where I once hoped to have laid my
+     own), and this is my reason for troubling you with this notice. I
+     wish the funeral to be very private. The body is embalmed, and in
+     lead. It will be embarked from Leghorn. Would you have any
+     objection to give the proper directions on its arrival?
+
+     "I am yours, &c. N.B.
+
+     "P.S. You are aware that Protestants are not allowed holy ground in
+     Catholic countries."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 490. TO MR. SHELLEY.
+
+     "April 23. 1822.
+
+     "The blow was stunning and unexpected; for I thought the danger
+     over, by the long interval between her stated amelioration and the
+     arrival of the express. But I have borne up against it as I best
+     can, and so far successfully, that I can go about the usual
+     business of life with the same appearance of composure, and even
+     greater. There is nothing to prevent your coming to-morrow; but,
+     perhaps, to-day, and yester-evening, it was better not to have met.
+     I do not know that I have any thing to reproach in my conduct, and
+     certainly nothing in my feelings and intentions towards the dead.
+     But it is a moment when we are apt to think that, if this or that
+     had been done, such event might have been prevented,--though every
+     day and hour shows us that they are the most natural and
+     inevitable. I suppose that Time will do his usual work--Death has
+     done his.
+
+     "Yours ever, N.B."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 491. TO SIR WALTER SCOTT.
+
+     "Pisa, May 4. 1822.
+
+     "My dear Sir Walter,
+
+     "Your account of your family is very pleasing: would that I 'could
+     answer this comfort with the like!' but I have just lost my natural
+     daughter, Allegra, by a fever. The only consolation, save time, is
+     the reflection, that she is either at rest or happy; for her few
+     years (only five) prevented her from having incurred any sin,
+     except what we inherit from Adam.
+
+     "'Whom the gods love, die young.'"
+
+     "I need not say that your letters are particularly welcome, when
+     they do not tax your time and patience; and now that our
+     correspondence is resumed, I trust it will continue.
+
+     "I have lately had some anxiety, rather than trouble, about an
+     awkward affair here, which you may perhaps have heard of; but our
+     minister has behaved very handsomely, and the Tuscan Government as
+     well as it is possible for such a government to behave, which is
+     not saying much for the latter. Some other English, and Scots, and
+     myself, had a brawl with a dragoon, who insulted one of the party,
+     and whom we mistook for an officer, as he was medalled and well
+     mounted, &c. but he turned out to be a sergeant-major. He called
+     out the guard at the gates to arrest us (we being unarmed); upon
+     which I and another (an Italian) rode through the said guard; but
+     they succeeded in detaining others of the party. I rode to my
+     house and sent my secretary to give an account of the attempted and
+     illegal arrest to the authorities, and then, without dismounting,
+     rode back towards the gates, which are near my present mansion.
+     Half-way I met my man vapouring away and threatening to draw upon
+     me (who had a cane in my hand, and no other arms). I, still
+     believing him an officer, demanded his name and address, and gave
+     him my hand and glove thereupon. A servant of mine thrust in
+     between us (totally without orders), but let him go on my command.
+     He then rode off at full speed; but about forty paces further was
+     stabbed, and very dangerously (so as to be in peril), by some
+     _Callum Beg_ or other of my people (for I have some rough-handed
+     folks about me), I need hardly say without my direction or
+     approval. The said dragoon had been sabring our unarmed countrymen,
+     however, at the _gate, after they were in arrest,_ and held by the
+     guards, and wounded one, Captain Hay, very severely. However, he
+     got his paiks--having acted like an assassin, and being treated
+     like one. _Who_ wounded him, though it was done before thousands of
+     people, they have never been able to ascertain, or prove, nor even
+     the _weapon_; some said a _pistol_, an _air-gun_, a stiletto, a
+     sword, a lance, a pitchfork, and what not. They have arrested and
+     examined servants and people of all descriptions, but can make out
+     nothing. Mr. Dawkins, our minister, assures me, that no suspicion
+     is entertained of the man who wounded him having been instigated by
+     me, or any of the party. I enclose you copies of the depositions of
+     those with us, and Dr. Craufurd, a canny Scot (_not_ an
+     acquaintance), who saw the latter part of the affair. They are in
+     Italian.
+
+     "These are the only literary matters in which I have been engaged
+     since the publication and row about 'Cain;'--but Mr. Murray has
+     several things of mine in his obstetrical hands. Another Mystery--a
+     Vision--a Drama--and the like. But _you won't_ tell me what _you_
+     are doing--however, I shall find you out, write what you will. You
+     say that I should like your son-in-law--it would be very difficult
+     for me to dislike any one connected with you; but I have no doubt
+     that his own qualities are all that you describe.
+
+     "I am sorry you don't like Lord Orford's new work. My aristocracy,
+     which is very fierce, makes him a favourite of mine. Recollect that
+     those 'little factions' comprised Lord Chatham and Fox, the father,
+     and that _we_ live in gigantic and exaggerated times, which make
+     all under Gog and Magog appear pigmean. After having seen Napoleon
+     begin like Tamerlane and end like Bajazet in our own time, we have
+     not the same interest in what would otherwise have appeared
+     important history. But I must conclude.
+
+     "Believe me ever and most truly yours,
+
+     "NOEL BYRON."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 492. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Pisa, May 17. 1822.
+
+     "I hear that the Edinburgh has attacked the three dramas, which is
+     a bad business for _you_; and I don't wonder that it discourages
+     you. However, _that_ volume may be trusted to _time_,--depend upon
+     it. I read it over with some attention since it was published, and
+     I think the time will come when it will be preferred to my other
+     writings, though not immediately. I say this without irritation
+     against the critics or criticism, whatever they may be (for I have
+     not seen them); and nothing that has or may appear in Jeffrey's
+     Review can make me forget that he stood by me for ten good years
+     without any motive to do so but his own good-will.
+
+     "I hear Moore is in town; remember me to him, and believe me
+
+     "Yours truly, N.B.
+
+     "P.S. If you think it necessary, you may send me the Edinburgh.
+     Should there be any thing that requires an answer, I will reply,
+     but _temperately_ and _technically_; that is to say, merely with
+     respect to the _principles_ of the criticism, and not personally or
+     offensively as to its literary merits."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 493. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Pisa, May 17. 1822.
+
+     "I hear you are in London. You will have heard from Douglas
+     Kinnaird (who tells me you have dined with him) as much as you
+     desire to know of my affairs at home and abroad. I have lately lost
+     my little girl Allegra by a fever, which has been a serious blow to
+     me.
+
+     "I did not write to you lately (except one letter to Murray's), not
+     knowing exactly your 'where-abouts.' Douglas K. refused to forward
+     my message to Mr. Southey--_why_, he himself can explain.
+
+     "You will have seen the statement of a squabble, &c.&c.[79] What
+     are you about? Let me hear from you at your leisure, and believe me
+     ever yours,
+
+     "N.B."
+
+[Footnote 79: Here follows a repetition of the details given on this
+subject to Sir Walter Scott and others.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 494. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Montenero[80], May 26. 1822.
+
+     "Near Leghorn.
+
+     "The body is embarked, in what ship I know not, neither could I
+     enter into the details; but the Countess G.G. has had the goodness
+     to give the necessary orders to Mr. Dunn, who superintends the
+     embarkation, and will write to you. I wish it to be buried in
+     Harrow church.
+
+     "There is a spot in the church_yard_, near the footpath, on the
+     brow of the hill looking towards Windsor, and a tomb under a large
+     tree, (bearing the name of Peachie, or Peachey,) where I used to
+     sit for hours and hours when a boy. This was my favourite spot;
+     but, as I wish to erect a tablet to her memory, the body had better
+     be deposited in the church. Near the door, on the left hand as you
+     enter, there is a monument with a tablet containing these words:--
+
+        "'When Sorrow weeps o'er Virtue's sacred dust,
+        Our tears become us, and our grief is just:
+        Such were the tears she shed, who grateful pays
+        This last sad tribute of her love and praise.'
+
+     I recollect them (after seventeen years), not from any thing
+     remarkable in them, but because from my seat in the gallery I had
+     generally my eyes turned towards that monument. As near it as
+     convenient I could wish Allegra to be buried, and on the wall a
+     marble tablet placed, with these words:--
+
+              In Memory of
+                Allegra,
+       Daughter of G.G. Lord Byron,
+        who died at Bagna Cavallo,
+        in Italy, April 20th, 1822,
+     aged five years and three months.
+
+     'I shall go to her, but she shall not return to me.'
+                                            2d Samuel, xii. 23.
+
+     "The funeral I wish to be as private as is consistent with decency;
+     and I could hope that Henry Drury will, perhaps, read the service
+     over her. If he should decline it, it can be done by the usual
+     minister for the time being. I do not know that I need add more
+     just now.
+
+     "Since I came here, I have been invited by the Americans on board
+     their squadron, where I was received with all the kindness which I
+     could wish, and with _more ceremony_ than I am fond of. I found
+     them finer ships than your own of the same class, well manned and
+     officered. A number of American gentlemen also were on board at the
+     time, and some ladies. As I was taking leave, an American lady
+     asked me for a _rose_ which I wore, for the purpose, she said, of
+     sending to America something which I had about me, as a memorial. I
+     need not add that I felt the compliment properly. Captain Chauncey
+     showed me an American and very pretty edition of my poems, and
+     offered me a passage to the United States, if I would go there.
+     Commodore Jones was also not less kind and attentive. I have since
+     received the enclosed letter, desiring me to sit for my picture for
+     some Americans. It is singular that, in the same year that Lady
+     Noel leaves by will an interdiction for my daughter to see her
+     father's portrait for many years, the individuals of a nation, not
+     remarkable for their liking to the English in particular, nor for
+     flattering men in general, request me to sit for my
+     'pourtraicture,' as Baron Bradwardine calls it. I am also told of
+     considerable literary honours in Germany. Goethe, I am told, is my
+     professed patron and protector. At Leipsic, this year, the highest
+     prize was proposed for a translation of two cantos of Childe
+     Harold. I am not sure that this was at _Leipsic_, but Mr. Rowcroft
+     was my authority--a good German scholar (a young American), and an
+     acquaintance of Goethe's.
+
+     "Goethe and the Germans are particularly fond of Don Juan, which
+     they judge of as a work of art. I had heard something of this
+     before through Baron Lutzerode. The translations have been very
+     frequent of several of the works, and Goethe made a comparison
+     between Faust and Manfred.
+
+     "All this is some compensation for your English native brutality,
+     so fully displayed this year to its highest extent.
+
+     "I forgot to mention a little anecdote of a different kind. I went
+     over the Constitution (the Commodore's flag-ship), and saw, among
+     other things worthy of remark, a little boy _born_ on board of her
+     by a sailor's wife. They had christened him 'Constitution Jones.'
+     I, of course, approved the name; and the woman added, 'Ah, sir, if
+     he turns out but half as good as his name!'
+
+     "Yours ever," &c.
+
+[Footnote 80: A hill, three or four miles from Leghorn, much resorted
+to, as a place of residence during the summer months.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER. 495. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Montenero, near Leghorn, May 29. 1822.
+
+     "I return you the proofs revised. Your printer has made one odd
+     mistake:--'poor as a _mouse_,' instead of 'poor as a _miser_.' The
+     expression may seem strange, but it is only a translation of
+     'semper avarus eget.' You will add the Mystery, and publish as soon
+     as you can. I care nothing for your 'season,' nor the _blue_
+     approbations or disapprobations. All that is to be considered by
+     you on the subject is as a matter of _business_; and if I square
+     that to your notions (even to the running the risk entirely
+     myself), you may permit me to choose my own time and mode of
+     publication. With regard to the late volume, the present run
+     against _it_ or _me_ may impede it for a time, but it has the vital
+     principle of permanency within it, as you may perhaps one day
+     discover. I wrote to you on another subject a few days ago.
+
+     Yours, N.B.
+
+     "P.S. Please to send me the Dedication of Sardanapalus to Goethe. I
+     shall prefix it to Werner, unless you prefer my putting another,
+     stating that the former had been omitted by the publisher.
+
+     "On the title-page of the present volume, put 'Published for the
+     Author by J.M.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 496. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Montenero, Leghorn, June 6. 1822.
+
+     "I return you the revise of Werner, and expect the rest. With
+     regard to the Lines to the Po, perhaps you had better put them
+     quietly in a second edition (if you reach one, that is to say) than
+     in the first; because, though they have been reckoned fine, and I
+     wish them to be preserved, I do not wish them to attract IMMEDIATE
+     observation, on account of the relationship of the lady to whom
+     they are addressed with the first families in Romagna and the
+     Marches.
+
+     "The defender of 'Cain' may or may not be, as you term him, 'a tyro
+     in literature:' however I think both you and I are under great
+     obligation to him. I have read the Edinburgh review in Galignani's
+     Magazine, and have not yet decided whether to answer them or not;
+     for, if I do, it will be difficult for me not 'to make sport for
+     the Philistines' by pulling down a house or two; since, when I once
+     take pen in hand, I _must_ say what comes uppermost, or fling it
+     away. I have not the hypocrisy to pretend impartiality, nor the
+     temper (as it is called) to keep always from saying what may not be
+     pleasing to the hearer or reader. What do they mean by
+     '_elaborate_?' Why, _you_ know that they were written as fast as I
+     could put pen to paper, and printed from the _original_ MSS., and
+     never revised but in the proofs: _look_ at the _dates_ and the MSS.
+     themselves. Whatever faults they have must spring from
+     carelessness, and not from labour. They said the same of 'Lara,'
+     which I wrote while undressing after coming home from balls and
+     masquerades, in the year of revelry 1814. Yours."
+
+     "June 8. 1822.
+
+     "You give me no explanation of your intention as to the 'Vision of
+     Quevedo Redivivus,' one of my best things: indeed, you are
+     altogether so abstruse and undecided lately, that I suppose you
+     mean me to write 'John Murray, Esq., a Mystery,'--a composition
+     which would not displease the clergy nor the trade. I by no means
+     wish you to do what you don't like, but merely to say what you will
+     do. The Vision _must_ be published by some one. As to 'clamours,'
+     the die is cast: and 'come one, come all,' we will fight it out--at
+     least one of us."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 497. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Montenero, Villa Dupoy, near Leghorn, June 8. 1822.
+
+     "I have written to you twice through the medium of Murray, and on
+     one subject, _trite_ enough,--the loss of poor little Allegra by a
+     fever; on which topic I shall say no more--there is nothing but
+     time.
+
+     "A few days ago, my earliest and dearest friend, Lord Clare, came
+     over from Geneva on purpose to see me before he returned to
+     England. As I have always loved him (since I was thirteen, at
+     Harrow,) better than any (_male_) thing in the world, I need hardly
+     say what a melancholy pleasure it was to see him for a _day_ only;
+     for he was obliged to resume his journey immediately. * * * Do you
+     recollect, in the year of revelry 1814, the pleasantest parties and
+     balls all over London? and not the least so at * *'s. Do you
+     recollect your singing duets with Lady * *, and my flirtation with
+     Lady * *, and all the other fooleries of the time? while * * was
+     sighing, and Lady * * ogling him with her clear hazel eyes. _But_
+     eight years have passed, and, since that time, * * has * * * * *
+     *;--has run away with * * * * *; and _mysen_ (as my Nottinghamshire
+     friends call themselves) might as well have thrown myself out of
+     the window while you were singing, as intermarried where I did. You
+     and * * * * have come off the best of us. I speak merely of my
+     marriage, and its consequences, distresses, and calumnies; for I
+     have been much more happy, on the whole, _since_, than I ever could
+     have been with * *.
+
+     "I have read the recent article of Jeffrey in a faithful
+     transcription of the impartial Galignani. I suppose the long and
+     short of it is, that he wishes to provoke me to reply. But I won't,
+     for I owe him a good turn still for his kindness by-gone. Indeed, I
+     presume that the present opportunity of attacking me again was
+     irresistible; and I can't blame him, knowing what human nature is.
+     I shall make but one remark:--what does he mean by elaborate? The
+     whole volume was written with the greatest rapidity, in the midst
+     of evolutions, and revolutions, and persecutions, and proscriptions
+     of all who interested me in Italy. They said the same of 'Lara,'
+     which, _you_ know, was written amidst balls and fooleries, and
+     after coming home from masquerades and routs, in the summer of the
+     sovereigns. Of all I have ever written, they are perhaps the most
+     carelessly composed; and their faults, whatever they may be, are
+     those of negligence, and not of labour. I do not think this a
+     merit, but it is a fact.
+
+     "Yours ever and truly, N.B.
+
+     "P.S. You see the great advantage of my new signature;--it may
+     either stand for 'Nota Bene' or 'Noel Byron,' and, as such, will
+     save much repetition, in writing either books or letters. Since I
+     came here, I have been invited on board of the American squadron,
+     and treated with all possible honour and ceremony. They have asked
+     me to sit for my picture; and, as I was going away, an American
+     lady took a rose from me (which had been given to me by a very
+     pretty Italian lady that very morning), because, she said, 'She was
+     determined to send or take something which I had about me to
+     America.' _There_ is a kind of Lalla Rookh incident for you!
+     However, all these American honours arise, perhaps, not so much
+     from their enthusiasm for my 'Poeshie,' as their belief in my
+     dislike to the English,--in which I have the satisfaction to
+     coincide with them. I would rather, however, have a nod from an
+     American, than a snuff-box from an emperor."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 498. TO MR. ELLICE.
+
+     "Montenero, Leghorn, June 12. 1822.
+
+     "My dear Ellice,
+
+     "It is a long time since I have written to you, but I have not
+     forgotten your kindness, and I am now going to tax it--I hope not
+     too highly--but _don't_ be alarmed, it is _not_ a loan, but
+     _information_ which I am about to solicit. By your extensive
+     connections, no one can have better opportunities of hearing the
+     real state of _South_ America--I mean Bolivar's country. I have
+     many years had transatlantic projects of settlement, and what I
+     could wish from you would be some information of the best course to
+     pursue, and some letters of recommendation in case I should sail
+     for Angostura. I am told that land is very cheap there; but though
+     I have no great disposable funds to vest in such purchases, yet my
+     income, such as it is, would be sufficient in any country (except
+     England) for all the comforts of life, and for most of its
+     luxuries. The war there is now over, and as I do not go there to
+     _speculate_, but to settle, without any views but those of
+     independence and the enjoyment of the common civil rights, I should
+     presume such an arrival would not be unwelcome.
+
+     "All I request of you is, not to _dis_courage nor _en_courage, but
+     to give me such a statement as you think prudent and proper. I do
+     not address my other friends upon this subject, who would only
+     throw obstacles in my way, and bore me to return to England; which
+     I never will do, unless compelled by some insuperable cause. I have
+     a quantity of furniture, books, &c. &c. &c. which I could easily
+     ship from Leghorn; but I wish to 'look before I leap' over the
+     Atlantic. Is it true that for a few thousand dollars a large tract
+     of land may be obtained? I speak of _South_ America, recollect. I
+     have read some publications on the subject, but they seemed violent
+     and vulgar party productions. Please to address your answer[81] to
+     me at this place, and believe me ever and truly yours," &c.
+
+[Footnote 81: The answer which Mr. Ellice returned was, as might be
+expected, strongly dissuasive of this design. The wholly disorganised
+state of the country and its institutions, which it would take ages,
+perhaps, to restore even to the degree of industry and prosperity which
+it had enjoyed under the Spaniards, rendered Columbia, in his opinion,
+one of the last places in the world to which a man desirous of peace and
+quiet, or of security for his person and property, should resort to as
+an asylum. As long as Bolivar lived and maintained his authority, every
+reliance, Mr. Ellice added, might be placed on his integrity and
+firmness; but with his death a new æra of struggle and confusion would
+be sure to arise.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+About this time he sat for his picture to Mr. West, an American artist,
+who has himself given, in one of our periodical publications, the
+following account of his noble sitter:--
+
+"On the day appointed, I arrived at two o'clock, and began the picture.
+I found him a bad sitter. He talked all the time, and asked a multitude
+of questions about America--how I liked Italy, what I thought of the
+Italians, &c. When he was silent, he was a better sitter than before;
+for he assumed a countenance that did not belong to him, as though he
+were thinking of a frontispiece for Childe Harold. In about an hour our
+first sitting terminated, and I returned to Leghorn, scarcely able to
+persuade myself that this was the haughty misanthrope whose character
+had always appeared so enveloped in gloom and mystery; for I do not
+remember ever to have met with manners more gentle and attractive.
+
+"The next day I returned and had another sitting of an hour, during
+which he seemed anxious to know what I should make of my undertaking.
+Whilst I was painting, the window from which I received my light became
+suddenly darkened, and I heard a voice exclaim 'è troppo bello!' I
+turned, and discovered a beautiful female stooping down to look in, the
+ground on the outside being on a level with the bottom of the window.
+Her long golden hair hung down about her face and shoulders, her
+complexion was exquisite, and her smile completed one of the most
+romantic-looking heads, set off as it was by the bright sun behind it,
+which I had ever beheld. Lord Byron invited her to come in, and
+introduced her to me as the Countess Guiccioli. He seemed very fond of
+her, and I was glad of her presence, for the playful manner which he
+assumed towards her made him a much better sitter.
+
+"The next day, I was pleased to find that the progress which I had made
+in his likeness had given satisfaction, for, when we were alone, he
+said that he had a particular favour to request of me--would I grant it?
+I said I should be happy to oblige him; and he enjoined me to the
+flattering task of painting the Countess Guiccioli's portrait for him.
+On the following morning I began it, and, after, they sat alternately.
+He gave me the whole history of his connection with her, and said that
+he hoped it would last for ever; at any rate, it should not be his fault
+if it did not. His other attachments had been broken off by no fault of
+his.
+
+"I was by this time sufficiently intimate with him to answer his
+question as to what I thought of him before I had seen him. He laughed
+much at the idea which I had formed of him, and said, 'Well, you find me
+like other people, do you not?' He often afterwards repeated, 'And so
+you thought me a finer fellow, did you?' I remember once telling him,
+that notwithstanding his vivacity, I thought myself correct in at least
+one estimate which I had made of him, for I still conceived that he was
+not a happy man. He enquired earnestly what reason I had for thinking
+so, and I asked him if he had never observed in little children, after a
+paroxysm of grief, that they had at intervals a convulsive or tremulous
+manner of drawing in a long breath. Wherever I had observed this, in
+persons of whatever age, I had always found that it came from sorrow. He
+said the thought was new to him, and that he would make use of it.
+
+"Lord Byron, and all the party, left Villa Rossa (the name of their
+house) in a few days, to pack up their things in their house at Pisa.
+He told me that he should remain a few days there, and desired me, if I
+could do any thing more to the pictures, to come and stay with him. He
+seemed at a loss where to go, and was, I thought, on the point of
+embarking for America. I was with him at Pisa for a few days; but he was
+so annoyed by the police, and the weather was so hot, that I thought it
+doubtful whether I could improve the pictures, and, taking my departure
+one morning before he was up, I wrote him an excuse from Leghorn. Upon
+the whole, I left him with an impression that he possessed an excellent
+heart, which had been misconstrued on all hands from little else than a
+reckless levity of manners, which he took a whimsical pride in opposing
+to those of other people."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 499. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Pisa, July 6. 1822.
+
+     "I return you the revise. I have softened the part to which Gifford
+     objected, and changed the name of Michael to Raphael, who was an
+     angel of gentler sympathies. By the way, recollect to alter Michael
+     to _Raphael_ in the _scene_ itself throughout, for I have only had
+     time to do so in the list of the dramatis personæ, and _scratch out
+     all the pencil-marks_, to avoid puzzling the printers. I have given
+     the '_Vision of Quevedo Redivivus_' to John Hunt, which will
+     relieve you from a dilemma. He must publish it at his _own_ risk,
+     as it is at his own desire. Give him the _corrected_ copy which
+     Mr. Kinnaird had, as it is mitigated partly, and also the preface.
+
+     "Yours," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 500. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Pisa, July 8. 1822.
+
+     "Last week I returned you the packet of proofs. You had, perhaps,
+     better not publish in the same volume the _Po_ and _Rimini_
+     translation.
+
+     "I have consigned a letter to Mr. John Hunt for the 'Vision of
+     Judgment,' which you will hand over to him. Also the 'Pulci,'
+     original and Italian, and any _prose_ tracts of mine; for Mr. Leigh
+     Hunt is arrived here, and thinks of commencing a periodical work,
+     to which I shall contribute. I do not propose to you to be the
+     publisher, because I know that you are unfriends; but all things in
+     your care, except the volume now in the press, and the manuscript
+     purchased of Mr. Moore, can be given for this purpose, according as
+     they are wanted.
+
+     "With regard to what you say about your 'want of memory,' I can
+     only remark, that you inserted the note to Marino Faliero against
+     my positive revocation, and that you omitted the Dedication of
+     Sardanapalus to Goethe (place it before the volume now in the
+     press), both of which were things not very agreeable to me, and
+     which I could wish to be avoided in future, as they might be with a
+     very little care, or a simple memorandum in your pocket-book.
+
+     "It is not impossible that I may have three or four cantos of Don
+     Juan ready by autumn, or a little later, as I obtained a permission
+     from my dictatress to continue it,--_provided always_ it was to be
+     more guarded and decorous and sentimental in the continuation than
+     in the commencement. How far these conditions have been fulfilled
+     may be seen, perhaps, by-and-by; but the embargo was only taken off
+     upon these stipulations. You can answer at your leisure. Yours,"
+     &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 501. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Pisa, July 12. 1822.
+
+     "I have written to you lately, but not in answer to your last
+     letter of about a fortnight ago. I wish to know (and request an
+     answer to _that_ point) what became of the stanzas to Wellington
+     (intended to open a canto of Don Juan with), which I sent you
+     several months ago. If they have fallen into Murray's hands, he and
+     the Tories will suppress them, as those lines rate that hero at his
+     real value. Pray be explicit on this, as I have no other copy,
+     having sent you the original; and if you have them, let me have
+     _that_ again, or a _copy_ correct.
+
+     "I subscribed at Leghorn two hundred Tuscan crowns to your Irishism
+     committee; it is about a thousand francs, more or less. As Sir
+     C.S., who receives thirteen thousand a year of the public money,
+     could not afford more than a thousand livres out of his enormous
+     salary, it would have appeared ostentatious in a private individual
+     to pretend to surpass him; and therefore I have sent but the above
+     sum, as you will see by the enclosed receipt.[82]
+
+     "Leigh Hunt is here, after a voyage of eight months, during which
+     he has, I presume, made the Periplus of Hanno the Carthaginian, and
+     with much the same speed. He is setting up a Journal, to which I
+     have promised to contribute; and in the first number the 'Vision of
+     Judgment, by Quevedo Redivivus,' will probably appear, with other
+     articles.
+
+     "Can you give us any thing? He seems sanguine about the matter, but
+     (entre nous) I am not. I do not, however, like to put him out of
+     spirits by saying so; for he is bilious and unwell. Do, pray,
+     answer _this_ letter immediately.
+
+     "Do send Hunt any thing in prose or verse, of yours, to start him
+     handsomely--any lyrical, _irical_, or what you please.
+
+     "Has not your Potatoe Committee been blundering? Your advertisement
+     says, that Mr. L. Callaghan (a queer name for a banker) hath been
+     disposing of money in Ireland 'sans authority of the Committee.' I
+     suppose it will end in Callaghan's calling out the Committee, the
+     chairman of which carries pistols in his pocket, of course.
+
+     "When you can spare time from _duetting, coquetting_, and
+     claretting with your Hibernians of both sexes, let me have a line
+     from you. I doubt whether Paris is a good place for the composition
+     of your new poesy."
+
+[Footnote 82: "Received from Mr. Henry Dunn the sum of two hundred
+Tuscan crowns (for account of the Right Honourable Lord Noel Byron), for
+the purpose of assisting the Irish poor.
+
+"Thomas Hall.
+
+"Leghorn, 9th July, 1822. Tuscan crowns, 200."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 502. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Pisa, August 8. 1822.
+
+     "You will have heard by this time that Shelley and another
+     gentleman (Captain Williams) were drowned about a month ago (a
+     _month_ yesterday), in a squall off the Gulf of Spezia. There is
+     thus another man gone, about whom the world was ill-naturedly, and
+     ignorantly, and brutally mistaken. It will, perhaps, do him justice
+     _now_, when he can be no better for it.[83]
+
+     "I have not seen the thing you mention[84], and only heard of it
+     casually, nor have I any desire. The price is, as I saw in some
+     advertisements, fourteen shillings, which is too much to pay for a
+     libel on oneself. Some one said in a letter, that it was a Doctor
+     Watkins, who deals in the life and libel line. It must have
+     diminished your natural pleasure, as a friend (vide
+     Rochefoucault), to see yourself in it.
+
+     "With regard to the Blackwood fellows, I never published any thing
+     against them; nor, indeed, have seen their magazine (except in
+     Galignani's extracts) for these three years past. I once wrote, a
+     good while ago, some remarks [85] on their review of Don Juan, but
+     saying very little about themselves, and these were _not_
+     published. If you think that I ought to follow your example[86](and
+     I like to be in your company when I can) in contradicting their
+     impudence, you may shape this declaration of mine into a similar
+     paragraph for me. It is possible that you may have seen the little
+     I _did_ write (and never published) at Murray's;--it contained much
+     more about Southey than about the Blacks.
+
+     "If you think that I ought to do any thing about Watkins's book, I
+     should not care much about publishing _my Memoir now_, should it be
+     necessary to counteract the fellow. But, in _that_ case, I should
+     like to look over the _press_ myself. Let me know what you think,
+     or whether I had better _not_;--at least, not the second part,
+     which touches on the actual confines of still existing matters.
+
+     "I have written three more Cantos of Don Juan, and am hovering on
+     the brink of another (the ninth). The reason I want the stanzas
+     again which I sent you is, that as these cantos contain a full
+     detail (like the storm in Canto Second) of the siege and assault of
+     Ismael, with much of sarcasm on those butchers in large business,
+     your mercenary soldiery, it is a good opportunity of gracing the
+     poem with * * *. With these things and these fellows, it is
+     necessary, in the present clash of philosophy and tyranny, to throw
+     away the scabbard. I know it is against fearful odds; but the
+     battle must be fought; and it will be eventually for the good of
+     mankind, whatever it may be for the individual who risks himself.
+
+     "What do you think of your Irish bishop? Do you remember Swift's
+     line, 'Let me have a _barrack_--a fig for the _clergy_?' This seems
+     to have been his reverence's motto. * * *
+
+     "Yours," &c.
+
+[Footnote 83: In a letter to Mr. Murray, of an earlier date, which has
+been omitted to avoid repetitions, he says on the same subject, "You
+were all mistaken about Shelley, who was, without exception, the _best_
+and least selfish man I ever knew." There is also another passage in the
+same letter which, for its perfect truth, I must quote:--"I have
+received your scrap, with Henry Drury's letter enclosed. It is just like
+him--always kind and ready to oblige his old friends."]
+
+[Footnote 84: A book which had just appeared, entitled "Memoirs of the
+Right Hon. Lord Byron."]
+
+[Footnote 85: The remarkable pamphlet from which extracts have been
+already given in this work.]
+
+[Footnote 86: It had been asserted in a late Number of Blackwood, that
+both Lord Byron and myself were employed in writing satires against that
+Magazine.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 503. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Pisa, August 27. 1822.
+
+     "It is boring to trouble you with 'such small gear;' but it must be
+     owned that I should be glad if you would enquire whether my Irish
+     subscription ever reached the committee in Paris from Leghorn. My
+     reasons, like Vellum's, 'are threefold:'--First, I doubt the
+     accuracy of all almoners, or remitters of benevolent cash; second,
+     I do suspect that the said Committee, having in part served its
+     time to time-serving, may have kept back the acknowledgment of an
+     obnoxious politician's name in their lists; and third, I feel
+     pretty sure that I shall one day be twitted by the government
+     scribes for having been a professor of love for Ireland, and not
+     coming forward with the others in her distresses.
+
+     "It is not, as you may opine, that I am ambitious of having my name
+     in the papers, as I can have that any day in the week gratis. All I
+     want is to know if the Reverend Thomas Hall did or did not remit
+     my subscription (200 scudi of Tuscany, or about a thousand francs,
+     more or less,) to the Committee at Paris.
+
+     "The other day at Viareggio, I thought proper to swim off to my
+     schooner (the Bolivar) in the offing, and thence to shore
+     again--about three miles, or better, in all. As it was at mid-day,
+     under a broiling sun, the consequence has been a feverish attack,
+     and my whole skin's coming off, after going through the process of
+     one large continuous blister, raised by the sun and sea together. I
+     have suffered much pain; not being able to lie on my back, or even
+     side; for my shoulders and arms were equally St. Bartholomewed. But
+     it is over,--and I have got a new skin, and am as glossy as a snake
+     in its new suit.
+
+     "We have been burning the bodies of Shelley and Williams on the
+     sea-shore, to render them fit for removal and regular interment.
+     You can have no idea what an extraordinary effect such a funeral
+     pile has, on a desolate shore, with mountains in the background and
+     the sea before, and the singular appearance the salt and
+     frankincense gave to the flame. All of Shelley was consumed, except
+     his _heart_, which would not take the flame, and is now preserved
+     in spirits of wine.
+
+     "Your old acquaintance Londonderry has quietly died at North Cray!
+     and the virtuous De Witt was torn in pieces by the populace! What a
+     lucky * * the Irishman has been in his life and end.[87] In him
+     your Irish Franklin est mort!
+
+     "Leigh Hunt is sweating articles for his new Journal; and both he
+     and I think it somewhat shabby in _you_ not to contribute. Will you
+     become one of the _properrioters_? 'Do, and we go snacks.' I
+     recommend you to think twice before you respond in the negative.
+
+     "I have nearly (_quite three_) four new cantos of Don Juan ready. I
+     obtained permission from the female Censor Morum of _my_ morals to
+     continue it, provided it were immaculate; so I have been as decent
+     as need be. There is a deal of war--a siege, and all that, in the
+     style, graphical and technical, of the shipwreck in Canto Second,
+     which 'took,' as they say, in the Row.
+
+     Yours, &c.
+
+     "P.S. That * * * Galignani has about ten lies in one paragraph. It
+     was not a Bible that was found in Shelley's pocket, but John
+     Keats's poems. However, it would not have been strange, for he was
+     a great admirer of Scripture as a composition. _I_ did not send my
+     bust to the academy of New York; but I sat for my picture to young
+     West, an American artist, at the request of some members of that
+     Academy to _him_ that he would take my portrait,--for the Academy,
+     I believe.[88]
+
+     "I had, and still have, thoughts of South America, but am
+     fluctuating between it and Greece. I should have gone, long ago, to
+     one of them, but for my liaison with the Countess Gi.; for love, in
+     these days, is little compatible with glory. _She_ would be
+     delighted to go too; but I do not choose to expose her to a long
+     voyage, and a residence in an unsettled country, where I shall
+     probably take a part of some sort."
+
+[Footnote 87: The particulars of this event had, it is evident, not yet
+readied him.]
+
+[Footnote 88: This portrait, though destined for America, was, it
+appears, never sent thither. A few copies of it have since been painted
+by Mr. West, but the original picture was purchased by Mr. Joy, of
+Hartham Park, Wilts; who is also the possessor of the original portrait
+of Madame Guiccioli, by the same artist.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Soon after the above letters were written, Lord Byron removed to Genoa,
+having taken a house, called the Villa Saluzzo, at Albaro, one of the
+suburbs of that city. From the time of the unlucky squabble with the
+serjeant-major at Pisa, his tranquillity had been considerably broken in
+upon, as well by the judicial enquiries consequent upon that event, as
+by the many sinister rumours and suspicions to which it gave rise.
+Though the wounded man had recovered, his friends all vowed vengeance
+with the dagger: and the sensation which the affair and its various
+consequences had produced was,--to Madame Guiccioli more particularly,
+from the situation in which her family stood, in regard to
+politics,--distressing and alarming. While the impression, too, of this
+event was still recent, another circumstance occurred which, though
+comparatively unimportant, had the unlucky effect of again drawing the
+attention of the Tuscans to their new visitors. During Lord Byron's
+short visit to Leghorn, a Swiss servant in his employ having quarrelled,
+on some occasion, with the brother of Madame Guiccioli, drew his knife
+upon the young Count, and wounded him slightly on the cheek. This
+affray, happening so soon after the other, was productive also of so
+much notice and conversation, that the Tuscan government, in its horror
+of every thing like disturbance, thought itself called upon to
+interfere; and orders were accordingly issued, that, within four days,
+the two Counts Gamba, father and son, should depart from Tuscany. To
+Lord Byron this decision was, in the highest degree, provoking and
+disconcerting; it being one of the conditions of the Guiccioli's
+separation from her husband, that she should thenceforward reside under
+the same roof with her father. After balancing in his mind between
+various projects,--sometimes thinking of Geneva, and sometimes, as we
+have seen, of South America,--he at length decided, for the present, to
+transfer his residence to Genoa.
+
+His habits of life, while at Pisa, had but very little differed, except
+in the new line of society into which his introduction to Shelley's
+friends led him,--from the usual monotonous routine in which, so
+singularly for one of his desultory disposition, the daily course of
+his existence had now, for some years, flowed. At two he usually
+breakfasted, and at three, or, as the year advanced, four o'clock, those
+persons who were in the habit of accompanying him in his rides, called
+upon him. After, occasionally, a game of billiards, he proceeded,--and,
+in order to avoid starers, in his carriage,--as far as the gates of the
+town, where his horses met him. At first the route he chose for these
+rides was in the direction of the Cascine and of the pine-forest that
+reaches towards the sea; but having found a spot more convenient for his
+pistol exercise on the road leading from the Porta alla Spiaggia to the
+east of the city, he took daily this course during the remainder of his
+stay. When arrived at the Podere or farm, in the garden of which they
+were allowed to erect their target, his friends and he dismounted, and,
+after devoting about half an hour to a trial of skill at the pistol,
+returned, a little before sunset, into the city.
+
+"Lord Byron," says a friend who was sometimes present at their
+practising, "was the best marksman. Shelley, and Williams, and
+Trelawney, often made as good shots as he--but they were not so certain;
+and he, though his hand trembled violently, never missed, for he
+calculated on this vibration, and depended entirely on his eye. Once
+after demolishing his mark, he set up a slender cane, whose colour,
+nearly the same as the gravel in which it was fixed, might well have
+deceived him, and at twenty paces he divided it with his bullet. His joy
+at a good shot, and his vexation at a failure, was great--and when we
+met him on his return, his cold salutation, or joyous laugh, told the
+tale of the day's success."
+
+For the first time since his arrival in Italy, he now found himself
+tempted to give dinner parties; his guests being, besides Count Gamba
+and Shelley, Mr. Williams, Captain Medwin, Mr. Taafe, and Mr.
+Trelawney;--and "never," as his friend Shelley used to say, "did he
+display himself to more advantage than on these occasions; being at once
+polite and cordial, full of social hilarity and the most perfect good
+humour; never diverging into ungraceful merriment, and yet keeping up
+the spirit of liveliness throughout the evening." About midnight his
+guests generally left him, with the exception of Captain Medwin, who
+used to remain, as I understand, talking and drinking with his noble
+host till far into the morning; and to the careless, half mystifying
+confidences of these nocturnal sittings, implicitly listened to and
+confusedly recollected, we owe the volume with which Captain Medwin,
+soon after the death of the noble poet, favoured the world.
+
+On the subject of this and other such intimacies formed by Lord Byron,
+not only at the period of which we are speaking, but throughout his
+whole life, it would be difficult to advance any thing more judicious,
+or more demonstrative of a true knowledge of his character, than is to
+be found in the following remarks of one who had studied him with her
+whole heart,--who had learned to regard him with the eyes of good sense,
+as well as of affection, and whose strong love, in short, was founded
+upon a basis the most creditable both to him and herself,--the being
+able to understand him.[89]
+
+"We continued in Pisa even more rigorously to absent ourselves from
+society. However, as there were a good many English in Pisa, he could
+not avoid becoming acquainted with various friends of Shelley, among
+which number was Mr. Medwin. They followed him in his rides, dined with
+him, and felt themselves happy, of course, in the apparent intimacy in
+which they lived with so renowned a man; but not one of them was
+admitted to any part of his friendship, which, indeed, he did not easily
+accord. He had a great affection for Shelley, and a great esteem for his
+character and talents; but he was not his friend in the most extensive
+sense of that word. Sometimes, when speaking of his friends and of
+friendship, as also of love, and of every other noble emotion of the
+soul, his expressions might inspire doubts concerning his sentiments and
+the goodness of his heart. The feeling of the moment regulated his
+speech, and, besides, he liked to play the part of singularity,--and
+sometimes worse,--more especially with those whom he suspected of
+endeavouring to make discoveries as to his real character; but it was
+only mean minds and superficial observers that could be deceived in him.
+It was necessary to consider his actions to perceive the contradiction
+they bore to his words: it was necessary to be witness of certain
+moments, during which unforeseen and involuntary emotion forced him to
+give himself entirely up to his feelings; and whoever beheld him then,
+became aware of the stores of sensibility and goodness of which his
+noble heart was full.
+
+"Among the many occasions _I_ had of seeing him thus overpowered, I
+shall mention one relative to his feelings of friendship. A few days
+before leaving Pisa, we were one evening seated in the garden of the
+Palazzo Lanfranchi. A soft melancholy was spread over his countenance;
+he recalled to mind the events of his life; compared them with his
+present situation, and with that which it might have been if his
+affection for me had not caused him to remain in Italy, saying things
+which would have made earth a paradise for me, but that even then a
+presentiment that I should lose all this happiness tormented me. At this
+moment a servant announced Mr. Hobhouse. The slight shade of melancholy
+diffused over Lord Byron's face gave instant place to the liveliest joy;
+but it was so great, that it almost deprived him of strength. A fearful
+paleness came over his cheeks, and his eyes were filled with tears as he
+embraced his friend. His emotion was so great that he was forced to sit
+down.
+
+"Lord Clare's visit also occasioned him extreme delight. He had a great
+affection for Lord Clare, and was very happy during the short visit that
+he paid him at Leghorn. The day on which they separated was a melancholy
+one for Lord Byron. 'I have a presentiment that I shall never see him
+more,' he said, and his eyes filled with tears. The same melancholy came
+over him during the first weeks that succeeded to Lord Clare's
+departure, whenever his conversation happened to fall upon this
+friend."[90]
+
+Of his feelings on the death of his daughter Allegra, this lady gives
+the following account:--"On the occasion also of the death of his
+natural daughter, I saw in his grief the excess of paternal kindness.
+His conduct towards this child was always that of a fond father; but no
+one would have guessed from his expressions that he felt this affection
+for her. He was dreadfully agitated by the first intelligence of her
+illness; and when afterwards that of her death arrived, I was obliged to
+fulfil the melancholy task of communicating it to him. The memory of
+that frightful moment is stamped indelibly on my mind. For several
+evenings he had not left his house, I therefore went to him. His first
+question was relative to the courier he had despatched for tidings of
+his daughter, and whose delay disquieted him. After a short interval of
+suspense, with every caution which my own sorrow suggested, I deprived
+him of all hope of the child's recovery. 'I understand,' said he,--'it
+is enough, say no more.' A mortal paleness spread itself over his face,
+his strength failed him, and he sunk into a seat. His look was fixed,
+and the expression such that I began to fear for his reason; he did not
+shed a tear, and his countenance manifested so hopeless, so profound, so
+sublime a sorrow, that at the moment he appeared a being of a nature
+superior to humanity. He remained immovable in the same attitude for an
+hour, and no consolation which I endeavoured to afford him seemed to
+reach his ears, far less his heart. But enough of this sad episode, on
+which I cannot linger, even after the lapse of so many years, without
+renewing in my own heart the awful wretchedness of that day. He desired
+to be left alone, and I was obliged to leave him. I found him on the
+following morning tranquillised, and with an expression of religious
+resignation on his features. 'She is more fortunate than we are,' he
+said; 'besides, her position in the world would scarcely have allowed
+her to be happy. It is God's will--let us mention it no more.' And from
+that day he would never pronounce her name; but became more anxious
+when he spoke of Ada,--so much so as to disquiet himself when the usual
+accounts sent him were for a post or two delayed."[91]
+
+The melancholy death of poor Shelley, which happened, as we have seen,
+also during this period, seems to have affected Lord Byron's mind, less
+with grief for the actual loss of his friend, than with bitter
+indignation against those who had, through life, so grossly
+misrepresented him; and never certainly was there an instance where the
+supposed absence of all religion in an individual was assumed so eagerly
+as an excuse for the absence of all charity in judging him. Though never
+personally acquainted with Mr. Shelley, I can join freely with those who
+most loved him in admiring the various excellences of his heart and
+genius, and lamenting the too early doom that robbed us of the mature
+fruits of both. His short life had been, like his poetry, a sort of
+bright erroneous dream,--false in the general principles on which it
+proceeded, though beautiful and attaching in most of the details. Had
+full time been allowed for the "over-light" of his imagination to have
+been tempered down by the judgment which, in him, was still in reserve,
+the world at large would have been taught to pay that high homage to his
+genius which those only who saw what he was capable of can now be
+expected to accord to it.
+
+It was about this time that Mr. Cowell, paying a visit to Lord Byron at
+Genoa, was told by him that some friends of Mr. Shelley, sitting
+together one evening, had seen that gentleman, distinctly, as they
+thought, walk into a little wood at Lerici, when at the same moment, as
+they afterwards discovered, he was far away in quite a different
+direction. "This," added Lord Byron, in a low, awe-struck tone of
+voice, "was but ten days before poor Shelley died."
+
+[Footnote 89: My poor Zimmerman, who now will understand thee?"--such
+was the touching speech addressed to Zimmerman by his wife, on her
+death-bed; and there is implied in these few words all that a man of
+morbid sensibility must be dependant for upon the tender and
+self-forgetting tolerance of the woman with whom he is united.]
+
+[Footnote 90: "In Pisa abbiamo continuato anche più rigorosaraente a
+vivere lontano dalla società. Essendosi però in Pisa molti Inglesi egli
+non potè escusarsi dal fare la conoscenza di varii amici di Shelley, fra
+i quali uno fu Mr. Medwin. Essi lo seguitavano al passeggio, pranzavono
+con lui e certamente si tenevano felici della apparente intimità che
+loro accordava un uomo così superiore. Ma nessuno di loro fu ammesso mai
+a porta della sua amicizia, che egli non era facile a accordare. Per
+Shelley egli aveva dell' affezione, e molta stima pel suo carattere e
+pel suo talento, ma non era suo amico nel estensione del senso che si
+deva dare alla parola amicizia. Talvolta parlando egli de' suoi amici, e
+dell' amicizia, come pure dell' amore, e di ogni altro nobile sentimento
+dell' anima, potevano i suoi discorsi far nascere dei dubbii sui veri
+suoi sentimenti, e sulla bontà del suo core. Una impressione momentanea
+regolava i suoi discorsi; e di più egli amava anche a rappresentare un
+personaggio bizzarro, e qualche volta anche peggio,--specialmente con
+quelli che egli pensava volessero studiare e fare delle scoperte sul suo
+carattere. Ma nell' inganno non poteva cadere che una piccola mente, e
+un osservatore superficiale. Bisognava esaminare le sue azioni per
+sentire tutta le contraddizione che era fra di esse e i suoi discorsi;
+bisognava vederlo in certi momenti in cui per una emozione improvisa e
+più forte della sua volontà la sua anima si abbandonava interamente a se
+stessa;--bisognava vederlo allora per scoprire i tesori di sensibilità e
+di bontà che erano ìn quella nobile anima.
+
+"Fra le tante volte che io l'ho veduto in simili circostanze ne
+ricorderò una che risguarda i suoi sentimenti di amicizia. Pochi giorni
+prima di lasciare Pisa eravamo verso sera insieme seduti nel giardino
+del Palazzo Lanfranchi. Una dolce malinconia era sparsa sul suo viso.
+Egli riandava col pensiero gli avvenimenti della sua vita e faceva il
+confronto colle attuale sue situazione e quella che avrebbe potuta
+essere se la sua affezione per me non lo avesse fatto restare in Italia;
+e diceva cose che avrebbero resa per me la terra un paradiso, se giÃ
+sino d'allora il pressentimento di perdere tanta felicità non mi avesse
+tormentata. In questo mentre un domestico annunciò Mr. Hobhouse. La
+leggiera tinta di malinconia sparsa sul viso di Byron fece, luogo
+subitamente alia più viva gioia; ma essa fu così forte che gli tolse
+quasi le forze. Un pallore commovente ricoperse il suo volto, e nell'
+abbracciare il suo amico i suoi occhi erano pieni di lacrime di
+contento. E l'emozione fu così forte che egli fu obbligato di sedersi,
+sentendosi mancare le forze.
+
+"La venuta pure di Lord Clare fu per lui un epoca di grande felicità.
+Egli amava sommamente Lord Clare--egli era così felice in quel breve
+tempo che passò presso di lui a Livorno, e il giorno in cui si
+separarono fu un giorno di grande tristezza per Lord Byron. 'Io ho il
+pressentimento che non lo vedrò piu,' diceva egli; e i suoi occhi si
+riempirano di lacrime; e in questo stato l'ho veduto per varii
+settimanie dopo la partenza di Lord Clare, ogni qual volta il discorso
+cadeva sopra di codesto il suo amico."]
+
+[Footnote 91: "Nell' occasione pure della morire della sua figlia
+naturale io ho veduto nel suo dolore tuttociò che vi è di più profondo
+nella tenerezza paterna. La sua condotta verso di codesta fanciulla era
+stata sempre quella del padre il più amoroso; ma dalle di lui parole non
+si sarebbe giudicato che avesse tanta affezione per lei. Alia prima
+notizia della di lei malattia egli fu sommamente agitato; giunse poi la
+notizia della morte, ed io dovessi esercitare il tristo uficio di
+participarla a Lord Byron. Quel sensibile momenta sarà indelebile nella
+mia memoria. Egli non usciva da varii giorni la sera: io andai dunque da
+lui. La prima domauda che egli mi fece fu relativa al Corriere che egli
+aveva spedito per avere notizie della sua figlia, e di cui il retardo lo
+inquietava. Dopo qualche momento di sospensione con tutta l'arte che
+sapeva suggerirmi il mio proprio dotore gli tolsi ogni speranza della
+guarizione della fanciulla. 'Ho inteso,' disse egli--'basta così--non
+dite di più'--e un pallore mortale si sparse sul suo volto; le forze gli
+mancarono, e cadde sopra una sedia d'appoggio. Il suo sguardo era fisso
+e tale che mi fece temere per la sua ragione. Egli rimase in quello
+stato d'immobilità un' ora; e nessuna parola dì consolazione che io
+potessi indirezzargli pareva penetrare le sue orecchie non che il suo
+core. Ma basta così di questa trista detenzione nella quale non posso
+fermarmi dopo tanti anni senza risvegliare dì nuovo nel mio animo le
+terribile sofferenze di quel giorno. La mattinà lo trovai tranquillo, e
+con una espressione di religiosa rassegnazione nel suo volto. 'Ella è
+più felice di noi,' diss' egli--'d'altronde la sua situazione nel mondo
+non le avrebbe data forse felicità. Dio ha voluto così--non ne parliamo
+più.' E da quel giorno in poi non ha più voluto proferire il nome di
+quella fanciulla. Ma è divenuto più pensieroso parlando di Adda, al
+punto di tormentarsi quando gli ritardavano di qualche ordinario le di
+lei notizie."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 504. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Genoa, October 9. 1822.
+
+     "I have received your letter, and as you explain it, I have no
+     objection, on _your_ account, to omit those passages in the new
+     Mystery (which were marked in the half-sheet sent the other day to
+     Pisa), or the passage in _Cain_;--but why not be open and say so at
+     _first_? You should be more straight-forward on every account.
+
+     "I have been very unwell--four days confined to my bed in 'the
+     worst inn's worst room,' at Lerici, with a violent rheumatic and
+     bilious attack, constipation, and the devil knows what: no
+     physician, except a young fellow, who, however, was kind and
+     cautious, and that's enough.
+
+     "At last I seized Thompson's book of prescriptions (a donation of
+     yours), and physicked myself with the first dose I found in it; and
+     after undergoing the ravages of all kinds of decoctions, sallied
+     from bed on the fifth day to cross the Gulf to Sestri. The sea
+     revived me instantly; and I ate the sailor's cold fish, and drank a
+     gallon of country wine, and got to Genoa the same night after
+     landing at Sestri, and have ever since been keeping well, but
+     thinner, and with an occasional cough towards evening.
+
+     "I am afraid the Journal _is a bad_ business, and won't do; but in
+     it I am sacrificing _myself_ for others--_I_ can have no advantage
+     in it. I believe the _brothers Hunts_ to be honest men; I am sure
+     that they are poor ones; they have not a nap. They pressed me to
+     engage in this work, and in an evil hour I consented. Still I shall
+     not repent, if I can do them the least service. I have done all I
+     can for Leigh Hunt since he came here; but it is almost
+     useless:--his wife is ill, his six children not very tractable, and
+     in the affairs of this world he himself is a child. The death of
+     Shelley left them totally aground; and I could not see them in such
+     a state without using the common feelings of humanity, and what
+     means were in my power, to set them afloat again.
+
+     "So Douglas Kinnaird is out of the way? He was so the last time I
+     sent him a parcel, and he gives no previous notice. When is he
+     expected again?
+
+     "Yours, &c.
+
+     "P.S. Will you say at once--do you publish Werner and the Mystery
+     or not? You never once allude to them.
+
+     "That curst advertisement of Mr. J. Hunt is out of the limits. I
+     did not lend him my name to be hawked about in this way.
+
+     "However, I believe--at least, hope--that after all you may be a
+     good fellow at bottom, and it is on this presumption that I now
+     write to you on the subject of a poor woman of the name of _Yossy_,
+     who is, or was, an author of yours, as she says, and published a
+     book on Switzerland in 1816, patronised by the 'Court and Colonel
+     M'Mahon.' But it seems that neither the Court nor the Colonel could
+     get over the portentous price of three pounds, thirteen, and
+     sixpence,' which alarmed the too susceptible public; and, in short,
+     'the book died away,' and, what is worse, the poor soul's husband
+     died too, and she writes with the man a corpse before her; but
+     instead of addressing the bishop or Mr. Wilberforce, she hath
+     recourse to that proscribed, atheistical, syllogistical,
+     phlogistical person, _mysen_, as they say in Notts. It is strange
+     enough, but the rascaille English who calumniate me in every
+     direction and on every score, whenever they are in great distress
+     recur to me for assistance. If I have had one example of this, I
+     have had letters from a thousand, and as far as is in my power have
+     tried to repay good for evil, and purchase a shilling's worth of
+     salvation as long as my pocket can hold out.
+
+     "Now, I am willing to do what I can for this unfortunate person;
+     but her situation and her wishes (not unreasonable, however,)
+     require more than can be advanced by one individual like myself;
+     for I have many claims of the same kind just at present, and also
+     some remnants of _debt_ to pay in England--God, he knows, the
+     _latter_ how reluctantly! Can the Literary Fund do nothing for her?
+     By your interest, which is great among the pious, I dare say that
+     something might be collected. Can you get any of her books
+     published? Suppose you took her as author in my place, now vacant
+     among your ragamuffins; she is a moral and pious person, and will
+     shine upon your shelves. But seriously, do what you can for her."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 505. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Genoa, 9bre 23. 1822.
+
+     "I have to thank you for a parcel of books, which are very welcome,
+     especially Sir Walter's gift of 'Halidon Hill.' You have sent me a
+     copy of 'Werner,' but _without_ the preface. If you have published
+     it _without_, you will have plunged me into a very disagreeable
+     dilemma, because I shall be accused of plagiarism from Miss Lee's
+     German's Tale, whereas I have fully and freely acknowledged that
+     the drama is entirely taken from the story.
+
+     "I return you the Quarterly Review, uncut and unopened, not from
+     disrespect or disregard or pique, but it is a kind of reading which
+     I have some time disused, as I think the periodical style of
+     writing hurtful to the habits of the mind, by presenting the
+     superfices of too many things at once. I do not know that it
+     contains any thing disagreeable to me--it may or it may not; nor do
+     I return it on account that there _may_ be an article which you
+     hinted at in one of your late letters, but because I have left off
+     reading these kind of works, and should equally have returned you
+     any other number.
+
+     "I am obliged to take in one or two abroad, because solicited to do
+     so. The Edinburgh came before me by mere chance in Galignani's
+     picnic sort of gazette, where he had inserted a part of it.
+
+     "You will have received various letters from me lately, in a style
+     which I used with reluctance; but you left me no other choice by
+     your absolute refusal to communicate with a man you did not like
+     upon the mere simple matter of transfer of a few papers of little
+     consequence (except to their author), and which could be of no
+     moment to yourself.
+
+     "I hope that Mr. Kinnaird is better. It is strange that you never
+     alluded to his accident, if it be true, as stated in the papers. I
+     am yours, &c. &c.
+
+     "I hope that you have a milder winter than we have had here. We
+     have had inundations worthy of the Trent or Po, and the conductor
+     (Franklin's) of my house was struck (or supposed to be stricken) by
+     a thunderbolt. I was so near the window that I was dazzled and my
+     eyes hurt for several minutes, and everybody in the house felt an
+     electric shock at the moment. Madame Guiccioli was frightened, as
+     you may suppose.
+
+     "I have thought since that your bigots would have 'saddled me with
+     a judgment' (as Thwackum did Square when he bit his tongue in
+     talking metaphysics), if any thing had happened of consequence.
+     These fellows always forget Christ in their Christianity, and what
+     he said when 'the tower of Siloam fell.'
+
+     "To-day is the 9th, and the 10th is my surviving daughter's
+     birth-day. I have ordered, as a regale, a mutton chop and a bottle
+     of ale. She is seven years old, I believe. Did I ever tell you that
+     the day I came of age I dined on eggs and bacon and a bottle of
+     ale? For once in a way they are my favourite dish and drinkable,
+     but as neither of them agree with me, I never use them but on great
+     jubilees--once in four or five years or so.
+
+     "I see somebody represents the Hunts and Mrs. Shelley as living in
+     my house: it is a falsehood. They reside at some distance, and I do
+     not see them twice in a month. I have not met Mr. Hunt a dozen
+     times since I came to Genoa, or near it.
+
+     "Yours ever," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 506. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Genoa, 10bre 25°. 1822.
+
+     "I had sent you back the Quarterly, without perusal, having
+     resolved to read no more reviews, good, bad, or indifferent; but
+     'who can control his fate?' Galignani, to whom my English studies
+     are confined, has forwarded a copy of at least one half of it in
+     his indefatigable catch-penny weekly compilation; and as, 'like
+     honour, it came unlooked for,' I have looked through it. I must say
+     that, upon the _whole_, that is, the whole of the _half_ which I
+     have read (for the other half is to be the segment of Galignani's
+     next week's circular), it is extremely handsome, and any thing but
+     unkind or unfair. As I take the good in good part, I must not, nor
+     will not, quarrel with the bad. What the writer says of Don Juan is
+     harsh, but it is inevitable. He must follow, or at least not
+     directly oppose, the opinion of a prevailing, and yet not very
+     firmly seated, party. A Review may and will direct and 'turn awry'
+     the currents of opinion, but it must not directly oppose them. Don
+     Juan will be known by and by, for what it is intended,--a _Satire_
+     on _abuses_ of the present states of society, and not an eulogy of
+     vice. It may be now and then voluptuous: I can't help that.
+     Ariosto is worse; Smollett (see Lord Strutwell in vol. 2d of
+     Roderick Random) ten times worse; and Fielding no better. No girl
+     will ever be seduced by reading Don Juan:--no, no; she will go to
+     Little's poems and Rousseau's _romans_ for that, or even to the
+     immaculate De Staël. They will encourage her, and not the Don, who
+     laughs at that, and--and--most other things. But never mind--_ça
+     irà!_
+
+     "Now, do you see what you and your friends do by your injudicious
+     rudeness?--actually cement a sort of connection which you strove to
+     prevent, and which, had the Hunts _prospered_, would not in all
+     probability have continued. As it is, I will not quit them in their
+     adversity, though it should cost me character, fame, money, and the
+     usual _et cetera_.
+
+     "My original motives I already explained (in the letter which you
+     thought proper to show): they are the _true_ ones, and I abide by
+     them, as I tell you, and I told Leigh Hunt when he questioned me on
+     the subject of that letter. He was violently hurt, and never will
+     forgive me at bottom; but I can't help that. I never meant to make
+     a parade of it; but if he chose to question me, I could only answer
+     the plain truth: and I confess I did not see any thing in the
+     letter to hurt him, unless I said he was 'a bore,' which I don't
+     remember. Had their Journal gone on well, and I could have aided to
+     make it better for them, I should then have left them, after my
+     safe pilotage off a lee shore, to make a prosperous voyage by
+     themselves. As it is, I can't, and would not, if I could, leave
+     them among the breakers.
+
+     "As to any community of feeling, thought, or opinion, between
+     Leigh Hunt and me, there is little or none. We meet rarely, hardly
+     ever; but I think him a good-principled and able man, and must do
+     as I would be done by. I do not know what world he has lived in,
+     but I have lived in three or four; but none of them like his Keats
+     and kangaroo terra incognita. Alas! poor Shelley! how we would have
+     laughed had he lived, and how we used to laugh now and then, at
+     various things which are grave in the suburbs!
+
+     "You are all mistaken about Shelley. You do not know how mild, how
+     tolerant, how good he was in society; and as perfect a gentleman as
+     ever crossed a drawing-room, when he liked, and where liked.
+
+     "I have some thoughts of taking a run down to Naples (_solus_, or,
+     at most, _cum sola_) this spring, and writing, when I have studied
+     the country, a Fifth and Sixth Canto of Childe Harold: but this is
+     merely an idea for the present, and I have other excursions and
+     voyages in my mind. The busts[92] are finished: are you worthy of
+     them?
+
+     "Yours, &c. N.B.
+
+     "P.S. Mrs. Shelley is residing with the Hunts at some distance from
+     me. I see them very seldom, and generally on account of their
+     business. Mrs. Shelley, I believe, will go to England in the
+     spring.
+
+     "Count Gamba's family, the father and mother and daughter, are
+     residing with me by Mr. Hill (the minister's) recommendation, as a
+     safer asylum from the political persecutions than they could have
+     in another residence; but they occupy one part of a large house,
+     and I the other, and our establishments are quite separate.
+
+     "Since I have read the Quarterly, I shall erase two or three
+     passages in the latter six or seven cantos, in which I had lightly
+     stroked over two or three of your authors; but I will not return
+     evil for good. I liked what I read of the article much.
+
+     "Mr. J. Hunt is most likely the publisher of the new Cantos; with
+     what prospects of success I know not, nor does it very much matter,
+     as far as I am concerned; but I hope that it may be of use to him;
+     he is a stiff, sturdy, conscientious man, and I like him; he is
+     such a one as Prynne or Pym might be. I bear you no ill-will for
+     declining the Don Juans.
+
+     "Have you aided Madame de Yossy, as I requested? I sent her three
+     hundred francs. Recommend her, will you, to the Literary Fund, or
+     to some benevolence within your circles."
+
+[Footnote 92: Of the bust of himself by Bartollini he says, in one of
+the omitted letters to Mr. Murray:--"The bust does not turn out a good
+one,--though it may be like for aught I know, as it exactly resembles a
+superannuated Jesuit." Again: "I assure you Bartollini's is dreadful,
+though my mind misgives me that it is hideously like. If it is, I cannot
+be long for this world, for it overlooks seventy."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 507. TO LADY ----.
+
+     "Albaro, November 10. 1822.
+
+     "The Chevalier persisted in declaring himself an ill-used
+     gentleman, and describing you as a kind of cold Calypso, who lead
+     astray people of an amatory disposition without giving them any
+     sort of compensation, contenting yourself, it seems, with only
+     making _one_ fool instead of two, which is the more approved method
+     of proceeding on such occasions. For my part, I think you are quite
+     right; and be assured from me that a woman (as society is
+     constituted in England) who gives any advantage to a man may expect
+     a lover, but will sooner or later find a tyrant; and this is not
+     the man's fault either, perhaps, but is the necessary and natural
+     result of the circumstances of society, which, in fact, tyrannise
+     over the man equally with the woman; that is to say, if either of
+     them have any feeling or honour.
+
+     "You can write to me at your leisure and inclination. I have always
+     laid it down as a maxim, and found it justified by experience, that
+     a man and a woman make far better friendships than can exist
+     between two of the same sex; but _these_ with this condition, that
+     they never have made, or are to make, love with each other. Lovers
+     may, and, indeed, generally _are_ enemies, but they never can be
+     friends; because there must always be a spice of jealousy and a
+     something of self in all their speculations.
+
+     "Indeed, I rather look upon love altogether as a sort of hostile
+     transaction, very necessary to make or to break matches, and keep
+     the world going, but by no means a sinecure to the parties
+     concerned.
+
+     "Now, as my love perils are, I believe, pretty well over, and
+     yours, by all accounts, are never to begin, we shall be the best
+     friends imaginable, as far as both are concerned, and with this
+     advantage, that we may both fall to loving right and left through
+     all our acquaintance, without either sullenness or sorrow from that
+     amiable passion which are its inseparable attendants.
+
+     "Believe me," &c.
+
+
+END OF THE FIFTH VOLUME.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters
+And Journals, Vol. 5, by (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WRITINGS OF LORD BYRON ***
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And
+Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6), by (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6)
+
+Author: (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
+
+Editor: Thomas Moore
+
+Release Date: August 27, 2005 [EBook #16609]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WRITINGS OF LORD BYRON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Taavi Kalju and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+LIFE
+
+OF
+
+LORD BYRON:
+
+WITH HIS LETTERS AND JOURNALS.
+
+BY THOMAS MOORE, ESQ.
+
+IN SIX VOLUMES.--VOL. V.
+
+NEW EDITION.
+
+
+LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 1854.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF VOL. V.
+
+LETTERS AND JOURNALS OF LORD BYRON, WITH NOTICES OF HIS LIFE, from
+October, 1820, to November, 1822.
+
+
+
+
+NOTICES
+
+OF THE
+
+LIFE OF LORD BYRON.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER 394. TO MR. 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 _Gail_, 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 received the French of
+     mine. Only think of being _traduced_ 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? 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, it seems, whom they have
+     christened 'Dieu-donné;'--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 'Little's Poems' or
+     'Don Juan.' If you don't write soon, I will 'make you a speech.'
+     Yours," &c.
+
+[Footnote 1: I had mistaken the name of the lady he enquired 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.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 395. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, 8bre 25°, 1820.
+
+     "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 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,
+     fourthly, 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 he gives of her admirers (as unfortunate) at the close of
+     'The Abbot.'
+
+     "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
+     O'Trigger's, most of whom are to be found in the old Scotch
+     Chronicles, Spalding, &c. 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.
+
+     "Yours.
+
+     "You had better not publish Blackwood and the Roberts' prose,
+     except what regards Pope;--you have let the time slip by."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Pamphlet in answer to Blackwood's Magazine, here mentioned, was
+occasioned by an article in that work, entitled "Remarks on Don Juan,"
+and though put to press by Mr. Murray, was never published. The writer
+in the Magazine having, in reference to certain passages in Don Juan,
+taken occasion to pass some severe strictures on the author's
+matrimonial conduct, Lord Byron, in his reply, enters at some length
+into that painful subject; and the following extracts from his
+defence,--if defence it can be called, where there has never yet been
+any definite charge,--will be perused with strong interest:--
+
+     "My learned brother proceeds to observe, that 'it is in vain for
+     Lord B. to attempt in any way to justify his own behaviour in that
+     affair: and now that he has so _openly_ and _audaciously_ invited
+     enquiry and reproach, we do not see any good reason why he should
+     not be plainly told so by the voice of his countrymen.' How far the
+     'openness' of an anonymous poem, and the 'audacity' of an imaginary
+     character, which the writer supposes to be meant for Lady B. may be
+     deemed to merit this formidable denunciation from their 'most sweet
+     voices,' I neither know nor care; but when he tells me that I
+     cannot 'in any way _justify_ my own behaviour in that affair,' I
+     acquiesce, because no man can '_justify_' himself until he knows of
+     what he is accused; and I have never had--and, God knows, my whole
+     desire has ever been to obtain it--any specific charge, in a
+     tangible shape, submitted to me by the adversary, nor by others,
+     unless the atrocities of public rumour and the mysterious silence
+     of the lady's legal advisers may be deemed such.[2] But is not the
+     writer content with what has been already said and done? Has not
+     'the general voice of his countrymen' long ago pronounced upon the
+     subject--sentence without trial, and condemnation without a
+     charge? Have I not been exiled by ostracism, except that the shells
+     which proscribed me were anonymous? Is the writer ignorant of the
+     public opinion and the public conduct upon that occasion? If he is,
+     I am not: the public will forget both long before I shall cease to
+     remember either.
+
+     "The man who is exiled by a faction has the consolation of thinking
+     that he is a martyr; he is upheld by hope and the dignity of his
+     cause, real or imaginary: he who withdraws from the pressure of
+     debt may indulge in the thought that time and prudence will
+     retrieve his circumstances: he who is condemned by the law has a
+     term to his banishment, or a dream of its abbreviation; or, it may
+     be, the knowledge or the belief of some injustice of the law or of
+     its administration in his own particular: but he who is outlawed by
+     general opinion, without the intervention of hostile politics,
+     illegal judgment, or embarrassed circumstances, whether he be
+     innocent or guilty, must undergo all the bitterness of exile,
+     without hope, without pride, without alleviation. This case was
+     mine. Upon what grounds the public founded their opinion, I am not
+     aware; but it was general, and it was decisive. Of me or of mine
+     they knew little, except that I had written what is called poetry,
+     was a nobleman, had married, became a father, and was involved in
+     differences with my wife and her relatives, no one knew why,
+     because the persons complaining refused to state their grievances.
+     The fashionable world was divided into parties, mine consisting of
+     a very small minority; the reasonable world was naturally on the
+     stronger side, which happened to be the lady's, as was most proper
+     and polite. The press was active and scurrilous; and such was the
+     rage of the day, that the unfortunate publication of two copies of
+     verses rather complimentary than otherwise to the subjects, of
+     both, was tortured into a species of crime, or constructive petty
+     treason. I was accused of every monstrous vice by public rumour and
+     private rancour: my name, which had been a knightly or a noble one
+     since my fathers helped to conquer the kingdom for William the
+     Norman, was tainted. I felt that, if what was whispered, and
+     muttered, and murmured, was true, I was unfit for England; if
+     false, England was unfit for me. I withdrew: but this was not
+     enough. In other countries, in Switzerland, in the shadow of the
+     Alps, and by the blue depth of the lakes, I was pursued and
+     breathed upon by the same blight. I crossed the mountains, but it
+     was the same; so I went a little farther, and settled myself by the
+     waves of the Adriatic, like the stag at bay, who betakes him to the
+     waters.
+
+     "If I may judge by the statements of the few friends who gathered
+     round me, the outcry of the period to which I allude was beyond all
+     precedent, all parallel, even in those cases where political
+     motives have sharpened slander and doubled enmity. I was advised
+     not to go to the theatres, lest I should be hissed, nor to my duty
+     in parliament, lest I should be insulted by the way; even on the
+     day of my departure, my most intimate friend told me afterwards
+     that he was under apprehensions of violence from the people who
+     might be assembled at the door of the carriage. However, I was not
+     deterred by these counsels from seeing Kean in his best characters,
+     nor from voting according to my principles; and, with regard to the
+     third and last apprehensions of my friends, I could not share in
+     them, not being made acquainted with their extent till some time
+     after I had crossed the Channel. Even if I had been so, I am not of
+     a nature to be much affected by men's anger, though I may feel hurt
+     by their aversion. Against all individual outrage, I could protect
+     or redress myself; and against that of a crowd, I should probably
+     have been enabled to defend myself, with the assistance of others,
+     as has been done on similar occasions.
+
+     "I retired from the country, perceiving that I was the object of
+     general obloquy; I did not indeed imagine, like Jean Jacques
+     Rousseau, that all mankind was in a conspiracy against me, though I
+     had perhaps as good grounds for such a chimera as ever he had; but
+     I perceived that I had to a great extent become personally
+     obnoxious in England, perhaps through my own fault, but the fact
+     was indisputable; the public in general would hardly have been so
+     much excited against a more popular character, without at least an
+     accusation or a charge of some kind actually expressed or
+     substantiated; for I can hardly conceive that the common and
+     every-day occurrence of a separation between man and wife could in
+     itself produce so great a ferment. I shall say nothing of the usual
+     complaints of 'being prejudged,' 'condemned unheard,' 'unfairness,'
+     'partiality,' and so forth, the usual changes rung by parties who
+     have had, or are to have, a trial; but I was a little surprised to
+     find myself condemned without being favoured with the act of
+     accusation, and to perceive in the absence of this portentous
+     charge or charges, whatever it or they were to be, that every
+     possible or impossible crime was rumoured to supply its place, and
+     taken for granted. This could only occur in the case of a person
+     very much disliked, and I knew no remedy, having already used to
+     their extent whatever little powers I might possess of pleasing in
+     society. I had no party in fashion, though I was afterwards told
+     that there was one--but it was not of my formation, nor did I then
+     know of its existence--none in literature; and in politics I had
+     voted with the Whigs, with precisely that importance which a Whig
+     vote possesses in these Tory days, and with such personal
+     acquaintance with the leaders in both houses as the society in
+     which I lived sanctioned, but without claim or expectation of
+     anything like friendship from any one, except a few young men of my
+     own age and standing, and a few others more advanced in life, which
+     last it had been my fortune to serve in circumstances of
+     difficulty. This was, in fact, to stand alone: and I recollect,
+     some time after, Madame de Staël said to me in Switzerland, 'You
+     should not have warred with the world--it will not do--it is too
+     strong always for any individual: I myself once tried it in early
+     life, but it will not do.' I perfectly acquiesce in the truth of
+     this remark; but the world had done me the honour to begin the war;
+     and, assuredly, if peace is only to be obtained by courting and
+     paying tribute to it, I am not qualified to obtain its countenance.
+     I thought, in the words of Campbell,
+
+        "'Then wed thee to an exil'd lot,
+        And if the world hath loved thee not,
+          Its absence may be borne.'
+
+     "I have heard of, and believe, that there are human beings so
+     constituted as to be insensible to injuries; but I believe that the
+     best mode to avoid taking vengeance is to get out of the way of
+     temptation. I hope that I may never have the opportunity, for I am
+     not quite sure that I could resist it, having derived from my
+     mother something of the '_perfervidum ingenium Scotorum_.' I have
+     not sought, and shall not seek it, and perhaps it may never come in
+     my path. I do not in this allude to the party, who might be right
+     or wrong; but to many who made her cause the pretext of their own
+     bitterness. She, indeed, must have long avenged me in her own
+     feelings, for whatever her reasons may have been (and she never
+     adduced them to me at least), she probably neither contemplated nor
+     conceived to what she became the means of conducting the father of
+     her child, and the husband of her choice.
+
+     "So much for 'the general voice of his countrymen:' I will now
+     speak of some in particular.
+
+     "In the beginning of the year 1817, an article appeared in the
+     Quarterly Review, written, I believe, by Walter Scott, doing great
+     honour to him, and no disgrace to me, though both poetically and
+     personally more than sufficiently favourable to the work and the
+     author of whom it treated. It was written at a time when a selfish
+     man would not, and a timid one dared not, have said a word in
+     favour of either; it was written by one to whom temporary public
+     opinion had elevated me to the rank of a rival--a proud
+     distinction, and unmerited; but which has not prevented me from
+     feeling as a friend, nor him from more than corresponding to that
+     sentiment. The article in question was written upon the third Canto
+     of Childe Harold, and after many observations, which it would as
+     ill become me to repeat as to forget, concluded with 'a hope that I
+     might yet return to England.' How this expression was received in
+     England itself I am not acquainted, but it gave great offence at
+     Rome to the respectable ten or twenty thousand English travellers
+     then and there assembled. I did not visit Rome till some time
+     after, so that I had no opportunity of knowing the fact; but I was
+     informed, long afterwards, that the greatest indignation had been
+     manifested in the enlightened Anglo-circle of that year, which
+     happened to comprise within it--amidst a considerable leaven of
+     Welbeck Street and Devonshire Place, broken loose upon their
+     travels--several really well-born and well-bred families, who did
+     not the less participate in the feeling of the hour. 'Why should he
+     return to England?' was the general exclamation--I answer _why_? It
+     is a question I have occasionally asked myself, and I never yet
+     could give it a satisfactory reply. I had then no thoughts of
+     returning, and if I have any now, they are of business, and not of
+     pleasure. Amidst the ties that have been dashed to pieces, there
+     are links yet entire, though the chain itself be broken. There are
+     duties, and connections, which may one day require my presence--and
+     I am a father. I have still some friends whom I wish to meet again,
+     and, it may be, an enemy. These things, and those minuter details
+     of business, which time accumulates during absence, in every man's
+     affairs and property, may, and probably will, recall me to England;
+     but I shall return with the same feelings with which I left it, in
+     respect to itself, though altered with regard to individuals, as I
+     have been more or less informed of their conduct since my
+     departure; for it was only a considerable time after it that I was
+     made acquainted with the real facts and full extent of some of
+     their proceedings and language. My friends, like other friends,
+     from conciliatory motives, withheld from me much that they could,
+     and some things which they _should_ have unfolded; however, that
+     which is deferred is not lost--but it has been no fault of mine
+     that it has been deferred at all.
+
+     "I have alluded to what is said to have passed at Rome merely to
+     show that the sentiment which I have described was not confined to
+     the English in England, and as forming part of my answer to the
+     reproach cast upon what has been called my 'selfish exile,' and my
+     'voluntary exile.' 'Voluntary' it has been; for who would dwell
+     among a people entertaining strong hostility against him? How far
+     it has been 'selfish' has been already explained."
+
+[Footnote 2: While these sheets are passing through the press, a printed
+statement has been transmitted to me by Lady Noel Byron, which the
+reader will find inserted in the Appendix to this volume. (_First
+Edition_.)]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The following passages from the same unpublished pamphlet will be found,
+in a literary point of view, not less curious.
+
+     "And here I wish to say a few words on the present state of English
+     poetry. That this is the age of the decline of English poetry will
+     be doubted by few who have calmly considered the subject. That
+     there are men of genius among the present poets makes little
+     against the fact, because it has been well said, that 'next to him
+     who forms the taste of his country, the greatest genius is he who
+     corrupts it.' No one has ever denied genius to Marino, who
+     corrupted not merely the taste of Italy, but that of all Europe for
+     nearly a century. The great cause of the present deplorable state
+     of English poetry is to be attributed to that absurd and systematic
+     depreciation of Pope, in which, for the last few years, there has
+     been a kind of epidemical concurrence. Men of the most opposite
+     opinions have united upon this topic. Warton and Churchill began
+     it, having borrowed the hint probably from the heroes of the
+     Dunciad, and their own internal conviction that their proper
+     reputation can be as nothing till the most perfect and harmonious
+     of poets--he who, having no fault, has had REASON made his
+     reproach--was reduced to what they conceived to be his level; but
+     even they dared not degrade him below Dryden. Goldsmith, and
+     Rogers, and Campbell, his most successful disciples; and Hayley,
+     who, however feeble, has left one poem 'that will not be willingly
+     let die' (the Triumphs of Temper), kept up the reputation of that
+     pure and perfect style; and Crabbe, the first of living poets, has
+     almost equalled the master. Then came Darwin, who was put down by a
+     single poem in the Antijacobin; and the Cruscans, from Merry to
+     Jerningham, who were annihilated (if _Nothing_ can be said to be
+     annihilated) by Gifford, the last of the wholesome English
+     satirists. * * *
+
+     "These three personages, S * *, W * *, and C * *, had all of them a
+     very natural antipathy to Pope, and I respect them for it, as the
+     only original feeling or principle which they have contrived to
+     preserve. But they have been joined in it by those who have joined
+     them in nothing else: by the Edinburgh Reviewers, by the whole
+     heterogeneous mass of living English poets, excepting Crabbe,
+     Rogers, Gifford, and Campbell, who, both by precept and practice,
+     have proved their adherence; and by me, who have shamefully
+     deviated in practice, but have ever loved and honoured Pope's
+     poetry with my whole soul, and hope to do so till my dying day. I
+     would rather see all I have ever written lining the same trunk in
+     which I actually read the eleventh book of a modern Epic poem at
+     Malta in 1811, (I opened it to take out a change after the paroxysm
+     of a tertian, in the absence of my servant, and found it lined with
+     the name of the maker, Eyre, Cockspur-street, and with the Epic
+     poetry alluded to,) than sacrifice what I firmly believe in as the
+     Christianity of English poetry, the poetry of Pope.
+
+     "Nevertheless, I will not go so far as * * in his postscript, who
+     pretends that no great poet ever had immediate fame, which, being
+     interpreted, means that * * is not quite so much read by his
+     contemporaries as might be desirable. This assertion is as false
+     as it is foolish. Homer's glory depended upon his present
+     popularity: he recited,--and without the strongest impression of
+     the moment, who would have gotten the Iliad by heart, and given it
+     to tradition? Ennius, Terence, Plautus, Lucretius, Horace, Virgil,
+     Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Sappho, Anacreon, Theocritus, all
+     the great poets of antiquity, were the delight of their
+     contemporaries.[3] The very existence of a poet, previous to the
+     invention of printing, depended upon his present popularity; and
+     how often has it impaired his future fame? Hardly ever. History
+     informs us, that the best have come down to us. The reason is
+     evident: the most popular found the greatest number of transcribers
+     for their MSS.; and that the taste of their contemporaries was
+     corrupt can hardly be avouched by the moderns, the mightiest of
+     whom have but barely approached them. Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, and
+     Tasso, were all the darlings of the contemporary reader. Dante's
+     poem was celebrated long before his death; and, not long after it,
+     States negotiated for his ashes, and disputed for the sites of the
+     composition of the Divina Commedia. Petrarch was crowned in the
+     Capitol. Ariosto was permitted to pass free by the public robber
+     who had read the Orlando Furioso. I would not recommend Mr. * * to
+     try the same experiment with his Smugglers. Tasso, notwithstanding
+     the criticisms of the Cruscanti, would have been crowned in the
+     Capitol, but for his death.
+
+     "It is easy to prove the immediate popularity of the chief poets of
+     the only modern nation in Europe that has a poetical language, the
+     Italian. In our own, Shakspeare, Spenser, Jonson, Waller, Dryden,
+     Congreve, Pope, Young, Shenstone, Thomson, Johnson, Goldsmith,
+     Gray, were all as popular in their lives as since. Gray's Elegy
+     pleased instantly, and eternally. His Odes did not, nor yet do they
+     please like his Elegy. Milton's politics kept him down; but the
+     Epigram of Dryden, and the very sale of his work, in proportion to
+     the less reading time of its publication, prove him to have been
+     honoured by his contemporaries. I will venture to assert, that the
+     sale of the Paradise Lost was greater in the first four years after
+     its publication than that of 'The Excursion,' in the same number,
+     with the difference of nearly a century and a half between them of
+     time, and of thousands in point of general readers.
+
+     "It may be asked, why, having this opinion of the present state of
+     poetry in England, and having had it long, as my friends and others
+     well know--possessing, or having possessed too, as a writer, the
+     ear of the public for the time being--I have not adopted a
+     different plan in my own compositions, and endeavoured to correct
+     rather than encourage the taste of the day. To this I would answer,
+     that it is easier to perceive the wrong than to pursue the right,
+     and that I have never contemplated the prospect 'of filling (with
+     Peter Bell, see its Preface,) permanently a station in the
+     literature of the country.' Those who know me best, know this, and
+     that I have been considerably astonished at the temporary success
+     of my works, having flattered no person and no party, and expressed
+     opinions which are not those of the general reader. Could I have
+     anticipated the degree of attention which has been accorded,
+     assuredly I would have studied more to deserve it. But I have lived
+     in far countries abroad, or in the agitating world at home, which
+     was not favourable to study or reflection; so that almost all I
+     have written has been mere passion,--passion, it is true, of
+     different kinds, but always passion: for in me (if it be not an
+     Irishism to say so) my _indifference_ was a kind of passion, the
+     result of experience, and not the philosophy of nature. Writing
+     grows a habit, like a woman's gallantry: there are women who have
+     had no intrigue, but few who have had but one only; so there are
+     millions of men who have never written a book, but few who have
+     written only one. And thus, having written once, I wrote on;
+     encouraged no doubt by the success of the moment, yet by no means
+     anticipating its duration, and I will venture to say, scarcely even
+     wishing it. But then I did other things besides write, which by no
+     means contributed either to improve my writings or my prosperity.
+
+     "I have thus expressed publicly upon the poetry of the day the
+     opinion I have long entertained and expressed of it to all who have
+     asked it, and to some who would rather not have heard it; as I told
+     Moore not very long ago, 'we are all wrong except Rogers, Crabbe,
+     and Campbell.'[4] Without being old in years, I am in days, and do
+     not feel the adequate spirit within me to attempt a work which
+     should show what I think right in poetry, and must content myself
+     with having denounced what is wrong. There are, I trust, younger
+     spirits rising up in England, who, escaping the contagion which has
+     swept away poetry from our literature, will recall it to their
+     country, such as it once was and may still be.
+
+     "In the mean time, the best sign of amendment will be repentance,
+     and new and frequent editions of Pope and Dryden.
+
+     "There will be found as comfortable metaphysics and ten times more
+     poetry in the 'Essay on Man,' than in the 'Excursion.' If you
+     search for passion, where is it to be found stronger than in the
+     epistle from Eloisa to Abelard, or in Palamon and Arcite? Do you
+     wish for invention, imagination, sublimity, character? seek them in
+     the Rape of the Lock, the Fables of Dryden, the Ode on Saint
+     Cecilia's Day, and Absalom and Achitophel: you will discover in
+     these two poets only, _all_ for which you must ransack innumerable
+     metres, and God only knows how many _writers_ of the day, without
+     finding a tittle of the same qualities,--with the addition, too, of
+     wit, of which the latter have none. I have not, however, forgotten
+     Thomas Brown the Younger, nor the Fudge Family, nor Whistlecraft;
+     but that is not wit--it is humour. I will say nothing of the
+     harmony of Pope and Dryden in comparison, for there is not a living
+     poet (except Rogers, Gifford, Campbell, and Crabbe) who can write
+     an heroic couplet. The fact is, that the exquisite beauty of their
+     versification has withdrawn the public attention from their other
+     excellences, as the vulgar eye will rest more upon the splendour of
+     the uniform than the quality of the troops. It is this very
+     harmony, particularly in Pope, which has raised the vulgar and
+     atrocious cant against him:--because his versification is perfect,
+     it is assumed that it is his only perfection; because his truths
+     are so clear, it is asserted that he has no invention; and because
+     he is always intelligible, it is taken for granted that he has no
+     genius. We are sneeringly told that he is the 'Poet of Reason,' as
+     if this was a reason for his being no poet. Taking passage for
+     passage, I will undertake to cite more lines teeming with
+     _imagination_ from Pope than from any two living poets, be they who
+     they may. To take an instance at random from a species of
+     composition not very favourable to imagination--Satire: set down
+     the character of Sporus, with all the wonderful play of fancy which
+     is scattered over it, and place by its side an equal number of
+     verses, from any two existing poets, of the same power and the same
+     variety--where will you find them?
+
+     "I merely mention one instance of many in reply to the injustice
+     done to the memory of him who harmonised our poetical language. The
+     attorneys clerks, and other self-educated genii, found it easier to
+     distort themselves to the new models than to toil after the
+     symmetry of him who had enchanted their fathers. They were besides
+     smitten by being told that the new school were to revive the
+     language of Queen Elizabeth, the true English; as every body in the
+     reign of Queen Anne wrote no better than French, by a species of
+     literary treason.
+
+     "Blank verse, which, unless in the drama, no one except Milton ever
+     wrote who could rhyme, became the order of the day,--or else such
+     rhyme as looked still blanker than the verse without it. I am aware
+     that Johnson has said, after some hesitation, that he could not
+     'prevail upon himself to wish that Milton had been a rhymer.' The
+     opinions of that truly great man, whom it is also the present
+     fashion to decry, will ever be received by me with that deference
+     which time will restore to him from all; but, with all humility, I
+     am not persuaded that the Paradise Lost would not have been more
+     nobly conveyed to posterity, not perhaps in heroic couplets,
+     although even _they_ could sustain the subject if well balanced,
+     but in the stanza of Spenser, or of Tasso, or in the terza rima of
+     Dante, which the powers of Milton could easily have grafted on our
+     language. The Seasons of Thomson would have been better in rhyme,
+     although still inferior to his Castle of Indolence; and Mr.
+     Southey's Joan of Arc no worse, although it might have taken up six
+     months instead of weeks in the composition. I recommend also to the
+     lovers of lyrics the perusal of the present laureate's odes by the
+     side of Dryden's on Saint Cecilia, but let him be sure to read
+     _first_ those of Mr. Southey.
+
+     "To the heaven-born genii and inspired young scriveners of the day
+     much of this will appear paradox; it will appear so even to the
+     higher order of our critics; but it was a truism twenty years ago,
+     and it will be a re-acknowledged truth in ten more. In the mean
+     time, I will conclude with two quotations, both intended for some
+     of my old classical friends who have still enough of Cambridge
+     about them to think themselves honoured by having had John Dryden
+     as a predecessor in their college, and to recollect that their
+     earliest English poetical pleasures were drawn from the 'little
+     nightingale' of Twickenham.
+
+     "The first is from the notes to a Poem of the 'Friends[5],' pages
+     181, 182.
+
+     "'It is only within the last twenty or thirty years that those
+     notable discoveries in criticism have been made which have taught
+     our recent versifiers to undervalue this energetic, melodious, and
+     moral poet. The consequences of this want of due esteem for a
+     writer whom the good sense of our predecessors had raised to his
+     proper station have been NUMEROUS AND DEGRADING ENOUGH. This is not
+     the place to enter into the subject, even as far as it _affects our
+     poetical numbers alone_, and there is matter of more importance
+     that requires present reflection.'
+
+     "The second is from the volume of a young person learning to write
+     poetry, and beginning by teaching the art. Hear him[6]:
+
+                        "'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[7]
+        Of _dolts_ to _smooth_, _inlay_, and _chip_, 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
+        Mark'd with most flimsy mottos, and in large
+        The name of _one_ Boileau.'
+
+     "A little before the manner of Pope is termed
+
+                        "'A _scism_[8],
+        Nurtured by _foppery_ and barbarism,
+        Made great Apollo blush for this his land.'
+
+     "I thought '_foppery_' was a consequence of _refinement_; but
+     _n'importe_.
+
+     "The above will suffice to show the notions entertained by the new
+     performers on the English lyre of him who made it most tunable,
+     and the great improvements of their own _variazioni_.
+
+     "The writer of this is a tadpole of the Lakes, a young disciple of
+     the six or seven new schools, in which he has learnt to write such
+     lines and such sentiments as the above. He says, 'easy was the
+     task' of imitating Pope, or it may be of equalling him, I presume.
+     I recommend him to try before he is so positive on the subject, and
+     then compare what he will have _then_ written and what he has _now_
+     written with the humblest and earliest compositions of Pope,
+     produced in years still more youthful than those of Mr. K. when he
+     invented his new 'Essay on Criticism,' entitled 'Sleep and Poetry'
+     (an ominous title), from whence the above canons are taken. Pope's
+     was written at nineteen, and published at twenty-two.
+
+     "Such are the triumphs of the new schools, and such their scholars.
+     The disciples of Pope were Johnson, Goldsmith, Rogers, Campbell,
+     Crabbe, Gifford, Matthias, Hayley, and the author of the Paradise
+     of Coquettes; to whom may be added Richards, Heber, Wrangham,
+     Bland, Hodgson, Merivale, and others who have not had their full
+     fame, because 'the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle
+     to the strong,' and because there is a fortune in fame as in all
+     other things. Now of all the new schools--I say _all_, for, 'like
+     Legion, they are many'--has there appeared a single scholar who has
+     not made his master ashamed of him? unless it be * *, who has
+     imitated every body, and occasionally surpassed his models. Scott
+     found peculiar favour and imitation among the fair sex: there was
+     Miss Holford, and Miss Mitford, and Miss Francis; but with the
+     greatest respect be it spoken, none of his imitators did much
+     honour to the original except Hogg, the Ettrick shepherd, until the
+     appearance of 'The Bridal of Triermain,' and 'Harold the
+     Dauntless,' which in the opinion of some equalled if not surpassed
+     him; and lo! after three or four years they turned out to be the
+     Master's own compositions. Have Southey, or Coleridge, or
+     Wordsworth, made a follower of renown? Wilson never did well till
+     he set up for himself in the 'City of the Plague.' Has Moore, or
+     any other living writer of reputation, had a tolerable imitator, or
+     rather disciple? Now it is remarkable that almost all the followers
+     of Pope, whom I have named, have produced beautiful and standard
+     works, and it was not the number of his imitators who finally hurt
+     his fame, but the despair of imitation, and the _ease_ of _not_
+     imitating him sufficiently. This, and the same reason which induced
+     the Athenian burgher to vote for the banishment of Aristides,
+     'because he was tired of always hearing him called _the Just_,'
+     have produced the temporary exile of Pope from the State of
+     Literature. But the term of his ostracism will expire, and the
+     sooner the better; not for him, but for those who banished him, and
+     for the coming generation, who
+
+        "Will blush to find their fathers were his foes."
+
+[Footnote 3: As far as regards the poets of ancient times, this
+assertion is, perhaps, right; though, if there be any truth in what
+Ælian and Seneca have left on record, of the obscurity, during their
+lifetime, of such men as Socrates and Epicurus, it would seem to prove
+that, among the ancients, contemporary fame was a far more rare reward
+of literary or philosophical eminence than among us moderns. When the
+"Clouds" of Aristophanes was exhibited before the assembled deputies of
+the towns of Attica, these personages, as Ælian tells us, were
+unanimously of opinion, that the character of an unknown person, called
+Socrates, was uninteresting upon the stage; and Seneca has given the
+substance of an authentic letter of Epicurus, in which that philosopher
+declares that nothing hurt him so much, in the midst of all his
+happiness, as to think that Greece,--"illa nobilis Græcia,"--so far
+from knowing him, had scarcely even heard of his existence.--Epist. 79.]
+
+[Footnote 4: I certainly ventured to differ from the judgment of my
+noble friend, no less in his attempts to depreciate that peculiar walk
+of the art in which he himself so grandly trod, than in the
+inconsistency of which I thought him guilty, in condemning all those who
+stood up for particular "schools" of poetry, and yet, at the same time,
+maintaining so exclusive a theory of the art himself. How little,
+however, he attended to either the grounds or degrees of my dissent from
+him, will appear by the following wholesale report of my opinion, in his
+"Detached Thoughts:"
+
+"One of my notions different from those of my contemporaries, 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 age of British
+poesy."]
+
+[Footnote 5: Written by Lord Byron's early friend, the Rev. Francis
+Hodgson.]
+
+[Footnote 6: The strange verses that follow are from a poem by
+Keats.--In a manuscript note on this passage of the pamphlet, dated
+November 12. 1821, Lord Byron says, "Mr. Keats died at Rome about a year
+after this was written, of a decline produced by his having burst a
+blood-vessel on reading the article on his 'Endymion' in the Quarterly
+Review. I have read the article before and since; and, although it is
+bitter, I do not think that a man should permit himself to be killed by
+it. But a young man little dreams what he must inevitably encounter in
+the course of a life ambitious of public notice. My indignation at Mr.
+Keats's depreciation of Pope has hardly permitted me to do justice to
+his own genius, which, malgrè all the fantastic fopperies of his style,
+was undoubtedly of great promise. His fragment of 'Hyperion' seems
+actually inspired by the Titans, and is as sublime as Æschylus. He is a
+loss to our literature; and the more so, as he himself, before his
+death, is said to have been persuaded that he had not taken the right
+line, and was reforming his style upon the more classical models of the
+language."]
+
+[Footnote 7: "It was at least a _grammar_ 'school.'"]
+
+[Footnote 8: "So spelt by the author."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 396. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, 9bre 4. 1820.
+
+     "I have received from Mr. Galignani the enclosed letters,
+     duplicates and receipts, which will explain themselves.[9] As the
+     poems are your property by purchase, right, and justice, _all
+     matters of publication, &c. &c. are for you to decide upon_. I know
+     not how far my compliance with Mr. Galignani'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 farther, except, in my answer to
+     Mr. Galignani, to state that the letters, &c. &c. are sent to you,
+     and the causes thereof.
+
+     "If you can check these foreign pirates, do; if not, put the
+     permissive papers in the fire. I can have no view nor object
+     whatever, but to secure to you your property.
+
+     "Yours, &c.
+
+     "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
+     English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. They support Pope, I see, in
+     the Quarterly; let them continue to do so: it is a sin, and a
+     shame, and a _damnation_ to think that _Pope!!_ 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."
+
+[Footnote 9: Mr. Galignani had applied to Lord Byron with the view of
+procuring from him such legal right over those works of his Lordship of
+which he had hitherto been the sole publisher in France, as would enable
+him to prevent others, in future, from usurping the same privilege.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 397. TO MR. 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 producing so
+     little!
+
+     "Galignani sends me, post haste, a permission _for him, from me,_
+     to publish, &c. &c. 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 both let our
+     wits run away with our sentiments; for I am sure that we are both
+     Queen's men at bottom. 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 understand
+     me?--which is about to blow up the whole alphabet. 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' to any of your acquaintance, make a Melody of it,
+     that his ghost, like poor Yorick's, may have the satisfaction of
+     being plaintively pitied--or still more nobly commemorated, like
+     'Oh breathe not his name.' 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.
+
+        "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 the Deed of Separation, in the 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 _five_ since we were _two_.
+
+     "Pray excuse all this nonsense; for I must talk nonsense 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 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 _murdered me_--he has carried away my fine jubilee clothes.'
+
+     "So Bowles has been telling a story, too ('tis 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," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 393. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, 9bre 9°, 1820.
+
+     "The talent you approve of is an amiable one, and 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 enough to make a
+     _Gallery_. If '_the_ parson' 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 election
+        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 would not disrelish a sight of these light little humorous
+     things, and may be indulged now and then.
+
+     "Why, I do like one or two vices, to be sure; but I can back a
+     horse and fire a pistol 'without thinking or blinking' like Major
+     Sturgeon; I have fed at times for 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, as
+     at Venice, in 1818, or at least I _could do_, and have done it
+     ONCE.
+
+     "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.[10]
+
+     "Last week I sent you a correspondence with Galignani, and some
+     documents on your property. You have now, I think, an opportunity
+     of _checking_, or at least _limiting_, those _French
+     republications_. You may let all your authors publish what they
+     please _against me_ and _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
+     authenticated_ ('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.[11] She always appeared on
+     particular occasions, before the deaths of the family, &c. &c. I
+     heard Madame 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
+     of 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."
+
+[Footnote 10: Here follow some details respecting his friend Charles S.
+Matthews, which have already been given in the first volume of this
+work.]
+
+[Footnote 11: The ghost-story, in which he here professes such serious
+belief, forms the subject of one of Mr. Rogers's beautiful Italian
+sketches.--See "Italy," p. 43. edit. 1830.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 399. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, 9bre 18°, 1820.
+
+     "The death of Waite is a shock to the--teeth, as well as to the
+     feelings of all who knew him. Good God, he and _Blake_[12] 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 greatness, as
+     he who preserves the hair and the teeth is preferable to 'the
+     bloody blustering warrior' 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 clearing
+     _roots_ and _brushes_ now to be obtained? Pray obtain what
+     information you can upon these '_Tusc_ulan questions.' 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 with 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 tailor 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?
+
+     "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 tiger (in poesy), if I miss the
+     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 'The 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_ accordingly. I would rather give them
+     away than hack and hew them. I don't say that you are not right: I
+     merely repeat that I cannot better them. I must 'either make a
+     spoon, or spoil a horn;' and there's an end.
+
+     "Yours.
+
+     "P.S. Of the praises of that little * * * Keats. 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 praise of the Edinburgh than I was,
+     or more alive to their censure, as I showed in English Bards and
+     Scotch Reviewers. 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?' it is better sense and as much
+     poetry as Johnny Keats.
+
+     "Bowles must be _bowled_ down. 'Tis a sad match at cricket if he
+     can get any notches at Pope's expense. If he once get into
+     '_Lord's_ ground,' (to continue 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 Lord Ipswich and Brookman, on
+     our side."
+
+[Footnote 12: A celebrated hair-dresser.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 400. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, 9bre 23°, 1820.
+
+     "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. Whatever 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
+     Juan, they identify Don Juan as mine, which I don't think worth a
+     Chancery suit about my daughter's guardianship, as in your present
+     code a facetious poem is sufficient to take away a man's rights
+     over his family.
+
+     "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 BARBARIANS, and THEIR EMPEROR a FOOL, and themselves more fools
+     than he; all which they may send to Vienna for any thing I care.
+     They have got themselves masters of the Papal police, and are
+     bullying away; but some day or other they will pay for all: it may
+     not be very soon, because these unhappy Italians have no
+     consistency among themselves; but I suppose that Providence will
+     get tired of them at last, * *
+
+     "Yours," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 401. TO MR. 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 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 _now_, 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 discretionary
+     power[13]; 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 all, contradict_
+     any thing, if I have _mis_-stated; for my first object is the
+     truth, even at my own expense.
+
+     "I have some knowledge of your countryman Muley Moloch, the
+     lecturer. He wrote to me several letters 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 * * * but they
+     _won't_ 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, &c. &c. 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 * * * for the top of
+     Parnassus.
+
+     "These rogues are right--_we do_ laugh at _t'others_--eh?--don't
+     we?[14] You shall see--you shall see what things 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," &c.
+
+[Footnote 13: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 14: 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.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 402. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Ravenna, Dec. 9. 1820.
+
+     "I open my letter to tell you a fact, which will show the state of
+     this country better than I can. The commandant 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. 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
+     hinder us from going, as it is the custom for every body here, it
+     seems, to run 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 profession--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 up
+     stairs into my own quarter. 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. Every body conjectures 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, 'O Dio!' and 'Gesu!' two or three times, and
+     appeared to have suffered little. Poor fellow! he was a brave
+     officer, but had made himself much disliked by the people. I knew
+     him personally, and had met 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, &c.
+
+     "P.S. The lieutenant on duty by the body is smoking his pipe with
+     great composure.--A queer people this."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 403. TO MR. 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 quâ 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.
+
+     "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 blackguards, 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 _Spectator_ and a
+     newspaper, why not?--only not on a _Sunday_. 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 'Gli,' or 'I 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!'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The year 1820 was an era signalised, as will be remembered, by the many
+efforts of the revolutionary spirit which, at that time, broke forth,
+like ill-suppressed fire, throughout the greater part of the South of
+Europe. In Italy, Naples had already raised the Constitutional standard,
+and her example was fast operating through the whole of that country.
+Throughout Romagna, secret societies, under the name of Carbonari, had
+been organised, which waited but the word of their chiefs to break out
+into open insurrection. We have seen from Lord Byron's Journal in 1814,
+what intense interest he took in the last struggles of Revolutionary
+France under Napoleon; and his exclamations, "Oh for a
+Republic!--'Brutus, thou sleepest!'" show the lengths to which, in
+theory at least, his political zeal extended. Since then, he had but
+rarely turned his thoughts to politics; the tame, ordinary vicissitude
+of public affairs having but little in it to stimulate a mind like his,
+whose sympathies nothing short of a crisis seemed worthy to interest.
+This the present state of Italy gave every promise of affording him;
+and, in addition to the great national cause itself, in which there was
+every thing that a lover of liberty, warm from the pages of Petrarch and
+Dante, could desire, he had also private ties and regards to enlist him
+socially in the contest. The brother of Madame Guiccioli, Count Pietro
+Gamba, who had been passing some time at Rome and Naples, was now
+returned from his tour; and the friendly sentiments with which,
+notwithstanding a natural bias previously in the contrary direction, he
+at length learned to regard the noble lover of his sister, cannot better
+be described than in the words of his fair relative herself.
+
+"At this time," says Madame Guiccioli, "my beloved brother, Pietro,
+returned to Ravenna from Rome and Naples. He had been prejudiced by some
+enemies of Lord Byron against his character, and my intimacy with him
+afflicted him greatly; nor had my letters succeeded in entirely
+destroying the evil impression which Lord Byron's detractors had
+produced. No sooner, however, had he seen and known him, than he became
+inspired with an interest in his favour, such as could not have been
+produced by mere exterior qualities, but was the result only of that
+union he saw in him of all that is most great and beautiful, as well in
+the heart as mind of man. From that moment every former prejudice
+vanished, and the conformity of their opinions and studies contributed
+to unite them in a friendship, which only ended with their lives."[15]
+
+The young Gamba, who was, at this time, but twenty years of age, with a
+heart full of all those dreams of the regeneration of Italy, which not
+only the example of Naples, but the spirit working beneath the surface
+all around him, inspired, had, together with his father, who was still
+in the prime of life, become enrolled in the secret bands now organising
+throughout Romagna, and Lord Byron was, by their intervention, admitted
+also among the brotherhood. The following heroic Address to the
+Neapolitan Government (written by the noble poet in Italian,[16] and
+forwarded, it is thought, by himself to Naples, but intercepted on the
+way,) will show how deep, how earnest, and expansive was his zeal in
+that great, general cause of Political Freedom, for which he soon after
+laid down his life among the marshes of Missolonghi.
+
+"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 thousand
+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 determination 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 individual 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 commanding 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."[17]
+
+It was during the agitation of this crisis, while surrounded by rumours
+and alarms, and expecting, every moment, to be summoned into the field,
+that Lord Byron commenced the Journal which I am now about to give; and
+which it is impossible to peruse, with the recollection of his former
+Diary of 1814 in our minds, without reflecting how wholly different, in
+all the circumstances connected with them, were the two periods at which
+these records of his passing thoughts were traced. The first he wrote at
+a time which may be considered, to use his own words, as "the most
+poetical part of his whole life,"--_not_ certainly, in what regarded the
+powers of his genius, to which every succeeding year added new force and
+range, but in all that may be said to constitute the poetry of
+character,--those fresh, unworldly feelings of which, in spite of his
+early plunge into experience, he still retained the gloss, and that
+ennobling light of imagination, which, with all his professed scorn of
+mankind, still followed in the track of his affections, giving a lustre
+to every object on which they rested. There was, indeed, in his
+misanthropy, as in his sorrows, at that period, to the full as much of
+fancy as of reality; and even those gallantries and loves in which he at
+the same time entangled himself partook equally, as I have endeavoured
+to show, of the same imaginative character. Though brought early under
+the dominion of the senses, he had been also early rescued from this
+thraldom by, in the first place, the satiety such excesses never fail to
+produce, and, at no long interval after, by this series of half-fanciful
+attachments which, though in their moral consequences to society,
+perhaps, still more mischievous, had the varnish at least of refinement
+on the surface, and by the novelty and apparent difficulty that invested
+them served to keep alive that illusion of imagination from which such
+pursuits derive their sole redeeming charm.
+
+With such a mixture, or rather predominance, of the ideal in his loves,
+his hates, and his sorrows, the state of his existence at that period,
+animated as it was, and kept buoyant, by such a flow of success, must be
+acknowledged, even with every deduction for the unpicturesque
+associations of a London life, to have been, in a high degree, poetical,
+and to have worn round it altogether a sort of halo of romance, which
+the events that followed were but too much calculated to dissipate. By
+his marriage, and its results, he was again brought back to some of
+those bitter realities of which his youth had had a foretaste. Pecuniary
+embarrassment--that ordeal, of all others, the most trying to delicacy
+and high-mindedness--now beset him with all the indignities that usually
+follow in its train; and he was thus rudely schooled into the advantages
+of _possessing_ money, when he had hitherto thought but of the generous
+pleasure of _dispensing_ it. No stronger proof, indeed, is wanting of
+the effect of such difficulties in tempering down even the most
+chivalrous pride, than the necessity to which he found himself reduced
+in 1816, not only of departing from his resolution never to profit by
+the sale of his works, but of accepting a sum of money, for copyright,
+from his publisher, which he had for some time persisted in refusing
+for himself, and, in the full sincerity of his generous heart, had
+destined for others.
+
+The injustice and malice to which he soon after became a victim had an
+equally fatal effect in disenchanting the dream of his existence. Those
+imaginary, or, at least, retrospective sorrows, in which he had once
+loved to indulge, and whose tendency it was, through the medium of his
+fancy, to soften and refine his heart, were now exchanged for a host of
+actual, ignoble vexations, which it was even more humiliating than
+painful to encounter. His misanthropy, instead of being, as heretofore,
+a vague and abstract feeling, without any object to light upon, and
+losing therefore its acrimony in diffusion, was now, by the hostility he
+came in contact with, condensed into individual enmities, and narrowed
+into personal resentments; and from the lofty, and, as it appeared to
+himself, philosophical luxury of hating mankind in the gross, he was now
+brought down to the self-humbling necessity of despising them in detail.
+
+By all these influences, so fatal to enthusiasm of character, and
+forming, most of them, indeed, a part of the ordinary process by which
+hearts become chilled and hardened in the world, it was impossible but
+that some material change must have been effected in a disposition at
+once so susceptible and tenacious of impressions. By compelling him to
+concentre himself in his own resources and energies, as the only stand
+now left against the world's injustice, his enemies but succeeded in
+giving to the principle of self-dependence within him a new force and
+spring which, however it added to the vigour of his character, could not
+fail, by bringing Self so much into action, to impair a little its
+amiableness. Among the changes in his disposition, attributable mainly
+to this source, may be mentioned that diminished deference to the
+opinions and feelings of others which, after this compulsory rally of
+all his powers of resistance, he exhibited. Some portion, no doubt, of
+this refractoriness may be accounted for by his absence from all those
+whose slightest word or look would have done more with him than whole
+volumes of correspondence; but by no cause less powerful and revulsive
+than the struggle in which he had been committed could a disposition
+naturally diffident as his was, and diffident even through all this
+excitement, have been driven into the assumption of a tone so
+universally defying, and so full, if not of pride in his own pre-eminent
+powers, of such a contempt for some of the ablest among his
+contemporaries, as almost implied it. It was, in fact, as has been more
+than once remarked in these pages, a similar stirring up of all the best
+and worst elements of his nature, to that which a like rebound against
+injustice had produced in his youth;--though with a difference in point
+of force and grandeur, between the two explosions, almost as great as
+between the outbreaks of a firework and a volcano.
+
+Another consequence of the spirit of defiance now roused in him, and one
+that tended, perhaps, even more fatally than any yet mentioned, to sully
+and, for a time, bring down to earth the romance of his character, was
+the course of life to which, outrunning even the licence of his youth,
+he abandoned himself at Venice. From this, as from his earlier excesses,
+the timely warning of disgust soon rescued him; and the connection with
+Madame Guiccioli which followed, and which, however much to be
+reprehended, had in it all of marriage that his real marriage wanted,
+seemed to place, at length, within reach of his affectionate spirit that
+union and sympathy for which, through life, it had thirsted. But the
+treasure came too late;--the pure poetry of the feeling had vanished;
+and those tears he shed so passionately in the garden at Bologna flowed
+less, perhaps, from the love which he felt at that moment, than from the
+saddening consciousness how differently he could have felt formerly. It
+was, indeed, wholly beyond the power, even of an imagination like his,
+to go on investing with its own ideal glories a sentiment which,--more
+from daring and vanity than from any other impulse,--he had taken such
+pains to tarnish and debase in his own eyes. Accordingly, instead of
+being able, as once, to elevate and embellish all that interested him,
+to make an idol of every passing creature of his fancy, and mistake the
+form of love, which he so often conjured up, for its substance, he now
+degenerated into the wholly opposite and perverse error of depreciating
+and making light of what, intrinsically, he valued, and, as the reader
+has seen, throwing slight and mockery upon a tie in which it was evident
+some of the best feelings of his nature were wrapped up. That foe to all
+enthusiasm and romance, the habit of ridicule, had, in proportion as he
+exchanged the illusions for the realities of life, gained further empire
+over him; and how far it had, at this time, encroached upon the loftier
+and fairer regions of his mind may be seen in the pages of Don
+Juan,--that diversified arena, on which the two Genii, good and evil,
+that governed his thoughts, hold, with alternate triumph, their
+ever-powerful combat.
+
+Even this, too, this vein of mockery,--in the excess to which, at last,
+he carried it,--was but another result of the shock his proud mind had
+received from those events that had cast him off, branded and
+heart-stricken, from country and from home. As he himself touchingly
+says,
+
+    "And if I laugh at any mortal thing,
+    'Tis that I may not weep."
+
+This laughter,--which, in such temperaments, is the near neighbour of
+tears,--served as a diversion to him from more painful vents of
+bitterness; and the same philosophical calculation which made the poet
+of melancholy, Young, declare that "he preferred laughing at the world
+to being angry with it," led Lord Byron also to settle upon the same
+conclusion; and to feel, in the misanthropic views he was inclined to
+take of mankind, that mirth often saved him the pain of hate.
+
+That, with so many drawbacks upon all generous effusions of sentiment,
+he should still have preserved so much of his native tenderness and
+ardour as is conspicuous, through all disguises, in his unquestionable
+love for Madame Guiccioli, and in the still more undoubted zeal with
+which he now entered, heart and soul, into the great cause of human
+freedom, wheresoever or by whomsoever asserted[18],--only shows how rich
+must have been the original stores of sensibility and enthusiasm which
+even a career such as his could so little chill or exhaust. Most
+consoling, too, is it to reflect that the few latter years of his life
+should have been thus visited with a return of that poetic lustre,
+which, though it never had ceased to surround the bard, had but too much
+faded away from the character of the man; and that while
+Love,--reprehensible as it was, but still Love,--had the credit of
+rescuing him from the only errors that disgraced his maturer years, for
+Liberty was reserved the proud but mournful triumph of calling the last
+stage of his glorious course her own, and lighting him, amidst the
+sympathies of the world, to his grave.
+
+Having endeavoured, in this comparison between his present and former
+self, to account, by what I consider to be their true causes, for the
+new phenomena which his character, at this period, exhibited, I shall
+now lay before the reader the Journal by which these remarks were more
+immediately suggested, and from which I fear they will be thought to
+have too long detained him.
+
+[Footnote 15: "In quest' epoca venne a Ravenna di ritorno da Roma e
+Napoli il mio diletto fratello Pietro. Egli era stato prevenuto da dei
+nemeci di Lord Byron contro il di lui carattere; molto lo affligeva la
+mia intimità con lui, e le mie lettere non avevano riuscito a bene
+distruggere la cattiva impressione ricevuta dei detrattori di Lord
+Byron. Ma appena lo vidde e lo conobbe egli pure ricevesse quella
+impressione che non può essere prodotta da dei pregi esteriori, ma
+solamente dall unione di tuttociò che vi è di più bello e di più grande
+nel cuore e nella mente dell uomo. Svani ogni sua anteriore prevenzione
+contro di Lord Byron, e la conformità della loro idee e dei studii loro
+contribuì a stringerli in quella amicizia che non doveva avere fine che
+colla loro vita."]
+
+[Footnote 16: A draft of this Address, in his own handwriting, was found
+among his papers. He is supposed to have intrusted 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 his Lordship to supply him with money for his
+return. This man turned out afterwards to have been a spy, and the above
+paper, if confided to him, fell most probably into the hands of the
+Pontifical Government.]
+
+[Footnote 17: "Un Inglese amico della libertà avendo sentito che i
+Napolitani permettono anche agli stranieri di contribuire alia buona
+causa, bramerebbe l'onore di vedere accettata la sua offerta di mille
+luigi, la quale egli azzarda di fare. Già testimonio oculare non molto
+fa della tirannia dei Barbari negli stati da loro occupati nell' Italia,
+egli vede con tutto l'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 è poca
+in se stessa, come bisogna che sia sempre quella di un individuo ad una
+nazione, ma egli spera che non sarà l'ultima dalla parte dei suoi
+compatriotti. La sua lontananza dalle frontiere, e il sentimento della
+sua poca capacità personale di contribuire efficacimente a servire la
+nazione gl' impedisce di proporsi come degno della più piccola
+commissione che domanda dell' esperienza e del talento. Ma, se come
+semplice volontario la sua presenza non fosse un incomodo a quello che
+l'accetasse egli riparebbe a qualunque luogo indicato dal Governo
+Napolitano, per ubbidire agli ordini e participare ai pericoli del suo
+superiore, senza avere altri motivi che quello di dividere il destino di
+una brava nazione resistendo alla se dicente Santa Allianza la quale
+aggiunge l'ippocrisia al despotismo."]
+
+[Footnote 18: Among his "Detached Thoughts" I find this general passion
+for liberty thus strikingly expressed. After saying, in reference to his
+own choice of Venice as a place of residence, "I remembered General
+Ludlow's domal inscription, 'Omne solum forti patria,' and sat down free
+in a country which had been one of slavery for centuries," he adds, "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 deserts, and look on upon the first dance of
+their freedom.
+
+"As to political slavery, so general, it is men'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 _first_ spring, she is
+cowardly as the tiger, and retires to be hunted."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY OF LORD BYRON. 1821.
+
+"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 d----d 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. Wych, grocer, at Tunbridge, sold
+some bacon, flour, cheese, and, it is believed, some plums, to some
+gipsy woman accused. He had on his counter (I quote faithfully) a
+_book_, the Life of _Pamela_, which he was _tearing_ for _waste_ paper,
+&c. &c. In the cheese was found, &c. and a _leaf_ of _Pamela wrapt round
+the bacon._' What would Richardson, the vainest and luckiest of _living_
+authors (_i.e._ while alive)--he who, with Aaron Hill, used to prophesy
+and chuckle over the presumed fall of Fielding (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 bookseller'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 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 Filippo--well received.
+
+"Two days ago the King of Naples passed through Bologna on his way to
+congress. My servant Luigi 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--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, &c. &c. here is nothing
+but spirits of wine, coloured accordingly. Did _not_ eat two apples,
+which were placed by way of dessert. Fed the two cats, the hawk, and the
+tame (but _not tamed_) _crow_. Read Mitford's History of
+Greece--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. 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 practicable to-morrow. Sent
+the papers to Alli.--grand events coming.
+
+"11 o' the clock and nine minutes. Visited La Contessa G. Nata G.G.
+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, patriotism,
+Alfieri, Madame Albany, and other branches of learning. Also Sallust's
+Conspiracy of Catiline, and the War of Jugurtha. At 9 came in her
+brother, Il Conte Pietro--at 10, her father, Conte Ruggiero.
+
+"Talked of various modes of warfare--of the Hungarian 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 7th 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.' One must not be particular, 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 afternoon) to copy out
+seven or eight apophthegms of Bacon, in which I have detected such
+blunders as a school-boy 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.
+
+
+"January 6. 1821.
+
+"Mist--thaw--slop--rain. No stirring out on horseback. 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 Guinguené--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 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 chivalry 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--drawing--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 hay-making 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
+_ennuyé?_ 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 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 inebriation, 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 _ennuyé_ 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. 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 incalculable combinations
+of a climate where heat and cold struggle for mastery. Head Spence, and
+turned over Roscoe, 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, Betti V. and her husband, and others.
+Pretty black-eyed woman that--_only_ nineteen--same age as Teresa, who
+is prettier, though.
+
+"The Count Pietro G. 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.' 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 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
+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.
+
+
+"January 8. 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 Il 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 (_I_ doubt him--_they_
+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. Tore a button in my new coat.
+
+"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. Difficulties 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, &c. considering all things.
+
+"Dined. Read Johnson's 'Vanity of Human 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 superfluous, and that Pope (the best of poets, _I_ think) would
+have begun at once, only changing the punctuation--
+
+    "'Survey mankind from China to Peru.'
+
+The former line, 'Let observation,' &c. is certainly heavy and useless.
+But 'tis a grand poem--and _so true!_--true as the 10th 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. 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, &c.
+&c. and that the Austrian barbarians are placed again on _war_ pay, and
+will march. Let them--'they come like sacrifices in their trim,' 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 visiters--news, _war_, or rumours
+of war. Consulted with P.G. &c. &c. 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
+unquenchedly 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 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. 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 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 11. 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.
+
+"Alli. 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!
+
+"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 'suma 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.' '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 Bryant had impugned its veracity. It is true
+I read 'Homer Travestied' (the first twelve books), because Hobhouse 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 _inaccuracy_ in
+costume and description is, that his Gertrude, &c. 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 any thing 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 (but with one day's interval), chequered with snow or heavy
+rain only, since the 30th 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 numberless 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 _melo_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 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,
+because 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 Contesse G. this evening,
+who will be curious to have the effigies of a man so celebrated.
+
+"How strange are our thoughts, &c. &c. &c.[19]
+
+[Footnote 19: Here follows a long passage, already extracted, relative
+to his early friend, Edward Noel Long.]
+
+
+"Midnight.
+
+"Read the Italian translation by Guido Sorelli of the German
+Grillparzer--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, 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 Müllner'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, and Italian translations. Of the _real_ language I know
+absolutely nothing,--except oaths learnt from postilions and officers in
+a squabble. I can _swear_ in German potently, when I
+like--'Sacrament--Verfluchter--Hundsfott'--and so forth; but I have
+little of their less 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 Staël_ish_, 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 the ninth vol.
+octavo, of Mitford's Greece, where he rather vindicates the memory of
+this last of the Assyrians.
+
+"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 the 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 _if_ 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 (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 important 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, the Capo Politico of the
+remaining 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 disputing
+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 the painter, 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 1st 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 descriptions of Ossian, are somewhat tiresome in real, prosaic
+perspective. Politics still mysterious.
+
+
+"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
+_unpaid_ 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 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 Staël, with 'the Cossack,' towards
+the end of 1813, were the exhibitions of the succeeding year.
+
+"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. 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 bog-trotter,' &c. &c. Now I, who know Dr. Parr,
+and who know (_not_ by experience--for I never should have presumed so
+far as to contend with him--but by hearing him _with_ others, and _of_
+others) 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 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 remember 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 _sub_scribed and _circum_scribed
+'for the recall of Mr. Edgeworth to Ireland.'[20]
+
+"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 Staël.
+
+"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
+postilion. However, the impression of intellect and prudence is
+profound--and may be useful.
+
+[Footnote 20: In this, I rather think he was misinformed; whatever merit
+there may be in the jest, I have not, as far as I can recollect, the
+slightest claim to it.]
+
+
+"January 20. 1821.
+
+"Rode--fired pistols. Read from Grimm's Correspondence. 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 pistols--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
+walking-stick, at twelve paces, with a single bullet--and all by _eye_
+and calculation; for my hand is not steady, 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 plûpart des poëtes
+comiques étaient gens bilieux et mélancoliques; et que M. de Voltaire,
+qui est très gai, n'a jamais fait que des tragedies--et que la comedie
+gaie est le seul genre où il n'ait point réussi. C'est que celui qui rit
+et celui qui fait rire sont deux hommes fort différens.'--Vol. VI.
+
+"At this moment I feel as bilious as the best comic writer of them all,
+(even as Regnard himself, the next to Molière, 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
+Sardanapalus, 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.
+
+"It is three minutes past twelve.--'Tis the middle of night by the
+castle clock,' 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.
+
+
+"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.' The Cari. 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 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.'
+
+"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 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 individual 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 Ga. Gi. in despite of
+all I said and did to prevent it, _would_ separate from her husband, Il
+Cavalier Commendatore Gi. &c. &c. &c. and all on the account of 'P.P.
+clerk of this parish.' 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, &c. &c. &c.--
+
+    Many small articles make up a sum,
+    And hey ho for Caleb Quotem, oh!"
+
+
+"January 25. 1821.
+
+"Received a letter from Lord S.O. state secretary of the Seven
+Islands--a fine fellow--clever--dished in England 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. 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. Two thousand years since
+that sage's declaration of ignorance have not enlightened us more upon
+this important point; for, according 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 'grand
+peut-être'--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 '_Trecroci_.' 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_ ninety-five years old,
+she must recollect the Cardinal Alberoni, 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 _turbot_, (Friday, fast regularly and religiously,)
+which I wanted to eat all myself. Ate it.
+
+"Went out--found T. as usual--music. The gentlemen, 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,
+buffooning, 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 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 themselves, 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, _old_, and the master of the
+world.
+
+"_Memoranda._
+
+"What is Poetry?--The feeling of a Former world and Future.
+
+"_Thought 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 retrospect 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 -------------------------------------------------------------
+--------------------------------------------------------------------
+--------------------------------------------------------------------[21]
+
+"_Thought for a speech of Lucifer, in the tragedy of Cain:_--
+
+    "Were _Death_ an _evil_, would _I_ let thee _live_?
+    Fool! live as I live--as thy father lives,
+    And thy son's sons shall live for evermore.
+
+[Footnote 21: Thus marked, with impatient strokes of the pen, by himself
+in the original.]
+
+
+"Past Midnight. One o' the clock.
+
+"I have been reading W.F.S * * (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 pimples_--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, S * *,) 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. F. S * *. 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
+Wakefield, who found out that all the good things had been said already
+on the right side, and therefore 'dressed up some paradoxes' upon the
+wrong side--ingenious, but false, as he himself says--to which 'the
+learned world said nothing, nothing at all, sir.' The 'learned world,'
+however, _has_ said something to the brothers S * *.
+
+"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 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 yesterday. 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 risen--_ça ira!_
+
+"Read S * *. 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
+ridiculous, but that he deserves it.
+
+"In the same style this German talks of gondolas on the Arno--a precious
+fellow to dare to speak of Italy!
+
+"He says also that Dante's chief defect is a want, in 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
+gentleness 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 S * *. 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 * * *--* * *.[22] Things
+seem fast coming to a crisis--_ça ira!_
+
+"We talked over various matters of moment and movement. These I
+omit;--if they come to any thing, they will speak for themselves. After
+these, we spoke of Kosciusko. 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 letters and papers are
+stopped. Nobody knows any thing, 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.
+
+[Footnote 22: In the original MS. these watch-words are blotted over so
+as to be illegible.]
+
+
+"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 Contesse 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'--speaking of the _passions_. If this
+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 Correspondence. He repeats frequently, in
+speaking of a poet, or a man of genius in any department, even in music,
+(Gretry, for instance,) that he must have 'une ame qui se tourmente, un
+esprit violent.' How far this may be true, I know not; but if it were, I
+should be a poet 'per eccellenza;' for I have always had 'une ame,'
+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 form the annals of the literary part of that age of
+France, with much of her politics; and, still more, of her 'way of
+life.' He is as valuable, and far more entertaining than Muratori or
+Tiraboschi--I had almost said, than Ginguené--but there we should pause.
+However, 'tis a great man in its line.
+
+"Monsieur St. Lambert has
+
+    "'Et lorsqu'à ses regards la lumière est ravie,
+    Il n'a plus, en mourant, à 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.
+
+
+"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 over-flowing 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 England, 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. It I rouse, 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[23].
+
+[Footnote 23: In this little incident of the music in the streets thus
+touching so suddenly upon the nerve of memory, and calling away his mind
+from its dark bodings to a recollection of years and scenes the
+happiest, perhaps, of his whole life, there is something that appears to
+me peculiarly affecting.]
+
+
+"February 5. 1821.
+
+"At last, 'the kiln's in a low.' 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.
+Returned--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 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 15th inst.
+Instead of this, from some previous information or otherwise, 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 15th.
+
+"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.
+
+
+"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 commotion at Paris.
+
+"Rode out between four and six--finished my letter to Murray on Bowles's
+pamphlets--added postscript. Passed the evening as usual--out till
+eleven--and subsequently at home.
+
+
+"February 11. 1821.
+
+"Wrote--had a copy taken of an extract from Petrarch's Letters, with
+reference to the conspiracy of the Doge, M. Faliero, containing the
+poet's opinion of the matter. Heard a heavy firing of cannon towards
+Comacchio--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. 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 without, 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
+_fact_, 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 Sardanapalus. To-night, or
+to-morrow, I ought to answer letters.
+
+
+"February 16. 1821.
+
+"Last night Il Conte P.G. sent a man with a bag full of bayonets, some
+muskets, and some hundreds of cartridges to my house, without apprizing
+me, though I had seen him not half an hour before. About ten days ago,
+when there was to be a rising here, the Liberals and my brethren Ci.
+asked me to purchase some arms for a certain few of our ragamuffins. I
+did so immediately, and ordered ammunition, &c. 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, &c. &c. shall
+be liable to,' &c. &c.--and what do my friends, the patriots, do two
+days afterwards? 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 carabiniers 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 towards the Barbarians. If it be even so, in a
+short time 'there will be news o' thae craws,' as Mrs. Alison Wilson
+says of Jenny Blane's 'unco cockernony' in the 'Tales of my Landlord.'
+
+"In turning over Grimm's Correspondence to-day, I found a thought of
+Tom Moore's in a song of Maupertuis to a female Laplander.
+
+    "'Et tous les lieux,
+    Où sont ses yeux,
+    Font la Zone brûlante.'
+
+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
+    Bientôt il nous destine;
+    Mais ces longs jours
+    Seront trop courts,
+    Passés près des 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'll 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 depôt,
+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 Cæsar (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.
+
+
+"February 19. 1821.
+
+"Came home solus--very high wind--lightning--moonshine--solitary
+stragglers muffled in cloaks--women in mask--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
+Ci. It is to be in _the Forest_ of Boccacio's and Dryden's 'Huntsman'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 [24] degli Onesti' (Dryden has turned 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.
+
+[Footnote 24: In Boccacio, the name is, I think, Nastagio.]
+
+
+"February 21, 1821.
+
+"As usual, rode--visited, &c. 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, &c.--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 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, &c. as usual. The secret intelligence arrived this morning from
+the frontier to the Ci. 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 Northern 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.
+But, as Squire Sullen says, 'My head aches consumedly: Scrub, bring me a
+dram!' Drank some Imola wine, and some punch.
+
+
+"_Log-book continued_[25].
+
+[Footnote 25: In another paper-book.]
+
+
+"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, &c.--dined--wrote down an additional stanza for the 5th canto of
+D.J. which I had composed in bed this morning. Visited _l'Amica_. We are
+invited, on the night of the Veglione (next Domenica) with the Marchesa
+Clelia Cavalli and the Countess Spinelli Rusponi. I promised to go. Last
+night there was a row at the ball, of which I am a 'socio.' The
+Vice-legate had the imprudent 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 farther, and the
+whole city would have been in arms, and the government driven out of it.
+
+"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.
+
+"Last night I suffered horribly--from an indigestion, I believe. I
+_never_ sup--that is, never at home. But, last 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 somewhat 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 should believe that it was married to the body, if they did
+not sympathise 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+During the two months comprised in this Journal, some of the Letters of
+the following series were written. The reader must, therefore, be
+prepared to find in them occasional notices of the same train of events.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 404. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Ravenna, January 2. 1821.
+
+     "Your entering into my project for the Memoir is pleasant to me.
+     But I doubt (contrary to my dear Made Mac F * *, 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 although Made. de S.'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 * *, 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, M * * L * *[26], 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 * * was
+     open-_mouthed_ 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, Rousseau, &c. &c. 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 Lissa in 1811. He was brave, but a
+     disciplinarian. 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 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[27],'but it 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,' we may perhaps meet, in France or England, within
+     the year.
+
+     "Yours, &c.
+
+     "Of course, I cannot explain to you existing circumstances, as they
+     open all letters.
+
+     "Will you set me right about your curst 'Champs Elysées?'--are they
+     'és' or 'ées' 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."
+
+[Footnote 26: Of this gentleman, the following notice occurs in the
+"Detached Thoughts:"--"L * * was a good man, a clever man, but a bore.
+My only revenge or consolation used to be setting him by the ears with
+some vivacious person who hated bores especially,--Madame de S---- or
+H----, for example. But I liked L * *; 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 M * * 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 _terra_fied by the
+charge; thrice did I lose him in the grey 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'd give the lands of Deloraine
+    Dark Musgrave were alive again!'
+
+that is,--
+
+    "I would give many a sugar cane
+    M * * L * * were alive again!"]
+
+[Footnote 27: The following passage from the letter of mine, to which
+the above was an answer, will best explain what follows:--With respect
+to the newspaper, it is odd enough that Lord * * * * and myself had been
+(about a week or two before I received your letter) speculating upon
+your assistance in a plan somewhat similar, but more literary and less
+regularly-periodical in its appearance. Lord * *, 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 être _obligé_!' 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."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 405. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, January 4. 1821.
+
+     "I just see, by the papers of Galignani, that there is a new
+     tragedy of great expectation, by Barry Cornwall. Of what I have
+     read of his works Hiked the _Dramatic_ Sketches, but thought his
+     Sicilian Story and Marcian Colonna, in rhyme, quite spoilt, by I
+     know not what affectation of Wordsworth, 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 (Barry Cornwall is not
+     his _true_ name) was a schoolfellow 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 Marino Faliero. 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 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,' &c. and do not
+     judge me by your old mad 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
+     Ben Jonson, who was a scholar and a classic. Or, take up a
+     translation of Alfieri, and try the interest, &c. 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_ tailors' yards. Nothing so easy as intricate confusion of
+     plot and rant. Mrs. Centlivre, in comedy, has _ten times the bustle
+     of Congreve_; but are they to be compared? and yet she drove
+     Congreve from the theatre."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 406. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, January 19. 1821.
+
+     "Yours of the 29th ultimo 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[28] 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 thousands of
+     worthy 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 _I_ 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.[29]
+
+     "The _third_ canto of Don Juan is 'dull,' but you must really put
+     up with it: if the two first and the two following are tolerable,
+     what do you expect? particularly as I neither dispute with you on
+     it as a matter of criticism, nor as a matter of business.
+
+     "Besides, what am I to understand? you and Douglas Kinnaird, and
+     others, write to me, that the two first published cantos are among
+     the best that I ever wrote, and are reckoned so; Augusta 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 ostentation, 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.[30] 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 those
+     plaguy 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."
+
+[Footnote 28: To the letter which enclosed this protest, and which has
+been omitted to avoid repetitions, he had subjoined a passage from
+Spence's Anecdotes (p. 197. of Singer's edition), where Pope says,
+speaking of himself, "I had taken such strong resolutions against any
+thing of that kind, from seeing how much every body that _did_ write for
+the stage was obliged to subject themselves to the players and the
+town."--_Spence's Anecdotes_, p. 22.
+
+In the same paragraph, Pope is made to say, "After I had got acquainted
+with the town, I resolved never to write any thing for the stage, though
+solicited by many of my friends to do so, and particularly Betterton."]
+
+[Footnote 29: No further step was ever taken in this affair; and the
+documents, which were of no use whatever, are, I believe, still in Mr.
+Murray's possession.]
+
+[Footnote 30: The self-will of Lord Byron was in no point more
+conspicuous than in the determination with which he thus persisted in
+giving the preference to one or two works of his own which, in the eyes
+of all other persons, were most decided failures. Of this class was the
+translation from Pulci, so frequently mentioned by him, which appeared
+afterwards in the Liberal, and which, though thus rescued from the fate
+of remaining unpublished, roust for ever, I fear, submit to the doom of
+being unread.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 407. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "January 20. 1821.
+
+     "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 Lord Byron has a tragedy coming out,' &c. &c. &c. and
+     that the Courier and Morning Chronicle, &c. &c. are pulling one
+     another to pieces about it and him, &c.
+
+     "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 to my
+     judgment_. If you do not wish to drive me mad altogether, you will
+     hit upon some way to prevent this.
+
+     "Yours, &c.
+
+     "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 Aeschylus. I speak of course humbly, and with the
+     greatest sense of the distance of time and merit between the two
+     performances; 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 408. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, January 20. 1821.
+
+     "If Harris or Elliston persist, after the remonstrance which I
+     desired you and Mr. 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_, because 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 preventing this cursed attempt at
+     representation.
+
+     "God help me! at this distance, I am treated like a corpse or a
+     fool by the few people that I thought I could rely upon; and I
+     _was_ a fool to think any better of them than of the rest of
+     mankind.
+
+     "Pray write. Yours, &c.
+
+     "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 altogether_, and only _forty
+     copies struck off privately_ for presents to my friends. What curst
+     fools those speculating buffoons must be _not_ to see that it is
+     unfit for their fair--or their booth!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 409. TO MR. 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, &c. &c.[31]
+
+     "Have you heard that the 'Braziers' Company have, or mean to
+     present an address at Brandenburgh House, '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 * * * *, 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 embarked, 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, 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 hisses, nor
+     the insolence of their applause. I write only for the _reader_, and
+     care for nothing but the _silent_ approbation 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," &c.
+
+[Footnote 31: Already given in his Journal.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 410. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, January 27. 1821.
+
+     "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 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.
+
+     "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 law-suit--and the trustees of
+     Lady Byron refusing to allow of an advantageous loan to be made
+     from my property to Lord Blessington, &c. &c. 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 _here_, else I should have taken the liberty of
+     Hannibal's ring.
+
+     "Pray thank Gifford for all his goodnesses. The winter is as cold
+     here as Parry's polarities. I must now take a canter in the forest;
+     my horses are waiting.
+
+     "Yours ever and truly."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 411. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, February 2. 1821.
+
+     "Your letter of excuses has arrived. I receive the letter, but do
+     not admit the excuses, except 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, 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. * * 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 acknowledge 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 I 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 the English booksellers, and I desire no interest out of that
+     country.
+
+     "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 crum of the old
+     loaf. You have no right to act suspiciously with me, for I have
+     given you no reason. I shall always be frank with you; as, for
+     instance, whenever you talk with the votaries of Apollo
+     arithmetically, 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, &c.
+
+     "P.S. If you venture, as you say, to Ravenna this year, 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,' which are rather frequent here of late
+     among the native parties. But perhaps your visit may be
+     anticipated; 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 412. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, February 16, 1821.
+
+     "In the month of March will arrive from Barcelona _Signor Curioni_,
+     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.
+
+     "The fifth is so far from being the last of Don Juan, 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 'Werter-faced man' in Germany, so as to
+     show the different ridicules of the society in each of those
+     countries, and to have displayed him gradually _gâté_ and _blasé_
+     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 tradition says hell: but
+     it is probably only an allegory of the other state. You are now in
+     possession of my notions on the subject.
+
+     "You say the Doge will not be popular: did I ever write for
+     _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 succeded the older writers. It
+     appears to me, that good English, and a severer approach to the
+     rules, might combine something not dishonourable 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 its
+     popularity, but does not persuade me that it is _therefore_ faulty.
+     Whatever faults it has will arise from deficiency in the conduct,
+     rather than in the conception, which is simple and severe.
+
+     "So _you epigrammatise_ upon _my epigram_? I will _pay_ you for
+     _that_, mind if I don't, some day. I never let any one off in the
+     long run (_who first begins_). Remember * * *, 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
+     English pirates did not begin their attempts till after I had left
+     England the second time. Pray attend to this. Let me know what you
+     and your synod think on Bowles.
+
+     "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 Morghen's, and _Ovid_'s (I don't _mean
+     poetry_),--are as low as need be: look at the seal which I gave to
+     William Bankes, and own it. How came George Bankes to quote
+     'English Bards' in the House of Commons? All the world keep
+     flinging that poem in my face.
+
+     "Belzoni _is_ a grand traveller, and his English is very prettily
+     broken.
+
+     "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 row, 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," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 413. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, February 21. 1821.
+
+     "In the forty-fourth page, volume first, of Turner's Travels (which
+     you lately sent me), it is stated that 'Lord Byron, when he
+     expressed such confidence of its practicability, seems to have
+     forgotten that Leander swam both ways, with and against the tide;
+     whereas _he_ (Lord Byron) only performed the easiest part of the
+     task by swimming with it from Europe to Asia.' I certainly could
+     not have forgotten, what is known to every schoolboy, 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 into 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 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, 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 _must_ 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 possible, 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 _four_, 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
+     probability. It is not quite fair in him to infer, that because
+     _he_ failed, Leander could not succeed. There are still four
+     instances 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 perceived none;
+     it is favourable to the swimmer on neither 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 practicable. Any young
+     man, in good 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
+     Hellespont. Of what may be done in swimming, I will mention one
+     more instance. In 1818, the Chevalier Mengaldo (a gentleman of
+     Bassano), a good swimmer, wished to swim with my friend Mr.
+     Alexander Scott and myself. As he seemed particularly 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 consequence, as there was
+     a gondola to hold his clothes and pick him up. Scott swam 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, comprising 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 its
+     performance, Mr. Hoppner, 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. He tried to swim
+     directly across, instead of going higher up to take the vantage: he
+     might as well have tried to _fly_ 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. Whether 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. Turner, '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,
+     however, is not so 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 perceiving the greater strength of the opposite stream by
+     which the diplomatic traveller palliates his own failure. Our
+     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 greater 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 and
+     Captain 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. Turner'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. Turner 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."[32]
+
+[Footnote 32: To the above letter, which was published at the time, Mr.
+Turner wrote a reply, but, for reasons stated by himself, did not print
+it. At his request, I give insertion to his paper in the Appendix.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 414. TO MR. 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 particularly 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_,
+     notwithstanding 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. If not, let me have my
+     francs. They were paid by Missiaglia, the _W_enetian 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, &c.
+
+     "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.
+
+        BOWLES. "Why, how now, saucy Tom,
+                  If you thus must ramble,
+                I will publish some
+                  Remarks on Mr. Campbell.
+
+        CAMPBELL. "Why, how now, Billy Bowles,
+                    &c. &c. &c."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 415. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "March 2. 1821.
+
+     "This was the beginning of a letter which I meant for Perry, but
+     stopped 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+TO MR. PERRY.
+
+     "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,' &c. which was never intended for such an
+     exhibition, and I trust will never undergo it. It is 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 the buzzing of the other.
+
+     "This may not seem a courteous comparison, but I have no other
+     ready; and it occurs naturally."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 416. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, Marzo, 1821.
+
+     "Dear Moray,
+
+     "In my packet of the 12th instant, in the last sheet (_not_ the
+     _half_ sheet), last page, _omit_ the sentence which (defining, or
+     attempting to define, what and who are gentlemen) 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,' &c. &c. I say,
+     omit the whole of that sentence, because, like the 'cosmogony, or
+     creation of the world,' in the 'Vicar of Wakefield,' 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 _parle
+     euphuism_; but there is a _nobility_ of thought and expression to
+     be found no less in Shakspeare, Pope, and Burns, than in Dante,
+     Alfieri,' &c. &c. 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 on 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_.
+       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.
+      11. _Prompter. Puppet squeaks._
+      12. _The ear of Eve._
+      13. _Familiar toad._
+      14. _Half froth, half venom, splits_ himself abroad.
+      15. _Fop_ at the _toilet_.
+      16. _Flatterer_ at the _board_.
+      17. _Amphibious thing_.
+      18. Now _trips a lady_.
+      19. Now _struts a lord_.
+      20. A _cherub's face_.
+      21. A _reptile_ all the rest.
+      22. The _Rabbins_.
+      23. Pride that _licks 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_ 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 fellows are
+     trying against Pope.
+
+     "Ask Mr. Gifford if, in the fifth act of 'The Doge,' you could not
+     contrive (where the sentence of the _Veil_ is passed) 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.[33]
+
+     "Yours, truly, &c.
+
+     "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 Naples by these fellows.
+
+     "I wish to propose to _Holmes_, the miniature painter, to come out
+     to me this spring. I will pay his expenses, 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 face while it lasts. Madame
+     G. is also very handsome, but it is quite in a different
+     style--completely 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."
+
+[Footnote 33: These lines--perhaps from some difficulty in introducing
+them--were never inserted in the Tragedy.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 417. TO MR. 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; and as she was
+     now four years old complete, and quite above the control of the
+     servants--and as a _man_ living without 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.[34] 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.
+
+     "P.S. There is a report here of a change in France; 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. Afterwards, 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."
+
+[Footnote 34: With such anxiety did he look to this essential part of
+his daughter's education, that notwithstanding the many advantages she
+was sure to derive from the kind and feminine superintendence of Mrs.
+Shelley, his apprehensions, lest her feeling upon religious subjects
+might be disturbed by the conversation of Shelley himself, prevented him
+from allowing her to remain under his friend's roof.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 418. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, April 21. 1821.
+
+     "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. Upon this point you can consult
+     with Mr. Gifford, and think twice before you publish it at all.
+
+     Yours truly,
+
+     B.
+
+     "P.S. You may make my subscription for Mr. Scott's widow, &c.
+     _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, it would look indelicate. I
+     would give more, but my disappointments last year about Rochdale
+     and the transfer from the funds render me more economical for the
+     present."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 419. TO MR. SHELLEY.
+
+     "Ravenna, April 26. 1821.
+
+     "The child continues doing well, and the accounts are regular and
+     favourable. It is gratifying to me that you 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--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 unnecessary 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 inordinate 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 poetry. You
+     also know my high opinion of your own poetry,--because it is of
+     _no_ school. I read Cenci--but, besides that I think the _subject_
+     essentially _un_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 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.
+
+     "P.S. Could not you and I contrive to meet this summer? Could not
+     you take a run here _alone_?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 420. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, April 26. 1821.
+
+     "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 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 suburbing, 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 (which produced
+     the English Bards, &c.) 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.
+
+     "Yours, &c.
+
+     "P.S. Your latest packet of books is on its way here, but not
+     arrived. Kenilworth excellent. Thanks for the pocket-books, of
+     which 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?--_conditionally, recollect_; not
+     to be published before decease. _He_ has the permission to dispose
+     of them, and I advised him to do so."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 421. TO MR. 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 ran write but little, as all
+     letters are opened. 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 nowhere now
+     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," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 422. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Ravenna, May 3. 1821.
+
+     "Though I wrote to you on the 28th ultimo, I must acknowledge yours
+     of this day, with the lines[35]. 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[36]? I do not recollect to
+     have said any thing of _you_ that could offend,--certainly, nothing
+     intentionally. As for * *, 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. And did you _not_ approve, as he says? Would
+     I had known that before! I would have given him some more
+     gruel.[37] 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 barbarians. 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."
+
+[Footnote 35: "Aye, down to the dust with them, slaves as they are," &c.
+&c.]
+
+[Footnote 36: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 37: 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 partisanship 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.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was at this time that he began, under the title of "Detached
+Thoughts," that Book of Notices or Memorandums, from which, in the
+course of these pages, I have extracted so many curious illustrations of
+his life and opinions, and of which the opening article is as follows:--
+
+"Amongst various Journals, Memoranda, Diaries, &c. 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 proclamations, 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 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 necessarily 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 its
+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.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 423. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, May 10. 1821.
+
+     "I have just got your packet. I am obliged to Mr. Bowles, and Mr.
+     Bowles is obliged to me, for having restored him to good-humour. He
+     is to write, 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. Bowles, you will _not_ publish my
+     _defence of Gilchrist_: it would be brutal to do so after his
+     urbanity, for it is rather too rough, like his own attack upon
+     Gilchrist. 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 first Letter to you. Upon this consult Gifford; and, above all,
+     don't let any thing be added which can _personally_ affect Mr.
+     Bowles.
+
+     "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.
+
+     "I hope and trust that Elliston _won't_ be permitted to act the
+     drama. Surely _he_ 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,
+     Oxford, nor Scott's novels among them. Why don't you republish
+     Hodgson's Childe Harold's Monitor and Latino-mastix? They are
+     excellent. Think of this--they are all for _Pope_.
+
+     "Yours," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The controversy, in which Lord Byron, with so much grace and
+good-humour, thus allowed himself to be disarmed by the courtesy of his
+antagonist, it is not my intention to run the risk of reviving by any
+enquiry into its origin or merits. In all such discussions on matters of
+mere taste and opinion, where, on one side, it is the aim of the
+disputants to elevate the object of the contest, and on the other, to
+depreciate it, Truth will usually be found, like Shakspeare's gatherer
+of samphire on the cliff, "halfway down." Whatever judgment, however,
+may be formed respecting the controversy itself, of the urbanity and
+gentle feeling on both sides, which (notwithstanding some slight trials
+of this good understanding afterwards) led ultimately to the result
+anticipated in the foregoing letter, there can be but one opinion; and
+it is only to be wished that such honourable forbearance were as sure of
+imitators as it is, deservedly, of eulogists. In the lively pages thus
+suppressed, when ready fledged for flight, with a power of self-command
+rarely exercised by wit, there are some passages, of a general nature,
+too curious to be lost, which I shall accordingly proceed to extract for
+the reader.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Pope himself 'sleeps well--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. * * *
+
+"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; 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 remarkable or a
+celebrated character, might well have pretended to all the 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, thought his
+'Epistle on the Characters of Women' his 'masterpiece.' 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, it may be remarked, that it does not
+always depend upon personal appearance, 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 Luxembourg
+(who had precisely Pope's figure) was not only somewhat too amatory for
+a great man, but fortunate in his attachments. La Valière, the passion
+of Louis XIV. 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 Acon dextro, capta est Leonilla sinistro,
+      Et potis est forma vincere uterque Deos:
+    Blande puer, lumen quod habes concede sorori,
+      Sic tu cæcus Amor, sic erit illa Venus.'
+
+"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 of _forty-four_.'
+
+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. 'They particularly renounce Celestial Venus, into
+whose temple, &c. &c. &c. I remember, too, to have seen a building in
+Ægina in which there is a statue of Fortune, holding a horn of Amalthea;
+and near here 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 submit 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 vii. 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 Strafford)
+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.
+
+"In regard 'to the strange mixture of indecent, and sometimes _profane_
+levity, which his conduct and language _often_ exhibited,' and which so
+much shocks the tone of _Pope_, than the tone of the _time_. With the
+exception of the correspondence 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 any thing in Pope's letters. The comedies of
+Congreve, Vanbrugh, Farquhar, Gibber, &c. 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 every body
+understood _that_, but few could talk rationally upon less common
+topics.' The refinement of latter 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To the extract that follows I beg to call the particular attention of
+the reader. Those who at all remember the peculiar bitterness and
+violence with which the gentleman here commemorated assailed Lord Byron,
+at a crisis when both his heart and fame were most vulnerable, will, if
+I am not mistaken, feel a thrill of pleasurable admiration in reading
+these sentences, such as alone can convey any adequate notion of the
+proud, generous pleasure that must have been felt in writing them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Poor Scott is now no more. 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, '_squeel_') 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 griefs by the loss of his son, and had known, by experience, the
+bitterness of 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 James 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In reference to some complaints made by Mr. Bowles, in his Pamphlet, of
+a charge of "hypochondriacism" which he supposed to have been brought
+against him by his assailant, Mr. Gilchrist, the noble writer thus
+proceeds:--
+
+"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 Molière, was atrabilarious, and Molière 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.
+
+"Mendelsohn 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.'
+
+"In page 14. we have a large assertion, that 'the Eloisa alone is
+sufficient to convict him (Pope) 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-être,' 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 with,
+at the same time, 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 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? 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 systematise. It assails, but does not argue; it may be
+wrong, but it does not assume pretensions to optimism."
+
+Mr. Bowles having, in his pamphlet, complained of some anonymous
+communication which he had received, Lord Byron thus comments on the
+circumstance.
+
+"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 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 intimation 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 denunciation was addressed to
+the Cardinal Legate of Romagna, instead of to * * * *. 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 Heatherblutter' (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,' 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."
+
+The following just tribute to my Reverend Friend's merits as a poet I
+have peculiar pleasure in extracting:--
+
+"Mr. Bowles has no reason to 'succumb' but to Mr. Bowles. As a poet, the
+author of 'The Missionary' may compete with the foremost of his
+contemporaries. 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 honorably rank with
+his living rivals," &c. &c. &c.
+
+Among various Addenda for this pamphlet, sent at different times to Mr.
+Murray, I find the following curious passages:--
+
+"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 (no friend to Pope) asserts that Pope formed _Kent's_ 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 _Pope's_ at Twickenham. Warton
+applauds 'his singular effort of art and taste, in impressing so much
+variety and scenery on a spot of five acres.' Pope was the _first_ 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 _best_ rules and
+observations on _Architecture_ and _Gardening_.' (See Warton's Essay,
+vol. ii. p. 237, &c.&c.)
+
+"Now, is it not a shame, after this, to hear our Lakers in '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 _Stowe_. 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 _Kent's_ 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 Lord Bathurst's is carved,
+'Here Pope sang,'--he composed beneath it. Bolingbroke, in one of his
+letters, represents them both writing in a hayfield. 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, painting,
+_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 a
+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 enthusiastical for the country because they live in
+London. It is to be observed, that the rustical founders are rather
+anxious to disclaim any connection with their metropolitan followers,
+whom they ungraciously review, and call cockneys, atheists, foolish
+fellows, bad writers, and other hard names, not less ungrateful than
+unjust. I can understand the pretensions of the aquatic gentlemen of
+Windermere to what Mr. B * * terms '_entusumusy_' for lakes, and
+mountains, and daffodils, and buttercups; but I should be glad to be
+apprised of the foundation of the London propensities of their imitative
+brethren to the same' high argument.' Southey, Wordsworth, 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_?
+
+"When they have really seen 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 permitted 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,' 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.
+
+"If they had said nothing of _Pope_, they might have remained 'alone
+with their glory' for aught I should have said or thought about them or
+their nonsense. But if they interfere with the little 'Nightingale' of
+Twickenham, they may find others who will bear it--_I_ 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 clothed in
+consummate beauty. Sir William Temple observes, 'That of all the members
+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.' 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, 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 clothes
+might be 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. * * 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 are now, 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 Shakspeare,
+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, I 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 _fencing_-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 composition. _Vulgarity_ is far worse than downright
+_black-guardism_; 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_? 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, gentlemen,
+is the _Eagle_ of the _Sun_, from Archangel in Russia: the _otterer_ it
+is, the _igherer_ he flies.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In a note on a passage relative to Pope's lines upon Lady Mary W.
+Montague, he says--
+
+"I think that I could show, if necessary, that Lady Mary W. Montague was
+also greatly to blame in that quarrel, _not_ for having rejected, but
+for having encouraged him; but I would rather decline the task--though
+she should have remembered her own line, '_He 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 _Harvey_, I
+should love him;' so, if you were to call a female of the same species
+'Mary,' I should love it better than others (biped or quadruped) of the
+same sex with a different appellation. She was an extraordinary 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 banish'd 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,' &c. &c.
+
+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 '_purée_' 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 university not to know that the
+philosopher was himself 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 424. TO MR. HOPPNER.
+
+     "Ravenna, May 11. 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, 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, 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 throwing 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 attachment: this is, I believe, the case also in France.
+     And after all, what is the higher society of England? According 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, &c.
+
+     "P.S. I gave to a musician_er_ a letter for you some time ago--has
+     he presented himself? Perhaps you could introduce him to the
+     Ingrains and other dilettanti. He is simple and unassuming--two
+     strange things in his profession--and he fiddles like Orpheus
+     himself or Amphion: 'tis a pity that he can't make Venice dance
+     away from the brutal tyrant who tramples upon it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 425. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "May 14. 1821.
+
+     "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 manager. It is
+     a pity that you did not show them its _unfitness_ for the stage
+     before the play was _published_, and exact a promise from the
+     managers not to act it. In case of their refusal, we would not have
+     published it at all. But this is too late.
+
+     "Yours.
+
+     "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 I '_brought forward the
+     play!!!_' This is 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 426. TO MR. 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, notwithstanding all my remonstrances
+     through all my friends (and yourself among the rest), the managers
+     persisted in attempting the tragedy, and that it has been
+     'unanimously 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 _I_ '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 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 30th. They must have been in a _hell_ of
+     a hurry for this damnation, 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 assassination, 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.' 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 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, &c.
+
+     "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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 427. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, May 19. 1821.
+
+     "By the papers of Thursday, and two letters of Mr. Kinnaird, I
+     perceive that the Italian gazette had lied most _Italically_, and
+     that the drama had _not_ been hissed, and that my friends _had_
+     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 expenses. 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, &c. I wrote to you a week ago on the subject.
+
+     "Now I should be glad to know what compensation Mr. Elliston would
+     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 _I_ '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 my brains out 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[38].
+
+     "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
+     Fourteenth, who insisted upon buying at any price Algernon Sydney's
+     horse, and, on his 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 (intending 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 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
+     torchlight, but by _lightning_ light: 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
+     the 'Bold Thunder' and 'Brisk Lightning' in person.--_Three_ of us
+     would be too many. There it goes--_flash_ again! but
+
+        "I tax not you, ye elements, with unkindness;
+        I never gave ye _franks_, nor _call'd_ upon you;
+
+     as I have done by and upon Mr. Elliston.
+
+     "Why do you not write? You should at least send me a line of
+     particulars: I know nothing yet but by Galignani and the Honourable
+     Douglas.
+
+     "Well, and how does our Pope controversy go on? and the pamphlet?
+     It is impossible to write any news: the Austrian scoundrels rummage
+     all letters.
+
+     "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."
+
+[Footnote 38: The account given, by Madame Guiccioli, of his anxiety on
+this occasion, fully corroborates his own:--"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 those 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
+relative 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 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_; for _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!!!--here, probably, at Ravenna?--and to whom? perhaps to
+Fletcher!!!--that illustrious literary character,'" &c. &c.--"Ma però la
+sua tranquillità era suo malgrado sovente alterata dalle publiche
+vicende, e dagli attachi che spesso si direggevano a lui nei giornali
+come ad autore principalmente. Era invano che egli protestava
+indifferenza per codesti attachi. L'impressione non era é vero che
+momentanea, e purtroppo per una nobile fierezza sdegnava sempre di
+rispondere ai suoi dettratori. Ma per quanto fosse breve quella
+impressione era però assai forte per farlo molto soffrire e per
+affliggere quelli che lo amavano. Tuttociò che ebbe luogo per la
+rappresentazione del suo Marino Faliero lo inquictò pure moltissimo e
+dietro ad un articolo di una Gazetta di Milano in cui si parlava di
+quell' affare egli mi scrisse così--'Ecco la verità di ciò che io vi
+dissi pochi giorni fa, come vengo sacrificato in tutte le maniere seza
+sapere il _perché_ e il _come_. La tragedia di cui si parla non è (e non
+era mai) nè scritta nè adattata al teatro; ma non è però romantico il
+disegno, è piuttosto regolare--regolarissimo per l' unità del tempo, c
+mancando poco a quella del sito. Voi sapete bene se io aveva intenzione
+di farla rappresentare, poichè era scritta al vostro fianco e nei
+momenti per certo più _tragici_ per me come _uomo_ che come
+_autore_,--perchè _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 _l'autore ne fece la
+letlura!!!_--quì forse? a Ravenna?--ed a chi? forse a Fletcher!!!--quel
+illustre litterato,'" &c. &c.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 428. TO ME. 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 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 429. TO MR. HOPPNER.
+
+     "Ravenna, May 25. 1821.
+
+     "I am very much pleased with what you say of Switzerland, 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.
+
+     "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, &c.
+     &c. All this was more fomented by the barbarian agents, who are
+     numerous here (one of them was stabbed yesterday, 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 430. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, May 25. 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 _un_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_), while all this kick-up has been going on about the
+     play? You SHABBY fellow!!! Were it not for two letters from Douglas
+     Kinnaird, I should have been as ignorant as you are negligent.
+
+     "So, I hear Bowles has been abusing Hobhouse? If that's the case,
+     he has broken the truce, like Morillo's successor, and I will cut
+     him out, as Cochrane did the Esmeralda.
+
+     "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 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 shabby
+     correspondent! N."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 431. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, May 28. 1821.
+
+     "Since my last of the 26th or 25th, I have dashed off my fifth act
+     of the tragedy called 'Sardanapalus.' 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 six times sans answer, which
+     proves you to be a--bookseller. I pray you to send me a copy of Mr.
+     _Wrangham_'s reformation of '_Langhorne_'s Plutarch.' 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 Apollonius_ of Tyana. It is in English,
+     and I think edited or written by what Martin Marprelate calls '_a
+     bouncing priest_.' I shall trouble you no farther with this sheet
+     than with the postage. Yours, &c. N.
+
+     "P.S. Since I wrote this, I determined to enclose it (as a half
+     sheet) to Mr. Kinnaird, who will have the goodness to forward it.
+     Besides, it saves sealing-wax."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 432. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, May 30. 1821.
+
+     "Dear Moray,
+
+     "You say you have written often: I have only received yours of the
+     eleventh, which is very short. By this post, _five_ packets, I send
+     you the tragedy of Sardanapalus, which is written in a rough hand:
+     perhaps Mrs. Leigh can help you to decipher 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 sun-rise. 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. The trait is perhaps too
+     familiar, but it is historical, (of _Otho_, at least,) and natural
+     in an effeminate character."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 433. TO MR. 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, however, but doubt that you will be singular
+     in your opinion. My _new_ tragedy is completed.
+
+     "The B * * is _right_,--I ought to have mentioned her _humour_ and
+     _amiability_, but I thought at her _sixty_, beauty would be most
+     agreeable or least likely. However, 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 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, &c.
+
+     "P.S. Did you receive two letters of Douglas Kinnaird's in an
+     endorse from me? Remember me to Mengaldo, Soranzo, 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 information 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?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 434. TO MR. 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 * *:'--
+
+        "Behold the blessings of a lucky lot--
+        My play is damn'd, and Lady * * _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, &c.;
+     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 somewhat 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 printing 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[39]? You see what comes of being familiar 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_ 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 discharge 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 * * * *--a fine old Visigoth name, or Ostrogoth.
+
+     "The Greeks! what think you? They are my old acquaintances--but
+     what to think I know not. Let us hope howsomever.
+
+     "Yours,
+
+     "B."
+
+[Footnote 39: In their eagerness, like true controversialists, to avail
+themselves of every passing advantage, and convert even straws into
+weapons on an emergency, my two friends, during their short warfare,
+contrived to place me in that sort of embarrassing position, the most
+provoking feature of which is, that it excites more amusement 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 be stated, by
+"a gentleman of the highest literary," &c. &c., 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 authoritatively 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 designating 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 conversation, 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.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 435. TO MR. 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 panegyric in the
+     correspondence of Mrs. Waterhouse and Colonel Berkeley? 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 mayn't 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? I have sent Murray a new
+     tragedy, ycleped 'Sardanapalus,' writ according to Aristotle--all,
+     save the chorus--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 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.
+
+     "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, &c.
+
+     "B."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 436. TO MR. 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 _me_? 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 deliver'd.
+
+     "I have had a friend of your Mr. Irving's--a very pretty lad--a Mr.
+     Coolidge, 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 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, &c. &c. &c. 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 _Norway_ (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, &c.
+
+     "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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the Journal entitled "Detached Thoughts," I find the tribute to his
+genius which he here mentions, as well as some others, thus
+interestingly dwelt upon.
+
+"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, &c. &c. It is
+still somewhere amongst my papers. In the same month I received an
+invitation into _Holstein_ from a Mr. Jacobsen (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.
+Jacobsen'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. Jacobsen 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 mansion 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."
+
+Of the visit, too, of the American gentleman, he thus speaks in the same
+Journal.
+
+"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 appearances; 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 Thorwaldsen 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 rased from
+the street called after him in Dublin); I say that I was more flattered
+by it, because it was _single, unpolitical_, 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;--_I_ would not pay the
+price of a 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 sat for
+my own?--Answer, that it was at the particular request of J.C. Hobhouse,
+Esq. 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 something of a hankering for _public_ fame rather
+than private remembrance.
+
+"Whenever an American requests to see me (which is not unfrequently), I
+comply, firstly, because I respect a people who acquired their freedom
+by their firmness without excess; and, secondly, 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
+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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 437. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, July 6. 1821.
+
+     "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. I mention this in case you are, or
+     intend to be, the publisher of the remaining Cantos.
+
+     "At the particular request of the Contessa G. I have promised _not_
+     to continue Don Juan. You will therefore look upon these three
+     Cantos as the last of the 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 Grammont, Gil Bias, and all the comedy of the passions, when
+     brought out naturally. But 'king's blood must keep word,' as
+     Serjeant Bothwell says."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER, 438. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "July 14. 1821.
+
+     "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 dramatise, like the Greeks (a _modest_
+     phrase), striking passages of history, as they did of history and
+     mythology. You will find all this very _un_like Shakspeare; and so
+     much the better in one sense, for I look upon him to be the _worst_
+     of models[40], 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 unpleasant scenes
+     here: they have, without trial or process, 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."
+
+[Footnote 40: In venturing this judgment upon Shakspeare, Lord Byron but
+followed in the footsteps of his great idol Pope. "It was mighty simple
+in Rowe," says this poet, "to write a play now professedly in
+Shakspeare's style, that is, professedly in the style of a bad
+age."--Spence, sect. 4. 1734-36. Of Milton, too, Pope seems to have held
+pretty nearly the same opinion as that professed by Lord Byron in some
+of these letters. See, in Spence, sect. 5 1737-39, a passage on which
+his editor remarks--"Perhaps Pope did not relish Shakspeare more than he
+seems to have done Milton."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 439. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, July 22. 1821.
+
+     "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 theatres_ are _closed_, 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 character: but, for that
+     matter, so is Richard the Third. Mind the _unities_, which are my
+     great object of research. I am glad that Gifford likes it: as for
+     'the million,' you see I have carefully consulted any thing but the
+     _taste_ of the day for extravagant 'coups de théâtre.' Any probable
+     loss, as I said before, will be allowed for in our accompts. The
+     reviews (except one or two--Blackwood's, for instance) are cold
+     enough; but never mind those fellows: I shall send them to the
+     right about, if I take it into my head. I 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 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. The captain has been
+     reprimanded, the servant released, and the business at present
+     rests there."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Among the victims of the "black sentence and proscription" by which the
+rulers of Italy were now, as appears from the above letters, avenging
+their late alarm upon all who had even in the remotest degree
+contributed to it, the two Gambas were, of course, as suspected Chiefs
+of the Carbonari of Romagna, included. About the middle of July, Madame
+Guiccioli, in a state of despair, wrote to inform Lord Byron that her
+father, in whose palazzo she was at that time residing, had just been
+ordered to quit Ravenna within twenty-four hours, and that it was the
+intention of her brother to depart the following morning. The young
+Count, however, was not permitted to remain even so long, being arrested
+that very night, and conveyed by soldiers to the frontier; and the
+Contessa herself, in but a few days after, found that she also must join
+the crowd of exiles. The prospect of being again separated from her
+noble friend seems to have rendered banishment little less fearful, in
+her eyes, than death. "This alone," she says in a letter to him, "was
+wanting to fill up the measure of my despair. Help me, my dear Byron,
+for I am in a situation most terrible; and without you, I can resolve
+upon nothing. * * has just been with me, having been sent by * * to
+tell me that I must depart from Ravenna before next Tuesday, as my
+husband has had recourse to Rome, for the purpose of either forcing me
+to return to him, or else putting me in a convent; and the answer from
+thence is expected in a few days. I must not speak of this to any
+one,--I roust escape by night; for, if my project should be discovered,
+it will be impeded, and my passport (which the goodness of Heaven has
+permitted me, I know not how, to obtain) will be taken from me. Byron! I
+am in despair!--If I must leave you here without knowing when I shall
+see you again, if it is your will that I should suffer so cruelly, I am
+resolved to remain. They may put me in a convent; I shall die,--but--but
+then you cannot aid me, and I cannot reproach you. I know not what they
+tell me, for my agitation overwhelms me;--and why? Not because I fear my
+present danger, but solely, I call Heaven to witness, solely because I
+must leave you."
+
+Towards the latter end of July, the writer of this tender and truly
+feminine letter found herself forced to leave Ravenna,--the home of her
+youth, as it was, now, of her heart,--uncertain whither to go, or where
+she should again meet Lord Byron. After lingering for a short time at
+Bologna, under a faint expectation that the Court of Rome might yet,
+through some friendly mediation [41], be induced to rescind its order
+against her relatives, she at length gave up all hope, and joined her
+father and brother at Florence.
+
+It has been already seen, from Lord Byron's letters, that he had himself
+become an object of strong suspicion to the Government, and it was,
+indeed, chiefly in their desire to rid themselves of his presence, that
+the steps taken against the Gamba family had originated;--the constant
+benevolence which he exercised towards the poor of Ravenna being likely,
+it was feared, to render him dangerously popular among a people unused
+to charity on so enlarged a scale. "One of the principal causes," says
+Madame Guiccioli, "of the exile of my relatives, was in reality the idea
+that Lord Byron would share the banishment of his friends. Already the
+Government were averse to Lord Byron's residence at Ravenna; knowing his
+opinions, fearing his influence, and also exaggerating the extent of his
+means for giving effect to them. They fancied that he provided money for
+the purchase of arms, &c. and that he contributed pecuniarily to the
+wants of the Society. The truth is, that, when called upon to exercise
+his beneficence, he made no enquiries as to the political and religious
+opinions of those who required his aid. Every unhappy and needy object
+had an equal share in his benevolence. The Anti-Liberals, however,
+insisted upon believing that he was the principal support of Liberalism
+in Romagna, and were desirous of his departure; but, not daring to exact
+it by any direct measure, they were in hopes of being able indirectly to
+force him into this step."[42]
+
+After stating the particulars of her own hasty departure, the lady
+proceeds:--"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 embittered 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[43]."
+
+[Footnote 41: Among the persons applied to by Lord Byron for their
+interest on this occasion was the late Duchess of Devonshire, whose
+answer, dated from Spa, I found among his papers. With the utmost
+readiness her Grace undertakes to write to Rome on the subject, and
+adds, "Believe me also, my Lord, that there is a character of justice,
+goodness, and benevolence, in the present Government of Rome, which, if
+they are convinced of the just claims of the Conte de Gamba and his son,
+will make them grant their request."]
+
+[Footnote 42: "Una delle principali 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. Già da qualche tempo la permanenza
+di Lord Byron in Ravenna era mal gradita dal Governo conoscendosile sue
+opinione e temendosila sua influenza, ed essaggiandosi anche i suoi
+mezzi per esercitarìa. Si credeva che egli somministrasse danaro per
+provvedere armi, e che provvedesse ai bisogni della Società. La veritÃ
+era che nello spargere le sue beneficenze egli non s'informava delle
+opinioni politiche e religiose di quello che aveva bisogno del suo
+soccorso; ogni misero ed ogni infelice aveva un eguale diviso alia sua
+generosità. 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."]
+
+[Footnote 43: "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 può dunque pensare cosa dovesse essere qual
+viaggio per me e cosa io dovessi soffrire nella sua lontananza. Le sue
+lettere avrebbero potuto essermi di conforto; ma quando io le riceveva
+era già trascorso lo spazio di due giorni dal momenta in cui furono
+scritte, e questo pensiero distruggeva tutto il bene che esse potevano
+farmi, e la mia anima era lacerata dai più crudeli timori. Frattanto era
+necessario per la di lui convenienza che egli restasse ancora qualche
+tempo in Ravenna affinchè non avesse a dirsi che egli pure ne era
+esigliato; ed oltreciò egli si era sominamente affezionato a quel
+soggiorno e voleva innanzi di partire vedere esausiti tutti i tentativi
+e tutte le speranze del ritorno dei miei parenti."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 440. TO MR. 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 _convent_, as her father is _not_
+     here,) I have determined 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 confined others, without _trial_,
+     _process_, or even _accusation_!! Every body says they would have
+     done the same by me if they dared proceed openly. My motive,
+     however, for remaining, is because _every one_ of my acquaintance,
+     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, &c.
+
+     "P.S. Can you give me an idea of the comparative expenses of
+     Switzerland and Italy? which I have forgotten. I speak merely of
+     those of decent _living, horses_, &c. 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
+     transmigration, &c. &c. &c."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 441. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, July 30. 1821.
+
+     "Enclosed is the best account of the Doge Faliero, which was only
+     sent to me from an old MS. 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. You will see also that' he spoke very
+     little, and those only words of rage and disdain,' _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 MS. than in the play. I wish that I had met with it
+     in time. Do not forget this note, with a translation.
+
+     "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 pleures_.' Recollect this.
+
+     "I am so busy here about those poor proscribed exiles, 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, &c.
+
+     "P.S. Please to append the letter about _the Hellespont_ as a note
+     to your next opportunity of the verses on Leander, &c. &c. &c. in
+     Childe Harold. Don't forget it amidst your multitudinous
+     avocations, which I think of celebrating in a Dithyrambic Ode to
+     Albemarle Street.
+
+     "Are you aware that Shelley has written an Elegy on Keats, and
+     accuses the Quarterly of killing him?
+
+        "'Who kill'd 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;--you Review
+     people have no more right to kill than any other footpads. However,
+     he who would die of an article in a Review would probably have died
+     of something else equally trivial. The same thing nearly happened
+     to Kirke White, who died afterwards of a consumption."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 442. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Ravenna, August 2. 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 disputants. Did you receive this letter? It imports me
+     to know that our letters are not intercepted or mislaid.
+
+     "Your Berlin drama [44] is an honour, unknown since the days of
+     Elkanah Settle, whose 'Emperor 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
+     frontispiece, which he dared to put before his play.
+
+     "Was not your showing the Memoranda to * * somewhat perilous? Is
+     there not a facetious allusion or two which might as well be
+     reserved for posterity?
+
+     "I know S * * 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 S * *'s on Rome,
+     from which they say that I _might_ have taken some ideas. I give
+     you my honour that I never saw it except in that criticism, which
+     gives, I think, three or four stanzas, sent them (they say) for the
+     nonce by a correspondent--perhaps himself. The fact is easily
+     proved; for I don't understand German, and there was, I believe, no
+     translation--at least, it was the first time that I ever heard of,
+     or saw, either translation or original.
+
+     "I remember having some talk with S * * 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 Molière is no poet[45].'
+
+     "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 anyone--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 _you_! I
+     know no man who looks so well for his years, or who deserves to
+     look better and 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. 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. 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 will come to that he had never been
+     hurt. Pray, let me hear from you, and excuse haste and hot weather.
+
+     "Yours, &c.
+
+     "You may have probably seen all sorts of attacks upon me in some
+     gazettes in England some months ago. 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? 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."
+
+[Footnote 44: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 45: This threat has been since acted upon;--the critic in
+question having, to the great horror of the French literati, pronounced
+Molière to be a "farceur."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+About this time Mr. Shelley, who had now fixed his residence at Pisa,
+received a letter from Lord Byron, earnestly requesting to see him, in
+consequence of which he immediately set out for Ravenna; and the
+following extracts from letters, written during his stay with his noble
+friend, will be read with that double feeling of interest which is
+always sure to be excited in hearing one man of genius express his
+opinions of another.
+
+     "Ravenna, August 7. 1821.
+
+     "I arrived last night at ten o'clock, and sat up talking with Lord
+     Byron until five this morning: I then went to sleep, and now awake
+     at eleven; and having despatched my breakfast as quick as possible,
+     mean to devote the interval until twelve, when the post departs, to
+     you.
+
+     "Lord Byron is very well, and was delighted, to see me. He has in
+     fact completely recovered his health, and lives a life totally the
+     reverse of that which he led at Venice. He has a permanent sort of
+     liaison with the Contessa Guiccioli, who is now at Florence, and
+     seems from her letters to be a very amiable woman. She is waiting
+     there until something shall be decided as to their emigration to
+     Switzerland or stay in Italy, which is yet undetermined on either
+     side. She was compelled to escape from the Papal territory in great
+     haste, as measures had already been taken to place her in a
+     convent, where she would have been unrelentingly confined for
+     life. The oppression of the marriage contract as existing in the
+     laws and opinions of Italy, though less frequently exercised, is
+     far severer than that of England.
+
+     "Lord Byron had almost destroyed himself at Venice. His state of
+     debility was such that he was unable to digest any food: he was
+     consumed by hectic fever, and would speedily have perished but for
+     this attachment, which reclaimed him from the excesses into which
+     he threw himself, from carelessness and pride, rather than taste.
+     Poor fellow I he is now quite well, and immersed in politics and
+     literature. He has given me a number of the most interesting
+     details on the former subject; but we will not speak of them in a
+     letter. Fletcher is here, and--as if, like a shadow, he waxed and
+     waned with the substance of his master--has also revived his good
+     looks, and from amidst the unseasonable grey hairs, a fresh harvest
+     of flaxen locks has put forth.
+
+     "We talked a great deal of poetry and such matters last night; and,
+     as usual, differed--and I think more than ever. He affects to
+     patronise a system of criticism fit only for the production of
+     mediocrity; and, although all his finer poems and passages have
+     been produced in defiance of this system, yet I recognise the
+     pernicious effects of it in the Doge of Venice; and it will cramp
+     and limit his future efforts, however great they may be, unless he
+     gets rid of it. I have read only parts of it, or rather he himself
+     read them to me, and gave me the plan of the whole.
+
+     "Ravenna, August 15. 1821.
+
+     "We ride out in the evening through the pine forests which divide
+     the city from the sea. Our way of life is this, and I have
+     accommodated myself to it without much difficulty:--Lord Byron gets
+     up at two--breakfasts--we talk, read, &c. until six--then we ride
+     at eight, and after dinner sit talking until four or five in the
+     morning. I get up at twelve, and am now devoting the interval
+     between my rising and his to you.
+
+     "Lord Byron is greatly improved in every respect--in genius, in
+     temper, in moral views, in health and happiness. His connection
+     with La Guiccioli has been an inestimable benefit to him. He lives
+     in considerable splendour, but within his income, which is now
+     about four thousand a year, one thousand of which he devotes to
+     purposes of charity. He has had mischievous passions, but these he
+     seems to have subdued; and he is becoming, what he should be, a
+     virtuous man. The interest which he took in the politics of Italy,
+     and the actions he performed in consequence of it, are subjects not
+     fit to be written, but are such as will delight and surprise you.
+
+     "He is not yet decided to go to Switzerland, a place, indeed,
+     little fitted for him: the gossip and the cabals of those
+     Anglicised coteries would torment him as they did before, and might
+     exasperate him into a relapse of libertinism, which, he says, he
+     plunged into not from taste, but from despair. La Guiccioli and her
+     brother (who is Lord Byron's friend and confidant, and acquiesces
+     perfectly in her connection with him) wish to go to Switzerland,
+     as Lord Byron says, merely from the novelty and pleasure of
+     travelling. Lord Byron prefers Tuscany or Lucca, and is trying to
+     persuade them to adopt his views. He has made _me_ write a long
+     letter to her to engage her to remain. An odd thing enough for an
+     utter stranger to write on subjects of the utmost delicacy to his
+     friend's mistress--but it seems destined that I am always to have
+     some active part in every body's affairs whom I approach. I have
+     set down, in tame Italian, the strongest reasons I can think of
+     against the Swiss emigration. To tell you the truth, I should be
+     very glad to accept as my fee his establishment in Tuscany. Ravenna
+     is a miserable place: the people are barbarous and wild, and their
+     language the most infernal _patois_ that you can imagine. He would
+     be in every respect better among the Tuscans.
+
+     "He has read to me one of the unpublished cantos of Don Juan, which
+     is astonishingly fine. It sets him not only above, but far above
+     all the poets of the day. Every word has the stamp of immortality.
+     This canto is in a style (but totally free from indelicacy, 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 degree, what I have long preached,--of
+     producing something wholly new, and relative to the age, and yet
+     surpassingly beautiful. It may be vanity, but I think I see the
+     trace of my earnest exhortations to him, to create something wholly
+     new. * * * *
+
+     "I am sure, if I asked, it would not be refused; yet there is
+     something in me that makes it impossible. Lord Byron and I are
+     excellent friends; and were I reduced to poverty, or were I a
+     writer who had no claim to a higher station than I possess, or did
+     I possess a higher than I deserve, we should appear in all things
+     as such, and I would freely ask him any favour. Such is not now the
+     case: the demon of mistrust and of pride lurks between two persons
+     in our situation, poisoning the freedom of our intercourse. This is
+     a tax, and a heavy one, which we must pay for being human. I think
+     the fault is not on my side; nor is it likely,--I being the weaker.
+     I hope that in the next world these things will be better managed.
+     What is passing in the heart of another rarely escapes the
+     observation of one who is a strict anatomist of his own. * * *
+
+     "Lord Byron here has splendid apartments in the palace of Count
+     Guiccioli, who is one of the richest men in Italy. She is divorced,
+     with an allowance of twelve thousand crowns a year;--a miserable
+     pittance from a man who has a hundred and twenty thousand a year.
+     There are two monkeys, five cats, eight dogs, and ten horses, all
+     of whom (except the horses) walk about the house like the masters
+     of it. Tita, the Venetian, is here, and operates as my valet--a
+     fine fellow, with a prodigious black beard, who has stabbed two or
+     three people, and is the most good-natured-looking fellow I ever
+     saw.
+
+     "Wednesday, Ravenna.
+
+     "I told you I had written, by Lord Byron's desire, to La
+     Guiccioli, to dissuade her and her family from Switzerland. Her
+     answer is this moment arrived, and my representation seems to have
+     reconciled them to the unfitness of the step. At the conclusion of
+     a letter, full of all the fine things she says she has heard of me,
+     is this request, which I transcribe:--'Signore, la vostra bontà mi
+     fa ardita di chiedervi un favore, me lo accorderete voi? _Non
+     partite da Ravenna senza Milord._' Of course, being now, by all the
+     laws of knighthood, captive to a lady's request, I shall only be at
+     liberty on _my parole_ until Lord Byron is settled at Pisa. I shall
+     reply, of course, that the boon is granted, and that if Lord Byron
+     is reluctant to quit Ravenna after I have made arrangements for
+     receiving him at Pisa, I am bound to place myself in the same
+     situation as now, to assail him with importunities to rejoin her.
+     Of this there is fortunately no need; and I need not tell you that
+     there is no fear that this chivalric submission of mine to the
+     great general laws of antique courtesy, against which I never
+     rebel, and which is my religion, should interfere with my soon
+     returning, and long remaining with you, dear girl. * *
+
+     "We ride out every evening as usual, and practise pistol-shooting
+     at a pumpkin, and I am not sorry to observe that I approach towards
+     my noble friend's exactness of aim. I have the greatest trouble to
+     get away, and Lord Byron, as a reason for my stay, has urged, that
+     without either me or the Guiccioli, he will certainly fall into his
+     old habits. I then talk, and he listens to reason; and I earnestly
+     hope that he is too well aware of the terrible and degrading
+     consequences of his former mode of life, to be in danger from the
+     short interval of temptation that will be left him."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 443. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, August 10. 1821.
+
+     "Your conduct to Mr. Moore is certainly very handsome; 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, &c. 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 find easy 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 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 correspondence 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. _I_ 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 444. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, August 16. 1821.
+
+     "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 *
+     * more. One meets with none else among the English.
+
+     "I wait the proofs of the MSS. with proper impatience.
+
+     "So you have published, or mean to publish, the new Juans? Ar'n't
+     you afraid of the Constitutional Assassination of Bridge Street?
+     When first I saw the name of _Murray_, I thought it had been yours;
+     but was solaced by seeing that your synonyme is an attorneo, and
+     that you are not one of that atrocious crew.
+
+     "I am in a great discomfort about the probable war, and with my
+     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 robbing 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, &c.
+
+     "P.S. I restore Smith's letter, whom thank for his good opinion. Is
+     the bust by Thorwaldsen arrived?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 445. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, August 23. 1821.
+
+     "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[46]. 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 third, is
+     taken from _Tully's Tripoli_ (pray _note this_), and the rest from
+     my own observation. Remember, 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. _I_ 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) 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 16th instant.
+
+     "Your friend, like the public, is not aware, that my dramatic
+     simplicity is _studiously_ Greek, and must continue so: _no_ reform
+     ever succeeded at first[47]. 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 theatre_.
+
+     "Yours.
+
+     "P.S. Can't accept your courteous offer.
+
+        "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 cramm'd,
+        So, if _you will_, _I_ sha'n't be shamm'd,
+        And if you _won't_, _you_ may be damn'd,
+                              My Murray.
+
+     "These matters must be arranged with Mr. Douglas Kinnaird. 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'--deduction for the trade'--'make very
+     little'--'generally lose by him'--'pirated edition'--'foreign
+     edition'--'severe criticisms,' &c. with other hints and howls for
+     an oration, which I leave Douglas, who is an orator, to answer.
+
+     "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, and that's more than you are."
+
+[Footnote 46: One of the charges of plagiarism brought against him by
+some scribblers of the day was founded (as I have already observed in
+the first volume of this work) on his having sought in the authentic
+records of real shipwrecks those materials out of which he has worked
+his own powerful description in the second Canto of Don Juan. With as
+much justice might the Italian author, (Galeani, if I recollect right,)
+who wrote a Discourse on the Military Science displayed by Tasso in his
+battles, have reproached that poet with the sources from which he drew
+his knowledge:--with as much justice might Puysegur and Segrais, who
+have pointed out the same merit in Homer and Virgil, have withheld their
+praise because the science on which this merit was founded must have
+been derived by the skill and industry of these poets from others.
+
+So little was Tasso ashamed of those casual imitations of other poets
+which are so often branded as plagiarisms, that, in his Commentary on
+his Rime, he takes pains to point out and avow whatever coincidences of
+this kind occur in his own verses.
+
+While on this subject, I may be allowed to mention one single instance,
+where a thought that had lain perhaps indistinctly in Byron's memory
+since his youth, comes out so improved and brightened as to be, by every
+right of genius, his own. In the Two Noble Kinsmen of Beaumont and
+Fletcher (a play to which the picture of passionate friendship,
+delineated in the characters of Palamon and Arcite, would be sure to
+draw the attention of Byron in his boyhood,) we find the following
+passage:--
+
+           "Oh never
+    Shall we two exercise, like twins of Honour,
+    Our arms again, and _feel our fiery horses
+    Like proud seas under us_."
+
+Out of this somewhat forced simile, by a judicious transposition of the
+comparison, and by the substitution of the more definite word "waves"
+for "seas" the clear, noble thought in one of the Cantos of Childe
+Harold has been produced:--
+
+    "Once more upon the waters! yet once more!
+    And the waves bound beneath me, as a steed
+    That knows his rider."]
+
+[Footnote 47: "No man ever rose (says Pope) to any degree of perfection
+in writing but through obstinacy and an inveterate resolution against
+the stream of mankind."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 446. TO MR. 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 _you_, 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 himself (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 survivorship. 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 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, &c.
+
+     "The argument of the above is, that he wanted to 'stint me of my
+     sizings,' as Lear says,--that is to say, _not_ to propose an
+     extravagant price for an extravagant poem, as is becoming. Pray
+     take his guineas, by all means--_I_ 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, &c.
+
+     "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 I but perhaps it is for the best, if Herodotus's
+     anecdote is to be believed.
+
+     "Remember me to any friendly Angles of our mutual 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!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 447. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, August 31. 1821.
+
+     "I have received the Juans, which are printed so _carelessly_,
+     especially the fifth 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 squad don't approve of it; but I tell you that
+     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 MS.
+
+     "I never saw such stuff as is printed:--Gu_ll_eyaz instead of
+     Gu_lb_eyaz, &c. Are you aware that Gulbeyaz is a real name, and the
+     other nonsense? I copied the _Cantos_ out carefully, so that there
+     is _no_ excuse, as the printer read, or at least _prints_, the MS.
+     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, _it 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 reason 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, &c.
+
+     Also '_precarious_' for '_precocious_;' and this line, stanza 133.
+
+        "_And this strong extreme effect to tire no longer._
+
+     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'); let it, and see if
+     they sha'n't have enough of it. I do not allude to Gifford, who has
+     always been my friend, and whom I do not consider as responsible
+     for the articles written by others.
+
+     "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.
+
+     "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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 448.[48] TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "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
+     publications) 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 can't."
+
+[Footnote 48: Written in the envelope of the preceding Letter.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 449. TO MR. 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, containing the _Giaour_-nal, 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 syllables, which make but a cacophonous rhythmus. Put the pen
+     through the said, as I would mine through * *'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 _here_, till
+     further notice. Yours ever," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One of the "paper-books" mentioned in this letter as intrusted to Mr.
+Mawman for me, contained a portion, to the amount of nearly a hundred
+pages, of a prose story, relating the adventures of a young Andalusian
+nobleman, 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
+     château 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.
+     On her arrival at the château, I received another still more
+     affectionate, pressing me, in very fond, and rather foolish, terms,
+     to join her immediately. As I was preparing to set out from
+     Seville, I received a third--this was from her father, Don Jose di
+     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
+     replied, by express, that as reason had nothing to do with the
+     matter, it was unnecessary to give any--but that she was an injured
+     and excellent woman. I then enquired why she had written to me 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.
+
+     "I 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 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 blamable. My case was
+     supposed to comprise all the crimes which could, and several which
+     could not, be committed, and little less than an auto-da-fé was
+     anticipated as the result. But let no man say that we are abandoned
+     by our friends in adversity--it was just the reverse. Mine thronged
+     around me to condemn, advise, and console me with their
+     disapprobation.--They told me all that was, would, or could be said
+     on the subject. They shook their heads--they exhorted me--deplored
+     me, with tears in their eyes, and--went to dinner."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 450. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, September 4. 1821.
+
+     "By Saturday's post, I sent you a fierce and furibund 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.
+
+     "Yesterday I received Mr. ----, 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[49] 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[50], 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; that is to say,
+     to the _popular_ part, the _troops_ of the Carbonari. They are
+     originally a society of hunters in the forest, who took the name of
+     Americans, but at present comprise some thousands, &c.; 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
+     would 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.
+
+     "What think'st 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 squad are quite
+     wrong; and so you will find by and by. 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[51], 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 _Longitude_,' that you were trying to discover it.
+
+     "Let me hear that Gifford is _better_. He can't be spared either by
+     you or me."
+
+[Footnote 49: It will be observed, from this and a few other instances,
+that notwithstanding the wonderful purity of English he was able to
+preserve in his writings, while living constantly with persons speaking
+a different language, he had already begun so far to feel the influence
+of this habit as to fall occasionally into Italianisms in his familiar
+letters.--"I am in the case to know"--"I have caused write"--"It regrets
+me," &c.]
+
+[Footnote 50: An anonymous letter which he had received, threatening him
+with assassination.]
+
+[Footnote 51: In this note, so highly honourable to the fair writer, she
+says, "Remember, my Byron, the promise you have made me. Never shall I
+be able to tell you the satisfaction I feel from it, so great are the
+sentiments of pleasure and confidence with which the sacrifice you have
+made has inspired me." In a postscript to the note she adds, "I am only
+sorry that Don Juan was not left in the infernal regions."--"Ricordati,
+mio Byron, della promessa che mi hai fatta. Non potrei mai dirti la
+satisfazione ch' io ne provo!--sono tanti i sentimenti di piacere e di
+confidenza che il tuo sacrificio m'inspira."--"Mi reveresce solo che Don
+Giovanni non resti all' Inferno."
+
+In enclosing the lady's note to Mr. Murray, July 4th, Lord B. says,
+"This is the note of acknowledgment for the promise not to continue Don
+Juan. She says, in the postscript, that she is only sorry that D.J. does
+not _remain_ in Hell (or go there)".]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 451. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, September 12. 1821.
+
+     "By Tuesday's post, I forwarded, in three packets, the drama of
+     Cain in three acts, of which I request the acknowledgment 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
+     starting too many of your vagabonds at once. You may give them the
+     start, for any thing I care.
+
+     "Why don't you publish my _Pulci_--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
+     sha'n't, though,) I will write a poem to which 'English Bards,' &c.
+     shall be new milk, in comparison. 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--S * * twaddling--W * * drivelling--C * * muddling--* *
+     piddling--B * * quibbling, squabbling, and snivelling. * * 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. B * * C * *
+     will do better by-and-by, I dare say, if he don't get spoiled by
+     green tea, and the praises of Pentonville and Paradise Row. The
+     pity of these men is, that they never lived in _high life_, nor in
+     _solitude_: 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, _quarum partes fuimus_. Both of us have
+     learnt by this much which nothing else could have taught us.
+
+     "Yours.
+
+     "P.S. I saw one of your brethren, another of the allied sovereigns
+     of Grub Street, the other day, Mawman the Great, by whom I sent due
+     homage to your imperial self. To-morrow'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, parsons, scribblers, and loungers.
+     Some day I will give you a poetical catalogue of them."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 452. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Ravenna, September 17. 1821.
+
+     "The enclosed lines[52], 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 heart-breaking to see such things in a people as
+     the reception of that unredeemed * * * * * * 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, &c. &c. &c."
+
+[Footnote 52: "The Irish Avatar." In this copy the following sentence
+(taken from a letter of Curran, in the able Life of that true Irishman,
+by his son) is prefixed as a motto to the Poem,--"And Ireland, like a
+bastinadoed elephant, kneeling to receive the paltry rider."--_Letter of
+Curran, Life_, 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."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 453. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Ravenna, September 19, 1821.
+
+     "I am in all the sweat, dust, and blasphemy of an universal packing
+     of all my things, furniture, &c. for 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,' 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 preparing 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 English
+     visiters; for which reason, after writing for some information
+     about houses, upon hearing that there was a colony of English all
+     over the cantons of Geneva, &c. 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.' Be_case_ as _how_,
+     'spoke' is not grammar, except in the House of Commons; 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 regard, 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 licentiousness of Verb and Noun as may tend to 'disparage my
+     parts of speech' 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.'
+     Therefore, 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--'Cain' by name--making three in 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.
+     pers. 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," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 454. TO MR. 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! &c. &c. &c.
+
+     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 prodigality!'--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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 455 TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, September 20. 1821.
+
+     "You need not send 'The Blues,' which is a mere buffoonery, never
+     meant for publication.[53]
+
+     "The papers to which I allude, in case of survivorship, are
+     collections of letters, &c. 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 correspondents living, nor 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 Hobhouse 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, &c.--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 grandfather (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 addicted to any unhinging vice. It
+     was, however, but a strong suspicion, owing to the manner of his
+     death and 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 afterwards. I think, then, that
+     I may call this dejection _constitutional_. I had always been told
+     that I resembled more my maternal grandfather than any of my
+     _father's_ 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 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.
+
+     "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 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_ passions, rather than the rant of the present day. For
+     that matter--
+
+                      "Nay, if thou'lt mouth,
+        I'll rant as well as thou--
+
+     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 that 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, &c.
+
+     "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."
+
+[Footnote 53: This short satire, which is wholly unworthy of his pen,
+appeared afterwards in the Liberal.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 456. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, September 24. 1821.
+
+     "I have been thinking over our late correspondence, and wish to
+     propose to you the following articles for our future:--
+
+     "1stly. 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.
+
+     "2dly. 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 reimbursed for the same.
+
+     "3dly. 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 farther which I desire to know about them.--No other
+     English works whatsoever.
+
+     "4thly. That you send me no periodical works whatsoever--_no_
+     Edinburgh, Quarterly, Monthly, nor any review, magazine, or
+     newspaper, English or foreign, of any description.
+
+     "5thly. That you send 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.
+
+     "6thly. That all negotiations in matters of business between you
+     and me pass through the medium of the Hon. 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 legal friends. For the rest, I merely request to be left
+     in ignorance.
+
+     "The same applies to opinions, _good_, _bad_, or _indifferent_, 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 _troubled_; 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 channels 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 do of Italy, and God knows _that_ is
+     little enough, with all your travels, &c. &c. &c. The English
+     travellers _know Italy as you_ know Guernsey: how much is _that_?
+
+     "If any thing occurs so violently gross or personal as requires
+     notice, Mr. Douglas 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 mind _free 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 _cannot_ observe these
+     conditions, we shall cease to be correspondents,--but not
+     _friends_, for I shall always be yours ever and truly,
+
+     "BYRON.
+
+     "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 there!_--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, &c. 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."[54]
+
+[Footnote 54: It would be difficult to describe more strongly or more
+convincingly than Lord Byron has done in this letter the sort of petty,
+but thwarting obstructions and distractions which are at present thrown
+across the path of men of real talent by that swarm of minor critics and
+pretenders with whom the want of a vent in other professions has crowded
+all the walks of literature. Nor is it only the writers of the day that
+suffer from this multifarious rush into the mart;--the readers also,
+from having (as Lord Byron expresses it in another letter) "the
+superficies of too many things presented to them at once," come to lose
+by degrees their powers of discrimination; and, in the same manner as
+the palate becomes confused in trying various wines, so the public taste
+declines in proportion as the impressions to which it is exposed
+multiply.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 457. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "September 27. 1821.
+
+     "It was not Murray's fault. I did not send the MS. _overture_, but
+     I send it now[55], 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 * * *. 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;--but I hope still that I have done justice to
+     his great men and his good heart. As for * * *, you will find it
+     laid on with a trowel. I delight in your 'fact historical'--is it a
+     fact?
+
+     "Yours, &c.
+
+     "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!"
+
+[Footnote 55: 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.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 458. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "September 28. 1821.
+
+     "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 Melbourne'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 refers to the two periods (1812 and 1814) when my
+     marriage with her niece was in contemplation, and will tend to show
+     what my real views and feelings were upon that subject.
+
+     "You need not be alarmed; the 'fourteen years[56]' will hardly
+     elapse without some mortality amongst us; it is a long lease of
+     life to speculate upon. So your 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 Moore 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 Lady ----, (* * * * * * *), 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.
+
+     "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 a year or two more 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 of Charles Gordon, now of
+     Dulwich; and some few to Mrs. Chaworth; but these latter are
+     probably destroyed or inaccessible.
+
+     "I mention these people and particulars merely as _chances_. Most
+     of them have probably destroyed the letters, which in fact are of
+     little import, many of them written when very young, and several at
+     school and college.
+
+     "Peel (the _second_ brother of the Secretary) was a correspondent
+     of mine, and also Porter, the son of the Bishop of Clogher; Lord
+     Clare a very voluminous one; William Harness (a friend of Milman's)
+     another; Charles Drummond (son of the banker); William Bankes (the
+     voyager), your friend: R.C. Dallas, Esq.; Hodgson; Henry Drury;
+     Hobhouse you were already aware of.
+
+     "I have gone through this long list[57] 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, &c. &c. &c. 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, in
+     very English Etruscan; for I _speak_ Italian very fluently, but
+     write it carelessly and incorrectly to a degree."
+
+[Footnote 56: He here adverts to a passing remark, in one of Mr.
+Murray's letters, that, as his Lordship's "Memoranda" were not to be
+published in his lifetime, the sum now paid for the work, 2100_l_. would
+most probably, upon a reasonable calculation of survivorship, amount
+ultimately to no less than 8000_l_.]
+
+[Footnote 57: To all the persons upon this list who were accessible,
+application 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 correspondent 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 accumulate 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 distinguished
+associate and intimate of the noble poet, from the very outset to the
+close of his extraordinary career, have come forward cordially to
+communicate whatever memorials they possessed of him,--trusting, as I am
+willing to flatter myself, that they 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.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 459. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "September 29. 1821.
+
+     "I send you two rough things, prose and verse, not much in
+     themselves, but which will show, one of them, 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, mentioned in the foregoing note, one was a letter
+intended to be sent to Lady Byron relative to his money invested in the
+funds, of which the following are extracts:--
+
+     "Ravenna, Marza 1mo, 1821.
+
+     "I have received your message, through my sister's letter, about
+     English security, &c. &c. 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 consequence 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.
+
+     "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 without 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 in the note consisted of some verses, written by
+him, December 10th, 1820, on seeing the following paragraph in a
+newspaper:--"Lady Byron is this year the lady patroness at the annual
+Charity Ball given at the Town Hall at Hinckley, Leicestershire, and Sir
+G. Crewe, Bart, the principal steward." These verses are full of strong
+and indignant feeling,--every stanza concluding pointedly with the words
+"Charity Ball,"--and the thought that predominates through the whole may
+be collected from a few of the opening lines:--
+
+    "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,'" &c. &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 460. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "September--no--October 1. 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 intermittent
+     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, provided you raised your price upon
+     him--as what Lady Holderness (my sister's grandmother, a
+     Dutchwoman) used to call Augusta, her _Residee Legatoo_--so as to
+     provide for us all: _my_ bones with a splendid and larmoyante
+     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 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 'The
+     Vision of 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 Apotheosis 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 Emancipation, 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.
+
+     "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.'
+
+     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 mountain of lead upon my heart,' which I believe to be
+     constitutional, and that nothing will remove it but the same
+     remedy."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 461. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "October 6. 1821.
+
+     "By this post I have sent my nightmare to balance the incubus of *
+     * *'s impudent anticipation of the Apotheosis of George the Third.
+     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 _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. Laudanum has a similar effect; but I can take much of
+     _it_ without any effect at all. The thing that gives me the
+     highest spirits (it seems absurd, but true) is a close of
+     _salts_--I mean in the afternoon, after their effect.[58] 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," &c.
+
+[Footnote 58: It was, no doubt, from a similar experience of its effects
+that Dryden always took physic when about to write any thing of
+importance. His caricature, Bayes, is accordingly made to say, "When I
+have a grand design, I ever take physic and let blood; for, when you
+would have pure swiftness of thought and fiery flights of fancy, you
+must have a care of the pensive part;--in short," &c. &c.
+
+On this subject of the effects of medicine upon the mind and spirits,
+some curious facts and illustrations have been, with his usual research,
+collected by Mr. D'Israeli, in his amusing "Curiosities of Literature."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 462. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, October 9. 1821.
+
+     "You will please to present or convey the enclosed poem to Mr.
+     Moore. I sent him another copy to Paris, but he has probably left
+     that city.
+
+     "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 Harriet Lee's 'German's Tale' from the 'Canterbury Tales,'
+     and send it in a letter also. I began that tragedy in 1815.
+
+     "By the way, you have a good deal of my prose tracts in MS.? 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 Mystères 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 Crabbe,
+     Moore, and the Elect; but none of your curst common-place
+     trash,--unless something starts up of actual merit, which may very
+     well be, for 'tis time it should."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 463. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "October 20. 1821.
+
+     "If the errors _are_ in the MS. 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 MS. too?
+
+     "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.' It is so with all men. If I come to a
+     friend, and say, 'Friend, 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, &c. &c. &c. &c. &c. honestly
+     worth a thousand pounds, you shall have them for five hundred,'
+     what does Ditto say? why, he looks at them, he _hums_, he
+     _ha's_,--he _humbugs_, 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.
+
+     "I am filling another book for you with little anecdotes, to my own
+     knowledge, or well authenticated, of Sheridan, Curran, &c. 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.
+
+     "Yours," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 464. TO MR. ROGERS.
+
+     "Ravenna, October 21. 1821.
+
+     "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 winter, to which all my chattels, furniture, horses,
+     carriages, and live stock are already removed, and I am preparing
+     to follow.
+
+     "The cause of this removal is, shortly, the exile or proscription
+     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, &c. to precede me. I
+     have not here a seat or a bed hardly, except some jury chairs, and
+     tables, and a mattress 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, 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
+     could 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 climes.
+
+     "It is better than a lustre (five years and six months and some
+     days, more or less) since we met; and, like the man from Tadcaster
+     in the farce ('Love laughs at Locksmiths'), 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, Sheridan,
+     Curran, &c. &c. almost every body of much name of the old school.
+     But 'so am not I, said the foolish fat scullion,' therefore let us
+     make the most of our remainder.
+
+     "Let me find two lines from you at 'the hostel or inn.'
+
+     "Yours ever, &c.
+
+     "B."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 465. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Ravenna, Oct. 28. 1821.
+
+     "''Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,' and in three hours
+     more I have to set out on my way to Pisa--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. He is
+     trying to 'pound' me, too; 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' is agreeable, for more reasons
+     than one. Hobhouse is pleased to think as you do of it, and so do
+     some others--but the 'Arimaspian,' whom, like 'a Gryphon in the
+     wilderness,' 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 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 _min_ded 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 Brunswick blarney. I am of
+     Longman's opinion, that you should allow your friends to liquidate
+     the Bermuda claim. 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![59] &c. &c.' it is all very fine and very well,
+     but, till you can persuade me that there is _no 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 _species_, which I do
+     of our friend Ms. Spe_cie_."
+
+[Footnote 59: 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.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the month of August, Madame Guiccioli had joined her father at Pisa,
+and was now superintending the preparations at the Casa Lanfranchi,--one
+of the most ancient and spacious palaces of that city,--for the
+reception of her noble friend. "He left Ravenna," says this lady, "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 displeasure at this step. 'If your father should be
+recalled,' he said, '_I immediately return_ to Ravenna; and if he is
+recalled _previous_ to my departure, _I remain_.' 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!"[60]
+
+After describing his mode of life while at Ravenna, the lady thus
+proceeds:--
+
+"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 actions he was
+continually performing. Many families (in Ravenna principally) owed to
+him the few prosperous days they ever enjoyed. His arrival in that town
+was spoken of as a piece of public good fortune, and his departure as a
+public calamity; and this is the life which many attempted to asperse as
+that of a libertine. 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 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 excessive 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 contradictions 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."[61]
+
+At Bologna, according to the appointment made between them, Lord Byron
+and Mr. Rogers met; and the record which this latter gentleman has, in
+his Poem on Italy, preserved of their meeting, conveys so vivid a
+picture of the poet at this period, with, at the same time, so just and
+feeling a tribute to his memory, that, narrowed as my limits are now
+becoming, I cannot refrain from giving the sketch entire.
+
+[Footnote 60: "Egli era partito 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 dispiacere di lasciare Ravenna. 'Se papà è richiamato
+(mi scriveva egli) io torno in quel istante a Ravenna, e se è richiamato
+_prima_ della mia partenza, _io non parto_.' In questa speranza egli
+differi varii mesi a partire. Ma, finalmente, non potendo più sperare il
+nostro ritorno prossimo, egli mi scriveva--'Io parto molto mal
+volontieri prevedendo dei mali assai grandi per voi altri e massime per
+voi; altro non dico,--lo vedrete.' E in un altra lettera, 'Io lascio
+Ravenna così mal volontieri, e così persuaso che la mia partenza non può
+che condurre da un male ad un altro più 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!]
+
+[Footnote 61: The leaf that contains the original of this extract I have
+unluckily mislaid.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"BOLOGNA.
+
+    "'Twas night; the noise and bustle of the day
+    Were o'er. The mountebank no longer wrought
+    Miraculous cures--he and his stage were gone;
+    And he who, when the crisis of his tale
+    Came, and all stood breathless with hope and fear,
+    Sent round his cap; and he who thrumm'd his wire
+    And sang, with pleading look and plaintive strain
+    Melting the passenger. Thy thousand cries [62],
+    So well portray'd and by a son of thine,
+    Whose voice had swell'd the hubbub in his youth,
+    Were hush'd, BOLOGNA, silence in the streets,
+    The squares, when hark, the clattering of fleet hoofs;
+    And soon a courier, posting as from far,
+    Housing and holster, boot and belted coat
+    And doublet stain'd with many a various soil,
+    Stopt and alighted. 'Twas where hangs aloft
+    That ancient sign, the Pilgrim, welcoming
+    All who arrive there, all perhaps save those
+    Clad like himself, with staff and scallop-shell,
+    Those on a pilgrimage: and now approach'd
+    Wheels, through the lofty porticoes resounding,
+    Arch beyond arch, a shelter or a shade
+    As the sky changes. To the gate they came;
+    And, ere the man had half his story done,
+    Mine host received the Master--one long used
+    To sojourn among strangers, every where
+    (Go where he would, along the wildest track)
+    Flinging a charm that shall not soon be lost,
+    And leaving footsteps to be traced by those
+    Who love the haunts of Genius; one who saw,
+    Observed, nor shunn'd the busy scenes of life,
+    But mingled not; and mid the din, the stir,
+    Lived as a separate Spirit.
+                                "Much had pass'd
+    Since last we parted; and those five short years--
+    Much had they told! His clustering locks were turn'd
+    Grey; 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
+    Flash'd 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.
+      "Well I remember how the golden sun
+    Fill'd with its beams the unfathomable gulfs
+    As on we travell'd, and along the ridge,
+    'Mid groves of cork, and cistus, and wild fig,
+    His motley household came.--Not last nor least,
+    Battista, who upon the moonlight-sea
+    Of Venice had so ably, zealously
+    Served, and at parting, thrown his oar away
+    To follow through the world; who without stain
+    Had worn so long that honourable badge[63],
+    The gondolier's, in a Patrician House
+    Arguing unlimited trust.--Not last nor least,
+    Thou, though declining in thy beauty and strength,
+    Faithful Moretto, to the latest hour
+    Guarding his chamber-door, and now along
+    The silent, sullen strand of MISSOLONGHI
+    Howling in grief.
+                      "He had just left that Place
+    Of old renown, once in the ADRIAN sea[64],
+    RAVENNA; where from DANTE'S sacred tomb
+    He had so oft, as many a verse declares[65],
+    Drawn inspiration; where at twilight-time,
+    Through the pine-forest wandering with loose rein,
+    Wandering and lost, he had so oft beheld[66]
+    (What is not visible to a poet's eye?)
+    The spectre-knight, the hell-hounds, and their prey,
+    The chase, the slaughter, and the festal mirth
+    Suddenly blasted. 'Twas a theme he loved,
+    But others claim'd their turn; and many a tower,
+    Shatter'd uprooted from its native rock,
+    Its strength the pride of some heroic age,
+    Appear'd and vanish'd (many a sturdy steer[67]
+    Yoked and unyoked), while, as in happier days,
+    He pour'd his spirit forth. The past forgot,
+    All was enjoyment. Not a cloud obscured
+    Present or future.
+                       "He is now at rest;
+    And praise and blame fall on his ear alike,
+    Now dull in death. Yes, BYRON, thou art gone,
+    Gone like a star that through the firmament
+    Shot and was lost, in its eccentric course
+    Dazzling, perplexing. Yet thy heart, methinks,
+    Was generous, noble--noble in its scorn
+    Of all things low or little; nothing there
+    Sordid or servile. If imagined wrongs
+    Pursued thee, urging thee sometimes to do
+    Things long regretted, oft, as many know,
+    None more than I, thy gratitude would build
+    On slight foundations: and, if in thy life
+    Not happy, in thy death thou surely wert,
+    Thy wish accomplish'd; dying in the land
+    Where thy young mind had caught ethereal fire,
+    Dying in GREECE, and in a cause so glorious!
+      "They in thy train--ah, little did they think,
+    As round we went, that they so soon should sit
+    Mourning beside thee, while a Nation mourn'd,
+    Changing her festal for her funeral song;
+    That they so soon should hear the minute-gun,
+    As morning gleam'd on what remain'd of thee,
+    Roll o'er the sea, the mountains, numbering
+    Thy years of joy and sorrow.
+                                 "Thou art gone;
+    And he who would assail thee in thy grave,
+    Oh, let him pause! For who among us all,
+    Tried as thou wert--even from thine earliest years,
+    When wandering, yet unspoilt, a highland boy--Tried
+    as thou wert, and with thy soul of flame;
+    Pleasure, while yet the down was on thy cheek,
+    Uplifting, pressing, and to lips like thine,
+    Her charmed cup--ah, who among us all
+    Could say he had not err'd as much, and more?"
+
+[Footnote 62: "See the Cries of Bologna, as drawn by Aunibal Caracci. He
+was of very humble origin; and, to correct his brother's vanity, once
+sent him a portrait of their father, the tailor, threading his needle."]
+
+[Footnote 63: "The principal gondolier, il fante di poppa, was almost
+always in the confidence of his master, and employed on occasions that
+required judgment and address."]
+
+[Footnote 64: "Adrianum mare.--CICERO."]
+
+[Footnote 65: "See the Prophecy of Dante."]
+
+[Footnote 66: "See the tale as told by Boccaccio and Dryden."]
+
+[Footnote 67: "They wait for the traveller's carriage at the foot of
+every hill."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the road to Bologna he had met with his early and dearest friend,
+Lord Clare, and the following description of their short interview is
+given in his "Detached Thoughts."
+
+"Pisa, November 5. 1821.
+
+"'There is a strange coincidence sometimes in the little things of this
+world, Sancho,' says Sterne in a letter (if I mistake not), and so I
+have often found it.
+
+"Page 128. article 91. of this collection, 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 was 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 on 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 Bologna, 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After remaining a day at Bologna, Lord Byron crossed the Apennines with
+Mr. Rogers; and I find the following note of their visit together to the
+Gallery at Florence:--
+
+"I revisited the Florence Gallery, &c. My former impressions were
+confirmed; but there were too many visiters there to allow one 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 Rogers that it 'felt like being in the watchhouse.' I
+left him to make his obeisances to some of his acquaintances, and
+strolled on alone--the only four minutes I could snatch of any feeling
+for the works around me. I do not mean to apply this to a _tête-à-tête_
+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 prescription 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.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 466. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Pisa, November 3. 1821.
+
+     "The two passages cannot be altered without making Lucifer talk
+     like the Bishop of Lincoln, which would not be in the character of
+     the former. The notion is from Cuvier (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,' &c. do you really think such
+     things ever led any body astray? Are these people more impious than
+     Milton's Satan? or the Prometheus of Æschylus? or even than the
+     Sadducees of * *, the 'Fall of Jerusalem' * *? 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 kingdom, &c. 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_ premeditation, 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.
+
+     "Either dedicate it to Walter Scott, or, if you think he 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 grumbling back to my jungle again;
+     but if I do _hit_, it is crushing. * * * 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 _Hobhouse_'s. I addressed it to
+     you as an Admiralty man, great at the Custom-house. Pray deduct the
+     expenses of the same, and all others.
+
+     "Yours," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 467. TO MR. 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.
+
+     "Enclosed is a lyrical drama, (entitled 'A Mystery,' from its
+     subject,) which, perhaps may arrive in time for the volume. 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, &c.
+
+     "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, including the prose and the Don Juans, &c. I have at least
+     sent you _variety_ during the last year or two."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 468. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Pisa, November 16. 1821.
+
+     "There is here Mr. * *, an Irish genius, with whom we are
+     acquainted. He hath written a really _excellent_ Commentary on
+     Dante, 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
+     ventured 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 than there are in his
+     original. Indeed, the _Notes_ are well worth publication; but he
+     insists upon the translation 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,' &c.
+
+     "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.[68] 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, &c.
+
+     "P.S. What I wrote to you about low spirits is, however, very true.
+     At present, owing to the climate, &c. (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
+     proprietorship,) my spirits are much better. You seem to think that
+     I could not have written the 'Vision,' &c. under the influence of
+     low spirits; but I think there you err.[69] A man's poetry is a
+     distinct faculty, or Soul, and has no more to do with the every-day
+     individual than the Inspiration with the Pythoness when removed
+     from her tripod."
+
+[Footnote 68: Having discovered that, while I was abroad, a kind friend
+had, without any communication with myself, placed at the disposal 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 explanation, such passages as
+the above would be unintelligible.]
+
+[Footnote 69: 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. The
+author of the Night Thoughts was a "fellow of infinite jest;" and of the
+pathetic Rowe, Pope says--"He would laugh all day long--he would do
+nothing else but laugh."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The correspondence which I am now about to insert, though long since
+published by the gentleman with whom it originated[70], will, I have no
+doubt, even by those already acquainted with all the circumstances, be
+reperused with pleasure; as, among the many strange and affecting
+incidents with which these pages abound, there is not one, perhaps, so
+touching and singular as that to which the following letters refer.
+
+TO LORD BYRON.
+
+     "Frome, Somerset, November 21. 1821.
+
+     "My Lord,
+
+     "More than two years since, a lovely and beloved wife was taken
+     from me, by lingering disease, after a very short union. She
+     possessed unvarying gentleness and fortitude, and a piety so
+     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 mention 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
+     transcendant 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 procure! 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
+     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,
+     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,
+     deprived of the grand fountain of good, (a deep conviction of
+     inborn sin, and firm belief in the efficacy of Christ's death for
+     the salvation of those who trust in him, and really wish to serve
+     him,) would soon dry up, and leave us barren of 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 reflection how deep and expansive a concern for the
+     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. Delamartine; 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, showed 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."
+
+[Footnote 70: See "Thoughts on Private Devotion," by Mr. Sheppard.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+However romantic, in the eyes of the cold and worldly, the piety of this
+young person may appear, it were to be wished that the truly Christian
+feeling which dictated her prayer were more common among all who profess
+the same creed; and that those indications of a better nature, so
+visible even through the clouds of his character, which induced this
+innocent young woman to pray for Byron, while living, could have the
+effect of inspiring others with more charity towards his memory, now
+that he is dead.
+
+The following is Lord Byron's answer to this affecting communication.
+
+LETTER 469. TO MR. SHEPPARD.
+
+     "Pisa, December 8. 1821.
+
+     "Sir,
+
+     "I have received your letter. I need not say, that the extract
+     which it contains has affected me, because 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 the life and demeanour of the excellent
+     person whom I trust you will again meet, cannot be contemplated
+     without 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 reading 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 believers 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
+     comprehend. 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 this point of view, I would not
+     exchange the prayer of the deceased in my behalf for the united
+     glory of Homer, Cæsar, 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 clergyman; 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 470. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Pisa, December 4. 1821.
+
+     "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, &c. the noble poet,'meaning your
+     humble servant, 'poor guiltless I.'
+
+     "Poor Napoleon! he little dreamed to what vile comparisons the turn
+     of the wheel would reduce him!
+
+     "I have got here into a famous old feudal palazzo, on 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
+     mentioned by Ugolino in his dream, as his persecutor with
+     Sismondi,) and has had a fierce owner or two in its time. The
+     staircase, &c. is said to have been built by Michel Agnolo. 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," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 471. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Pisa, December 10. 1821.
+
+     "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.
+
+     "I have remarked a curious coincidence, which almost looks like a
+     fatality.
+
+     "My _mother_, my _wife_, my _daughter_, my _half-sister_, my
+     _sisters mother_, my _natural daughter_ (as far at least as _I_ 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 an only
+     child, an only child again. Lady Byron, as you know, was one also,
+     and so is my daughter, &c.
+
+     "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.
+
+     "Yours, &c. B."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 472. TO MR. 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.[71] I
+     wish _you_ would undertake 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, 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, &c. are as 'german
+     to the matter' as Mr. Maturin could desire for his novels. * * * *
+
+     "The consummation you mentioned for poor * * was near taking place
+     yesterday. Riding pretty sharply 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 a-head 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 * *
+     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, &c.
+
+     "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 harmless.[72] 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 * * 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 _burnt_. 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. * * is gone
+     to see what can be done.
+
+     "B."
+
+[Footnote 71: 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 he but a fair satire on the disposition
+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 been yet related
+or believed of him, and leaving even Goethe's story of the double murder
+in Florence far behind.]
+
+[Footnote 72: The following are the lines enclosed in this letter. In
+one of his Journals, where they are also given, he has subjoined to them
+the following note:--"I composed these stanzas (except the fourth, added
+now) a few days ago, on the road from Florence to Pisa.
+
+    "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.
+
+    "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?
+
+    "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.
+
+    "_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."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 473. TO MR. 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_ remonstrance 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 interfere.
+     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," &c
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 474. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "I send you the two notes, which will tell you the story I allude
+     to of the Auto da Fè. Shelley's allusion to his 'fellow-serpent' 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.
+
+     "My 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 _every
+     way_ that I can imagine may have any success. Be assured of this.
+
+     "Your Lordship's most truly,
+
+     "* *.
+
+     "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 in 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 475. TO SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART.
+
+     "Pisa, January 12. 1822.
+
+     "My dear Sir Walter,
+
+     "I need not say how grateful I am for your letter, but I must own
+     my ingratitude in not having written to you again long ago. Since I
+     left England (and it is not for all the usual term of
+     transportation) I have scribbled to five hundred blockheads on
+     business, &c. without difficulty, though with no great pleasure;
+     and yet, with the notion of addressing you a hundred times in my
+     head, and always in my heart, I have not done what I ought to have
+     done. I can only account for it on the same principle of tremulous
+     anxiety with which one sometimes makes love to a beautiful woman of
+     our own degree, with whom one is enamoured in good earnest;
+     whereas, we attack a fresh-coloured housemaid without (I speak, of
+     course, of earlier times) any sentimental remorse or mitigation of
+     our virtuous purpose.
+
+     "I owe to you far more than the usual obligation for the courtesies
+     of literature and common friendship; for you went out of your way
+     in 1817 to do me a service, when it required not merely kindness,
+     but courage to do so: to have been recorded by you in such a
+     manner, would have been a proud memorial at any time, but at such a
+     time when 'all the world and his wife,' as the proverb goes, were
+     trying to trample upon me, was something still higher to my
+     self-esteem,--I allude to the Quarterly Review of the Third Canto
+     of Childe Harold, which Murray told me was written by you,--and,
+     indeed, I should have known it without his information, as there
+     could not be two who _could_ and _would_ have done this at the
+     time. Had it been a common criticism, however eloquent or
+     panegyrical, I should have felt pleased, undoubtedly, and grateful,
+     but not to the extent which the extraordinary good-heartedness of
+     the whole proceeding must induce in any mind capable of such
+     sensations. The very _tardiness_ of this acknowledgment will, at
+     least, show that I have not forgotten the obligation; and I can
+     assure you that my sense of it has been out at compound interest
+     during the delay. I shall only add one word upon the subject, which
+     is, that I think that you, and Jeffrey, and Leigh Hunt were the
+     only literary men, of numbers whom I know (and some of whom I had
+     served), who dared venture even an anonymous word in my favour just
+     then: and that, of those three, I had never seen _one_ at all--of
+     the second much less than I desired--and that the third was under
+     no kind of obligation to me, whatever; while the other _two_ had
+     been actually attacked by me on a former occasion; _one_, indeed,
+     with some provocation, but the other wantonly enough. So you see
+     you have been heaping 'coals of fire, &c.' in the true gospel
+     manner, and I can assure you that they have burnt down to my very
+     heart.
+
+     "I am glad that you accepted the Inscription. I meant to have
+     inscribed 'The Foscarini' to you instead; but first, I heard that
+     'Cain' was thought the least bad of the two as a composition; and,
+     2dly, I have abused S * * like a pickpocket, in a note to the
+     Foscarini, and I recollected that he is a friend of yours (though
+     not of mine), and that it would not be the handsome thing to
+     dedicate to one friend any thing containing such matters about
+     another. However, I'll work the Laureate before I have done with
+     him, as soon as I can muster Billingsgate therefor. I like a row,
+     and always did from a boy, in the course of which propensity, I
+     must needs say, that I have found it the most easy of all to be
+     gratified, personally and poetically. You disclaim 'jealousies;'
+     but I would ask, as Boswell did of Johnson, 'of _whom could_ you be
+     _jealous_?'--of none of the living certainly, and (taking all and
+     all into consideration) of which of the dead? I don't like to bore
+     you about the Scotch novels, (as they call them, though two of them
+     are wholly English, and the rest half so,) but nothing can or could
+     ever persuade me, since I was the first ten minutes in your
+     company, that you are _not_ the man. To me those novels have so
+     much of 'Auld lang syne' (I was bred a canny Scot till ten years
+     old) that I never move without them; and when I removed from
+     Ravenna to Pisa the other day, and sent on my library before, they
+     were the only books that I kept by me, although I already have them
+     by heart.
+
+     "January 27. 1822.
+
+     "I delayed till now concluding, in the hope that I should have got
+     'The Pirate,' who is under way for me, but has not yet hove in
+     sight. I hear that your daughter is married, and I suppose by this
+     time you are half a grandfather--a young one, by the way. I have
+     heard great things of Mrs. Lockhart's personal and mental charms,
+     and much good of her lord: that you may live to see as many novel
+     Scotts as there are Scots' novels, is the very bad pun, but sincere
+     wish of
+
+     "Yours ever most affectionately, &c.
+
+     "P.S. Why don't you take a turn in Italy? You would find yourself
+     as well known and as welcome as in the Highlands among the natives.
+     As for the English, you would be with them as in London; and I need
+     not add, that I should be delighted to see you again, which is far
+     more than I shall ever feel or say for England, or (with a few
+     exceptions 'of kith, kin, and allies') any thing that it contains.
+     But my 'heart warms to the tartan,' or to any thing of Scotland,
+     which reminds me of Aberdeen and other parts, not so far from the
+     Highlands as that town, about Invercauld and Braemar, where I was
+     sent to drink goat's _fey_ in 1795-6, in consequence of a
+     threatened decline after the scarlet fever. But I am gossiping, so,
+     good night--and the gods be with your dreams!
+
+     "Pray, present my respects to Lady Scott, who may, perhaps,
+     recollect having seen me in town in 1815.
+
+     "I see that one of your supporters (for like Sir Hildebrand, I am
+     fond of Guillin) is a _mermaid_; it is my _crest_ too, and with
+     precisely the same curl of tail. There's concatenation for you:--I
+     am building a little cutter at Genoa, to go a cruising in the
+     summer. I know _you_ like the sea too."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 476. TO ----.[73]
+
+     "Pisa, February 6. 1822.
+
+     "'Try back the deep lane,' till we find a publisher for the
+     'Vision;' and if none such is to be found, print fifty copies at my
+     expense, distribute them amongst my acquaintance, and you will soon
+     see that the booksellers _will_ publish them, even if we opposed
+     them. That they are now afraid is natural, but I do not see that I
+     ought to give way on that account. I know nothing of Rivington's
+     'Remonstrance' by the 'eminent Churchman;' but I suppose he wants a
+     living. I once heard of a preacher at Kentish Town against 'Cain.'
+     The same outcry was raised against Priestley, Hume, Gibbon,
+     Voltaire, and all the men who dared to put tithes to the question.
+
+     "I have got S----'s pretended reply, to which I am surprised that
+     you do not allude. What remains to be done is to call him out. The
+     question is, would he come? for, if he would not, the whole thing
+     would appear ridiculous, if I were to take a long and expensive
+     journey to no purpose.
+
+     "You must be my second, and, as such, I wish to consult you.
+
+     "I apply to you, as one well versed in the duello, or monomachie.
+     Of course I shall come to England as privately as possible, and
+     leave it (supposing that I was the survivor) in the same manner;
+     having no other object which could bring me to that country except
+     to settle quarrels accumulated during my absence.
+
+     "By the last post I transmitted to you a letter upon some Rochdale
+     toll business, from which there are moneys in prospect. My agent
+     says two thousand pounds, but supposing it to be only one, or even
+     one hundred, still they may be moneys; and I have lived long enough
+     to have an exceeding respect for the smallest current coin of any
+     realm, or the least sum, which, although I may not want it myself,
+     may do something for others who may need it more than I.
+
+     "They say that 'Knowledge is Power:'--I used to think so; but I now
+     know that they meant '_money_:' and when Socrates declared, 'that
+     all he knew was, that he knew nothing,' he merely intended to
+     declare, that he had not a drachm in the Athenian world.
+
+     "The _circulars_ are arrived, and circulating like the vortices (or
+     vortexes) of Descartes. Still I have a due care of the needful, and
+     keep a look out ahead, as my notions upon the score of moneys
+     coincide with yours, and with all men's who have lived to see that
+     every guinea is a philosopher's stone, or at least his
+     _touch_-stone. You will doubt me the less, when I pronounce my firm
+     belief, that _Cash_ is _Virtue_.
+
+     "I cannot reproach myself with much expenditure: my only extra
+     expense (and it is more than I have spent upon myself) being a loan
+     of two hundred and fifty pounds to ----; and fifty pounds worth of
+     furniture, which I have bought for him; and a boat which I am
+     building for myself at Genoa, which will cost about a hundred
+     pounds more.
+
+     "But to return. I am determined to have all the moneys I can,
+     whether by my own funds, or succession, or lawsuit, or MSS. or any
+     lawful means whatever.
+
+     "I will pay (though with the sincerest reluctance) my remaining
+     creditors, and every man of law, by instalments from the award of
+     the arbitrators.
+
+     "I recommend to you the notice in Mr. Hanson's letter, on the
+     demands of moneys for the Rochdale tolls.
+
+     "Above all, I recommend my interests to your honourable worship.
+
+     "Recollect, too, that I expect some moneys for the various MSS. (no
+     matter what); and, in short, 'Rem _quocunque modo_, Rem!'--the
+     noble feeling of cupidity grows upon us with our years.
+
+     "Yours ever," &c.
+
+[Footnote 73: This letter has been already published, with a few others,
+in a periodical work, and is known to have been addressed to the late
+Mr. Douglas Kinnaird.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 477. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Pisa, February 8. 1822.
+
+     "Attacks upon me were to be expected, but I perceive one upon _you_
+     in the papers, which I confess that I did not expect. How, or in
+     what manner, _you_ can be considered responsible for what _I_
+     publish, I am at a loss to conceive.
+
+     "If 'Cain' be 'blasphemous,' Paradise Lost is blasphemous; and the
+     very words of the Oxford gentleman, 'Evil, be thou my good,' are
+     from that very poem, from the mouth of Satan, and is there any
+     thing more in that of Lucifer in the Mystery? Cain is nothing more
+     than a drama, not a piece of argument. If Lucifer and Cain speak as
+     the first murderer and the first rebel may be supposed to speak,
+     surely all the rest of the personages talk also according to their
+     characters--and the stronger passions have ever been permitted to
+     the drama.
+
+     "I have even avoided introducing the Deity as in Scripture, (though
+     Milton does, and not very wisely either,) but have adopted his
+     angel as sent to Cain instead, on purpose to avoid shocking any
+     feelings on the subject by falling short of what all uninspired men
+     must fall short in, viz. giving an adequate notion of the effect of
+     the presence of Jehovah. The old Mysteries introduced him liberally
+     enough, and all this is avoided in the new one.
+
+     "The attempt to _bully you_, because they think it won't succeed
+     with me, seems to me as atrocious an attempt as ever disgraced the
+     times. What! when Gibbon's, Hume's, Priestley's, and Drummond's
+     publishers have been allowed to rest in peace for seventy years,
+     are you to be singled out for a work of _fiction_, not of history
+     or argument? There must be something at the bottom of this--some
+     private enemy of your own: it is otherwise incredible.
+
+     "I can only say, 'Me, me; en adsum qui feci;'--that any proceedings
+     directed against you, I beg, may be transferred to me, who am
+     willing, and _ought_, to endure them all;--that if you have lost
+     money by the publication, I will refund any or all of the
+     copyright;--that I desire you will say that both _you_ and _Mr.
+     Gifford_ remonstrated against the publication, as also Mr.
+     Hobhouse;--that _I_ alone occasioned it, and I alone am the person
+     who, either legally or otherwise, should bear the burden. If they
+     prosecute, I will come to England--that is, if, by meeting it in my
+     own person, I can save yours. Let me know. You sha'n't suffer for
+     me, if I can help it. Make any use of this letter you please.
+
+     "Yours ever, &c.
+
+     "P.S. I write to you about all this row of bad passions and
+     absurdities with the _summer_ moon (for here our winter is clearer
+     than your dog-days) lighting the winding Arno, with all her
+     buildings and bridges,--so quiet and still!--What nothings are we
+     before the least of these stars!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 478. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Pisa, February 19. 1822.
+
+     "I am rather surprised not to have had an answer to my letter and
+     packets. Lady Noel is dead, and it is not impossible that I may
+     have to go to England to settle the division of the Wentworth
+     property, and what portion Lady B. is to have out of it; all which
+     was left undecided by the articles of separation. But I hope not,
+     if it can be done without,--and I have written to Sir Francis
+     Burdett to be my referee, as he knows the property.
+
+     "Continue to address here, as I shall not go if I can avoid it--at
+     least, not on that account. But I may on another; for I wrote to
+     Douglas Kinnaird to convey a message of invitation to Mr. Southey
+     to meet me, either in England, or (as less liable to interruption)
+     on the coast of France. This was about a fortnight ago, and I have
+     not yet had time to have the answer. However, you shall have due
+     notice; therefore continue to address to Pisa.
+
+     "My agents and trustees have written to me to desire that I would
+     take the name directly, so that I am yours very truly and
+     affectionately,
+
+     "NOEL BYRON.
+
+     "P.S. I have had no news from England, except on business; and
+     merely know, from some abuse in that faithful _ex_ and _de_-tractor
+     Galignani, that the clergy are up against 'Cain.' There is (if I am
+     not mistaken) some good church preferment on the Wentworth estates;
+     and I will show them what a good Christian I am, by patronising and
+     preferring the most pious of their order, should opportunity occur.
+
+     "M. and I are but little in correspondence, and I know nothing of
+     literary matters at present. I have been writing on business only
+     lately. What are _you_ about? Be assured that there is no such
+     coalition as you apprehend."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 479. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Pisa, February 20. 1822.[74]
+
+     "Your letter arrived since I wrote the enclosed. It is not likely,
+     as I have appointed agents and arbitrators for the Noel estates,
+     that I should proceed to England on that account,--though I may
+     upon another, within stated. At any rate, _continue_ you to address
+     here till you hear further from me. I could wish _you_ still to
+     arrange for me, either with a London or Paris publisher, for the
+     things, &c. I shall not quarrel with any arrangement you may please
+     to make.
+
+     "I have appointed Sir Francis Burdett my arbitrator to decide on
+     Lady Byron's allowance out of the Noel estates, which are estimated
+     at seven thousand a year, and _rents_ very well paid,--a rare thing
+     at this time. It is, however, owing to their _consisting_ chiefly
+     in pasture lands, and therefore less affected by corn bills, &c.
+     than properties in tillage.
+
+     "Believe me yours ever most affectionately,
+
+     "NOEL BYRON.
+
+     "Between my own property in the funds, and my wife's in land, I do
+     not know which _side_ to cry out on in politics.
+
+     "There is nothing against the immortality of the soul in 'Cain'
+     that I recollect. I hold no such opinions;--but, in a drama, the
+     first rebel and the first murderer must be made to talk according
+     to their characters. However, the parsons are all preaching at it,
+     from Kentish Town and Oxford to Pisa;--the scoundrels of priests,
+     who do more harm to religion than all the infidels that ever forgot
+     their catechisms!
+
+     "I have not seen Lady Noel's death announced in Galignani.--How is
+     that?"
+
+[Footnote 74: The preceding letter came enclosed in this.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 480. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Pisa, February 28. 1822.
+
+     "I begin to think that the packet (a heavy one) of five acts of
+     'Werner,' &c. can hardly have reached you, for your letter of last
+     week (which I answered) did not allude to it, and yet I insured it
+     at the post-office here.
+
+     "I have no direct news from England, except on the Noel business,
+     which is proceeding quietly, as I have appointed a gentleman (Sir
+     F. Burdett) for my arbitrator. They, too, have said that they will
+     recall the _lawyer_ whom _they_ had chosen, and will name a
+     gentleman too. This is better, as the arrangement of the estates
+     and of Lady B.'s allowance will thus be settled without quibbling.
+     My lawyers are taking out a licence for the name and arms, which it
+     seems I am to endue.
+
+     "By another, and indirect, quarter, I hear that 'Cain' has been
+     pirated, and that the Chancellor has refused to give Murray any
+     redress. Also, that G.R. (_your_ friend 'Ben') has expressed great
+     personal indignation at the said poem. All this is curious enough,
+     I think,--after allowing Priestley, Hume, and Gibbon, and
+     Bolingbroke, and Voltaire to be published, without depriving the
+     booksellers of their rights. I heard from Rome a day or two ago,
+     and, with what truth I know not, that * * *.
+
+     "Yours," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 481. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Pisa, March 1. 1822.
+
+     "As I still have no news of my 'Werner,' &c. packet, sent to you on
+     the 29th of January, I continue to bore you (for the fifth time, I
+     believe) to know whether it has not miscarried. As it was fairly
+     copied out, it will be vexatious if it be lost. Indeed, I insured
+     it at the post-office to make them take more care, and directed it
+     regularly to you at Paris.
+
+     "In the impartial Galignani I perceive an extract from Blackwood's
+     Magazine, in which it is said that there are people who have
+     discovered that you and I are no poets. With regard to one of us, I
+     know that this north-west passage to _my_ magnetic pole had been
+     long discovered by some sages, and I leave them the full benefit of
+     their penetration. I think, as Gibbon says of his History, 'that,
+     perhaps, a hundred years hence it may still continue to be abused.'
+     However, I am far from pretending to compete or compare with that
+     illustrious literary character.
+
+     "But, with regard to _you_, I thought that you had always been
+     allowed to be _a poet_, even by the stupid as well as the
+     envious--a bad one, to be sure--immoral, florid, Asiatic, and
+     diabolically popular,--but still always a poet, _nem. con._ This
+     discovery therefore, has to me all the grace of novelty, as well as
+     of consolation (according to Rochefoucault), to find myself
+     _no_-poetised in such good company. I am content to 'err with
+     Plato;' and can assure you very sincerely, that I would rather be
+     received a _non_-poet with you, than be crowned with all the bays
+     of (the _yet_-uncrowned) Lakers in their society. I believe you
+     think better of those worthies than I do. I know them * * * * * *
+     *.
+
+     "As for Southey, the answer to my proposition of a meeting is not
+     yet come. I sent the message, with a short note, to him through
+     Douglas Kinnaird, and Douglas's response is not arrived. If he
+     accepts, I shall have to go to England; but if not, I do not think
+     the Noel affairs will take me there, as the arbitrators can settle
+     them without my presence, and there do not seem to be any
+     difficulties. The licence for the new name and armorial bearings
+     will be taken out by the regular application, in such cases, to the
+     Crown, and sent to me.
+
+     "Is there a hope of seeing you in Italy again ever? What are you
+     doing?--_bored_ by me, I know; but I have explained _why_ before. I
+     have no correspondence now with London, except through relations
+     and lawyers and one or two friends. My greatest friend, Lord Clare,
+     is at Rome: we met on the road, and our meeting was quite
+     sentimental--_really_ pathetic on both sides. I have always loved
+     him better than any _male_ thing in the world."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The preceding was enclosed in that which follows.
+
+LETTER 482. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Pisa, March 4. 1822.
+
+     "Since I wrote the enclosed, I have waited another post, and now
+     have your answer acknowledging the arrival of the packet--a
+     troublesome one, I fear, to you in more ways than one, both from
+     weight external and internal.
+
+     "The unpublished things in your hands, in Douglas K.'s, and Mr.
+     John Murray's, are, 'Heaven and Earth, a lyrical kind of Drama upon
+     the Deluge, &c.;'--'Werner,' _now with you_;--a translation of the
+     First Canto of the Morgante Maggiore;--_ditto_ of an Episode in
+     Dante;--some stanzas to the Po, June 1st, 1819;--Hints from Horace,
+     written in 1811, but a good deal, _since_, to be omitted;--several
+     prose things, which may, perhaps, as well remain unpublished;--'The
+     Vision, &c. of Quevedo Redivivus' in verse.
+
+     "Here you see is 'more matter for a May morning;' but how much of
+     this can be published is for consideration. The Quevedo (one of my
+     best in that line) has appalled the Row already, and must take its
+     chance at Paris, if at all. The new Mystery is less speculative
+     than 'Cain,' and very pious; besides, it is chiefly lyrical. The
+     Morgante is the _best_ translation that ever was or will be made;
+     and the rest are--whatever you please to think them.
+
+     "I am sorry you think Werner even _approaching_ to any fitness for
+     the stage, which, with my notions upon it, is very far from my
+     present object. With regard to the publication, I have already
+     explained that I have no exorbitant expectations of either fame or
+     profit in the present instances; but wish them published because
+     they are written, which is the common feeling of all scribblers.
+
+     "With respect to 'Religion,' can I never convince you that I have
+     no such opinions as the characters in that drama, which seems to
+     have frightened every body? Yet _they_ are nothing to the
+     expressions in Goethe's Faust (which are ten times hardier), and
+     not a whit more bold than those of Milton's Satan. My ideas of a
+     character may run away with me: like all imaginative men, I, of
+     course, embody myself with the character while I draw it, but not a
+     moment after the pen is from off the paper.
+
+     "I am no enemy to religion, but the contrary. As a proof, I am
+     educating my natural daughter a strict Catholic in a convent of
+     Romagna; for I think people can never have _enough_ of religion, if
+     they are to have any. I incline, myself, very much to the Catholic
+     doctrines; but if I am to write a drama, I must make my characters
+     speak as I conceive them likely to argue.
+
+     "As to poor Shelley, who is another bugbear to you and the world,
+     he is, to my knowledge, the _least_ selfish and the mildest of
+     men--a man who has made more sacrifices of his fortune and feelings
+     for others than any I ever heard of. With his speculative opinions
+     I have nothing in common, nor desire to have.
+
+     "The truth is, my dear Moore, you live near the _stove_ of society,
+     where you are unavoidably influenced by its heat and its vapours. I
+     did so once--and too much--and enough to give a colour to my whole
+     future existence. As my success in society was _not_
+     inconsiderable, I am surely not a prejudiced judge upon the
+     subject, unless in its favour; but I think it, as now constituted,
+     _fatal_ to all great original undertakings of every kind. I never
+     courted it _then_, when I was young and high in blood, and one of
+     its 'curled darlings;' and do you think I would do so _now_, when I
+     am living in a clearer atmosphere? One thing _only_ might lead me
+     back to it, and that is, to try once more if I could do any good in
+     _politics_; but _not_ in the petty politics I see now preying upon
+     our miserable country.
+
+     "Do not let me be misunderstood, however. If you speak your _own_
+     opinions, they ever had, and will have, the greatest weight with
+     _me_. But if you merely _echo_ the 'monde,' (and it is difficult
+     not to do so, being in its favour and its ferment,) I can only
+     regret that you should ever repeat any thing to which I cannot pay
+     attention.
+
+     "But I am prosing. The gods go with you, and as much immortality of
+     all kinds as may suit your present and all other existence.
+
+     "Yours," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 483. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Pisa, March 6. 1822.
+
+     "The enclosed letter from Murray hath melted me; though I think it
+     is against his own interest to wish that I should continue his
+     connection. You may, therefore, send him the packet of _Werner,_
+     which will save you all further trouble. And pray, _can you_
+     forgive me for the bore and expense I have already put upon you? At
+     least, _say_ so--for I feel ashamed of having given you so much for
+     such nonsense.
+
+     "The fact is, I cannot _keep_ my _resentments,_ though violent
+     enough in their onset. Besides, now that all the world are at
+     Murray on my account, I neither can nor ought to leave him; unless,
+     as I really thought, it were better for _him_ that I should.
+
+     "I have had no other news from England, except a letter from Barry
+     Cornwall, the bard, and my old school-fellow. Though I have
+     sickened you with letters lately, believe me
+
+     "Yours, &c.
+
+     "P.S. In your last letter you say, speaking of Shelley, that you
+     would almost prefer the 'damning bigot' to the 'annihilating
+     infidel.'[75] Shelley believes in immortality, however--but this by
+     the way. Do you remember Frederick the Great's answer to the
+     remonstrance of the villagers whose curate preached against the
+     eternity of hell's torments? It was thus:--'If my faithful subjects
+     of Schrausenhaussen prefer being eternally damned, let them.'
+
+     "Of the two, I should think the long sleep better than the agonised
+     vigil. But men, miserable as they are, cling so to any thing like
+     life, that they probably would prefer damnation to quiet. Besides,
+     they think themselves so _important_ in the creation, that nothing
+     less can satisfy their pride--the insects!"
+
+[Footnote 75: It will be seen from the extract I shall give presently of
+the passage to which he refers, that he wholly mistook my meaning.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is Dr. Clarke, I think, who gives, in his Travels, rather a striking
+account of a Tartar whom he once saw exercising a young, fiery horse,
+upon a spot of ground almost surrounded by a steep precipice, and
+describes the wantonness of courage with which the rider, as if
+delighting in his own peril, would, at times, dash, with loose rein,
+towards the giddy verge. Something of the same breathless apprehension
+with which the traveller viewed that scene, did the unchecked daring of
+Byron's genius inspire in all who watched its course,--causing them, at
+the same moment, to admire and tremble, and, in those more especially
+who loved him, awakening a sort of instinctive impulse to rush forward
+and save him from his own headlong strength. But, however natural it was
+in friends to give way to this feeling, a little reflection upon his now
+altered character might have forewarned them that such interference
+would prove as little useful to him as safe for themselves; and it is
+not without some surprise I look back upon my own temerity and
+presumption in supposing that, let loose as he was now, in the full
+pride and consciousness of strength, with the wide regions of thought
+outstretching before him, any representations that even friendship could
+make would have the power--or _ought_ to have--of checking him. As the
+motives, however, by which I was actuated in my remonstrances to him may
+be left to speak for themselves, I shall, without dwelling any further
+upon the subject, content myself with laying before the reader a few
+such extracts from my own letters at this period[76] as may serve to
+explain some allusions in those just given.
+
+In writing to me under the date January 24th, it will be recollected
+that he says--"be assured that there is no such coalition as you
+apprehend." The following extracts from my previous communication to him
+will explain what this means:--"I heard some days ago that Leigh Hunt
+was on his way to you with all his family; and the idea seems to be,
+that you and Shelley and he are to conspire together in the Examiner. I
+cannot believe this,--and deprecate such a plan with all my might. Alone
+you may do any thing; but partnerships in fame, like those in trade,
+make the strongest party answerable for the deficiencies or
+delinquencies of the rest, and I tremble even for you with such a
+bankrupt >i>Co._--* * *. They are both clever fellows, and Shelley I
+look upon as a man of real genius; but I must again say, that you could
+not give your enemies (the * * *'s, 'et hoc genus omne') a greater
+triumph than by forming such an unequal and unholy alliance. You are,
+single-handed, a match for the world,--which is saying a good deal, the
+world being, like Briareus, a very many-handed gentleman,--but, to be
+so, you must stand alone. Recollect that the scurvy buildings about St.
+Peter's almost seem to overtop itself."
+
+[Footnote 76: It should have been mentioned before, that to the courtesy
+of Lord Byron's executor, Mr. Hobhouse, who had the kindness to restore
+to me such letters of mine as came into his hands, I am indebted for the
+power of producing these and other extracts.]
+
+The notices of Cain, in my letters to him, were, according to their
+respective dates, as follow:--
+
+
+"September 30. 1821.
+
+"Since writing the above, I have read Foscari and Cain. The former does
+not please me so highly as Sardanapalus. It has the fault of all those
+violent Venetian stories, being unnatural and improbable, and therefore,
+in spite of all your fine management of them, appealing but remotely to
+one's sympathies. But Cain 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 Æschylus and his
+Prometheus!--here is the true spirit both of the Poet--and the Devil."
+
+
+"February 9. 1822.
+
+"Do not take it into your head, my dear B. that the tide is at all
+turning against you in England. Till I see some symptoms of people
+_forgetting_ you a little, I will not believe that you lose ground. As
+it is, 'te veniente die, te, decedente,'--nothing is hardly talked of
+but you; and though good people sometimes bless themselves when they
+mention you, it is plain that even _they_ think much more about you
+than, for the good of their souls, they ought. Cain, to be sure, _has_
+made a sensation; and, grand as it is, I regret, for many reasons, you
+ever wrote it. * * For myself, I would not give up the _poetry_ of
+religion for all the wisest results that _philosophy_ will ever arrive
+at. Particular sects and creeds are fair game enough for those who are
+anxious enough about their neighbours to meddle with them; but our faith
+in the Future is a treasure not so lightly to be parted with; and the
+dream of immortality (if philosophers will have it a dream) is one that,
+let us hope, we shall carry into our last sleep with us."[77]
+
+[Footnote 77: It is to this sentence Lord Byron refers at the conclusion
+of his letter, March 4.]
+
+
+"February 19. 1822.
+
+"I have written to the Longmans to try the ground, for I do _not_ think
+Galignani the man for you. The only thing he can do is what we can do,
+ourselves, without him,--and that is, employ an English bookseller.
+Paris, indeed, might be convenient for such refugee works as are set
+down in the _Index Expurgatorius_ of London; and if you have any
+political catamarans to explode, this is your place. But, _pray_, let
+them be only political ones. Boldness, and even licence, in politics,
+does good,--actual, present good; but, in religion, it profits neither
+here nor hereafter; and, for myself, such a horror have I of both
+extremes on this subject, that I know not _which_ I hate most, the bold,
+damning bigot, or the bold, annihilating infidel. 'Furiosa res est in
+tenebris impetus;'--and much as we are in the dark, even the wisest of
+us, upon these matters, a little modesty, in unbelief as well as belief,
+best becomes us. You will easily guess that, in all this, I am thinking
+not so much of you, as of a friend and, at present, companion of yours,
+whose influence over your mind (knowing you as I do, and knowing what
+Lady B. _ought_ to have found out, that you are a person the most
+tractable to those who live with you that, perhaps, ever existed) I own
+I dread and deprecate most earnestly."[78]
+
+[Footnote 78: This passage having been shown by Lord Byron to Mr.
+Shelley, the latter wrote, in consequence, a letter to a gentleman with
+whom I was then in habits of intimacy, of which the following is an
+extract. The zeal and openness with which Shelley always professed his
+unbelief render any scruple that might otherwise be felt in giving
+publicity to such avowals unnecessary; besides which, the testimony of
+so near and clear an observer to the state of Lord Byron's mind upon
+religious subjects is of far too much importance to my object to be,
+from any over-fastidiousness, suppressed. We have here, too strikingly
+exemplified,--and in strong contrast, I must say, to the line taken by
+Mr. Hunt in similar circumstances,--the good breeding, gentle temper,
+and modesty for which Shelley was so remarkable, and of the latter of
+which Dualities in particular the undeserved compliment to myself
+affords a strong illustration, as showing how little this true poet had
+yet learned to know his own place.
+
+"Lord Byron has read me one or two letters of Moore to him, in which
+Moore speaks with great kindness of me; and of course I cannot but feel
+flattered by the approbation of a man, my inferiority to whom I am proud
+to acknowledge. Amongst other things, however, Moore, after giving Lord
+B, much good advice about public opinion, &c. seems to deprecate my
+influence on his mind on the subject of religion, and to attribute the
+tone assumed in Cain to my suggestions. Moore cautions him against any
+influence on this particular with the most friendly zeal, and it is
+plain that his motive springs from a desire of benefiting Lord B.
+without degrading me. I think you know Moore. Pray assure him that I
+have not the smallest influence over Lord Byron in this particular; if I
+had, I certainly should employ it to eradicate from his great mind the
+delusions of Christianity, which, in spite of his reason, seem
+perpetually to recur, and to lay in ambush for the hours of sickness and
+distress. Cain was _conceived_ many years ago, and begun before I saw
+him last year at Ravenna. How happy should I not be to attribute to
+myself, however indirectly, any participation in that immortal work!"]
+
+
+"March 16. 1822.
+
+"With respect to our Religious Polemics, I must try to set you right
+upon one or two points. In the first place, I do _not_ identify you with
+the blasphemies of Cain no more than I do myself with the impieties of
+my Mokanna,--all I wish and implore is that you, who are such a powerful
+manufacturer of these thunderbolts, would not _choose_ subjects that
+make it necessary to launch them. In the next place, were you even a
+decided atheist, I could not (except, perhaps, for the _decision_ which
+is always unwise) blame you. I could only pity,--knowing from experience
+how dreary are the doubts with which even the bright, poetic view I am
+myself inclined to take of mankind and their destiny is now and then
+clouded. I look upon Cuvier's book to be a most desolating one in the
+conclusions to which it may lead some minds. But the young, the
+simple,--all those whose hearts one would like to keep unwithered,
+trouble their heads but little about Cuvier. _You_, however, have
+embodied him in poetry which every one reads; and, like the wind,
+blowing 'where you list,' carry this deadly chill, mixed up with your
+own fragrance, into hearts that should be visited only by the latter.
+This is what I regret, and what with all my influence I would deprecate
+a repetition of. _Now_, do you understand me?
+
+"As to your solemn peroration, 'the truth is, my dear Moore, &c. &c.'
+meaning neither more nor less than that I give into the cant of the
+world, it only proves, alas! the melancholy fact, that you and I are
+hundreds of miles asunder. Could you hear me speak my opinions instead
+of coldly reading them, I flatter myself there is still enough of
+honesty and fun in this face to remind you that your friend Tom
+Moore--whatever else he may be,--is no Canter."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 484. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Pisa, March 6. 1822.
+
+     "You will long ago have received a letter from me (or should),
+     declaring my opinion of the treatment you have met with about the
+     recent publication. I think it disgraceful to those who have
+     persecuted _you_. I make peace with you, though our war was for
+     other reasons than this same controversy. I have written to Moore
+     by this post to forward to you the tragedy of' Werner.' I shall not
+     make or propose any present bargain about it or the new Mystery
+     till we see if they succeed. If they don't sell (which is not
+     unlikely), you sha'n't pay; and I suppose this is fair play, if you
+     choose to risk it.
+
+     "Bartolini, the celebrated sculptor, wrote to me to desire to take
+     my bust: I consented, on condition that he also took that of the
+     Countess Guiccioli. He has taken both, and I think it will be
+     allowed that _hers_ is beautiful. I shall make you a present of
+     them both, to show that I don't bear malice, and as a compensation
+     for the trouble and squabble you had about Thorwaldsen's. Of my own
+     I can hardly speak, except that it is thought very like what I _now
+     am_, which is different from what I was, of course, since you saw
+     me. The sculptor is a famous one; and as it was done by _his own_
+     particular request, will be done well, probably.
+
+     "What is to be done about * * and his Commentary? He will die if he
+     is _not_ published; he will be damned, if he _is_; but that _he_
+     don't mind. We must publish him.
+
+     "All the _row_ about _me_ has no otherwise affected me than by the
+     attack upon yourself, which is ungenerous in Church and State: but
+     as all violence must in time have its proportionate re-action, you
+     will do better by and by. Yours very truly,
+
+     "NOEL BYRON."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 485. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Pisa, March 8. 1822.
+
+     "You will have had enough of my letters by this time--yet one word
+     in answer to your present missive. You are quite wrong in thinking
+     that your '_advice_' had offended me; but I have already replied
+     (if not answered) on that point.
+
+     "With regard to Murray, as I really am the meekest and mildest of
+     men since Moses (though the public and mine 'excellent wife' cannot
+     find it out), I had already pacified myself and subsided back to
+     Albemarle Street, as my yesterday's _ye_pistle will have informed
+     you. But I thought that I had explained my causes of bile--at least
+     to you. Some instances of vacillation, occasional neglect, and
+     troublesome sincerity, real or imagined, are sufficient to put your
+     truly great author and man into a passion. But reflection, with
+     some aid from hellebore, hath already cured me 'pro tempore;' and,
+     if it had not, a request from you and Hobhouse would have come upon
+     me like two out of the 'tribus Anticyris,'--with which, however,
+     Horace despairs of purging a poet. I really feel ashamed of having
+     bored you so frequently and fully of late. But what could I do? You
+     are a friend--an absent one, alas!--and as I trust no one more, I
+     trouble you in proportion.
+
+     "This war of 'Church and State' has astonished me more than it
+     disturbs; for I really thought 'Cain' a speculative and hardy, but
+     still a harmless, production. As I said before, I am really a great
+     admirer of tangible religion; and am breeding one of my daughters a
+     Catholic, that she may have her hands full. It is by far the most
+     elegant worship, hardly excepting the Greek mythology. What with
+     incense, pictures, statues, altars, shrines, relics, and the real
+     presence, confession, absolution,--there is something sensible to
+     grasp at. Besides, it leaves no possibility of doubt; for those who
+     swallow their Deity, really and truly, in transubstantiation, can
+     hardly find any thing else otherwise than easy of digestion.
+
+     "I am afraid that this sounds flippant, but I don't mean it to be
+     so; only my turn of mind is so given to taking things in the absurd
+     point of view, that it breaks out in spite of me every now and
+     then. Still, I do assure you that I am a very good Christian.
+     Whether you will believe me in this, I do not know; but I trust you
+     will take my word for being
+
+     "Very truly and affectionately yours, &c.
+
+     "P.S. Do tell Murray that one of the conditions of peace is, that
+     he publisheth (or obtaineth a publisher for) * * *'s Commentary on
+     Dante, against which there appears in the trade an unaccountable
+     repugnance. It will make the man so exuberantly happy. He dines
+     with me and half-a-dozen English to-day; and I have not the heart
+     to tell him how the bibliopolar world shrink from his
+     Commentary;--and yet it is full of the most orthodox religion and
+     morality. In short, I make it a point that he shall be in print. He
+     is such a good-natured, heavy-* * Christian, that we must give him
+     a shove through the press. He naturally thirsts to be an author,
+     and has been the happiest of men for these two months, printing,
+     correcting, collating, dating, anticipating, and adding to his
+     treasures of learning. Besides, he has had another fall from his
+     horse into a ditch the other day, while riding out with me into the
+     country."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 486. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Pisa, March 15. 1822.
+
+     "I am glad that you and your friends approve of my letter of the
+     8th ultimo. You may give it what publicity you think proper in the
+     circumstances. I have since written to you twice or thrice.
+
+     "As to 'a Poem in the old way,' I shall attempt of that kind
+     nothing further. I follow the bias of my own mind, without
+     considering whether women or men are or are not to be pleased; but
+     this is nothing to my publisher, who must judge and act according
+     to popularity.
+
+     "Therefore let the things take their chance: if _they pay,_ you
+     will pay me in proportion; and if they don't, I must.
+
+     "The Noel affairs, I hope, will not take me to England. I have no
+     desire to revisit that country, unless it be to keep you out of a
+     prison (if this can be effected by my taking your place), or
+     perhaps to get myself into one, by exacting satisfaction from one
+     or two persons who take advantage of my absence to abuse me.
+     Further than this, I have no business nor connection with England,
+     nor desire to have, _out_ of my own family and friends, to whom I
+     wish all prosperity. Indeed, I have lived upon the whole so little
+     in England (about five years since I was one-and-twenty), that my
+     habits are too continental, and your climate would please me as
+     little as the society.
+
+     "I saw the Chancellor's Report in a French paper. Pray, why don't
+     they prosecute the translation of _Lucretius_? or the original with
+     its
+
+        "'Primus in orbe Deos fecit Timor,'
+
+     or
+
+        "'Tantum Religio potuit suadere malorum?'
+
+     "You must really get something done for Mr. * *'s Commentary: what
+     can I say to him?
+
+     "Yours," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 487. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Pisa, April 13. 1822.
+
+     "Mr. Kinnaird writes that there has been an 'excellent Defence' of
+     'Cain,' against 'Oxoniensis;' you have sent me nothing but a not
+     very excellent _of_-fence of the same poem. If there be such a
+     'Defender of the Faith,' you may send me his thirty-nine articles,
+     as a counterbalance to some of your late communications.
+
+     "Are you to publish, or not, what Moore and Mr. Kinnaird have in
+     hand, and the 'Vision of Judgment?' If you publish the latter in a
+     very cheap edition, so as to baffle the pirates by a low price, you
+     will find that it will do. The 'Mystery' I look upon as good, and
+     'Werner' too, and I expect that you will publish them speedily. You
+     need not put your name to _Quevedo,_ but publish it as a foreign
+     edition, and let it make its way. Douglas Kinnaird has it still,
+     with the preface, I believe.
+
+     "I refer you to him for documents on the late row here. I sent them
+     a week ago.
+
+     "Yours," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 488. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Pisa, April 18. 1822.
+
+     "I have received the Defence of 'Cain.' Who is my Warburton?--for
+     he has done for me what the bishop did for the poet against
+     Crousaz. His reply seems to me conclusive; and if you understood
+     your own interest, you would print it together with the poem.
+
+     "It is very odd that I do not hear from you. I have forwarded to
+     Mr. Douglas Kinnaird the documents on a squabble here, which
+     occurred about a month ago. The affair is still going on; but they
+     make nothing of it hitherto. I think, what with home and abroad,
+     there has been hot water enough for one while. Mr. Dawkins, the
+     English minister, has behaved in the handsomest and most
+     gentlemanly manner throughout the whole business.
+
+     "Yours ever, &c.
+
+     "P.S. I have got Lord Glenbervie's book, which is very amusing and
+     able upon the topics which he touches upon, and part of the preface
+     pathetic. Write soon."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 489. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Pisa, April 22. 1822.
+
+     "You will regret to hear that I have received intelligence of the
+     death of my daughter Allegra of a fever in the convent of Bagna
+     Cavallo, where she was placed for the last year, to commence her
+     education. It is a heavy blow for many reasons, but must be borne,
+     with time.
+
+     "It is my present intention to send her remains to England for
+     sepulture in Harrow church (where I once hoped to have laid my
+     own), and this is my reason for troubling you with this notice. I
+     wish the funeral to be very private. The body is embalmed, and in
+     lead. It will be embarked from Leghorn. Would you have any
+     objection to give the proper directions on its arrival?
+
+     "I am yours, &c. N.B.
+
+     "P.S. You are aware that Protestants are not allowed holy ground in
+     Catholic countries."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 490. TO MR. SHELLEY.
+
+     "April 23. 1822.
+
+     "The blow was stunning and unexpected; for I thought the danger
+     over, by the long interval between her stated amelioration and the
+     arrival of the express. But I have borne up against it as I best
+     can, and so far successfully, that I can go about the usual
+     business of life with the same appearance of composure, and even
+     greater. There is nothing to prevent your coming to-morrow; but,
+     perhaps, to-day, and yester-evening, it was better not to have met.
+     I do not know that I have any thing to reproach in my conduct, and
+     certainly nothing in my feelings and intentions towards the dead.
+     But it is a moment when we are apt to think that, if this or that
+     had been done, such event might have been prevented,--though every
+     day and hour shows us that they are the most natural and
+     inevitable. I suppose that Time will do his usual work--Death has
+     done his.
+
+     "Yours ever, N.B."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 491. TO SIR WALTER SCOTT.
+
+     "Pisa, May 4. 1822.
+
+     "My dear Sir Walter,
+
+     "Your account of your family is very pleasing: would that I 'could
+     answer this comfort with the like!' but I have just lost my natural
+     daughter, Allegra, by a fever. The only consolation, save time, is
+     the reflection, that she is either at rest or happy; for her few
+     years (only five) prevented her from having incurred any sin,
+     except what we inherit from Adam.
+
+     "'Whom the gods love, die young.'"
+
+     "I need not say that your letters are particularly welcome, when
+     they do not tax your time and patience; and now that our
+     correspondence is resumed, I trust it will continue.
+
+     "I have lately had some anxiety, rather than trouble, about an
+     awkward affair here, which you may perhaps have heard of; but our
+     minister has behaved very handsomely, and the Tuscan Government as
+     well as it is possible for such a government to behave, which is
+     not saying much for the latter. Some other English, and Scots, and
+     myself, had a brawl with a dragoon, who insulted one of the party,
+     and whom we mistook for an officer, as he was medalled and well
+     mounted, &c. but he turned out to be a sergeant-major. He called
+     out the guard at the gates to arrest us (we being unarmed); upon
+     which I and another (an Italian) rode through the said guard; but
+     they succeeded in detaining others of the party. I rode to my
+     house and sent my secretary to give an account of the attempted and
+     illegal arrest to the authorities, and then, without dismounting,
+     rode back towards the gates, which are near my present mansion.
+     Half-way I met my man vapouring away and threatening to draw upon
+     me (who had a cane in my hand, and no other arms). I, still
+     believing him an officer, demanded his name and address, and gave
+     him my hand and glove thereupon. A servant of mine thrust in
+     between us (totally without orders), but let him go on my command.
+     He then rode off at full speed; but about forty paces further was
+     stabbed, and very dangerously (so as to be in peril), by some
+     _Callum Beg_ or other of my people (for I have some rough-handed
+     folks about me), I need hardly say without my direction or
+     approval. The said dragoon had been sabring our unarmed countrymen,
+     however, at the _gate, after they were in arrest,_ and held by the
+     guards, and wounded one, Captain Hay, very severely. However, he
+     got his paiks--having acted like an assassin, and being treated
+     like one. _Who_ wounded him, though it was done before thousands of
+     people, they have never been able to ascertain, or prove, nor even
+     the _weapon_; some said a _pistol_, an _air-gun_, a stiletto, a
+     sword, a lance, a pitchfork, and what not. They have arrested and
+     examined servants and people of all descriptions, but can make out
+     nothing. Mr. Dawkins, our minister, assures me, that no suspicion
+     is entertained of the man who wounded him having been instigated by
+     me, or any of the party. I enclose you copies of the depositions of
+     those with us, and Dr. Craufurd, a canny Scot (_not_ an
+     acquaintance), who saw the latter part of the affair. They are in
+     Italian.
+
+     "These are the only literary matters in which I have been engaged
+     since the publication and row about 'Cain;'--but Mr. Murray has
+     several things of mine in his obstetrical hands. Another Mystery--a
+     Vision--a Drama--and the like. But _you won't_ tell me what _you_
+     are doing--however, I shall find you out, write what you will. You
+     say that I should like your son-in-law--it would be very difficult
+     for me to dislike any one connected with you; but I have no doubt
+     that his own qualities are all that you describe.
+
+     "I am sorry you don't like Lord Orford's new work. My aristocracy,
+     which is very fierce, makes him a favourite of mine. Recollect that
+     those 'little factions' comprised Lord Chatham and Fox, the father,
+     and that _we_ live in gigantic and exaggerated times, which make
+     all under Gog and Magog appear pigmean. After having seen Napoleon
+     begin like Tamerlane and end like Bajazet in our own time, we have
+     not the same interest in what would otherwise have appeared
+     important history. But I must conclude.
+
+     "Believe me ever and most truly yours,
+
+     "NOEL BYRON."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 492. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Pisa, May 17. 1822.
+
+     "I hear that the Edinburgh has attacked the three dramas, which is
+     a bad business for _you_; and I don't wonder that it discourages
+     you. However, _that_ volume may be trusted to _time_,--depend upon
+     it. I read it over with some attention since it was published, and
+     I think the time will come when it will be preferred to my other
+     writings, though not immediately. I say this without irritation
+     against the critics or criticism, whatever they may be (for I have
+     not seen them); and nothing that has or may appear in Jeffrey's
+     Review can make me forget that he stood by me for ten good years
+     without any motive to do so but his own good-will.
+
+     "I hear Moore is in town; remember me to him, and believe me
+
+     "Yours truly, N.B.
+
+     "P.S. If you think it necessary, you may send me the Edinburgh.
+     Should there be any thing that requires an answer, I will reply,
+     but _temperately_ and _technically_; that is to say, merely with
+     respect to the _principles_ of the criticism, and not personally or
+     offensively as to its literary merits."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 493. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Pisa, May 17. 1822.
+
+     "I hear you are in London. You will have heard from Douglas
+     Kinnaird (who tells me you have dined with him) as much as you
+     desire to know of my affairs at home and abroad. I have lately lost
+     my little girl Allegra by a fever, which has been a serious blow to
+     me.
+
+     "I did not write to you lately (except one letter to Murray's), not
+     knowing exactly your 'where-abouts.' Douglas K. refused to forward
+     my message to Mr. Southey--_why_, he himself can explain.
+
+     "You will have seen the statement of a squabble, &c.&c.[79] What
+     are you about? Let me hear from you at your leisure, and believe me
+     ever yours,
+
+     "N.B."
+
+[Footnote 79: Here follows a repetition of the details given on this
+subject to Sir Walter Scott and others.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 494. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Montenero[80], May 26. 1822.
+
+     "Near Leghorn.
+
+     "The body is embarked, in what ship I know not, neither could I
+     enter into the details; but the Countess G.G. has had the goodness
+     to give the necessary orders to Mr. Dunn, who superintends the
+     embarkation, and will write to you. I wish it to be buried in
+     Harrow church.
+
+     "There is a spot in the church_yard_, near the footpath, on the
+     brow of the hill looking towards Windsor, and a tomb under a large
+     tree, (bearing the name of Peachie, or Peachey,) where I used to
+     sit for hours and hours when a boy. This was my favourite spot;
+     but, as I wish to erect a tablet to her memory, the body had better
+     be deposited in the church. Near the door, on the left hand as you
+     enter, there is a monument with a tablet containing these words:--
+
+        "'When Sorrow weeps o'er Virtue's sacred dust,
+        Our tears become us, and our grief is just:
+        Such were the tears she shed, who grateful pays
+        This last sad tribute of her love and praise.'
+
+     I recollect them (after seventeen years), not from any thing
+     remarkable in them, but because from my seat in the gallery I had
+     generally my eyes turned towards that monument. As near it as
+     convenient I could wish Allegra to be buried, and on the wall a
+     marble tablet placed, with these words:--
+
+              In Memory of
+                Allegra,
+       Daughter of G.G. Lord Byron,
+        who died at Bagna Cavallo,
+        in Italy, April 20th, 1822,
+     aged five years and three months.
+
+     'I shall go to her, but she shall not return to me.'
+                                            2d Samuel, xii. 23.
+
+     "The funeral I wish to be as private as is consistent with decency;
+     and I could hope that Henry Drury will, perhaps, read the service
+     over her. If he should decline it, it can be done by the usual
+     minister for the time being. I do not know that I need add more
+     just now.
+
+     "Since I came here, I have been invited by the Americans on board
+     their squadron, where I was received with all the kindness which I
+     could wish, and with _more ceremony_ than I am fond of. I found
+     them finer ships than your own of the same class, well manned and
+     officered. A number of American gentlemen also were on board at the
+     time, and some ladies. As I was taking leave, an American lady
+     asked me for a _rose_ which I wore, for the purpose, she said, of
+     sending to America something which I had about me, as a memorial. I
+     need not add that I felt the compliment properly. Captain Chauncey
+     showed me an American and very pretty edition of my poems, and
+     offered me a passage to the United States, if I would go there.
+     Commodore Jones was also not less kind and attentive. I have since
+     received the enclosed letter, desiring me to sit for my picture for
+     some Americans. It is singular that, in the same year that Lady
+     Noel leaves by will an interdiction for my daughter to see her
+     father's portrait for many years, the individuals of a nation, not
+     remarkable for their liking to the English in particular, nor for
+     flattering men in general, request me to sit for my
+     'pourtraicture,' as Baron Bradwardine calls it. I am also told of
+     considerable literary honours in Germany. Goethe, I am told, is my
+     professed patron and protector. At Leipsic, this year, the highest
+     prize was proposed for a translation of two cantos of Childe
+     Harold. I am not sure that this was at _Leipsic_, but Mr. Rowcroft
+     was my authority--a good German scholar (a young American), and an
+     acquaintance of Goethe's.
+
+     "Goethe and the Germans are particularly fond of Don Juan, which
+     they judge of as a work of art. I had heard something of this
+     before through Baron Lutzerode. The translations have been very
+     frequent of several of the works, and Goethe made a comparison
+     between Faust and Manfred.
+
+     "All this is some compensation for your English native brutality,
+     so fully displayed this year to its highest extent.
+
+     "I forgot to mention a little anecdote of a different kind. I went
+     over the Constitution (the Commodore's flag-ship), and saw, among
+     other things worthy of remark, a little boy _born_ on board of her
+     by a sailor's wife. They had christened him 'Constitution Jones.'
+     I, of course, approved the name; and the woman added, 'Ah, sir, if
+     he turns out but half as good as his name!'
+
+     "Yours ever," &c.
+
+[Footnote 80: A hill, three or four miles from Leghorn, much resorted
+to, as a place of residence during the summer months.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER. 495. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Montenero, near Leghorn, May 29. 1822.
+
+     "I return you the proofs revised. Your printer has made one odd
+     mistake:--'poor as a _mouse_,' instead of 'poor as a _miser_.' The
+     expression may seem strange, but it is only a translation of
+     'semper avarus eget.' You will add the Mystery, and publish as soon
+     as you can. I care nothing for your 'season,' nor the _blue_
+     approbations or disapprobations. All that is to be considered by
+     you on the subject is as a matter of _business_; and if I square
+     that to your notions (even to the running the risk entirely
+     myself), you may permit me to choose my own time and mode of
+     publication. With regard to the late volume, the present run
+     against _it_ or _me_ may impede it for a time, but it has the vital
+     principle of permanency within it, as you may perhaps one day
+     discover. I wrote to you on another subject a few days ago.
+
+     Yours, N.B.
+
+     "P.S. Please to send me the Dedication of Sardanapalus to Goethe. I
+     shall prefix it to Werner, unless you prefer my putting another,
+     stating that the former had been omitted by the publisher.
+
+     "On the title-page of the present volume, put 'Published for the
+     Author by J.M.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 496. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Montenero, Leghorn, June 6. 1822.
+
+     "I return you the revise of Werner, and expect the rest. With
+     regard to the Lines to the Po, perhaps you had better put them
+     quietly in a second edition (if you reach one, that is to say) than
+     in the first; because, though they have been reckoned fine, and I
+     wish them to be preserved, I do not wish them to attract IMMEDIATE
+     observation, on account of the relationship of the lady to whom
+     they are addressed with the first families in Romagna and the
+     Marches.
+
+     "The defender of 'Cain' may or may not be, as you term him, 'a tyro
+     in literature:' however I think both you and I are under great
+     obligation to him. I have read the Edinburgh review in Galignani's
+     Magazine, and have not yet decided whether to answer them or not;
+     for, if I do, it will be difficult for me not 'to make sport for
+     the Philistines' by pulling down a house or two; since, when I once
+     take pen in hand, I _must_ say what comes uppermost, or fling it
+     away. I have not the hypocrisy to pretend impartiality, nor the
+     temper (as it is called) to keep always from saying what may not be
+     pleasing to the hearer or reader. What do they mean by
+     '_elaborate_?' Why, _you_ know that they were written as fast as I
+     could put pen to paper, and printed from the _original_ MSS., and
+     never revised but in the proofs: _look_ at the _dates_ and the MSS.
+     themselves. Whatever faults they have must spring from
+     carelessness, and not from labour. They said the same of 'Lara,'
+     which I wrote while undressing after coming home from balls and
+     masquerades, in the year of revelry 1814. Yours."
+
+     "June 8. 1822.
+
+     "You give me no explanation of your intention as to the 'Vision of
+     Quevedo Redivivus,' one of my best things: indeed, you are
+     altogether so abstruse and undecided lately, that I suppose you
+     mean me to write 'John Murray, Esq., a Mystery,'--a composition
+     which would not displease the clergy nor the trade. I by no means
+     wish you to do what you don't like, but merely to say what you will
+     do. The Vision _must_ be published by some one. As to 'clamours,'
+     the die is cast: and 'come one, come all,' we will fight it out--at
+     least one of us."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 497. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Montenero, Villa Dupoy, near Leghorn, June 8. 1822.
+
+     "I have written to you twice through the medium of Murray, and on
+     one subject, _trite_ enough,--the loss of poor little Allegra by a
+     fever; on which topic I shall say no more--there is nothing but
+     time.
+
+     "A few days ago, my earliest and dearest friend, Lord Clare, came
+     over from Geneva on purpose to see me before he returned to
+     England. As I have always loved him (since I was thirteen, at
+     Harrow,) better than any (_male_) thing in the world, I need hardly
+     say what a melancholy pleasure it was to see him for a _day_ only;
+     for he was obliged to resume his journey immediately. * * * Do you
+     recollect, in the year of revelry 1814, the pleasantest parties and
+     balls all over London? and not the least so at * *'s. Do you
+     recollect your singing duets with Lady * *, and my flirtation with
+     Lady * *, and all the other fooleries of the time? while * * was
+     sighing, and Lady * * ogling him with her clear hazel eyes. _But_
+     eight years have passed, and, since that time, * * has * * * * *
+     *;--has run away with * * * * *; and _mysen_ (as my Nottinghamshire
+     friends call themselves) might as well have thrown myself out of
+     the window while you were singing, as intermarried where I did. You
+     and * * * * have come off the best of us. I speak merely of my
+     marriage, and its consequences, distresses, and calumnies; for I
+     have been much more happy, on the whole, _since_, than I ever could
+     have been with * *.
+
+     "I have read the recent article of Jeffrey in a faithful
+     transcription of the impartial Galignani. I suppose the long and
+     short of it is, that he wishes to provoke me to reply. But I won't,
+     for I owe him a good turn still for his kindness by-gone. Indeed, I
+     presume that the present opportunity of attacking me again was
+     irresistible; and I can't blame him, knowing what human nature is.
+     I shall make but one remark:--what does he mean by elaborate? The
+     whole volume was written with the greatest rapidity, in the midst
+     of evolutions, and revolutions, and persecutions, and proscriptions
+     of all who interested me in Italy. They said the same of 'Lara,'
+     which, _you_ know, was written amidst balls and fooleries, and
+     after coming home from masquerades and routs, in the summer of the
+     sovereigns. Of all I have ever written, they are perhaps the most
+     carelessly composed; and their faults, whatever they may be, are
+     those of negligence, and not of labour. I do not think this a
+     merit, but it is a fact.
+
+     "Yours ever and truly, N.B.
+
+     "P.S. You see the great advantage of my new signature;--it may
+     either stand for 'Nota Bene' or 'Noel Byron,' and, as such, will
+     save much repetition, in writing either books or letters. Since I
+     came here, I have been invited on board of the American squadron,
+     and treated with all possible honour and ceremony. They have asked
+     me to sit for my picture; and, as I was going away, an American
+     lady took a rose from me (which had been given to me by a very
+     pretty Italian lady that very morning), because, she said, 'She was
+     determined to send or take something which I had about me to
+     America.' _There_ is a kind of Lalla Rookh incident for you!
+     However, all these American honours arise, perhaps, not so much
+     from their enthusiasm for my 'Poeshie,' as their belief in my
+     dislike to the English,--in which I have the satisfaction to
+     coincide with them. I would rather, however, have a nod from an
+     American, than a snuff-box from an emperor."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 498. TO MR. ELLICE.
+
+     "Montenero, Leghorn, June 12. 1822.
+
+     "My dear Ellice,
+
+     "It is a long time since I have written to you, but I have not
+     forgotten your kindness, and I am now going to tax it--I hope not
+     too highly--but _don't_ be alarmed, it is _not_ a loan, but
+     _information_ which I am about to solicit. By your extensive
+     connections, no one can have better opportunities of hearing the
+     real state of _South_ America--I mean Bolivar's country. I have
+     many years had transatlantic projects of settlement, and what I
+     could wish from you would be some information of the best course to
+     pursue, and some letters of recommendation in case I should sail
+     for Angostura. I am told that land is very cheap there; but though
+     I have no great disposable funds to vest in such purchases, yet my
+     income, such as it is, would be sufficient in any country (except
+     England) for all the comforts of life, and for most of its
+     luxuries. The war there is now over, and as I do not go there to
+     _speculate_, but to settle, without any views but those of
+     independence and the enjoyment of the common civil rights, I should
+     presume such an arrival would not be unwelcome.
+
+     "All I request of you is, not to _dis_courage nor _en_courage, but
+     to give me such a statement as you think prudent and proper. I do
+     not address my other friends upon this subject, who would only
+     throw obstacles in my way, and bore me to return to England; which
+     I never will do, unless compelled by some insuperable cause. I have
+     a quantity of furniture, books, &c. &c. &c. which I could easily
+     ship from Leghorn; but I wish to 'look before I leap' over the
+     Atlantic. Is it true that for a few thousand dollars a large tract
+     of land may be obtained? I speak of _South_ America, recollect. I
+     have read some publications on the subject, but they seemed violent
+     and vulgar party productions. Please to address your answer[81] to
+     me at this place, and believe me ever and truly yours," &c.
+
+[Footnote 81: The answer which Mr. Ellice returned was, as might be
+expected, strongly dissuasive of this design. The wholly disorganised
+state of the country and its institutions, which it would take ages,
+perhaps, to restore even to the degree of industry and prosperity which
+it had enjoyed under the Spaniards, rendered Columbia, in his opinion,
+one of the last places in the world to which a man desirous of peace and
+quiet, or of security for his person and property, should resort to as
+an asylum. As long as Bolivar lived and maintained his authority, every
+reliance, Mr. Ellice added, might be placed on his integrity and
+firmness; but with his death a new æra of struggle and confusion would
+be sure to arise.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+About this time he sat for his picture to Mr. West, an American artist,
+who has himself given, in one of our periodical publications, the
+following account of his noble sitter:--
+
+"On the day appointed, I arrived at two o'clock, and began the picture.
+I found him a bad sitter. He talked all the time, and asked a multitude
+of questions about America--how I liked Italy, what I thought of the
+Italians, &c. When he was silent, he was a better sitter than before;
+for he assumed a countenance that did not belong to him, as though he
+were thinking of a frontispiece for Childe Harold. In about an hour our
+first sitting terminated, and I returned to Leghorn, scarcely able to
+persuade myself that this was the haughty misanthrope whose character
+had always appeared so enveloped in gloom and mystery; for I do not
+remember ever to have met with manners more gentle and attractive.
+
+"The next day I returned and had another sitting of an hour, during
+which he seemed anxious to know what I should make of my undertaking.
+Whilst I was painting, the window from which I received my light became
+suddenly darkened, and I heard a voice exclaim 'è troppo bello!' I
+turned, and discovered a beautiful female stooping down to look in, the
+ground on the outside being on a level with the bottom of the window.
+Her long golden hair hung down about her face and shoulders, her
+complexion was exquisite, and her smile completed one of the most
+romantic-looking heads, set off as it was by the bright sun behind it,
+which I had ever beheld. Lord Byron invited her to come in, and
+introduced her to me as the Countess Guiccioli. He seemed very fond of
+her, and I was glad of her presence, for the playful manner which he
+assumed towards her made him a much better sitter.
+
+"The next day, I was pleased to find that the progress which I had made
+in his likeness had given satisfaction, for, when we were alone, he
+said that he had a particular favour to request of me--would I grant it?
+I said I should be happy to oblige him; and he enjoined me to the
+flattering task of painting the Countess Guiccioli's portrait for him.
+On the following morning I began it, and, after, they sat alternately.
+He gave me the whole history of his connection with her, and said that
+he hoped it would last for ever; at any rate, it should not be his fault
+if it did not. His other attachments had been broken off by no fault of
+his.
+
+"I was by this time sufficiently intimate with him to answer his
+question as to what I thought of him before I had seen him. He laughed
+much at the idea which I had formed of him, and said, 'Well, you find me
+like other people, do you not?' He often afterwards repeated, 'And so
+you thought me a finer fellow, did you?' I remember once telling him,
+that notwithstanding his vivacity, I thought myself correct in at least
+one estimate which I had made of him, for I still conceived that he was
+not a happy man. He enquired earnestly what reason I had for thinking
+so, and I asked him if he had never observed in little children, after a
+paroxysm of grief, that they had at intervals a convulsive or tremulous
+manner of drawing in a long breath. Wherever I had observed this, in
+persons of whatever age, I had always found that it came from sorrow. He
+said the thought was new to him, and that he would make use of it.
+
+"Lord Byron, and all the party, left Villa Rossa (the name of their
+house) in a few days, to pack up their things in their house at Pisa.
+He told me that he should remain a few days there, and desired me, if I
+could do any thing more to the pictures, to come and stay with him. He
+seemed at a loss where to go, and was, I thought, on the point of
+embarking for America. I was with him at Pisa for a few days; but he was
+so annoyed by the police, and the weather was so hot, that I thought it
+doubtful whether I could improve the pictures, and, taking my departure
+one morning before he was up, I wrote him an excuse from Leghorn. Upon
+the whole, I left him with an impression that he possessed an excellent
+heart, which had been misconstrued on all hands from little else than a
+reckless levity of manners, which he took a whimsical pride in opposing
+to those of other people."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 499. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Pisa, July 6. 1822.
+
+     "I return you the revise. I have softened the part to which Gifford
+     objected, and changed the name of Michael to Raphael, who was an
+     angel of gentler sympathies. By the way, recollect to alter Michael
+     to _Raphael_ in the _scene_ itself throughout, for I have only had
+     time to do so in the list of the dramatis personæ, and _scratch out
+     all the pencil-marks_, to avoid puzzling the printers. I have given
+     the '_Vision of Quevedo Redivivus_' to John Hunt, which will
+     relieve you from a dilemma. He must publish it at his _own_ risk,
+     as it is at his own desire. Give him the _corrected_ copy which
+     Mr. Kinnaird had, as it is mitigated partly, and also the preface.
+
+     "Yours," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 500. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Pisa, July 8. 1822.
+
+     "Last week I returned you the packet of proofs. You had, perhaps,
+     better not publish in the same volume the _Po_ and _Rimini_
+     translation.
+
+     "I have consigned a letter to Mr. John Hunt for the 'Vision of
+     Judgment,' which you will hand over to him. Also the 'Pulci,'
+     original and Italian, and any _prose_ tracts of mine; for Mr. Leigh
+     Hunt is arrived here, and thinks of commencing a periodical work,
+     to which I shall contribute. I do not propose to you to be the
+     publisher, because I know that you are unfriends; but all things in
+     your care, except the volume now in the press, and the manuscript
+     purchased of Mr. Moore, can be given for this purpose, according as
+     they are wanted.
+
+     "With regard to what you say about your 'want of memory,' I can
+     only remark, that you inserted the note to Marino Faliero against
+     my positive revocation, and that you omitted the Dedication of
+     Sardanapalus to Goethe (place it before the volume now in the
+     press), both of which were things not very agreeable to me, and
+     which I could wish to be avoided in future, as they might be with a
+     very little care, or a simple memorandum in your pocket-book.
+
+     "It is not impossible that I may have three or four cantos of Don
+     Juan ready by autumn, or a little later, as I obtained a permission
+     from my dictatress to continue it,--_provided always_ it was to be
+     more guarded and decorous and sentimental in the continuation than
+     in the commencement. How far these conditions have been fulfilled
+     may be seen, perhaps, by-and-by; but the embargo was only taken off
+     upon these stipulations. You can answer at your leisure. Yours,"
+     &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 501. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Pisa, July 12. 1822.
+
+     "I have written to you lately, but not in answer to your last
+     letter of about a fortnight ago. I wish to know (and request an
+     answer to _that_ point) what became of the stanzas to Wellington
+     (intended to open a canto of Don Juan with), which I sent you
+     several months ago. If they have fallen into Murray's hands, he and
+     the Tories will suppress them, as those lines rate that hero at his
+     real value. Pray be explicit on this, as I have no other copy,
+     having sent you the original; and if you have them, let me have
+     _that_ again, or a _copy_ correct.
+
+     "I subscribed at Leghorn two hundred Tuscan crowns to your Irishism
+     committee; it is about a thousand francs, more or less. As Sir
+     C.S., who receives thirteen thousand a year of the public money,
+     could not afford more than a thousand livres out of his enormous
+     salary, it would have appeared ostentatious in a private individual
+     to pretend to surpass him; and therefore I have sent but the above
+     sum, as you will see by the enclosed receipt.[82]
+
+     "Leigh Hunt is here, after a voyage of eight months, during which
+     he has, I presume, made the Periplus of Hanno the Carthaginian, and
+     with much the same speed. He is setting up a Journal, to which I
+     have promised to contribute; and in the first number the 'Vision of
+     Judgment, by Quevedo Redivivus,' will probably appear, with other
+     articles.
+
+     "Can you give us any thing? He seems sanguine about the matter, but
+     (entre nous) I am not. I do not, however, like to put him out of
+     spirits by saying so; for he is bilious and unwell. Do, pray,
+     answer _this_ letter immediately.
+
+     "Do send Hunt any thing in prose or verse, of yours, to start him
+     handsomely--any lyrical, _irical_, or what you please.
+
+     "Has not your Potatoe Committee been blundering? Your advertisement
+     says, that Mr. L. Callaghan (a queer name for a banker) hath been
+     disposing of money in Ireland 'sans authority of the Committee.' I
+     suppose it will end in Callaghan's calling out the Committee, the
+     chairman of which carries pistols in his pocket, of course.
+
+     "When you can spare time from _duetting, coquetting_, and
+     claretting with your Hibernians of both sexes, let me have a line
+     from you. I doubt whether Paris is a good place for the composition
+     of your new poesy."
+
+[Footnote 82: "Received from Mr. Henry Dunn the sum of two hundred
+Tuscan crowns (for account of the Right Honourable Lord Noel Byron), for
+the purpose of assisting the Irish poor.
+
+"Thomas Hall.
+
+"Leghorn, 9th July, 1822. Tuscan crowns, 200."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 502. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Pisa, August 8. 1822.
+
+     "You will have heard by this time that Shelley and another
+     gentleman (Captain Williams) were drowned about a month ago (a
+     _month_ yesterday), in a squall off the Gulf of Spezia. There is
+     thus another man gone, about whom the world was ill-naturedly, and
+     ignorantly, and brutally mistaken. It will, perhaps, do him justice
+     _now_, when he can be no better for it.[83]
+
+     "I have not seen the thing you mention[84], and only heard of it
+     casually, nor have I any desire. The price is, as I saw in some
+     advertisements, fourteen shillings, which is too much to pay for a
+     libel on oneself. Some one said in a letter, that it was a Doctor
+     Watkins, who deals in the life and libel line. It must have
+     diminished your natural pleasure, as a friend (vide
+     Rochefoucault), to see yourself in it.
+
+     "With regard to the Blackwood fellows, I never published any thing
+     against them; nor, indeed, have seen their magazine (except in
+     Galignani's extracts) for these three years past. I once wrote, a
+     good while ago, some remarks [85] on their review of Don Juan, but
+     saying very little about themselves, and these were _not_
+     published. If you think that I ought to follow your example[86](and
+     I like to be in your company when I can) in contradicting their
+     impudence, you may shape this declaration of mine into a similar
+     paragraph for me. It is possible that you may have seen the little
+     I _did_ write (and never published) at Murray's;--it contained much
+     more about Southey than about the Blacks.
+
+     "If you think that I ought to do any thing about Watkins's book, I
+     should not care much about publishing _my Memoir now_, should it be
+     necessary to counteract the fellow. But, in _that_ case, I should
+     like to look over the _press_ myself. Let me know what you think,
+     or whether I had better _not_;--at least, not the second part,
+     which touches on the actual confines of still existing matters.
+
+     "I have written three more Cantos of Don Juan, and am hovering on
+     the brink of another (the ninth). The reason I want the stanzas
+     again which I sent you is, that as these cantos contain a full
+     detail (like the storm in Canto Second) of the siege and assault of
+     Ismael, with much of sarcasm on those butchers in large business,
+     your mercenary soldiery, it is a good opportunity of gracing the
+     poem with * * *. With these things and these fellows, it is
+     necessary, in the present clash of philosophy and tyranny, to throw
+     away the scabbard. I know it is against fearful odds; but the
+     battle must be fought; and it will be eventually for the good of
+     mankind, whatever it may be for the individual who risks himself.
+
+     "What do you think of your Irish bishop? Do you remember Swift's
+     line, 'Let me have a _barrack_--a fig for the _clergy_?' This seems
+     to have been his reverence's motto. * * *
+
+     "Yours," &c.
+
+[Footnote 83: In a letter to Mr. Murray, of an earlier date, which has
+been omitted to avoid repetitions, he says on the same subject, "You
+were all mistaken about Shelley, who was, without exception, the _best_
+and least selfish man I ever knew." There is also another passage in the
+same letter which, for its perfect truth, I must quote:--"I have
+received your scrap, with Henry Drury's letter enclosed. It is just like
+him--always kind and ready to oblige his old friends."]
+
+[Footnote 84: A book which had just appeared, entitled "Memoirs of the
+Right Hon. Lord Byron."]
+
+[Footnote 85: The remarkable pamphlet from which extracts have been
+already given in this work.]
+
+[Footnote 86: It had been asserted in a late Number of Blackwood, that
+both Lord Byron and myself were employed in writing satires against that
+Magazine.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 503. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Pisa, August 27. 1822.
+
+     "It is boring to trouble you with 'such small gear;' but it must be
+     owned that I should be glad if you would enquire whether my Irish
+     subscription ever reached the committee in Paris from Leghorn. My
+     reasons, like Vellum's, 'are threefold:'--First, I doubt the
+     accuracy of all almoners, or remitters of benevolent cash; second,
+     I do suspect that the said Committee, having in part served its
+     time to time-serving, may have kept back the acknowledgment of an
+     obnoxious politician's name in their lists; and third, I feel
+     pretty sure that I shall one day be twitted by the government
+     scribes for having been a professor of love for Ireland, and not
+     coming forward with the others in her distresses.
+
+     "It is not, as you may opine, that I am ambitious of having my name
+     in the papers, as I can have that any day in the week gratis. All I
+     want is to know if the Reverend Thomas Hall did or did not remit
+     my subscription (200 scudi of Tuscany, or about a thousand francs,
+     more or less,) to the Committee at Paris.
+
+     "The other day at Viareggio, I thought proper to swim off to my
+     schooner (the Bolivar) in the offing, and thence to shore
+     again--about three miles, or better, in all. As it was at mid-day,
+     under a broiling sun, the consequence has been a feverish attack,
+     and my whole skin's coming off, after going through the process of
+     one large continuous blister, raised by the sun and sea together. I
+     have suffered much pain; not being able to lie on my back, or even
+     side; for my shoulders and arms were equally St. Bartholomewed. But
+     it is over,--and I have got a new skin, and am as glossy as a snake
+     in its new suit.
+
+     "We have been burning the bodies of Shelley and Williams on the
+     sea-shore, to render them fit for removal and regular interment.
+     You can have no idea what an extraordinary effect such a funeral
+     pile has, on a desolate shore, with mountains in the background and
+     the sea before, and the singular appearance the salt and
+     frankincense gave to the flame. All of Shelley was consumed, except
+     his _heart_, which would not take the flame, and is now preserved
+     in spirits of wine.
+
+     "Your old acquaintance Londonderry has quietly died at North Cray!
+     and the virtuous De Witt was torn in pieces by the populace! What a
+     lucky * * the Irishman has been in his life and end.[87] In him
+     your Irish Franklin est mort!
+
+     "Leigh Hunt is sweating articles for his new Journal; and both he
+     and I think it somewhat shabby in _you_ not to contribute. Will you
+     become one of the _properrioters_? 'Do, and we go snacks.' I
+     recommend you to think twice before you respond in the negative.
+
+     "I have nearly (_quite three_) four new cantos of Don Juan ready. I
+     obtained permission from the female Censor Morum of _my_ morals to
+     continue it, provided it were immaculate; so I have been as decent
+     as need be. There is a deal of war--a siege, and all that, in the
+     style, graphical and technical, of the shipwreck in Canto Second,
+     which 'took,' as they say, in the Row.
+
+     Yours, &c.
+
+     "P.S. That * * * Galignani has about ten lies in one paragraph. It
+     was not a Bible that was found in Shelley's pocket, but John
+     Keats's poems. However, it would not have been strange, for he was
+     a great admirer of Scripture as a composition. _I_ did not send my
+     bust to the academy of New York; but I sat for my picture to young
+     West, an American artist, at the request of some members of that
+     Academy to _him_ that he would take my portrait,--for the Academy,
+     I believe.[88]
+
+     "I had, and still have, thoughts of South America, but am
+     fluctuating between it and Greece. I should have gone, long ago, to
+     one of them, but for my liaison with the Countess Gi.; for love, in
+     these days, is little compatible with glory. _She_ would be
+     delighted to go too; but I do not choose to expose her to a long
+     voyage, and a residence in an unsettled country, where I shall
+     probably take a part of some sort."
+
+[Footnote 87: The particulars of this event had, it is evident, not yet
+readied him.]
+
+[Footnote 88: This portrait, though destined for America, was, it
+appears, never sent thither. A few copies of it have since been painted
+by Mr. West, but the original picture was purchased by Mr. Joy, of
+Hartham Park, Wilts; who is also the possessor of the original portrait
+of Madame Guiccioli, by the same artist.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Soon after the above letters were written, Lord Byron removed to Genoa,
+having taken a house, called the Villa Saluzzo, at Albaro, one of the
+suburbs of that city. From the time of the unlucky squabble with the
+serjeant-major at Pisa, his tranquillity had been considerably broken in
+upon, as well by the judicial enquiries consequent upon that event, as
+by the many sinister rumours and suspicions to which it gave rise.
+Though the wounded man had recovered, his friends all vowed vengeance
+with the dagger: and the sensation which the affair and its various
+consequences had produced was,--to Madame Guiccioli more particularly,
+from the situation in which her family stood, in regard to
+politics,--distressing and alarming. While the impression, too, of this
+event was still recent, another circumstance occurred which, though
+comparatively unimportant, had the unlucky effect of again drawing the
+attention of the Tuscans to their new visitors. During Lord Byron's
+short visit to Leghorn, a Swiss servant in his employ having quarrelled,
+on some occasion, with the brother of Madame Guiccioli, drew his knife
+upon the young Count, and wounded him slightly on the cheek. This
+affray, happening so soon after the other, was productive also of so
+much notice and conversation, that the Tuscan government, in its horror
+of every thing like disturbance, thought itself called upon to
+interfere; and orders were accordingly issued, that, within four days,
+the two Counts Gamba, father and son, should depart from Tuscany. To
+Lord Byron this decision was, in the highest degree, provoking and
+disconcerting; it being one of the conditions of the Guiccioli's
+separation from her husband, that she should thenceforward reside under
+the same roof with her father. After balancing in his mind between
+various projects,--sometimes thinking of Geneva, and sometimes, as we
+have seen, of South America,--he at length decided, for the present, to
+transfer his residence to Genoa.
+
+His habits of life, while at Pisa, had but very little differed, except
+in the new line of society into which his introduction to Shelley's
+friends led him,--from the usual monotonous routine in which, so
+singularly for one of his desultory disposition, the daily course of
+his existence had now, for some years, flowed. At two he usually
+breakfasted, and at three, or, as the year advanced, four o'clock, those
+persons who were in the habit of accompanying him in his rides, called
+upon him. After, occasionally, a game of billiards, he proceeded,--and,
+in order to avoid starers, in his carriage,--as far as the gates of the
+town, where his horses met him. At first the route he chose for these
+rides was in the direction of the Cascine and of the pine-forest that
+reaches towards the sea; but having found a spot more convenient for his
+pistol exercise on the road leading from the Porta alla Spiaggia to the
+east of the city, he took daily this course during the remainder of his
+stay. When arrived at the Podere or farm, in the garden of which they
+were allowed to erect their target, his friends and he dismounted, and,
+after devoting about half an hour to a trial of skill at the pistol,
+returned, a little before sunset, into the city.
+
+"Lord Byron," says a friend who was sometimes present at their
+practising, "was the best marksman. Shelley, and Williams, and
+Trelawney, often made as good shots as he--but they were not so certain;
+and he, though his hand trembled violently, never missed, for he
+calculated on this vibration, and depended entirely on his eye. Once
+after demolishing his mark, he set up a slender cane, whose colour,
+nearly the same as the gravel in which it was fixed, might well have
+deceived him, and at twenty paces he divided it with his bullet. His joy
+at a good shot, and his vexation at a failure, was great--and when we
+met him on his return, his cold salutation, or joyous laugh, told the
+tale of the day's success."
+
+For the first time since his arrival in Italy, he now found himself
+tempted to give dinner parties; his guests being, besides Count Gamba
+and Shelley, Mr. Williams, Captain Medwin, Mr. Taafe, and Mr.
+Trelawney;--and "never," as his friend Shelley used to say, "did he
+display himself to more advantage than on these occasions; being at once
+polite and cordial, full of social hilarity and the most perfect good
+humour; never diverging into ungraceful merriment, and yet keeping up
+the spirit of liveliness throughout the evening." About midnight his
+guests generally left him, with the exception of Captain Medwin, who
+used to remain, as I understand, talking and drinking with his noble
+host till far into the morning; and to the careless, half mystifying
+confidences of these nocturnal sittings, implicitly listened to and
+confusedly recollected, we owe the volume with which Captain Medwin,
+soon after the death of the noble poet, favoured the world.
+
+On the subject of this and other such intimacies formed by Lord Byron,
+not only at the period of which we are speaking, but throughout his
+whole life, it would be difficult to advance any thing more judicious,
+or more demonstrative of a true knowledge of his character, than is to
+be found in the following remarks of one who had studied him with her
+whole heart,--who had learned to regard him with the eyes of good sense,
+as well as of affection, and whose strong love, in short, was founded
+upon a basis the most creditable both to him and herself,--the being
+able to understand him.[89]
+
+"We continued in Pisa even more rigorously to absent ourselves from
+society. However, as there were a good many English in Pisa, he could
+not avoid becoming acquainted with various friends of Shelley, among
+which number was Mr. Medwin. They followed him in his rides, dined with
+him, and felt themselves happy, of course, in the apparent intimacy in
+which they lived with so renowned a man; but not one of them was
+admitted to any part of his friendship, which, indeed, he did not easily
+accord. He had a great affection for Shelley, and a great esteem for his
+character and talents; but he was not his friend in the most extensive
+sense of that word. Sometimes, when speaking of his friends and of
+friendship, as also of love, and of every other noble emotion of the
+soul, his expressions might inspire doubts concerning his sentiments and
+the goodness of his heart. The feeling of the moment regulated his
+speech, and, besides, he liked to play the part of singularity,--and
+sometimes worse,--more especially with those whom he suspected of
+endeavouring to make discoveries as to his real character; but it was
+only mean minds and superficial observers that could be deceived in him.
+It was necessary to consider his actions to perceive the contradiction
+they bore to his words: it was necessary to be witness of certain
+moments, during which unforeseen and involuntary emotion forced him to
+give himself entirely up to his feelings; and whoever beheld him then,
+became aware of the stores of sensibility and goodness of which his
+noble heart was full.
+
+"Among the many occasions _I_ had of seeing him thus overpowered, I
+shall mention one relative to his feelings of friendship. A few days
+before leaving Pisa, we were one evening seated in the garden of the
+Palazzo Lanfranchi. A soft melancholy was spread over his countenance;
+he recalled to mind the events of his life; compared them with his
+present situation, and with that which it might have been if his
+affection for me had not caused him to remain in Italy, saying things
+which would have made earth a paradise for me, but that even then a
+presentiment that I should lose all this happiness tormented me. At this
+moment a servant announced Mr. Hobhouse. The slight shade of melancholy
+diffused over Lord Byron's face gave instant place to the liveliest joy;
+but it was so great, that it almost deprived him of strength. A fearful
+paleness came over his cheeks, and his eyes were filled with tears as he
+embraced his friend. His emotion was so great that he was forced to sit
+down.
+
+"Lord Clare's visit also occasioned him extreme delight. He had a great
+affection for Lord Clare, and was very happy during the short visit that
+he paid him at Leghorn. The day on which they separated was a melancholy
+one for Lord Byron. 'I have a presentiment that I shall never see him
+more,' he said, and his eyes filled with tears. The same melancholy came
+over him during the first weeks that succeeded to Lord Clare's
+departure, whenever his conversation happened to fall upon this
+friend."[90]
+
+Of his feelings on the death of his daughter Allegra, this lady gives
+the following account:--"On the occasion also of the death of his
+natural daughter, I saw in his grief the excess of paternal kindness.
+His conduct towards this child was always that of a fond father; but no
+one would have guessed from his expressions that he felt this affection
+for her. He was dreadfully agitated by the first intelligence of her
+illness; and when afterwards that of her death arrived, I was obliged to
+fulfil the melancholy task of communicating it to him. The memory of
+that frightful moment is stamped indelibly on my mind. For several
+evenings he had not left his house, I therefore went to him. His first
+question was relative to the courier he had despatched for tidings of
+his daughter, and whose delay disquieted him. After a short interval of
+suspense, with every caution which my own sorrow suggested, I deprived
+him of all hope of the child's recovery. 'I understand,' said he,--'it
+is enough, say no more.' A mortal paleness spread itself over his face,
+his strength failed him, and he sunk into a seat. His look was fixed,
+and the expression such that I began to fear for his reason; he did not
+shed a tear, and his countenance manifested so hopeless, so profound, so
+sublime a sorrow, that at the moment he appeared a being of a nature
+superior to humanity. He remained immovable in the same attitude for an
+hour, and no consolation which I endeavoured to afford him seemed to
+reach his ears, far less his heart. But enough of this sad episode, on
+which I cannot linger, even after the lapse of so many years, without
+renewing in my own heart the awful wretchedness of that day. He desired
+to be left alone, and I was obliged to leave him. I found him on the
+following morning tranquillised, and with an expression of religious
+resignation on his features. 'She is more fortunate than we are,' he
+said; 'besides, her position in the world would scarcely have allowed
+her to be happy. It is God's will--let us mention it no more.' And from
+that day he would never pronounce her name; but became more anxious
+when he spoke of Ada,--so much so as to disquiet himself when the usual
+accounts sent him were for a post or two delayed."[91]
+
+The melancholy death of poor Shelley, which happened, as we have seen,
+also during this period, seems to have affected Lord Byron's mind, less
+with grief for the actual loss of his friend, than with bitter
+indignation against those who had, through life, so grossly
+misrepresented him; and never certainly was there an instance where the
+supposed absence of all religion in an individual was assumed so eagerly
+as an excuse for the absence of all charity in judging him. Though never
+personally acquainted with Mr. Shelley, I can join freely with those who
+most loved him in admiring the various excellences of his heart and
+genius, and lamenting the too early doom that robbed us of the mature
+fruits of both. His short life had been, like his poetry, a sort of
+bright erroneous dream,--false in the general principles on which it
+proceeded, though beautiful and attaching in most of the details. Had
+full time been allowed for the "over-light" of his imagination to have
+been tempered down by the judgment which, in him, was still in reserve,
+the world at large would have been taught to pay that high homage to his
+genius which those only who saw what he was capable of can now be
+expected to accord to it.
+
+It was about this time that Mr. Cowell, paying a visit to Lord Byron at
+Genoa, was told by him that some friends of Mr. Shelley, sitting
+together one evening, had seen that gentleman, distinctly, as they
+thought, walk into a little wood at Lerici, when at the same moment, as
+they afterwards discovered, he was far away in quite a different
+direction. "This," added Lord Byron, in a low, awe-struck tone of
+voice, "was but ten days before poor Shelley died."
+
+[Footnote 89: My poor Zimmerman, who now will understand thee?"--such
+was the touching speech addressed to Zimmerman by his wife, on her
+death-bed; and there is implied in these few words all that a man of
+morbid sensibility must be dependant for upon the tender and
+self-forgetting tolerance of the woman with whom he is united.]
+
+[Footnote 90: "In Pisa abbiamo continuato anche più rigorosaraente a
+vivere lontano dalla società. Essendosi però in Pisa molti Inglesi egli
+non potè escusarsi dal fare la conoscenza di varii amici di Shelley, fra
+i quali uno fu Mr. Medwin. Essi lo seguitavano al passeggio, pranzavono
+con lui e certamente si tenevano felici della apparente intimità che
+loro accordava un uomo così superiore. Ma nessuno di loro fu ammesso mai
+a porta della sua amicizia, che egli non era facile a accordare. Per
+Shelley egli aveva dell' affezione, e molta stima pel suo carattere e
+pel suo talento, ma non era suo amico nel estensione del senso che si
+deva dare alla parola amicizia. Talvolta parlando egli de' suoi amici, e
+dell' amicizia, come pure dell' amore, e di ogni altro nobile sentimento
+dell' anima, potevano i suoi discorsi far nascere dei dubbii sui veri
+suoi sentimenti, e sulla bontà del suo core. Una impressione momentanea
+regolava i suoi discorsi; e di più egli amava anche a rappresentare un
+personaggio bizzarro, e qualche volta anche peggio,--specialmente con
+quelli che egli pensava volessero studiare e fare delle scoperte sul suo
+carattere. Ma nell' inganno non poteva cadere che una piccola mente, e
+un osservatore superficiale. Bisognava esaminare le sue azioni per
+sentire tutta le contraddizione che era fra di esse e i suoi discorsi;
+bisognava vederlo in certi momenti in cui per una emozione improvisa e
+più forte della sua volontà la sua anima si abbandonava interamente a se
+stessa;--bisognava vederlo allora per scoprire i tesori di sensibilità e
+di bontà che erano ìn quella nobile anima.
+
+"Fra le tante volte che io l'ho veduto in simili circostanze ne
+ricorderò una che risguarda i suoi sentimenti di amicizia. Pochi giorni
+prima di lasciare Pisa eravamo verso sera insieme seduti nel giardino
+del Palazzo Lanfranchi. Una dolce malinconia era sparsa sul suo viso.
+Egli riandava col pensiero gli avvenimenti della sua vita e faceva il
+confronto colle attuale sue situazione e quella che avrebbe potuta
+essere se la sua affezione per me non lo avesse fatto restare in Italia;
+e diceva cose che avrebbero resa per me la terra un paradiso, se giÃ
+sino d'allora il pressentimento di perdere tanta felicità non mi avesse
+tormentata. In questo mentre un domestico annunciò Mr. Hobhouse. La
+leggiera tinta di malinconia sparsa sul viso di Byron fece, luogo
+subitamente alia più viva gioia; ma essa fu così forte che gli tolse
+quasi le forze. Un pallore commovente ricoperse il suo volto, e nell'
+abbracciare il suo amico i suoi occhi erano pieni di lacrime di
+contento. E l'emozione fu così forte che egli fu obbligato di sedersi,
+sentendosi mancare le forze.
+
+"La venuta pure di Lord Clare fu per lui un epoca di grande felicità.
+Egli amava sommamente Lord Clare--egli era così felice in quel breve
+tempo che passò presso di lui a Livorno, e il giorno in cui si
+separarono fu un giorno di grande tristezza per Lord Byron. 'Io ho il
+pressentimento che non lo vedrò piu,' diceva egli; e i suoi occhi si
+riempirano di lacrime; e in questo stato l'ho veduto per varii
+settimanie dopo la partenza di Lord Clare, ogni qual volta il discorso
+cadeva sopra di codesto il suo amico."]
+
+[Footnote 91: "Nell' occasione pure della morire della sua figlia
+naturale io ho veduto nel suo dolore tuttociò che vi è di più profondo
+nella tenerezza paterna. La sua condotta verso di codesta fanciulla era
+stata sempre quella del padre il più amoroso; ma dalle di lui parole non
+si sarebbe giudicato che avesse tanta affezione per lei. Alia prima
+notizia della di lei malattia egli fu sommamente agitato; giunse poi la
+notizia della morte, ed io dovessi esercitare il tristo uficio di
+participarla a Lord Byron. Quel sensibile momenta sarà indelebile nella
+mia memoria. Egli non usciva da varii giorni la sera: io andai dunque da
+lui. La prima domauda che egli mi fece fu relativa al Corriere che egli
+aveva spedito per avere notizie della sua figlia, e di cui il retardo lo
+inquietava. Dopo qualche momento di sospensione con tutta l'arte che
+sapeva suggerirmi il mio proprio dotore gli tolsi ogni speranza della
+guarizione della fanciulla. 'Ho inteso,' disse egli--'basta così--non
+dite di più'--e un pallore mortale si sparse sul suo volto; le forze gli
+mancarono, e cadde sopra una sedia d'appoggio. Il suo sguardo era fisso
+e tale che mi fece temere per la sua ragione. Egli rimase in quello
+stato d'immobilità un' ora; e nessuna parola dì consolazione che io
+potessi indirezzargli pareva penetrare le sue orecchie non che il suo
+core. Ma basta così di questa trista detenzione nella quale non posso
+fermarmi dopo tanti anni senza risvegliare dì nuovo nel mio animo le
+terribile sofferenze di quel giorno. La mattinà lo trovai tranquillo, e
+con una espressione di religiosa rassegnazione nel suo volto. 'Ella è
+più felice di noi,' diss' egli--'d'altronde la sua situazione nel mondo
+non le avrebbe data forse felicità. Dio ha voluto così--non ne parliamo
+più.' E da quel giorno in poi non ha più voluto proferire il nome di
+quella fanciulla. Ma è divenuto più pensieroso parlando di Adda, al
+punto di tormentarsi quando gli ritardavano di qualche ordinario le di
+lei notizie."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 504. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Genoa, October 9. 1822.
+
+     "I have received your letter, and as you explain it, I have no
+     objection, on _your_ account, to omit those passages in the new
+     Mystery (which were marked in the half-sheet sent the other day to
+     Pisa), or the passage in _Cain_;--but why not be open and say so at
+     _first_? You should be more straight-forward on every account.
+
+     "I have been very unwell--four days confined to my bed in 'the
+     worst inn's worst room,' at Lerici, with a violent rheumatic and
+     bilious attack, constipation, and the devil knows what: no
+     physician, except a young fellow, who, however, was kind and
+     cautious, and that's enough.
+
+     "At last I seized Thompson's book of prescriptions (a donation of
+     yours), and physicked myself with the first dose I found in it; and
+     after undergoing the ravages of all kinds of decoctions, sallied
+     from bed on the fifth day to cross the Gulf to Sestri. The sea
+     revived me instantly; and I ate the sailor's cold fish, and drank a
+     gallon of country wine, and got to Genoa the same night after
+     landing at Sestri, and have ever since been keeping well, but
+     thinner, and with an occasional cough towards evening.
+
+     "I am afraid the Journal _is a bad_ business, and won't do; but in
+     it I am sacrificing _myself_ for others--_I_ can have no advantage
+     in it. I believe the _brothers Hunts_ to be honest men; I am sure
+     that they are poor ones; they have not a nap. They pressed me to
+     engage in this work, and in an evil hour I consented. Still I shall
+     not repent, if I can do them the least service. I have done all I
+     can for Leigh Hunt since he came here; but it is almost
+     useless:--his wife is ill, his six children not very tractable, and
+     in the affairs of this world he himself is a child. The death of
+     Shelley left them totally aground; and I could not see them in such
+     a state without using the common feelings of humanity, and what
+     means were in my power, to set them afloat again.
+
+     "So Douglas Kinnaird is out of the way? He was so the last time I
+     sent him a parcel, and he gives no previous notice. When is he
+     expected again?
+
+     "Yours, &c.
+
+     "P.S. Will you say at once--do you publish Werner and the Mystery
+     or not? You never once allude to them.
+
+     "That curst advertisement of Mr. J. Hunt is out of the limits. I
+     did not lend him my name to be hawked about in this way.
+
+     "However, I believe--at least, hope--that after all you may be a
+     good fellow at bottom, and it is on this presumption that I now
+     write to you on the subject of a poor woman of the name of _Yossy_,
+     who is, or was, an author of yours, as she says, and published a
+     book on Switzerland in 1816, patronised by the 'Court and Colonel
+     M'Mahon.' But it seems that neither the Court nor the Colonel could
+     get over the portentous price of three pounds, thirteen, and
+     sixpence,' which alarmed the too susceptible public; and, in short,
+     'the book died away,' and, what is worse, the poor soul's husband
+     died too, and she writes with the man a corpse before her; but
+     instead of addressing the bishop or Mr. Wilberforce, she hath
+     recourse to that proscribed, atheistical, syllogistical,
+     phlogistical person, _mysen_, as they say in Notts. It is strange
+     enough, but the rascaille English who calumniate me in every
+     direction and on every score, whenever they are in great distress
+     recur to me for assistance. If I have had one example of this, I
+     have had letters from a thousand, and as far as is in my power have
+     tried to repay good for evil, and purchase a shilling's worth of
+     salvation as long as my pocket can hold out.
+
+     "Now, I am willing to do what I can for this unfortunate person;
+     but her situation and her wishes (not unreasonable, however,)
+     require more than can be advanced by one individual like myself;
+     for I have many claims of the same kind just at present, and also
+     some remnants of _debt_ to pay in England--God, he knows, the
+     _latter_ how reluctantly! Can the Literary Fund do nothing for her?
+     By your interest, which is great among the pious, I dare say that
+     something might be collected. Can you get any of her books
+     published? Suppose you took her as author in my place, now vacant
+     among your ragamuffins; she is a moral and pious person, and will
+     shine upon your shelves. But seriously, do what you can for her."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 505. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Genoa, 9bre 23. 1822.
+
+     "I have to thank you for a parcel of books, which are very welcome,
+     especially Sir Walter's gift of 'Halidon Hill.' You have sent me a
+     copy of 'Werner,' but _without_ the preface. If you have published
+     it _without_, you will have plunged me into a very disagreeable
+     dilemma, because I shall be accused of plagiarism from Miss Lee's
+     German's Tale, whereas I have fully and freely acknowledged that
+     the drama is entirely taken from the story.
+
+     "I return you the Quarterly Review, uncut and unopened, not from
+     disrespect or disregard or pique, but it is a kind of reading which
+     I have some time disused, as I think the periodical style of
+     writing hurtful to the habits of the mind, by presenting the
+     superfices of too many things at once. I do not know that it
+     contains any thing disagreeable to me--it may or it may not; nor do
+     I return it on account that there _may_ be an article which you
+     hinted at in one of your late letters, but because I have left off
+     reading these kind of works, and should equally have returned you
+     any other number.
+
+     "I am obliged to take in one or two abroad, because solicited to do
+     so. The Edinburgh came before me by mere chance in Galignani's
+     picnic sort of gazette, where he had inserted a part of it.
+
+     "You will have received various letters from me lately, in a style
+     which I used with reluctance; but you left me no other choice by
+     your absolute refusal to communicate with a man you did not like
+     upon the mere simple matter of transfer of a few papers of little
+     consequence (except to their author), and which could be of no
+     moment to yourself.
+
+     "I hope that Mr. Kinnaird is better. It is strange that you never
+     alluded to his accident, if it be true, as stated in the papers. I
+     am yours, &c. &c.
+
+     "I hope that you have a milder winter than we have had here. We
+     have had inundations worthy of the Trent or Po, and the conductor
+     (Franklin's) of my house was struck (or supposed to be stricken) by
+     a thunderbolt. I was so near the window that I was dazzled and my
+     eyes hurt for several minutes, and everybody in the house felt an
+     electric shock at the moment. Madame Guiccioli was frightened, as
+     you may suppose.
+
+     "I have thought since that your bigots would have 'saddled me with
+     a judgment' (as Thwackum did Square when he bit his tongue in
+     talking metaphysics), if any thing had happened of consequence.
+     These fellows always forget Christ in their Christianity, and what
+     he said when 'the tower of Siloam fell.'
+
+     "To-day is the 9th, and the 10th is my surviving daughter's
+     birth-day. I have ordered, as a regale, a mutton chop and a bottle
+     of ale. She is seven years old, I believe. Did I ever tell you that
+     the day I came of age I dined on eggs and bacon and a bottle of
+     ale? For once in a way they are my favourite dish and drinkable,
+     but as neither of them agree with me, I never use them but on great
+     jubilees--once in four or five years or so.
+
+     "I see somebody represents the Hunts and Mrs. Shelley as living in
+     my house: it is a falsehood. They reside at some distance, and I do
+     not see them twice in a month. I have not met Mr. Hunt a dozen
+     times since I came to Genoa, or near it.
+
+     "Yours ever," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 506. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Genoa, 10bre 25°. 1822.
+
+     "I had sent you back the Quarterly, without perusal, having
+     resolved to read no more reviews, good, bad, or indifferent; but
+     'who can control his fate?' Galignani, to whom my English studies
+     are confined, has forwarded a copy of at least one half of it in
+     his indefatigable catch-penny weekly compilation; and as, 'like
+     honour, it came unlooked for,' I have looked through it. I must say
+     that, upon the _whole_, that is, the whole of the _half_ which I
+     have read (for the other half is to be the segment of Galignani's
+     next week's circular), it is extremely handsome, and any thing but
+     unkind or unfair. As I take the good in good part, I must not, nor
+     will not, quarrel with the bad. What the writer says of Don Juan is
+     harsh, but it is inevitable. He must follow, or at least not
+     directly oppose, the opinion of a prevailing, and yet not very
+     firmly seated, party. A Review may and will direct and 'turn awry'
+     the currents of opinion, but it must not directly oppose them. Don
+     Juan will be known by and by, for what it is intended,--a _Satire_
+     on _abuses_ of the present states of society, and not an eulogy of
+     vice. It may be now and then voluptuous: I can't help that.
+     Ariosto is worse; Smollett (see Lord Strutwell in vol. 2d of
+     Roderick Random) ten times worse; and Fielding no better. No girl
+     will ever be seduced by reading Don Juan:--no, no; she will go to
+     Little's poems and Rousseau's _romans_ for that, or even to the
+     immaculate De Staël. They will encourage her, and not the Don, who
+     laughs at that, and--and--most other things. But never mind--_ça
+     irà!_
+
+     "Now, do you see what you and your friends do by your injudicious
+     rudeness?--actually cement a sort of connection which you strove to
+     prevent, and which, had the Hunts _prospered_, would not in all
+     probability have continued. As it is, I will not quit them in their
+     adversity, though it should cost me character, fame, money, and the
+     usual _et cetera_.
+
+     "My original motives I already explained (in the letter which you
+     thought proper to show): they are the _true_ ones, and I abide by
+     them, as I tell you, and I told Leigh Hunt when he questioned me on
+     the subject of that letter. He was violently hurt, and never will
+     forgive me at bottom; but I can't help that. I never meant to make
+     a parade of it; but if he chose to question me, I could only answer
+     the plain truth: and I confess I did not see any thing in the
+     letter to hurt him, unless I said he was 'a bore,' which I don't
+     remember. Had their Journal gone on well, and I could have aided to
+     make it better for them, I should then have left them, after my
+     safe pilotage off a lee shore, to make a prosperous voyage by
+     themselves. As it is, I can't, and would not, if I could, leave
+     them among the breakers.
+
+     "As to any community of feeling, thought, or opinion, between
+     Leigh Hunt and me, there is little or none. We meet rarely, hardly
+     ever; but I think him a good-principled and able man, and must do
+     as I would be done by. I do not know what world he has lived in,
+     but I have lived in three or four; but none of them like his Keats
+     and kangaroo terra incognita. Alas! poor Shelley! how we would have
+     laughed had he lived, and how we used to laugh now and then, at
+     various things which are grave in the suburbs!
+
+     "You are all mistaken about Shelley. You do not know how mild, how
+     tolerant, how good he was in society; and as perfect a gentleman as
+     ever crossed a drawing-room, when he liked, and where liked.
+
+     "I have some thoughts of taking a run down to Naples (_solus_, or,
+     at most, _cum sola_) this spring, and writing, when I have studied
+     the country, a Fifth and Sixth Canto of Childe Harold: but this is
+     merely an idea for the present, and I have other excursions and
+     voyages in my mind. The busts[92] are finished: are you worthy of
+     them?
+
+     "Yours, &c. N.B.
+
+     "P.S. Mrs. Shelley is residing with the Hunts at some distance from
+     me. I see them very seldom, and generally on account of their
+     business. Mrs. Shelley, I believe, will go to England in the
+     spring.
+
+     "Count Gamba's family, the father and mother and daughter, are
+     residing with me by Mr. Hill (the minister's) recommendation, as a
+     safer asylum from the political persecutions than they could have
+     in another residence; but they occupy one part of a large house,
+     and I the other, and our establishments are quite separate.
+
+     "Since I have read the Quarterly, I shall erase two or three
+     passages in the latter six or seven cantos, in which I had lightly
+     stroked over two or three of your authors; but I will not return
+     evil for good. I liked what I read of the article much.
+
+     "Mr. J. Hunt is most likely the publisher of the new Cantos; with
+     what prospects of success I know not, nor does it very much matter,
+     as far as I am concerned; but I hope that it may be of use to him;
+     he is a stiff, sturdy, conscientious man, and I like him; he is
+     such a one as Prynne or Pym might be. I bear you no ill-will for
+     declining the Don Juans.
+
+     "Have you aided Madame de Yossy, as I requested? I sent her three
+     hundred francs. Recommend her, will you, to the Literary Fund, or
+     to some benevolence within your circles."
+
+[Footnote 92: Of the bust of himself by Bartollini he says, in one of
+the omitted letters to Mr. Murray:--"The bust does not turn out a good
+one,--though it may be like for aught I know, as it exactly resembles a
+superannuated Jesuit." Again: "I assure you Bartollini's is dreadful,
+though my mind misgives me that it is hideously like. If it is, I cannot
+be long for this world, for it overlooks seventy."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 507. TO LADY ----.
+
+     "Albaro, November 10. 1822.
+
+     "The Chevalier persisted in declaring himself an ill-used
+     gentleman, and describing you as a kind of cold Calypso, who lead
+     astray people of an amatory disposition without giving them any
+     sort of compensation, contenting yourself, it seems, with only
+     making _one_ fool instead of two, which is the more approved method
+     of proceeding on such occasions. For my part, I think you are quite
+     right; and be assured from me that a woman (as society is
+     constituted in England) who gives any advantage to a man may expect
+     a lover, but will sooner or later find a tyrant; and this is not
+     the man's fault either, perhaps, but is the necessary and natural
+     result of the circumstances of society, which, in fact, tyrannise
+     over the man equally with the woman; that is to say, if either of
+     them have any feeling or honour.
+
+     "You can write to me at your leisure and inclination. I have always
+     laid it down as a maxim, and found it justified by experience, that
+     a man and a woman make far better friendships than can exist
+     between two of the same sex; but _these_ with this condition, that
+     they never have made, or are to make, love with each other. Lovers
+     may, and, indeed, generally _are_ enemies, but they never can be
+     friends; because there must always be a spice of jealousy and a
+     something of self in all their speculations.
+
+     "Indeed, I rather look upon love altogether as a sort of hostile
+     transaction, very necessary to make or to break matches, and keep
+     the world going, but by no means a sinecure to the parties
+     concerned.
+
+     "Now, as my love perils are, I believe, pretty well over, and
+     yours, by all accounts, are never to begin, we shall be the best
+     friends imaginable, as far as both are concerned, and with this
+     advantage, that we may both fall to loving right and left through
+     all our acquaintance, without either sullenness or sorrow from that
+     amiable passion which are its inseparable attendants.
+
+     "Believe me," &c.
+
+
+END OF THE FIFTH VOLUME.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters
+And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6), by (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WRITINGS OF LORD BYRON ***
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Life of Lord Byron: with His Letters and Journals, vol V, by Thomas Moore
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And
+Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6), by (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6)
+
+Author: (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
+
+Editor: Thomas Moore
+
+Release Date: August 27, 2005 [EBook #16609]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WRITINGS OF LORD BYRON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Taavi Kalju and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+   <a href="images/1large.jpg">
+   <img src="images/1.jpg" alt="frontispiece" title="frontispiece" />
+   </a>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+   <a href="images/2large.jpg">
+   <img src="images/2.jpg" alt="frontispiece" title="frontispiece" />
+   </a>
+</div>
+
+
+<h1>LIFE</h1>
+
+<h3>OF</h3>
+
+<h1>LORD BYRON:</h1>
+
+<h3>WITH HIS LETTERS AND JOURNALS.</h3>
+
+<h2>BY THOMAS MOORE, ESQ.</h2>
+
+<h4>IN SIX VOLUMES.&mdash;VOL. V.</h4>
+
+<h4>NEW EDITION.</h4>
+
+<h5>LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 1854.</h5>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>CONTENTS OF VOL. V.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 10em;">LETTERS AND JOURNALS OF LORD BYRON, WITH NOTICES OF HIS LIFE, from</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 10em;">October, 1820, to November, 1822.</span><span class="pagenum"><a id="page1" name="page1"></a>Pg 1</span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>NOTICES</h3>
+
+<h3>OF THE</h3>
+
+<h3>LIFE OF LORD BYRON.</h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><b>LETTER 394. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, October 17. 1820.</p>
+
+<p>"You owe me two letters&mdash;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 <i>Gail</i>, but Sophia <i>Gay</i>&mdash;the English
+word <i>Gay</i>&mdash;who was my correspondent.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Can you tell who she is,
+as you did of the defunct * *?</p>
+
+<p>"Have you gone on with your Poem? I have received the French of
+mine. Only think of being <i>traduced</i> into a foreign language in
+such an abominable travesty! It is useless to rail, but one can't
+help it.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you got my Memoir copied? I have be<span class="pagenum"><a id="page2" name="page2"></a>Pg 2</span>gun a continuation. Shall
+I send it you, as far as it is gone?</p>
+
+<p>"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!&mdash;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,&mdash;the
+wiseacres!</p>
+
+<p>"You don't deserve a long letter&mdash;nor a letter at all&mdash;for your
+silence. You have got a new Bourbon, it seems, whom they have
+christened 'Dieu-donn&eacute;;'&mdash;perhaps the honour of the present may be
+disputed. Did you write the good lines on &mdash;&mdash;, the Laker? * *</p>
+
+<p>"The Queen has made a pretty theme for the journals. Was there ever
+such evidence published? Why, it is worse than 'Little's Poems' or
+'Don Juan.' If you don't write soon, I will 'make you a speech.'
+Yours," &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 395. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, 8bre 25&deg;, 1820.</p>
+
+<p>"Pray forward the enclosed to Lady Byron. It is on business.</p>
+
+<p>"In thanking you for the Abbot, I made four grand mistakes, Sir
+John Gordon was not of Gight, but of Bogagicht, and a son of
+Huntley's. He suffered <i>not</i> for his loyalty, but in an
+insurrection. He had <i>nothing</i> to do with Loch Leven, having been
+dead some time at the period of the Queen's confine<span class="pagenum"><a id="page3" name="page3"></a>Pg 3</span>ment: and,
+fourthly, I am not sure that he was the Queen's paramour or no, for
+Robertson does not allude to this, though <i>Walter Scott does</i>, in
+the list he gives of her admirers (as unfortunate) at the close of
+'The Abbot.'</p>
+
+<p>"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
+O'Trigger's, most of whom are to be found in the old Scotch
+Chronicles, Spalding, &amp;c. 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours.</p>
+
+<p>"You had better not publish Blackwood and the Roberts' prose,
+except what regards Pope;&mdash;you have let the time slip by."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The Pamphlet in answer to Blackwood's Magazine, here mentioned, was
+occasioned by an article in that work, entitled "Remarks on Don Juan,"
+and though put to press by Mr. Murray, was never published. The writer
+in the Magazine having, in reference to certain passages in Don Juan,
+taken occasion to pass some severe strictures on the author's
+matrimonial conduct, Lord Byron, in his reply, enters at some length
+into that painful subject; and the following extracts from his
+defence,&mdash;if defence it can be called, where there has never yet<span class="pagenum"><a id="page4" name="page4"></a>Pg 4</span> been
+any definite charge,&mdash;will be perused with strong interest:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"My learned brother proceeds to observe, that 'it is in vain for
+Lord B. to attempt in any way to justify his own behaviour in that
+affair: and now that he has so <i>openly</i> and <i>audaciously</i> invited
+enquiry and reproach, we do not see any good reason why he should
+not be plainly told so by the voice of his countrymen.' How far the
+'openness' of an anonymous poem, and the 'audacity' of an imaginary
+character, which the writer supposes to be meant for Lady B. may be
+deemed to merit this formidable denunciation from their 'most sweet
+voices,' I neither know nor care; but when he tells me that I
+cannot 'in any way <i>justify</i> my own behaviour in that affair,' I
+acquiesce, because no man can '<i>justify</i>' himself until he knows of
+what he is accused; and I have never had&mdash;and, God knows, my whole
+desire has ever been to obtain it&mdash;any specific charge, in a
+tangible shape, submitted to me by the adversary, nor by others,
+unless the atrocities of public rumour and the mysterious silence
+of the lady's legal advisers may be deemed such.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> But is not the
+writer content with what has been already said and done? Has not
+'the general voice of his countrymen' long ago pronounced upon the
+subject&mdash;sentence with<span class="pagenum"><a id="page5" name="page5"></a>Pg 5</span>out trial, and condemnation without a
+charge? Have I not been exiled by ostracism, except that the shells
+which proscribed me were anonymous? Is the writer ignorant of the
+public opinion and the public conduct upon that occasion? If he is,
+I am not: the public will forget both long before I shall cease to
+remember either.</p>
+
+<p>"The man who is exiled by a faction has the consolation of thinking
+that he is a martyr; he is upheld by hope and the dignity of his
+cause, real or imaginary: he who withdraws from the pressure of
+debt may indulge in the thought that time and prudence will
+retrieve his circumstances: he who is condemned by the law has a
+term to his banishment, or a dream of its abbreviation; or, it may
+be, the knowledge or the belief of some injustice of the law or of
+its administration in his own particular: but he who is outlawed by
+general opinion, without the intervention of hostile politics,
+illegal judgment, or embarrassed circumstances, whether he be
+innocent or guilty, must undergo all the bitterness of exile,
+without hope, without pride, without alleviation. This case was
+mine. Upon what grounds the public founded their opinion, I am not
+aware; but it was general, and it was decisive. Of me or of mine
+they knew little, except that I had written what is called poetry,
+was a nobleman, had married, became a father, and was involved in
+differences with my wife and her relatives, no one knew why,
+because the persons complaining refused to state their grievances.
+The fashionable world was divided into parties, mine consisting of
+a very small minority;<span class="pagenum"><a id="page6" name="page6"></a>Pg 6</span> the reasonable world was naturally on the
+stronger side, which happened to be the lady's, as was most proper
+and polite. The press was active and scurrilous; and such was the
+rage of the day, that the unfortunate publication of two copies of
+verses rather complimentary than otherwise to the subjects, of
+both, was tortured into a species of crime, or constructive petty
+treason. I was accused of every monstrous vice by public rumour and
+private rancour: my name, which had been a knightly or a noble one
+since my fathers helped to conquer the kingdom for William the
+Norman, was tainted. I felt that, if what was whispered, and
+muttered, and murmured, was true, I was unfit for England; if
+false, England was unfit for me. I withdrew: but this was not
+enough. In other countries, in Switzerland, in the shadow of the
+Alps, and by the blue depth of the lakes, I was pursued and
+breathed upon by the same blight. I crossed the mountains, but it
+was the same; so I went a little farther, and settled myself by the
+waves of the Adriatic, like the stag at bay, who betakes him to the
+waters.</p>
+
+<p>"If I may judge by the statements of the few friends who gathered
+round me, the outcry of the period to which I allude was beyond all
+precedent, all parallel, even in those cases where political
+motives have sharpened slander and doubled enmity. I was advised
+not to go to the theatres, lest I should be hissed, nor to my duty
+in parliament, lest I should be insulted by the way; even on the
+day of my departure, my most intimate friend told me afterwards
+that he was under apprehensions of violence<span class="pagenum"><a id="page7" name="page7"></a>Pg 7</span> from the people who
+might be assembled at the door of the carriage. However, I was not
+deterred by these counsels from seeing Kean in his best characters,
+nor from voting according to my principles; and, with regard to the
+third and last apprehensions of my friends, I could not share in
+them, not being made acquainted with their extent till some time
+after I had crossed the Channel. Even if I had been so, I am not of
+a nature to be much affected by men's anger, though I may feel hurt
+by their aversion. Against all individual outrage, I could protect
+or redress myself; and against that of a crowd, I should probably
+have been enabled to defend myself, with the assistance of others,
+as has been done on similar occasions.</p>
+
+<p>"I retired from the country, perceiving that I was the object of
+general obloquy; I did not indeed imagine, like Jean Jacques
+Rousseau, that all mankind was in a conspiracy against me, though I
+had perhaps as good grounds for such a chimera as ever he had; but
+I perceived that I had to a great extent become personally
+obnoxious in England, perhaps through my own fault, but the fact
+was indisputable; the public in general would hardly have been so
+much excited against a more popular character, without at least an
+accusation or a charge of some kind actually expressed or
+substantiated; for I can hardly conceive that the common and
+every-day occurrence of a separation between man and wife could in
+itself produce so great a ferment. I shall say nothing of the usual
+complaints of 'being prejudged,' 'condemned unheard,' 'unfairness,'
+'par<span class="pagenum"><a id="page8" name="page8"></a>Pg 8</span>tiality,' and so forth, the usual changes rung by parties who
+have had, or are to have, a trial; but I was a little surprised to
+find myself condemned without being favoured with the act of
+accusation, and to perceive in the absence of this portentous
+charge or charges, whatever it or they were to be, that every
+possible or impossible crime was rumoured to supply its place, and
+taken for granted. This could only occur in the case of a person
+very much disliked, and I knew no remedy, having already used to
+their extent whatever little powers I might possess of pleasing in
+society. I had no party in fashion, though I was afterwards told
+that there was one&mdash;but it was not of my formation, nor did I then
+know of its existence&mdash;none in literature; and in politics I had
+voted with the Whigs, with precisely that importance which a Whig
+vote possesses in these Tory days, and with such personal
+acquaintance with the leaders in both houses as the society in
+which I lived sanctioned, but without claim or expectation of
+anything like friendship from any one, except a few young men of my
+own age and standing, and a few others more advanced in life, which
+last it had been my fortune to serve in circumstances of
+difficulty. This was, in fact, to stand alone: and I recollect,
+some time after, Madame de Sta&euml;l said to me in Switzerland, 'You
+should not have warred with the world&mdash;it will not do&mdash;it is too
+strong always for any individual: I myself once tried it in early
+life, but it will not do.' I perfectly acquiesce in the truth of
+this remark; but the world had done me the honour to begin the war;
+and, assuredly, if<span class="pagenum"><a id="page9" name="page9"></a>Pg 9</span> peace is only to be obtained by courting and
+paying tribute to it, I am not qualified to obtain its countenance.
+I thought, in the words of Campbell,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"'Then wed thee to an exil'd lot,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And if the world hath loved thee not,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Its absence may be borne.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"I have heard of, and believe, that there are human beings so
+constituted as to be insensible to injuries; but I believe that the
+best mode to avoid taking vengeance is to get out of the way of
+temptation. I hope that I may never have the opportunity, for I am
+not quite sure that I could resist it, having derived from my
+mother something of the '<i>perfervidum ingenium Scotorum</i>.' I have
+not sought, and shall not seek it, and perhaps it may never come in
+my path. I do not in this allude to the party, who might be right
+or wrong; but to many who made her cause the pretext of their own
+bitterness. She, indeed, must have long avenged me in her own
+feelings, for whatever her reasons may have been (and she never
+adduced them to me at least), she probably neither contemplated nor
+conceived to what she became the means of conducting the father of
+her child, and the husband of her choice.</p>
+
+<p>"So much for 'the general voice of his countrymen:' I will now
+speak of some in particular.</p>
+
+<p>"In the beginning of the year 1817, an article appeared in the
+Quarterly Review, written, I believe, by Walter Scott, doing great
+honour to him, and no disgrace to me, though both poetically and
+personally<span class="pagenum"><a id="page10" name="page10"></a>Pg 10</span> more than sufficiently favourable to the work and the
+author of whom it treated. It was written at a time when a selfish
+man would not, and a timid one dared not, have said a word in
+favour of either; it was written by one to whom temporary public
+opinion had elevated me to the rank of a rival&mdash;a proud
+distinction, and unmerited; but which has not prevented me from
+feeling as a friend, nor him from more than corresponding to that
+sentiment. The article in question was written upon the third Canto
+of Childe Harold, and after many observations, which it would as
+ill become me to repeat as to forget, concluded with 'a hope that I
+might yet return to England.' How this expression was received in
+England itself I am not acquainted, but it gave great offence at
+Rome to the respectable ten or twenty thousand English travellers
+then and there assembled. I did not visit Rome till some time
+after, so that I had no opportunity of knowing the fact; but I was
+informed, long afterwards, that the greatest indignation had been
+manifested in the enlightened Anglo-circle of that year, which
+happened to comprise within it&mdash;amidst a considerable leaven of
+Welbeck Street and Devonshire Place, broken loose upon their
+travels&mdash;several really well-born and well-bred families, who did
+not the less participate in the feeling of the hour. 'Why should he
+return to England?' was the general exclamation&mdash;I answer <i>why</i>? It
+is a question I have occasionally asked myself, and I never yet
+could give it a satisfactory reply. I had then no thoughts of
+returning, and if I have any now, they are of busi<span class="pagenum"><a id="page11" name="page11"></a>Pg 11</span>ness, and not of
+pleasure. Amidst the ties that have been dashed to pieces, there
+are links yet entire, though the chain itself be broken. There are
+duties, and connections, which may one day require my presence&mdash;and
+I am a father. I have still some friends whom I wish to meet again,
+and, it may be, an enemy. These things, and those minuter details
+of business, which time accumulates during absence, in every man's
+affairs and property, may, and probably will, recall me to England;
+but I shall return with the same feelings with which I left it, in
+respect to itself, though altered with regard to individuals, as I
+have been more or less informed of their conduct since my
+departure; for it was only a considerable time after it that I was
+made acquainted with the real facts and full extent of some of
+their proceedings and language. My friends, like other friends,
+from conciliatory motives, withheld from me much that they could,
+and some things which they <i>should</i> have unfolded; however, that
+which is deferred is not lost&mdash;but it has been no fault of mine
+that it has been deferred at all.</p>
+
+<p>"I have alluded to what is said to have passed at Rome merely to
+show that the sentiment which I have described was not confined to
+the English in England, and as forming part of my answer to the
+reproach cast upon what has been called my 'selfish exile,' and my
+'voluntary exile.' 'Voluntary' it has been; for who would dwell
+among a people entertaining strong hostility against him? How far
+it has been 'selfish' has been already explained."</p></div>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page12" name="page12"></a>Pg 12</span></p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The following passages from the same unpublished pamphlet will be found,
+in a literary point of view, not less curious.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"And here I wish to say a few words on the present state of English
+poetry. That this is the age of the decline of English poetry will
+be doubted by few who have calmly considered the subject. That
+there are men of genius among the present poets makes little
+against the fact, because it has been well said, that 'next to him
+who forms the taste of his country, the greatest genius is he who
+corrupts it.' No one has ever denied genius to Marino, who
+corrupted not merely the taste of Italy, but that of all Europe for
+nearly a century. The great cause of the present deplorable state
+of English poetry is to be attributed to that absurd and systematic
+depreciation of Pope, in which, for the last few years, there has
+been a kind of epidemical concurrence. Men of the most opposite
+opinions have united upon this topic. Warton and Churchill began
+it, having borrowed the hint probably from the heroes of the
+Dunciad, and their own internal conviction that their proper
+reputation can be as nothing till the most perfect and harmonious
+of poets&mdash;he who, having no fault, has had REASON made his
+reproach&mdash;was reduced to what they conceived to be his level; but
+even they dared not degrade him below Dryden. Goldsmith, and
+Rogers, and Campbell, his most successful disciples; and Hayley,
+who, however feeble, has left one poem 'that will not be willingly
+let die' (the Triumphs of Temper), kept up the reputation of that
+pure and perfect style; and Crabbe,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page13" name="page13"></a>Pg 13</span> the first of living poets, has
+almost equalled the master. Then came Darwin, who was put down by a
+single poem in the Antijacobin; and the Cruscans, from Merry to
+Jerningham, who were annihilated (if <i>Nothing</i> can be said to be
+annihilated) by Gifford, the last of the wholesome English
+satirists. * * *</p>
+
+<p>"These three personages, S * *, W * *, and C * *, had all of them a
+very natural antipathy to Pope, and I respect them for it, as the
+only original feeling or principle which they have contrived to
+preserve. But they have been joined in it by those who have joined
+them in nothing else: by the Edinburgh Reviewers, by the whole
+heterogeneous mass of living English poets, excepting Crabbe,
+Rogers, Gifford, and Campbell, who, both by precept and practice,
+have proved their adherence; and by me, who have shamefully
+deviated in practice, but have ever loved and honoured Pope's
+poetry with my whole soul, and hope to do so till my dying day. I
+would rather see all I have ever written lining the same trunk in
+which I actually read the eleventh book of a modern Epic poem at
+Malta in 1811, (I opened it to take out a change after the paroxysm
+of a tertian, in the absence of my servant, and found it lined with
+the name of the maker, Eyre, Cockspur-street, and with the Epic
+poetry alluded to,) than sacrifice what I firmly believe in as the
+Christianity of English poetry, the poetry of Pope.</p>
+
+<p>"Nevertheless, I will not go so far as * * in his postscript, who
+pretends that no great poet ever had immediate fame, which, being
+interpreted, means that * * is not quite so much read by his
+contempo<span class="pagenum"><a id="page14" name="page14"></a>Pg 14</span>raries as might be desirable. This assertion is as false
+as it is foolish. Homer's glory depended upon his present
+popularity: he recited,&mdash;and without the strongest impression of
+the moment, who would have gotten the Iliad by heart, and given it
+to tradition? Ennius, Terence, Plautus, Lucretius, Horace, Virgil,
+Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Sappho, Anacreon, Theocritus, all
+the great poets of antiquity, were the delight of their
+contemporaries.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> The very existence of a poet, previous to the
+invention of printing, depended upon his present popularity; and
+how often has it impaired his future fame? Hardly ever. History
+informs us, that the best have come down to us. The reason is
+evident: the most popular found the greatest number of transcribers
+for their MSS.; and that the taste of their contemporaries was
+corrupt can hardly be avouched by the moderns, the mightiest<span class="pagenum"><a id="page15" name="page15"></a>Pg 15</span> of
+whom have but barely approached them. Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, and
+Tasso, were all the darlings of the contemporary reader. Dante's
+poem was celebrated long before his death; and, not long after it,
+States negotiated for his ashes, and disputed for the sites of the
+composition of the Divina Commedia. Petrarch was crowned in the
+Capitol. Ariosto was permitted to pass free by the public robber
+who had read the Orlando Furioso. I would not recommend Mr. * * to
+try the same experiment with his Smugglers. Tasso, notwithstanding
+the criticisms of the Cruscanti, would have been crowned in the
+Capitol, but for his death.</p>
+
+<p>"It is easy to prove the immediate popularity of the chief poets of
+the only modern nation in Europe that has a poetical language, the
+Italian. In our own, Shakspeare, Spenser, Jonson, Waller, Dryden,
+Congreve, Pope, Young, Shenstone, Thomson, Johnson, Goldsmith,
+Gray, were all as popular in their lives as since. Gray's Elegy
+pleased instantly, and eternally. His Odes did not, nor yet do they
+please like his Elegy. Milton's politics kept him down; but the
+Epigram of Dryden, and the very sale of his work, in proportion to
+the less reading time of its publication, prove him to have been
+honoured by his contemporaries. I will venture to assert, that the
+sale of the Paradise Lost was greater in the first four years after
+its publication than that of 'The Excursion,' in the same number,
+with the difference of nearly a century and a half between them of
+time, and of thousands in point of general readers.</p>
+
+<p>"It may be asked, why, having this opinion of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page16" name="page16"></a>Pg 16</span> present state of
+poetry in England, and having had it long, as my friends and others
+well know&mdash;possessing, or having possessed too, as a writer, the
+ear of the public for the time being&mdash;I have not adopted a
+different plan in my own compositions, and endeavoured to correct
+rather than encourage the taste of the day. To this I would answer,
+that it is easier to perceive the wrong than to pursue the right,
+and that I have never contemplated the prospect 'of filling (with
+Peter Bell, see its Preface,) permanently a station in the
+literature of the country.' Those who know me best, know this, and
+that I have been considerably astonished at the temporary success
+of my works, having flattered no person and no party, and expressed
+opinions which are not those of the general reader. Could I have
+anticipated the degree of attention which has been accorded,
+assuredly I would have studied more to deserve it. But I have lived
+in far countries abroad, or in the agitating world at home, which
+was not favourable to study or reflection; so that almost all I
+have written has been mere passion,&mdash;passion, it is true, of
+different kinds, but always passion: for in me (if it be not an
+Irishism to say so) my <i>indifference</i> was a kind of passion, the
+result of experience, and not the philosophy of nature. Writing
+grows a habit, like a woman's gallantry: there are women who have
+had no intrigue, but few who have had but one only; so there are
+millions of men who have never written a book, but few who have
+written only one. And thus, having written once, I wrote on;
+encouraged no doubt by the success of the mo<span class="pagenum"><a id="page17" name="page17"></a>Pg 17</span>ment, yet by no means
+anticipating its duration, and I will venture to say, scarcely even
+wishing it. But then I did other things besides write, which by no
+means contributed either to improve my writings or my prosperity.</p>
+
+<p>"I have thus expressed publicly upon the poetry of the day the
+opinion I have long entertained and expressed of it to all who have
+asked it, and to some who would rather not have heard it; as I told
+Moore not very long ago, 'we are all wrong except Rogers, Crabbe,
+and Campbell.'<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> Without being old in years, I am in days, and do
+not feel the adequate spirit within me to attempt a work which
+should show what I think right in poetry, and must content myself
+with having denounced what<span class="pagenum"><a id="page18" name="page18"></a>Pg 18</span> is wrong. There are, I trust, younger
+spirits rising up in England, who, escaping the contagion which has
+swept away poetry from our literature, will recall it to their
+country, such as it once was and may still be.</p>
+
+<p>"In the mean time, the best sign of amendment will be repentance,
+and new and frequent editions of Pope and Dryden.</p>
+
+<p>"There will be found as comfortable metaphysics and ten times more
+poetry in the 'Essay on Man,' than in the 'Excursion.' If you
+search for passion, where is it to be found stronger than in the
+epistle from Eloisa to Abelard, or in Palamon and Arcite? Do you
+wish for invention, imagination, sublimity, character? seek them in
+the Rape of the Lock, the Fables of Dryden, the Ode on Saint
+Cecilia's Day, and Absalom and Achitophel: you will discover in
+these two poets only, <i>all</i> for which you must ransack innumerable
+metres, and God only knows how many <i>writers</i> of the day, without
+finding a tittle of the same qualities,&mdash;with the addition, too, of
+wit, of which the latter have none. I have not, however, forgotten
+Thomas Brown the Younger, nor the Fudge Family, nor Whistlecraft;
+but that is not wit&mdash;it is humour. I will say nothing of the
+harmony of Pope and Dryden in comparison, for there is not a living
+poet (except Rogers, Gifford, Campbell, and Crabbe) who can write
+an heroic couplet. The fact is, that the exquisite beauty of their
+versification has withdrawn the public attention from their other
+excellences, as the vulgar eye will rest more upon the splendour of
+the uniform than the quality of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page19" name="page19"></a>Pg 19</span> troops. It is this very
+harmony, particularly in Pope, which has raised the vulgar and
+atrocious cant against him:&mdash;because his versification is perfect,
+it is assumed that it is his only perfection; because his truths
+are so clear, it is asserted that he has no invention; and because
+he is always intelligible, it is taken for granted that he has no
+genius. We are sneeringly told that he is the 'Poet of Reason,' as
+if this was a reason for his being no poet. Taking passage for
+passage, I will undertake to cite more lines teeming with
+<i>imagination</i> from Pope than from any two living poets, be they who
+they may. To take an instance at random from a species of
+composition not very favourable to imagination&mdash;Satire: set down
+the character of Sporus, with all the wonderful play of fancy which
+is scattered over it, and place by its side an equal number of
+verses, from any two existing poets, of the same power and the same
+variety&mdash;where will you find them?</p>
+
+<p>"I merely mention one instance of many in reply to the injustice
+done to the memory of him who harmonised our poetical language. The
+attorneys clerks, and other self-educated genii, found it easier to
+distort themselves to the new models than to toil after the
+symmetry of him who had enchanted their fathers. They were besides
+smitten by being told that the new school were to revive the
+language of Queen Elizabeth, the true English; as every body in the
+reign of Queen Anne wrote no better than French, by a species of
+literary treason.</p>
+
+<p>"Blank verse, which, unless in the drama, no one except Milton ever
+wrote who could rhyme, became<span class="pagenum"><a id="page20" name="page20"></a>Pg 20</span> the order of the day,&mdash;or else such
+rhyme as looked still blanker than the verse without it. I am aware
+that Johnson has said, after some hesitation, that he could not
+'prevail upon himself to wish that Milton had been a rhymer.' The
+opinions of that truly great man, whom it is also the present
+fashion to decry, will ever be received by me with that deference
+which time will restore to him from all; but, with all humility, I
+am not persuaded that the Paradise Lost would not have been more
+nobly conveyed to posterity, not perhaps in heroic couplets,
+although even <i>they</i> could sustain the subject if well balanced,
+but in the stanza of Spenser, or of Tasso, or in the terza rima of
+Dante, which the powers of Milton could easily have grafted on our
+language. The Seasons of Thomson would have been better in rhyme,
+although still inferior to his Castle of Indolence; and Mr.
+Southey's Joan of Arc no worse, although it might have taken up six
+months instead of weeks in the composition. I recommend also to the
+lovers of lyrics the perusal of the present laureate's odes by the
+side of Dryden's on Saint Cecilia, but let him be sure to read
+<i>first</i> those of Mr. Southey.</p>
+
+<p>"To the heaven-born genii and inspired young scriveners of the day
+much of this will appear paradox; it will appear so even to the
+higher order of our critics; but it was a truism twenty years ago,
+and it will be a re-acknowledged truth in ten more. In the mean
+time, I will conclude with two quotations, both intended for some
+of my old classical friends who have still enough of Cambridge
+about them to think themselves honoured by having had<span class="pagenum"><a id="page21" name="page21"></a>Pg 21</span> John Dryden
+as a predecessor in their college, and to recollect that their
+earliest English poetical pleasures were drawn from the 'little
+nightingale' of Twickenham.</p>
+
+<p>"The first is from the notes to a Poem of the 'Friends<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a>,' pages
+181, 182.</p>
+
+<p>"'It is only within the last twenty or thirty years that those
+notable discoveries in criticism have been made which have taught
+our recent versifiers to undervalue this energetic, melodious, and
+moral poet. The consequences of this want of due esteem for a
+writer whom the good sense of our predecessors had raised to his
+proper station have been <span class="smcap">numerous and degrading enough</span>. This is not
+the place to enter into the subject, even as far as it <i>affects our
+poetical numbers alone</i>, and there is matter of more importance
+that requires present reflection.'</p>
+
+<p>"The second is from the volume of a young person learning to write
+poetry, and beginning by teaching the art. Hear him<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a>:</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page22" name="page22"></a>Pg 22</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i14">"'But ye were dead<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">To things ye knew not of&mdash;were closely wed<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">To musty laws lined out with wretched rule<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And compass vile; so that ye taught a school<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a><br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Of <i>dolts</i> to <i>smooth</i>, <i>inlay</i>, and <i>chip</i>, and <i>fit</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Till, like the certain wands of Jacob's wit,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4"><i>Their verses tallied. Easy was the task:</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i4">A thousand handicraftsmen wore the mask<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Of poesy. Ill-fated, impious race,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">That blasphemed the bright lyrist to his face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And did not know it; no, they went about<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Holding a poor <i>decrepit</i> standard out<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Mark'd with most flimsy mottos, and in large<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">The name of <i>one</i> Boileau.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"A little before the manner of Pope is termed</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i14">"'A <i>scism</i><a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Nurtured by <i>foppery</i> and barbarism,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Made great Apollo blush for this his land.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"I thought '<i>foppery</i>' was a consequence of <i>refinement</i>; but
+<i>n'importe</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"The above will suffice to show the notions entertained by the new
+performers on the English<span class="pagenum"><a id="page23" name="page23"></a>Pg 23</span> lyre of him who made it most tunable,
+and the great improvements of their own <i>variazioni</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"The writer of this is a tadpole of the Lakes, a young disciple of
+the six or seven new schools, in which he has learnt to write such
+lines and such sentiments as the above. He says, 'easy was the
+task' of imitating Pope, or it may be of equalling him, I presume.
+I recommend him to try before he is so positive on the subject, and
+then compare what he will have <i>then</i> written and what he has <i>now</i>
+written with the humblest and earliest compositions of Pope,
+produced in years still more youthful than those of Mr. K. when he
+invented his new 'Essay on Criticism,' entitled 'Sleep and Poetry'
+(an ominous title), from whence the above canons are taken. Pope's
+was written at nineteen, and published at twenty-two.</p>
+
+<p>"Such are the triumphs of the new schools, and such their scholars.
+The disciples of Pope were Johnson, Goldsmith, Rogers, Campbell,
+Crabbe, Gifford, Matthias, Hayley, and the author of the Paradise
+of Coquettes; to whom may be added Richards, Heber, Wrangham,
+Bland, Hodgson, Merivale, and others who have not had their full
+fame, because 'the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle
+to the strong,' and because there is a fortune in fame as in all
+other things. Now of all the new schools&mdash;I say <i>all</i>, for, 'like
+Legion, they are many'&mdash;has there appeared a single scholar who has
+not made his master ashamed of him? unless it be * *, who has
+imitated every body, and occasionally surpassed his models. Scott
+found peculiar<span class="pagenum"><a id="page24" name="page24"></a>Pg 24</span> favour and imitation among the fair sex: there was
+Miss Holford, and Miss Mitford, and Miss Francis; but with the
+greatest respect be it spoken, none of his imitators did much
+honour to the original except Hogg, the Ettrick shepherd, until the
+appearance of 'The Bridal of Triermain,' and 'Harold the
+Dauntless,' which in the opinion of some equalled if not surpassed
+him; and lo! after three or four years they turned out to be the
+Master's own compositions. Have Southey, or Coleridge, or
+Wordsworth, made a follower of renown? Wilson never did well till
+he set up for himself in the 'City of the Plague.' Has Moore, or
+any other living writer of reputation, had a tolerable imitator, or
+rather disciple? Now it is remarkable that almost all the followers
+of Pope, whom I have named, have produced beautiful and standard
+works, and it was not the number of his imitators who finally hurt
+his fame, but the despair of imitation, and the <i>ease</i> of <i>not</i>
+imitating him sufficiently. This, and the same reason which induced
+the Athenian burgher to vote for the banishment of Aristides,
+'because he was tired of always hearing him called <i>the Just</i>,'
+have produced the temporary exile of Pope from the State of
+Literature. But the term of his ostracism will expire, and the
+sooner the better; not for him, but for those who banished him, and
+for the coming generation, who</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"Will blush to find their fathers were his foes."<br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' /><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page25" name="page25"></a>Pg 25</span></p>
+
+<p><b>LETTER 396. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, 9bre 4. 1820.</p>
+
+<p>"I have received from Mr. Galignani the enclosed letters,
+duplicates and receipts, which will explain themselves.<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> As the
+poems are your property by purchase, right, and justice, <i>all
+matters of publication, &amp;c. &amp;c. are for you to decide upon</i>. I know
+not how far my compliance with Mr. Galignani'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 farther, except, in my answer to
+Mr. Galignani, to state that the letters, &amp;c. &amp;c. are sent to you,
+and the causes thereof.</p>
+
+<p>"If you can check these foreign pirates, do; if not, put the
+permissive papers in the fire. I can have no view nor object
+whatever, but to secure to you your property.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>"P.S. I have read part of the Quarterly just arrived: Mr. Bowles
+shall be answered:&mdash;he is not quite correct in his statement about
+English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. They support Pope, I see,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page26" name="page26"></a>Pg 26</span> in
+the Quarterly; let them continue to do so: it is a sin, and a
+shame, and a <i>damnation</i> to think that <i>Pope!!</i> should require
+it&mdash;but he does. Those miserable mountebanks of the day, the poets,
+disgrace themselves and deny God in running down Pope, the most
+<i>faultless</i> of poets, and almost of men."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 397. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, November 5. 1820.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>whole</i> works producing so
+little!</p>
+
+<p>"Galignani sends me, post haste, a permission <i>for him, from me,</i>
+to publish, &amp;c. &amp;c. which <i>permit</i> I have signed and sent to Mr.
+Murray of Albemarle Street. Will you explain to G. <i>that I</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&mdash;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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page27" name="page27"></a>Pg 27</span> Murray. Let the dogs divide the carcass, if it is
+killed to their liking.</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad of your epigram. It is odd that we should both let our
+wits run away with our sentiments; for I am sure that we are both
+Queen's men at bottom. But there is no resisting a clinch&mdash;it is so
+clever! Apropos of that&mdash;we have a 'diphthong' also in this part of
+the world&mdash;not a <i>Greek</i>, but a <i>Spanish</i> one&mdash;do you understand
+me?&mdash;which is about to blow up the whole alphabet. 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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' to any of your acquaintance, make a Melody of it,
+that his ghost, like poor Yorick's, may have the satisfaction of
+being plaintively pitied&mdash;or still more nobly commemorated, like
+'Oh breathe not his name.' In case you should not think him worth
+it, here is a Chant for you instead&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"When a man hath no freedom to fight for at home,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Let him combat for that of his neighbours;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Let him think of the glories of Greece and of Rome,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">And get knock'd on the head for his labours.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"To do good to mankind is the chivalrous plan,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">And is always as nobly requited;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Then battle for freedom wherever you can,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">And, if not shot or hang'd, you'll get knighted.<br /></span>
+</div></div><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page28" name="page28"></a>Pg 28</span></p>
+
+<p>"So you have gotten the letter of 'Epigrams'&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Endorsement to the Deed of Separation, in the April of 1816.</i></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"A year ago you swore, fond she!<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">'To love, to honour, and so forth:<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Such was the vow you pledged to me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">And here's exactly what 'tis worth.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"For the anniversary of January 2. 1821, I have a small grateful
+anticipation, which, in case of accident, I add&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"<i>To Penelope, January 2. 1821.</i></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"This day, of all our days, has done<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">The worst for me and you:&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">'Tis just <i>six</i> years since we were <i>one</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">And <i>five</i> since we were <i>two</i>.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"Pray excuse all this nonsense; for I must talk nonsense just now,
+for fear of wandering to more serious topics, which, in the present
+state of things, is not safe by a foreign post.</p>
+
+<p>"I told you in my last, that I had been going on with 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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page29" name="page29"></a>Pg 29</span>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh the villain, he hath murdered my poor Timothy!'</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Clincher</i>. Damn your Timothy!&mdash;I tell you, woman, your husband
+has <i>murdered me</i>&mdash;he has carried away my fine jubilee clothes.'</p>
+
+<p>"So Bowles has been telling a story, too ('tis 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours," &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 393. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, 9bre 9&deg;, 1820.</p>
+
+<p>"The talent you approve of is an amiable one, and 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 '<i>generals</i>,'
+so that I trust never to have provocation enough to make a
+<i>Gallery</i>. If '<i>the</i> parson' had not by many little dirty sneaking
+traits provoked it, I should have been<span class="pagenum"><a id="page30" name="page30"></a>Pg 30</span> silent, though I <i>had
+observed</i> him. Here follows an alteration: put&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">Devil with <i>such</i> delight in damning,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">That if at the resurrection<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Unto him the free election<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Of his future could be given,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">'Twould be rather Hell than Heaven;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>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 would not disrelish a sight of these light little humorous
+things, and may be indulged now and then.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, I do like one or two vices, to be sure; but I can back a
+horse and fire a pistol 'without thinking or blinking' like Major
+Sturgeon; I have fed at times for two months together on sheer
+biscuit and water (without metaphor); I can get over seventy or
+eighty miles a day <i>riding</i> post, and <i>swim five</i> at a stretch, as
+at Venice, in 1818, or at least I <i>could do</i>, and have done it
+<span class="smcap">once</span>.</p>
+
+<p>"I know Henry Matthews: he is the image, to the very voice, of his
+brother Charles, only darker&mdash;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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page31" name="page31"></a>Pg 31</span> my other papers) would hardly do for the public: for our
+lives were not over strict, and our letters somewhat lax upon most
+subjects.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a></p>
+
+<p>"Last week I sent you a correspondence with Galignani, and some
+documents on your property. You have now, I think, an opportunity
+of <i>checking</i>, or at least <i>limiting</i>, those <i>French
+republications</i>. You may let all your authors publish what they
+please <i>against me</i> and <i>mine</i>. A publisher is not, and cannot be,
+responsible for all the works that issue from his printer's.</p>
+
+<p>"The 'White Lady of Avenel' is not quite so good as a <i>real well
+authenticated</i> ('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 <i>no doubt</i>
+of the fact, historical and spectral.<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> She always appeared on
+particular occasions, before the deaths of the family, &amp;c. &amp;c. I
+heard Madame 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 <i>hunted</i>
+afterwards. She was a girl attendant, who, one day dressing the
+hair of a Countess Colalto, was<span class="pagenum"><a id="page32" name="page32"></a>Pg 32</span> seen by her mistress to smile upon
+her husband in the glass. The Countess had her shut up in the wall
+of 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."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 399. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, 9bre 18&deg;, 1820.</p>
+
+<p>"The death of Waite is a shock to the&mdash;teeth, as well as to the
+feelings of all who knew him. Good God, he and <i>Blake</i><a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> 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 greatness, as
+he who preserves the hair and the teeth is preferable to 'the
+bloody blustering warrior' who gains a name by breaking heads and
+knocking out grinders. Who succeeds him? Where is tooth-powder
+<i>mild</i> and yet efficacious&mdash;where is <i>tincture</i>&mdash;where are clearing
+<i>roots</i> and <i>brushes</i> now to be obtained? Pray obtain what
+information you can upon these '<i>Tusc</i>ulan questions.' 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 <i>teeth</i>
+and <i>hair</i> remained with those who had died<span class="pagenum"><a id="page33" name="page33"></a>Pg 33</span> with them. Is not this
+odd? They go the very first things in <i>youth</i>, and yet last the
+longest in the dust, if people will but <i>die</i> to preserve them! It
+is a queer life, and a queer death, that of mortals.</p>
+
+<p>"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 tailor at Bologna
+so like him! and also at the top of his profession. Do not neglect
+this commission. <i>Who</i> or <i>what</i> can replace him? What says the
+public?</p>
+
+<p>"I remand you the Preface. <i>Don't forget</i> that the Italian extract
+from the Chronicle must <i>be translated</i>. With regard to what you
+say of retouching the Juans and the Hints, it is all very well; but
+I can't <i>furbish</i>. I am like the tiger (in poesy), if I miss the
+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
+<i>added</i> to 'The 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 <i>estimate</i> accordingly. I would rather give them
+away than hack and hew them. I don't say that you are not right: I
+merely repeat that I cannot better them. I must 'either make a
+spoon, or spoil a horn;' and there's an end.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours.</p>
+
+<p>"P.S. Of the praises of that little * * * Keats. I shall observe as
+Johnson did when Sheridan the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page34" name="page34"></a>Pg 34</span> actor got a <i>pension</i>: 'What! has
+<i>he</i> got a pension? Then it is time that I should give up <i>mine</i>!'
+Nobody could be prouder of the praise of the Edinburgh than I was,
+or more alive to their censure, as I showed in English Bards and
+Scotch Reviewers. At present <i>all the men</i> they have ever praised
+are degraded by that insane article. Why don't they review and
+praise 'Solomon's Guide to Health?' it is better sense and as much
+poetry as Johnny Keats.</p>
+
+<p>"Bowles must be <i>bowled</i> down. 'Tis a sad match at cricket if he
+can get any notches at Pope's expense. If he once get into
+'<i>Lord's</i> ground,' (to continue the pun, because it is foolish,) I
+think I could beat him in one innings. You did not know, perhaps,
+that I was once (<i>not metaphorically</i>, but <i>really</i>,) a good
+cricketer, particularly in <i>batting</i>, and I played in the Harrow
+match against the Etonians in 1805, gaining more notches (as one of
+our chosen eleven) than any, except Lord Ipswich and Brookman, on
+our side."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 400. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, 9bre 23&deg;, 1820.</p>
+
+<p>"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. Whatever 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
+Juan, they identify Don Juan as mine, which I don't think worth a<span class="pagenum"><a id="page35" name="page35"></a>Pg 35</span>
+Chancery suit about my daughter's guardianship, as in your present
+code a facetious poem is sufficient to take away a man's rights
+over his family.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <span class="smcap">most legible hand, that I think them damned scoundrels
+and barbarians</span>, and <span class="smcap">their emperor</span> a <span class="smcap">fool</span>, and themselves more fools
+than he; all which they may send to Vienna for any thing I care.
+They have got themselves masters of the Papal police, and are
+bullying away; but some day or other they will pay for all: it may
+not be very soon, because these unhappy Italians have no
+consistency among themselves; but I suppose that Providence will
+get tired of them at last, * *</p>
+
+<p>"Yours," &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 401. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, Dec. 9. 1820.</p>
+
+<p>"Besides this letter, you will receive <i>three</i> packets, containing,
+in all, 18 more sheets of Memoranda, which, I fear, will cost you
+more in postage 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 <i>now</i> in the way of <i>reversion</i>, (that is, after <i>my</i>
+death,) I should be very glad,&mdash;as, with all due regard to your
+progeny, I prefer you to your grandchildren. Would not Longman or
+Murray advance you a certain sum <i>now</i>, pledging them<span class="pagenum"><a id="page36" name="page36"></a>Pg 36</span>selves <i>not</i>
+to have them published till after <i>my</i> decease, think you?&mdash;and
+what say you?</p>
+
+<p>"Over these latter sheets I would leave you a discretionary
+power<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a>; because they contain, perhaps, a thing or two which is
+too sincere for the public. If I consent to your disposing of their
+reversion <i>now</i>, where would be the harm? Tastes may change. I
+would, in your case, make my essay to dispose of them, <i>not</i>
+publish, now; and if <i>you</i> (as is most likely) survive me, add what
+you please from your own knowledge; and, <i>above all, contradict</i>
+any thing, if I have <i>mis</i>-stated; for my first object is the
+truth, even at my own expense.</p>
+
+<p>"I have some knowledge of your countryman Muley Moloch, the
+lecturer. He wrote to me several letters 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,&mdash;as there must be in all talent, let loose upon the
+world, without a martingale.</p>
+
+<p>"The ministers seem still to persecute the Queen * * * but they
+<i>won't</i> go out, the sons of b&mdash;&mdash;es. Damn Reform&mdash;I want a
+place&mdash;what say you? You must applaud the honesty of the
+declaration, whatever you may think of the intention.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page37" name="page37"></a>Pg 37</span></p>
+
+<p>"I have quantities of paper in England, original and
+translated&mdash;tragedy, &amp;c. &amp;c. and am now copying out a fifth Canto
+of Don Juan, 149 stanzas. So that there will be near <i>three thin</i>
+Albemarle, or <i>two thick</i> 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 * * * for the top of
+Parnassus.</p>
+
+<p>"These rogues are right&mdash;<i>we do</i> laugh at <i>t'others</i>&mdash;eh?&mdash;don't
+we?<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> You shall see&mdash;you shall see what things 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&mdash;when they can get them. But I won't talk politics&mdash;it
+is low. Let us talk of the Queen, and her bath, and her
+bottle&mdash;that's the only <i>motley</i> nowadays.</p>
+
+<p>"If there are any acquaintances of mine, salute them. The priests
+here are trying to persecute me,&mdash;but no matter. Yours," &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 402. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, Dec. 9. 1820.</p>
+
+<p>"I open my letter to tell you a fact, which will show the state of
+this country better than I can. The commandant of the troops is
+<i>now</i> lying <i>dead</i><span class="pagenum"><a id="page38" name="page38"></a>Pg 38</span> in my house. He was shot at a little past eight
+o'clock, about two hundred paces from my door. 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
+hinder us from going, as it is the custom for every body here, it
+seems, to run away from 'the stricken deer.'</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;a surgeon, who said nothing of his profession&mdash;a priest,
+sobbing a frightened prayer&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;made my servant and a couple of the mob take up
+the body&mdash;sent off two soldiers to the guard&mdash;despatched Diego to
+the Cardinal with the news, and had the commandant carried up
+stairs into my own quarter. But it was too late, he was gone&mdash;not
+at all disfigured&mdash;bled inwardly&mdash;not above an ounce or two came
+out.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page39" name="page39"></a>Pg 39</span>"I had him partly stripped&mdash;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. Every body conjectures why he was killed, but no one knows
+how. The gun was found close by him&mdash;an old gun, half filed down.</p>
+
+<p>"He only said, 'O Dio!' and 'Gesu!' two or three times, and
+appeared to have suffered little. Poor fellow! he was a brave
+officer, but had made himself much disliked by the people. I knew
+him personally, and had met him often at conversazioni and
+elsewhere. My house is full of soldiers, dragoons, doctors,
+priests, and all kinds of persons,&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;and, as for consequences, I care for none
+in a duty. Yours, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>"P.S. The lieutenant on duty by the body is smoking his pipe with
+great composure.&mdash;A queer people this."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 403. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, Dec. 25. 1820.</p>
+
+<p>"You will or ought to have received the packet and letters which I
+remitted to your address a<span class="pagenum"><a id="page40" name="page40"></a>Pg 40</span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>newspaper</i>&mdash;nothing more nor
+less&mdash;weekly, or so, with some improvement or modifications upon
+the plan of the present scoundrels, who degrade that
+department,&mdash;but a <i>newspaper</i>, which we will edite in due form,
+and, nevertheless, with some attention.</p>
+
+<p>"There must always be in it a piece of poesy from one or other of
+us <i>two</i>, leaving room, however, for such dilettanti rhymers as may
+be deemed worthy of appearing in the same column; but <i>this</i> must
+be a <i>sine qu&acirc; non</i>; and also as much prose as we can compass. We
+will take an <i>office</i>&mdash;our names <i>not</i> announced, but
+suspected&mdash;and, by the blessing of Providence, give the age some
+new lights upon policy, poesy, biography, criticism, morality,
+theology, and all other <i>ism</i>, <i>ality</i>, and <i>ology</i> whatsoever.</p>
+
+<p>"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-<span class="pagenum"><a id="page41" name="page41"></a>Pg 41</span>place blackguards, 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,&mdash;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 <i>live</i> in London, and I also, to bring it to
+bear, and <i>we must keep it a secret</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours ever affectionately,</p>
+
+<p>"B.</p>
+
+<p>"P.S. If you thought of a middle plan between<span class="pagenum"><a id="page42" name="page42"></a>Pg 42</span> a <i>Spectator</i> and a
+newspaper, why not?&mdash;only not on a <i>Sunday</i>. 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 'Gli,' or 'I Carbonari,' if it so please you&mdash;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!'"</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The year 1820 was an era signalised, as will be remembered, by the many
+efforts of the revolutionary spirit which, at that time, broke forth,
+like ill-suppressed fire, throughout the greater part of the South of
+Europe. In Italy, Naples had already raised the Constitutional standard,
+and her example was fast operating through the whole of that country.
+Throughout Romagna, secret societies, under the name of Carbonari, had
+been organised, which waited but the word of their chiefs to break out
+into open insurrection. We have seen from Lord Byron's Journal in 1814,
+what intense interest he took in the last struggles of Revolutionary
+France under Napoleon; and his exclamations, "Oh for a
+Republic!&mdash;'Brutus, thou sleepest!'" show the lengths to which, in
+theory at least, his political zeal extended. Since then, he had but
+rarely turned his thoughts to politics; the tame, ordinary<span class="pagenum"><a id="page43" name="page43"></a>Pg 43</span> vicissitude
+of public affairs having but little in it to stimulate a mind like his,
+whose sympathies nothing short of a crisis seemed worthy to interest.
+This the present state of Italy gave every promise of affording him;
+and, in addition to the great national cause itself, in which there was
+every thing that a lover of liberty, warm from the pages of Petrarch and
+Dante, could desire, he had also private ties and regards to enlist him
+socially in the contest. The brother of Madame Guiccioli, Count Pietro
+Gamba, who had been passing some time at Rome and Naples, was now
+returned from his tour; and the friendly sentiments with which,
+notwithstanding a natural bias previously in the contrary direction, he
+at length learned to regard the noble lover of his sister, cannot better
+be described than in the words of his fair relative herself.</p>
+
+<p>"At this time," says Madame Guiccioli, "my beloved brother, Pietro,
+returned to Ravenna from Rome and Naples. He had been prejudiced by some
+enemies of Lord Byron against his character, and my intimacy with him
+afflicted him greatly; nor had my letters succeeded in entirely
+destroying the evil impression which Lord Byron's detractors had
+produced. No sooner, however, had he seen and known him, than he became
+inspired with an interest in his favour, such as could not have been
+produced by mere exterior qualities, but was the result only of that
+union he saw in him of all that is most great and beautiful, as well in
+the heart as mind of man. From that moment every former prejudice
+vanished, and the conformity of their<span class="pagenum"><a id="page44" name="page44"></a>Pg 44</span> opinions and studies contributed
+to unite them in a friendship, which only ended with their lives."<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a></p>
+
+<p>The young Gamba, who was, at this time, but twenty years of age, with a
+heart full of all those dreams of the regeneration of Italy, which not
+only the example of Naples, but the spirit working beneath the surface
+all around him, inspired, had, together with his father, who was still
+in the prime of life, become enrolled in the secret bands now organising
+throughout Romagna, and Lord Byron was, by their intervention, admitted
+also among the brotherhood. The following heroic Address to the
+Neapolitan Government (written by the noble poet in Italian,<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> and
+forwarded, it is thought, by himself<span class="pagenum"><a id="page45" name="page45"></a>Pg 45</span> to Naples, but intercepted on the
+way,) will show how deep, how earnest, and expansive was his zeal in
+that great, general cause of Political Freedom, for which he soon after
+laid down his life among the marshes of Missolonghi.</p>
+
+<p>"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 thousand
+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 determination 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 individual 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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page46" name="page46"></a>Pg 46</span> 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 commanding 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."<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page47" name="page47"></a>Pg 47</span></p>
+
+<p>It was during the agitation of this crisis, while surrounded by rumours
+and alarms, and expecting, every moment, to be summoned into the field,
+that Lord Byron commenced the Journal which I am now about to give; and
+which it is impossible to peruse, with the recollection of his former
+Diary of 1814 in our minds, without reflecting how wholly different, in
+all the circumstances connected with them, were the two periods at which
+these records of his passing thoughts were traced. The first he wrote at
+a time which may be considered, to use his own words, as "the most
+poetical part of his whole life,"&mdash;<i>not</i> certainly, in what regarded the
+powers of his genius, to which every succeeding year added new force and
+range, but in all that may be said to constitute the poetry of
+character,&mdash;those fresh, unworldly feelings of which, in spite of his
+early plunge into experience, he still retained the gloss, and that
+ennobling light of imagination, which, with all his professed scorn of
+mankind, still followed in the track of his affections, giving a lustre
+to every object on which they rested. There was, indeed, in his
+misanthropy, as in his sorrows, at that period, to the full as much of
+fancy as of reality; and even those gallantries and loves in which he at
+the same time entangled himself partook equally, as I have endeavoured
+to show, of the same imaginative character. Though brought early under
+the dominion of the senses, he had been also early rescued from this
+thraldom by, in the first place, the satiety such excesses never fail to
+produce, and, at no long interval after, by this series of half-fanciful
+attachments which, though in their<span class="pagenum"><a id="page48" name="page48"></a>Pg 48</span> moral consequences to society,
+perhaps, still more mischievous, had the varnish at least of refinement
+on the surface, and by the novelty and apparent difficulty that invested
+them served to keep alive that illusion of imagination from which such
+pursuits derive their sole redeeming charm.</p>
+
+<p>With such a mixture, or rather predominance, of the ideal in his loves,
+his hates, and his sorrows, the state of his existence at that period,
+animated as it was, and kept buoyant, by such a flow of success, must be
+acknowledged, even with every deduction for the unpicturesque
+associations of a London life, to have been, in a high degree, poetical,
+and to have worn round it altogether a sort of halo of romance, which
+the events that followed were but too much calculated to dissipate. By
+his marriage, and its results, he was again brought back to some of
+those bitter realities of which his youth had had a foretaste. Pecuniary
+embarrassment&mdash;that ordeal, of all others, the most trying to delicacy
+and high-mindedness&mdash;now beset him with all the indignities that usually
+follow in its train; and he was thus rudely schooled into the advantages
+of <i>possessing</i> money, when he had hitherto thought but of the generous
+pleasure of <i>dispensing</i> it. No stronger proof, indeed, is wanting of
+the effect of such difficulties in tempering down even the most
+chivalrous pride, than the necessity to which he found himself reduced
+in 1816, not only of departing from his resolution never to profit by
+the sale of his works, but of accepting a sum of money, for copyright,
+from his publisher, which he had for some time persisted in<span class="pagenum"><a id="page49" name="page49"></a>Pg 49</span> refusing
+for himself, and, in the full sincerity of his generous heart, had
+destined for others.</p>
+
+<p>The injustice and malice to which he soon after became a victim had an
+equally fatal effect in disenchanting the dream of his existence. Those
+imaginary, or, at least, retrospective sorrows, in which he had once
+loved to indulge, and whose tendency it was, through the medium of his
+fancy, to soften and refine his heart, were now exchanged for a host of
+actual, ignoble vexations, which it was even more humiliating than
+painful to encounter. His misanthropy, instead of being, as heretofore,
+a vague and abstract feeling, without any object to light upon, and
+losing therefore its acrimony in diffusion, was now, by the hostility he
+came in contact with, condensed into individual enmities, and narrowed
+into personal resentments; and from the lofty, and, as it appeared to
+himself, philosophical luxury of hating mankind in the gross, he was now
+brought down to the self-humbling necessity of despising them in detail.</p>
+
+<p>By all these influences, so fatal to enthusiasm of character, and
+forming, most of them, indeed, a part of the ordinary process by which
+hearts become chilled and hardened in the world, it was impossible but
+that some material change must have been effected in a disposition at
+once so susceptible and tenacious of impressions. By compelling him to
+concentre himself in his own resources and energies, as the only stand
+now left against the world's injustice, his enemies but succeeded in
+giving to the principle of self-dependence within him a new<span class="pagenum"><a id="page50" name="page50"></a>Pg 50</span> force and
+spring which, however it added to the vigour of his character, could not
+fail, by bringing Self so much into action, to impair a little its
+amiableness. Among the changes in his disposition, attributable mainly
+to this source, may be mentioned that diminished deference to the
+opinions and feelings of others which, after this compulsory rally of
+all his powers of resistance, he exhibited. Some portion, no doubt, of
+this refractoriness may be accounted for by his absence from all those
+whose slightest word or look would have done more with him than whole
+volumes of correspondence; but by no cause less powerful and revulsive
+than the struggle in which he had been committed could a disposition
+naturally diffident as his was, and diffident even through all this
+excitement, have been driven into the assumption of a tone so
+universally defying, and so full, if not of pride in his own pre-eminent
+powers, of such a contempt for some of the ablest among his
+contemporaries, as almost implied it. It was, in fact, as has been more
+than once remarked in these pages, a similar stirring up of all the best
+and worst elements of his nature, to that which a like rebound against
+injustice had produced in his youth;&mdash;though with a difference in point
+of force and grandeur, between the two explosions, almost as great as
+between the outbreaks of a firework and a volcano.</p>
+
+<p>Another consequence of the spirit of defiance now roused in him, and one
+that tended, perhaps, even more fatally than any yet mentioned, to sully
+and, for a time, bring down to earth the romance of his<span class="pagenum"><a id="page51" name="page51"></a>Pg 51</span> character, was
+the course of life to which, outrunning even the licence of his youth,
+he abandoned himself at Venice. From this, as from his earlier excesses,
+the timely warning of disgust soon rescued him; and the connection with
+Madame Guiccioli which followed, and which, however much to be
+reprehended, had in it all of marriage that his real marriage wanted,
+seemed to place, at length, within reach of his affectionate spirit that
+union and sympathy for which, through life, it had thirsted. But the
+treasure came too late;&mdash;the pure poetry of the feeling had vanished;
+and those tears he shed so passionately in the garden at Bologna flowed
+less, perhaps, from the love which he felt at that moment, than from the
+saddening consciousness how differently he could have felt formerly. It
+was, indeed, wholly beyond the power, even of an imagination like his,
+to go on investing with its own ideal glories a sentiment which,&mdash;more
+from daring and vanity than from any other impulse,&mdash;he had taken such
+pains to tarnish and debase in his own eyes. Accordingly, instead of
+being able, as once, to elevate and embellish all that interested him,
+to make an idol of every passing creature of his fancy, and mistake the
+form of love, which he so often conjured up, for its substance, he now
+degenerated into the wholly opposite and perverse error of depreciating
+and making light of what, intrinsically, he valued, and, as the reader
+has seen, throwing slight and mockery upon a tie in which it was evident
+some of the best feelings of his nature were wrapped up. That foe to all
+enthusiasm and romance, the habit of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page52" name="page52"></a>Pg 52</span> ridicule, had, in proportion as he
+exchanged the illusions for the realities of life, gained further empire
+over him; and how far it had, at this time, encroached upon the loftier
+and fairer regions of his mind may be seen in the pages of Don
+Juan,&mdash;that diversified arena, on which the two Genii, good and evil,
+that governed his thoughts, hold, with alternate triumph, their
+ever-powerful combat.</p>
+
+<p>Even this, too, this vein of mockery,&mdash;in the excess to which, at last,
+he carried it,&mdash;was but another result of the shock his proud mind had
+received from those events that had cast him off, branded and
+heart-stricken, from country and from home. As he himself touchingly
+says,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"And if I laugh at any mortal thing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Tis that I may not weep."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This laughter,&mdash;which, in such temperaments, is the near neighbour of
+tears,&mdash;served as a diversion to him from more painful vents of
+bitterness; and the same philosophical calculation which made the poet
+of melancholy, Young, declare that "he preferred laughing at the world
+to being angry with it," led Lord Byron also to settle upon the same
+conclusion; and to feel, in the misanthropic views he was inclined to
+take of mankind, that mirth often saved him the pain of hate.</p>
+
+<p>That, with so many drawbacks upon all generous effusions of sentiment,
+he should still have preserved so much of his native tenderness and
+ardour as is conspicuous, through all disguises, in his unquestionable
+love for Madame Guiccioli, and in the still more<span class="pagenum"><a id="page53" name="page53"></a>Pg 53</span> undoubted zeal with
+which he now entered, heart and soul, into the great cause of human
+freedom, wheresoever or by whomsoever asserted<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a>,&mdash;only shows how rich
+must have been the original stores of sensibility and enthusiasm which
+even a career such as his could so little chill or exhaust. Most
+consoling, too, is it to reflect that the few latter years of his life
+should have been thus visited with a return of that poetic lustre,
+which, though it never had ceased to surround the bard, had but too much
+faded away from the character of the man; and that while
+Love,&mdash;reprehensible as it was, but still Love,&mdash;had the credit of
+rescuing him from the only errors that disgraced his maturer years, for
+Liberty was reserved the proud but mournful triumph of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page54" name="page54"></a>Pg 54</span> calling the last
+stage of his glorious course her own, and lighting him, amidst the
+sympathies of the world, to his grave.</p>
+
+<p>Having endeavoured, in this comparison between his present and former
+self, to account, by what I consider to be their true causes, for the
+new phenomena which his character, at this period, exhibited, I shall
+now lay before the reader the Journal by which these remarks were more
+immediately suggested, and from which I fear they will be thought to
+have too long detained him.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY OF LORD BYRON. 1821.</b></p>
+
+<p>"Ravenna, January 4. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"'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.</p>
+
+<p>"This morning I gat me up late, as usual&mdash;weather bad&mdash;bad as
+England&mdash;worse. The snow of last week melting to the sirocco of to-day,
+so that there were two d&mdash;&mdash;d things at once. Could not even get to ride
+on horseback in the forest. Stayed at home all the morning&mdash;looked at
+the fire&mdash;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&mdash;a letter<span class="pagenum"><a id="page55" name="page55"></a>Pg 55</span> 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&mdash;but drank very little.</p>
+
+<p>"I was out of spirits&mdash;read the papers&mdash;thought what <i>fame</i> was, on
+reading, in a case of murder, that 'Mr. Wych, grocer, at Tunbridge, sold
+some bacon, flour, cheese, and, it is believed, some plums, to some
+gipsy woman accused. He had on his counter (I quote faithfully) a
+<i>book</i>, the Life of <i>Pamela</i>, which he was <i>tearing</i> for <i>waste</i> paper,
+&amp;c. &amp;c. In the cheese was found, &amp;c. and a <i>leaf</i> of <i>Pamela wrapt round
+the bacon.</i>' What would Richardson, the vainest and luckiest of <i>living</i>
+authors (<i>i.e.</i> while alive)&mdash;he who, with Aaron Hill, used to prophesy
+and chuckle over the presumed fall of Fielding (the prose Homer of human
+nature) and of Pope (the most beautiful of poets)&mdash;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!!!</p>
+
+<p>"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 bookseller's to the other tradesman's&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"Wrote five letters in about half an hour, short<span class="pagenum"><a id="page56" name="page56"></a>Pg 56</span> and savage, to all my
+rascally correspondents. Carriage came. Heard the news of three murders
+at Faenza and Forli&mdash;a carabinier, a smuggler, and an attorney&mdash;all last
+night. The two first in a quarrel, the latter by premeditation.</p>
+
+<p>"Three weeks ago&mdash;almost a month&mdash;the 7th it was&mdash;I picked up the
+commandant, mortally wounded, out of 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&mdash;by slugs they seemed. I examined him, but did not go to
+the dissection next morning.</p>
+
+<p>"Carriage at 8 or so&mdash;went to visit La Contessa G.&mdash;found her playing on
+the piano-forte&mdash;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 Filippo&mdash;well received.</p>
+
+<p>"Two days ago the King of Naples passed through Bologna on his way to
+congress. My servant Luigi brought the news. I had sent him to Bologna
+for a lamp. How will it end? Time will show.</p>
+
+<p>"Came home at eleven, or rather before. If the road and weather are
+comfortable, mean to ride to-morrow. High time&mdash;almost a week at this
+work&mdash;snow, sirocco, one day&mdash;frost and snow the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page57" name="page57"></a>Pg 57</span> other&mdash;sad climate for
+Italy. But the two seasons, last and present, are extraordinary. Read a
+Life of Leonardo da Vinci by Rossi&mdash;ruminated&mdash;wrote this much, and will
+go to bed.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"January 5. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"Rose late&mdash;dull and drooping&mdash;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,'&mdash;grand work&mdash;Scotch Fielding, as well as great English
+poet&mdash;wonderful man! I long to get drunk with him.</p>
+
+<p>"Dined versus six o' the clock. Forgot that there was a plum-pudding, (I
+have added, lately, <i>eating</i> to my 'family of vices,') and had dined
+before I knew it. Drank half a bottle of some sort of spirits&mdash;probably
+spirits of wine; for what they call brandy, rum, &amp;c. &amp;c. here is nothing
+but spirits of wine, coloured accordingly. Did <i>not</i> eat two apples,
+which were placed by way of dessert. Fed the two cats, the hawk, and the
+tame (but <i>not tamed</i>) <i>crow</i>. Read Mitford's History of
+Greece&mdash;Xenophon's Retreat of the Ten Thousand. Up to this present
+<i>moment writing, 6 minutes before eight o' the clock</i>&mdash;French hours, not
+Italian.</p>
+
+<p>"Hear the carriage&mdash;order pistols and great coat, as usual&mdash;necessary
+articles. Weather cold&mdash;<span class="pagenum"><a id="page58" name="page58"></a>Pg 58</span>carriage open, and inhabitants somewhat
+savage&mdash;rather treacherous and highly inflamed by politics. Fine
+fellows, though, good materials for a nation. Out of chaos God made a
+world, and out of high passions comes a people.</p>
+
+<p>"Clock strikes&mdash;going out to make love. Somewhat perilous, but not
+disagreeable. Memorandum&mdash;a new screen put up to-day. It is rather
+antique, but will do with a little repair.</p>
+
+<p>"Thaw continues&mdash;hopeful that riding may be practicable to-morrow. Sent
+the papers to All<sup>i</sup>.&mdash;grand events coming.</p>
+
+<p>"11 o' the clock and nine minutes. Visited La Contessa G. Nata G.G.
+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&mdash;finish it another day. Talked of Italy, patriotism,
+Alfieri, Madame Albany, and other branches of learning. Also Sallust's
+Conspiracy of Catiline, and the War of Jugurtha. At 9 came in her
+brother, Il Conte Pietro&mdash;at 10, her father, Conte Ruggiero.</p>
+
+<p>"Talked of various modes of warfare&mdash;of the Hungarian 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 7th or 8th of
+March, in which appointment I should trust, had it not been settled that
+it was to<span class="pagenum"><a id="page59" name="page59"></a>Pg 59</span> have broken out in October, 1820. But those Bolognese shirked
+the Romagnuoles.</p>
+
+<p>"'It is all one to Ranger.' One must not be particular, but take
+rebellion when it lies in the way. Come home&mdash;read the 'Ten Thousand'
+again, and will go to bed.</p>
+
+<p>"Mem.&mdash;Ordered Fletcher (at four o'clock this afternoon) to copy out
+seven or eight apophthegms of Bacon, in which I have detected such
+blunders as a school-boy 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.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"January 6. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"Mist&mdash;thaw&mdash;slop&mdash;rain. No stirring out on horseback. Read Spence's
+Anecdotes. Pope a fine fellow&mdash;always thought him so. Corrected blunders
+in <i>nine</i> apophthegms of Bacon&mdash;all historical&mdash;and read Mitford's
+Greece. Wrote an epigram. Turned to a passage in Guinguen&eacute;&mdash;ditto in
+Lord Holland's Lope de Vega. Wrote a note on Don Juan.</p>
+
+<p>"At eight went out to visit. Heard a little music&mdash;like music. Talked
+with Count Pietro G. of the Italian comedian Vestris, who is now at
+Rome&mdash;have seen him often act in Venice&mdash;a good actor&mdash;very. Somewhat of
+a mannerist; but excellent in broad comedy, as well as in the
+sentimental pathetic. He has made me frequently laugh and cry, neither
+of which is now a very easy matter&mdash;at least, for a player to produce in
+me.</p>
+
+<p>"Thought of the state of women under the ancient<span class="pagenum"><a id="page60" name="page60"></a>Pg 60</span> Greeks&mdash;convenient
+enough. Present state a remnant of the barbarism of the chivalry and
+feudal ages&mdash;artificial and unnatural. They ought to mind home&mdash;and be
+well fed and clothed&mdash;but not mixed in society. Well educated, too, in
+religion&mdash;but to read neither poetry nor politics&mdash;nothing but books of
+piety and cookery. Music&mdash;drawing&mdash;dancing&mdash;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 hay-making and milking?</p>
+
+<p>"Came home, and read Mitford again, and played with my mastiff&mdash;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,&mdash;the audience laughed, and asked him for a
+<i>Constitution</i>. This shows the state of the public mind here, as well as
+the assassinations. It won't do. There must be an universal
+republic,&mdash;and there ought to be.</p>
+
+<p>"The crow is lame of a leg&mdash;wonder how it happened&mdash;some fool trod upon
+his toe, I suppose. The falcon pretty brisk&mdash;the cats large and
+noisy&mdash;the monkeys I have not looked to since the cold weather, as they
+suffer by being brought up. Horses must be gay&mdash;get a ride as soon as
+weather serves. Deuced muggy still&mdash;an Italian winter is a sad thing,
+but all the other seasons are charming.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the reason that I have been, all my lifetime, more or less
+<i>ennuy&eacute;?</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page61" name="page61"></a>Pg 61</span> answer
+this, but presume that it is constitutional,&mdash;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;&mdash;when under their immediate influence&mdash;it is odd, but&mdash;I was in
+agitated, but <i>not</i> in depressed, spirits.</p>
+
+<p>"A dose of salts has the effect of a temporary inebriation, like light
+champagne, upon me. But wine and spirits make me sullen and savage to
+ferocity&mdash;silent, however, and retiring, and not quarrelsome, if not
+spoken to. Swimming also raises my spirits,&mdash;but in general they are
+low, and get daily lower. That is <i>hopeless</i>; for I do not think I am so
+much <i>ennuy&eacute;</i> 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&mdash;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. 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.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"January 7. 1821, Sunday.</p>
+
+<p>"Still rain&mdash;mist&mdash;snow&mdash;drizzle&mdash;and all the incalculable combinations
+of a climate where heat and cold struggle for mastery. Head Spence, and
+turned over Roscoe, to find a passage I have not<span class="pagenum"><a id="page62" name="page62"></a>Pg 62</span> found. Read the fourth
+vol. of W. Scott's second series of 'Tales of my Landlord.' Dined. Read
+the Lugano Gazette. Read&mdash;I forget what. At eight went to conversazione.
+Found there the Countess Geltrude, Betti V. and her husband, and others.
+Pretty black-eyed woman that&mdash;<i>only</i> nineteen&mdash;same age as Teresa, who
+is prettier, though.</p>
+
+<p>"The Count Pietro G. 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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"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,&mdash;or to try to get them
+away under cloud of night. On going home, I offered him the pistols
+which I had about me&mdash;but he refused, but said he would come off to me
+in case of accidents.</p>
+
+<p>"It wants half an hour of midnight, and rains;&mdash;as Gibbet says, 'a fine
+night for their enterprise&mdash;dark as hell, and blows like the devil.' If
+the row don't happen <i>now</i>, it must soon. I thought that their system of
+shooting people would soon produce a re-action&mdash;and now it seems coming.
+I will do<span class="pagenum"><a id="page63" name="page63"></a>Pg 63</span> what I can in the way of combat, though a little out of
+exercise. The cause is a good one.</p>
+
+<p>"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,)&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"Mended the fire&mdash;have got the arms&mdash;and a book or two, which I shall
+turn over. I know little of their numbers, but think the Carbonari
+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,&mdash;if ever they <i>will</i>
+rise, of which there is some doubt. In the mean time, I may as well read
+as do any thing else, being alone.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"January 8. 1821, Monday.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;the opponents of the
+Carbonari or Liberals&mdash;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,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page64" name="page64"></a>Pg 64</span> the Liberals were to assemble <i>here</i> (with me),
+and that he had given the word to Vincenzo G. and others of the <i>Chiefs</i>
+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&mdash;but
+no matter.</p>
+
+<p>"I advised them to attack in detail, and in different parties, in
+different <i>places</i> (though at the <i>same</i> 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&mdash;unless
+dispersed in small parties, and distracted with different assaults.
+Offered to let them assemble here, if they choose. It is a strongish
+post&mdash;narrow street, commanded from within&mdash;and tenable walls.</p>
+
+<p>"Dined. Tried on a new coat. Letter to Murray, with corrections of
+Bacon's Apophthegms and an epigram&mdash;the <i>latter not</i> for publication. At
+eight went to Teresa, Countess G. At nine and a half came in Il 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 <i>trimmer</i>, and deals, at present, his cards with both hands.
+If he don't mind, they'll be full. * * pretends (<i>I</i> doubt him&mdash;<i>they</i>
+don't,&mdash;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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page65" name="page65"></a>Pg 65</span> 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&mdash;only an avaricious one.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;or, rather, this morning&mdash;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 <i>yawned</i> for these two days.</p>
+
+<p>"Came home&mdash;read History of Greece&mdash;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&mdash;as is true. The brother lives at Rome.</p>
+
+<p>"Mended the fire with some 'sgobole' (a Romagnuole word), and gave the
+falcon some water. Drank some Seltzer-water. Mem.&mdash;received to-day a
+print, or etching, of the story of Ugolino, by an Italian
+painter&mdash;different, of course, from Sir Joshua Reynolds's, and I think
+(as far as recollection goes) <i>no worse</i>, for Reynolds's is not good in
+history. Tore a button in my new coat.</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page66" name="page66"></a>Pg 66</span> in this people, and a noble energy, if well
+directed. But who is to direct them? No matter. Out of such times heroes
+spring. Difficulties are the hotbeds of high spirits, and Freedom the
+mother of the few virtues incident to human nature.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"Tuesday, January 9. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"Rose&mdash;the day fine. Ordered the horses; but Lega (my <i>secretary</i>, 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, &amp;c. considering all things.</p>
+
+<p>"Dined. Read Johnson's 'Vanity of Human Wishes,'&mdash;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 <i>Conversationist</i>, as he was
+called in London, and a very clever man,) that the first line of this
+poem was superfluous, and that Pope (the best of poets, <i>I</i> think) would
+have begun at once, only changing the punctuation&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'Survey mankind from China to Peru.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The former line, 'Let observation,' &amp;c. is certainly heavy and useless.
+But 'tis a grand poem&mdash;and <i>so true!</i>&mdash;true as the 10th of Juvenal
+himself. The lapse of ages <i>changes</i> all things&mdash;time&mdash;language&mdash;the
+earth&mdash;the bounds of the sea&mdash;the stars of the sky, and every thing
+'about, around, and under<span class="pagenum"><a id="page67" name="page67"></a>Pg 67</span>neath' man, <i>except man himself</i>, 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. 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&mdash;&mdash; first and freedom afterwards&mdash;the <i>latter</i> 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
+<i>first</i> the best present of the two to their subjects.</p>
+
+<p>"At eight went out&mdash;heard some news. They say the King of Naples has
+declared, by couriers from Florence, to the <i>Powers</i> (as they call now
+those wretches with crowns) that his Constitution was compulsive, &amp;c.
+&amp;c. and that the Austrian barbarians are placed again on <i>war</i> pay, and
+will march. Let them&mdash;'they come like sacrifices in their trim,' 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Heard some music. At nine the usual visiters&mdash;news, <i>war</i>, or rumours
+of war. Consulted with P.G. &amp;c. &amp;c. They mean to <i>insurrect</i> 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,
+<i>onward!</i>&mdash;it is now the time to act, and what signifies <i>self</i>, if a
+single spark of that which would be worthy of the past can be bequeathed
+unquenchedly to the future?<span class="pagenum"><a id="page68" name="page68"></a>Pg 68</span> It is not one man, nor a million, but the
+<i>spirit</i> of liberty which must be spread. The waves which dash upon the
+shore are, one by one, broken, but yet the <i>ocean</i> conquers,
+nevertheless. It overwhelms the Armada, it wears the rock, and, if the
+<i>Neptunians</i> 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 <i>sea-weed</i> is <i>manure</i>) 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.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"January 10. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"Day fine&mdash;rained only in the morning. Looked over accounts. Read
+Campbell's Poets&mdash;marked errors of Tom (the author) for correction.
+Dined&mdash;went out&mdash;music&mdash;Tyrolese air, with variations. Sustained the
+cause of the original simple air against the variations of the Italian
+school.</p>
+
+<p>"Politics somewhat tempestuous, and cloudier daily. To-morrow being
+foreign post-day, probably something more will be known.</p>
+
+<p>"Came home&mdash;read. Corrected Tom Campbell's slips of the pen. A good
+work, though&mdash;style affected&mdash;but his defence of Pope is glorious. To be
+sure, it is his <i>own cause</i> too,&mdash;but no matter, it is very good, and
+does him great credit.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page69" name="page69"></a>Pg 69</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"Midnight.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been turning over different <i>Lives</i> of the Poets. I rarely read
+their works, unless an occasional flight over the classical ones, Pope,
+Dryden, Johnson, Gray, and those who approach them nearest (I leave the
+<i>rant</i> of the rest to the <i>cant</i> of the day), and&mdash;I had made several
+reflections, but I feel sleepy, and may as well go to bed.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"January 11. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"Read the letters. Corrected the tragedy and the 'Hints from Horace.'
+Dined, and got into better spirits. Went out&mdash;returned&mdash;finished
+letters, five in number. Read Poets, and an anecdote in Spence.</p>
+
+<p>"All<sup>i</sup>. 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!</p>
+
+<p>"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 'suma peculiar.' God grant us all better times, or more
+philosophy!</p>
+
+<p>"In reading, I have just chanced upon an expression of Tom
+Campbell's;&mdash;speaking of Collins, he says that no reader cares any more
+about the <i>characteristic manners</i> of his Eclogues than about the
+authenticity of the tale of Troy.' 'Tis false&mdash;we<span class="pagenum"><a id="page70" name="page70"></a>Pg 70</span> <i>do</i> care about the
+authenticity of the tale of Troy. I have stood upon that plain <i>daily</i>,
+for more than a month in 1810; and if any thing diminished my pleasure,
+it was that the blackguard Bryant had impugned its veracity. It is true
+I read 'Homer Travestied' (the first twelve books), because Hobhouse and
+others bored me with their learned localities, and I love quizzing. But
+I still venerated the grand original as the truth of <i>history</i> (in the
+material <i>facts</i>) and of <i>place</i>. 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?&mdash;its very magnitude proved this. Men do not
+labour over the ignoble and petty dead&mdash;and why should not the <i>dead</i> be
+<i>Homer</i>'s dead? The secret of Tom Campbell's defence of <i>inaccuracy</i> in
+costume and description is, that his Gertrude, &amp;c. 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 any thing which happens, even accidentally, to stumble
+upon it.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"January 12. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"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 (but with one day's interval), chequered with snow or heavy
+rain only, since the 30th of December, 1820. It is so far lucky that I
+have a<span class="pagenum"><a id="page71" name="page71"></a>Pg 71</span> literary turn;&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"Read the Poets&mdash;English, that is to say&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"Murray writes that they want to act the Tragedy of Marino Faliero&mdash;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 numberless 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&mdash;the time, twenty-four hours&mdash;the change of place not
+frequent&mdash;nothing <i>melo</i>dramatic&mdash;no surprises, no starts, nor
+trap-doors, nor opportunities 'for tossing their heads and kicking their
+heels'&mdash;and no <i>love</i>&mdash;the grand ingredient of a modern play.</p>
+
+<p>"I have found out the seal cut on Murray's letter. It is meant for
+Walter Scott&mdash;or <i>Sir</i> Walter&mdash;he is the first poet knighted since Sir
+Richard Blackmore. But it does not do him justice.
+Scott's&mdash;<span class="pagenum"><a id="page72" name="page72"></a>Pg 72</span>particularly when he recites&mdash;is a very intelligent
+countenance, and this seal says nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"Scott is certainly the most wonderful writer of the day. His novels are
+a new literature in themselves, and his poetry as good as any&mdash;if not
+better (only on an erroneous system)&mdash;and only ceased to be so popular,
+because the vulgar learned were tired of hearing 'Aristides called the
+Just,' and Scott the Best, and ostracised him.</p>
+
+<p>"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!&mdash;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 Contesse G. this evening,
+who will be curious to have the effigies of a man so celebrated.</p>
+
+<p>"How strange are our thoughts, &amp;c. &amp;c. &amp;c.<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"Midnight.</p>
+
+<p>"Read the Italian translation by Guido Sorelli of the German
+Grillparzer&mdash;a devil of a name, to be sure, for posterity; but they
+<i>must</i> learn to pronounce it. With all the allowance for a
+<i>translation</i>, and above all, an <i>Italian</i> translation (they are the
+very worst of translators, except from the Classics&mdash;Annibale Caro, for
+instance&mdash;and <i>there</i>, the bastardy of their language helps them, as, by
+way of <i>looking legitimate</i>, they ape their father's tongue);&mdash;but with<span class="pagenum"><a id="page73" name="page73"></a>Pg 73</span>
+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 <i>who is he?</i> I know him not; but <i>ages will</i>.
+'Tis a high intellect.</p>
+
+<p>"I must premise, however, that I have read <i>nothing</i> of Adolph M&uuml;llner'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, and Italian translations. Of the <i>real</i> language I know
+absolutely nothing,&mdash;except oaths learnt from postilions and officers in
+a squabble. I can <i>swear</i> in German potently, when I
+like&mdash;'Sacrament&mdash;Verfluchter&mdash;Hundsfott'&mdash;and so forth; but I have
+little of their less energetic conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"I like, however, their women, (I was once so <i>desperately</i> 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&mdash;all, except the Austrians, whom I abhor, loathe, and&mdash;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&mdash;except on an impulse, and then I am savage&mdash;but not
+deliberately so.</p>
+
+<p>"Grillparzer is grand&mdash;antique&mdash;<i>not so simple</i> as the ancients, but
+very simple for a modern&mdash;too Madame de Sta&euml;l<i>ish</i>, now and then&mdash;but
+altogether a great and goodly writer.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page74" name="page74"></a>Pg 74</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"January 13. 1821, Saturday.</p>
+
+<p>"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 the ninth vol.
+octavo, of Mitford's Greece, where he rather vindicates the memory of
+this last of the Assyrians.</p>
+
+<p>"Dined&mdash;news come&mdash;the <i>Powers</i> mean to war with the peoples. The
+intelligence seems positive&mdash;let it be so&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>not the loftiest</i> 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, <i>if</i> the times will
+allow me leisure. That <i>if</i> will hardly be a peace-maker.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"January 14. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"Turned over Seneca's tragedies. Wrote the opening lines of the intended
+tragedy of Sardanapalus. Rode out some miles into the forest. Misty<span class="pagenum"><a id="page75" name="page75"></a>Pg 75</span> and
+rainy. Returned&mdash;dined&mdash;wrote some more of my tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>"Read Diodorus Siculus&mdash;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 (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.</p>
+
+<p>"The effect of all wines and spirits upon me is, however, strange. It
+<i>settles</i>, but it makes me gloomy&mdash;gloomy at the very moment of their
+effect, and not gay hardly ever. But it composes for a time, though
+sullenly.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"January 15. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"Weather fine. Received visit. Rode out into the forest&mdash;fired pistols.
+Returned home&mdash;dined&mdash;dipped into a volume of Mitford's Greece&mdash;wrote
+part of a scene of 'Sardanapalus.' Went out&mdash;heard some music&mdash;heard
+some politics. More ministers from the other Italian powers gone to
+Congress. War seems certain&mdash;in that case, it will be a savage one.
+Talked over various important matters with one of the initiated. At ten
+and half returned home.</p>
+
+<p>"I have just thought of something odd. In the year 1814, Moore ('the
+poet,' <i>par excellence</i>, and he deserves it) and I were going together,
+in the same carriage, to dine with Earl Grey, the Capo Politico<span class="pagenum"><a id="page76" name="page76"></a>Pg 76</span> of the
+remaining Whigs. Murray, the magnificent (the illustrious publisher of
+that name), had just sent me a Java gazette&mdash;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 disputing
+on the subject. But, there is <i>fame</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"It was a great fame to be named with Moore; greater to be compared with
+him; greatest&mdash;<i>pleasure</i>, at least&mdash;to be <i>with</i> him; and, surely, an
+odd coincidence, that we should be dining together while they were
+quarrelling about us beyond the equinoctial line.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, the same evening, I met Lawrence the painter, and heard one of
+Lord Grey's daughters (a fine, tall, spirit-looking girl, with much of
+the <i>patrician, thorough-bred look</i> of her father, which I dote upon)
+play on the harp, so modestly and ingenuously, that she <i>looked music</i>.
+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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page77" name="page77"></a>Pg 77</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"January 16. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"Read&mdash;rode&mdash;fired pistols&mdash;returned&mdash;dined&mdash;wrote&mdash;visited&mdash;heard
+music&mdash;talked nonsense&mdash;and went home.</p>
+
+<p>"Wrote part of a Tragedy&mdash;advanced in Act 1st with 'all deliberate
+speed.' Bought a blanket. The weather is still muggy as a London
+May&mdash;mist, mizzle, the air replete with Scotticisms, which, though fine
+in the descriptions of Ossian, are somewhat tiresome in real, prosaic
+perspective. Politics still mysterious.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"January 17. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"Rode i' the forest&mdash;fired pistols&mdash;dined. Arrived a packet of books
+from England and Lombardy&mdash;English, Italian, French, and Latin. Read
+till eight&mdash;went out.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"January 18. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"To-day, the post arriving late, did not ride. Read letters&mdash;only two
+gazettes instead of twelve now due. Made Lega write to that negligent
+Galignani, and added a postscript. Dined.</p>
+
+<p>"At eight proposed to go out. Lega came in with a letter about a bill
+<i>unpaid</i> 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&mdash;but it <i>was</i> provoking&mdash;a set
+of scoundrels! It is, however, but five and twenty pounds.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"January 19. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"Rode. Winter's wind somewhat more unkind than ingratitude itself,
+though Shakspeare says otherwise. At least, I am so much more accustomed
+to<span class="pagenum"><a id="page78" name="page78"></a>Pg 78</span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Thought of a plan of education for my daughter Allegra, who ought to
+begin soon with her studies. Wrote a letter&mdash;afterwards a postscript.
+Rather in low spirits&mdash;certainly hippish&mdash;liver touched&mdash;will take a
+dose of salts.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been reading the Life, by himself and daughter, of Mr. R.L.
+Edgeworth, the father of <i>the</i> Miss Edgeworth. It is altogether a great
+name. In 1813, I recollect to have met them in the fashionable 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 Sta&euml;l, with 'the Cossack,' towards
+the end of 1813, were the exhibitions of the succeeding year.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;no, nor forty-eight even. I had seen poor Fitzpatrick not
+very long before&mdash;a man of pleasure, wit, eloquence, all things. He
+tottered&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page79" name="page79"></a>Pg 79</span>"He began by telling 'that he had given Dr. Parr a dressing, who had
+taken him for an Irish bog-trotter,' &amp;c. &amp;c. Now I, who know Dr. Parr,
+and who know (<i>not</i> by experience&mdash;for I never should have presumed so
+far as to contend with him&mdash;but by hearing him <i>with</i> others, and <i>of</i>
+others) 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 an instant. For the rest, he seemed intelligent, vehement,
+vivacious, and full of life. He bids fair for a hundred years.</p>
+
+<p>"He was not much admired in London, and I remember a 'ryghte merrie' and
+conceited jest which was rife among the gallants of the day,&mdash;viz. a
+paper had been presented for the <i>recall of Mrs. Siddons to the stage</i>,
+(she having lately taken leave, to the loss of ages,&mdash;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 <i>sub</i>scribed and <i>circum</i>scribed
+'for the recall of Mr. Edgeworth to Ireland.'<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a></p>
+
+<p>"The fact was&mdash;every body cared more about <i>her</i>. She was a nice little
+unassuming 'Jeanie Deans'-looking body,' as we Scotch say&mdash;and, if not
+handsome, certainly not ill-looking. Her conversation was as quiet as
+herself. One would never<span class="pagenum"><a id="page80" name="page80"></a>Pg 80</span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"As for Mrs. Edgeworth, I forget&mdash;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 Sta&euml;l.</p>
+
+<p>"To turn from them to their works, I admire them; but they excite no
+feeling, and they leave no love&mdash;except for some Irish steward or
+postilion. However, the impression of intellect and prudence is
+profound&mdash;and may be useful.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"January 20. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"Rode&mdash;fired pistols. Read from Grimm's Correspondence. Dined&mdash;went
+out&mdash;heard music&mdash;returned&mdash;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&mdash;what! without asking my consent, and even in opposition to it!</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>January 21. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"Fine, clear frosty day&mdash;that is to say, an Italian frost, for their
+winters hardly get beyond snow; for which reason nobody knows how to
+skate (or skait)&mdash;a Dutch and English accomplishment. Rode out, as
+usual, and fired pistols. Good shooting&mdash;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&mdash;considering the difference of powder and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page81" name="page81"></a>Pg 81</span> pistols&mdash;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
+walking-stick, at twelve paces, with a single bullet&mdash;and all by <i>eye</i>
+and calculation; for my hand is not steady, 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Dined&mdash;visited&mdash;came home&mdash;read. Remarked on an anecdote in Grimm's
+Correspondence, which says that 'Regnard et la pl&ucirc;part des po&euml;tes
+comiques &eacute;taient gens bilieux et m&eacute;lancoliques; et que M. de Voltaire,
+qui est tr&egrave;s gai, n'a jamais fait que des tragedies&mdash;et que la comedie
+gaie est le seul genre o&ugrave; il n'ait point r&eacute;ussi. C'est que celui qui rit
+et celui qui fait rire sont deux hommes fort diff&eacute;rens.'&mdash;Vol. VI.</p>
+
+<p>"At this moment I feel as bilious as the best comic writer of them all,
+(even as Regnard himself, the next to Moli&egrave;re, 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
+Sardanapalus, which I have, for some days, ceased to compose.</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow is my birth-day&mdash;that is to say, at twelve o' the clock,
+midnight, <i>i.e.</i> in twelve minutes, I shall have completed thirty and
+three years of age!!!&mdash;and I go to my bed with a heaviness of heart at
+having lived so long, and to so little purpose.</p>
+
+<p>"It is three minutes past twelve.&mdash;'Tis the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page82" name="page82"></a>Pg 82</span> middle of night by the
+castle clock,' and I am now thirty-three!</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Eheu, fugaces, Posthume, Posthume,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Labuntur anni;&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>but I don't regret them so much for what I have done, as for what I
+<i>might</i> have done.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Through life's road, so dim and dirty,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I have dragged to three-and-thirty.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What have these years left to me?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nothing&mdash;except thirty-three.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"January 22. 1821.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+   <img src="images/3.jpg"
+       alt="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."
+       title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page83" name="page83"></a>Pg 83</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"January 23. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"Fine day. Read&mdash;rode&mdash;fired pistols, and returned. Dined&mdash;read. Went
+out at eight&mdash;made the usual visit. Heard of nothing but war,&mdash;'the cry
+is still, They come.' The Car<sup>i</sup>. seem to have no plan&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;for myself, it is much the same.</p>
+
+<p>"I am somewhat puzzled what to do with my little daughter, and my
+effects, which are of some quantity and value,&mdash;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 <i>her</i>, 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.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page84" name="page84"></a>Pg 84</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"January 24. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"Returned&mdash;met some masques in the Corso&mdash;'Vive la bagatelle!'&mdash;the
+Germans are on the Po, the Barbarians at 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&mdash;I 'rode on.'</p>
+
+<p>"Dined&mdash;(damn this pen!)&mdash;beef tough&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"The principal persons in the events which may occur in a few days are
+gone out on a <i>shooting party</i>. If it were like a '<i>highland</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"If they gather,&mdash;'whilk is to be doubted,'&mdash;they will not muster a
+thousand men. The reason of this is, that the populace are not
+interested,&mdash;only the higher and middle orders. I wish that the
+peasantry were: they are a fine savage race of two-legged leopards. But
+the Bolognese won't&mdash;the Romagnuoles can't without them. Or, if they
+try&mdash;<span class="pagenum"><a id="page85" name="page85"></a>Pg 85</span>what then? They will try, and man can do no more&mdash;and, if he
+<i>would</i> but try his utmost, much might be done. The Dutch, for instance,
+against the Spaniards&mdash;<i>then</i> the tyrants of Europe, since, the slaves,
+and, lately, the freedmen.</p>
+
+<p>"The year 1820 was not a fortunate one for the individual 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&mdash;with me at least.</p>
+
+<p>"In the same year, 1820, the Countess T.G. nata G<sup>a</sup>. G<sup>i</sup>. in despite of
+all I said and did to prevent it, <i>would</i> separate from her husband, Il
+Cavalier Commendatore G<sup>i</sup>. &amp;c. &amp;c. &amp;c. and all on the account of 'P.P.
+clerk of this parish.' The other little petty vexations of the
+year&mdash;overturns in carriages&mdash;the murder of people before one's door,
+and dying in one's beds&mdash;the cramp in swimming&mdash;colics&mdash;indigestions and
+bilious attacks, &amp;c. &amp;c. &amp;c.&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Many small articles make up a sum,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And hey ho for Caleb Quotem, oh!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"January 25. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"Received a letter from Lord S.O. state secretary of the Seven
+Islands&mdash;a fine fellow&mdash;clever&mdash;dished in England five years ago, and
+came abroad to retrench and to renew. He wrote from<span class="pagenum"><a id="page86" name="page86"></a>Pg 86</span> Ancona, in his way
+back to Corfu, on some matters of our own. He is son of the late Duke of
+L. by a second marriage. He wants me to go to Corfu. Why not?&mdash;perhaps I
+may, next spring.</p>
+
+<p>"Answered Murray's letter&mdash;read&mdash;lounged. Scrawled this additional page
+of life's log-book. One day more is over of it and of me:&mdash;but 'which is
+best, life or death, the gods only know,' as Socrates said to his
+judges, on the breaking up of the tribunal. Two thousand years since
+that sage's declaration of ignorance have not enlightened us more upon
+this important point; for, according to the Christian dispensation, no
+one can know whether he is <i>sure</i> of salvation&mdash;even the most
+righteous&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"It has been said that the immortality of the soul is a 'grand
+peut-&ecirc;tre'&mdash;but still it is a <i>grand</i> one. Every body clings to it&mdash;the
+stupidest, and dullest, and wickedest of human bipeds is still persuaded
+that he is immortal.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"January 26. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"Fine day&mdash;a few mares' tails portending change, but the sky clear, upon
+the whole. Rode&mdash;fired pistols&mdash;good shooting. Coming back, met an old
+man. Charity&mdash;purchased a shilling's worth of salvation. If that was to
+be bought, I have given more to my fellow-creatures in this
+life&mdash;sometimes<span class="pagenum"><a id="page87" name="page87"></a>Pg 87</span> for <i>vice</i>, but, if not more <i>often</i>, at least more
+<i>considerably</i>, for virtue&mdash;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;&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"Returning, on the bridge near the mill, met an old woman. I asked her
+age&mdash;she said '<i>Trecroci</i>.' I asked my groom (though myself a decent
+Italian) what the devil <i>her</i> 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&mdash;ninety-five years!!!&mdash;and she was yet
+rather active&mdash;<i>heard</i> my question, for she answered it&mdash;<i>saw</i> 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 <i>is</i> ninety-five years old,
+she must recollect the Cardinal Alberoni, who was legate here.</p>
+
+<p>"On dismounting, found Lieutenant E. just arrived from Faenza. Invited
+him to dine with me to-morrow. Did <i>not</i> invite him for to-day, because
+there was a small <i>turbot</i>, (Friday, fast regularly and religiously,)
+which I wanted to eat all myself. Ate it.</p>
+
+<p>"Went out&mdash;found T. as usual&mdash;music. The gentlemen, who make revolutions
+and are gone on a shooting, are not yet returned. They don't return<span class="pagenum"><a id="page88" name="page88"></a>Pg 88</span>
+till Sunday&mdash;that is to say, they have been out for five days,
+buffooning, while the interests of a whole country are at stake, and
+even they themselves compromised.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a difficult part to play amongst such a set of assassins and
+blockheads&mdash;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&mdash;it is upon the dice.</p>
+
+<p>"If the Neapolitans have but a single Massaniello 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 themselves, there is nothing to shake them from
+without.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"January 28. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"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!&mdash;I hope to pay them in <i>ball</i> for that powder. Rode out
+till twilight.</p>
+
+<p>"Pondered the subjects of four tragedies to be written (life and
+circumstances permitting), to wit, Sardanapalus, already begun; Cain, a
+metaphysical<span class="pagenum"><a id="page89" name="page89"></a>Pg 89</span> subject, something in the style of Manfred, but in five
+<i>acts</i>, 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 <i>my</i> tragic, at least, out of the gloomy
+sequestration and old age of the tyrant&mdash;and even out of his sojourn at
+Caprea&mdash;by softening the <i>details</i>, 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,&mdash;being also, at the same time, <i>old</i>, and the master of the
+world.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Memoranda.</i></p>
+
+<p>"What is Poetry?&mdash;The feeling of a Former world and Future.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Thought Second.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Why, at the very height of desire and human pleasure,&mdash;worldly, social,
+amorous, ambitious, or even avaricious,&mdash;does there mingle a certain
+sense of doubt and sorrow&mdash;a fear of what is to come&mdash;a doubt of what
+<i>is</i>&mdash;a retrospect 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?&mdash;I know not, except that on a pinnacle we are most susceptible
+of giddiness, and that we never fear falling except from a
+precipice&mdash;the higher, the more awful, and the more sublime; and,
+therefore, I am not sure that Fear is not a pleasurable sensation; at
+least, <i>Hope</i> is; and <i>what Hope</i> is there<span class="pagenum"><a id="page90" name="page90"></a>Pg 90</span> 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?&mdash;in hell. It is useless to say
+<i>where</i> the Present is, for most of us know; and as for the Past, <i>what</i>
+predominates in memory?&mdash;<i>Hope baffled</i>. Ergo, in all human affairs, it
+is Hope&mdash;Hope&mdash;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&mdash;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<br />
+&mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash;
+&mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash;
+&mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash;
+&mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash;<br />
+&mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash;
+&mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash;
+&mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash;
+&mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash;<br />
+&mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash;
+&mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash;
+&mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash;
+&mdash; &mdash; &mdash; &mdash;<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a></p>
+
+<p>"<i>Thought for a speech of Lucifer, in the tragedy of Cain:</i>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Were <i>Death</i> an <i>evil</i>, would <i>I</i> let thee <i>live</i>?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fool! live as I live&mdash;as thy father lives,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thy son's sons shall live for evermore.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"Past Midnight. One o' the clock.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been reading W.F.S * * (brother to the other of the name) till
+now, and I can make out nothing. He evidently shows a great power of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page91" name="page91"></a>Pg 91</span>
+words, but there is nothing to be taken hold of. He is like Hazlitt, in
+English, who <i>talks pimples</i>&mdash;a red and white corruption rising up (in
+little imitation of mountains upon maps), but containing nothing, and
+discharging nothing, except their own humours.</p>
+
+<p>"I dislike him the worse, (that is, S * *,) 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,&mdash;to which, however, the above
+comparisons do too much honour.</p>
+
+<p>"Continuing to read Mr. F. S * *. 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 <i>all over the world</i> 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,&mdash;or like George in the Vicar of
+Wakefield, who found out that all the good things had been said already
+on the right side, and therefore 'dressed up some paradoxes' upon the
+wrong side&mdash;ingenious, but false, as he himself says&mdash;to which 'the
+learned world said nothing, nothing at all, sir.' The 'learned world,'
+however, <i>has</i> said something to the brothers S * *.</p>
+
+<p>"It is high time to think of something else. What they say of the
+antiquities of the North is best.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"January 29. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"Yesterday, the woman of ninety-five years of age was with me. She said
+her eldest son (if now alive)<span class="pagenum"><a id="page92" name="page92"></a>Pg 92</span> would have been seventy. She is
+thin&mdash;short, but active&mdash;hears, and sees, and talks incessantly. Several
+teeth left&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"I forgot to ask her if she remembered Alberoni (legate here), but will
+ask her next time. Gave her a louis&mdash;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,&mdash;pretty work at ninety-five years old!
+She had a dozen children, of whom some are alive. Her name is Maria
+Montanari.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;'<i>Sem</i> tutti soldat' per la liberta' ('we are all
+soldiers for liberty'). They cheered me as I passed&mdash;I returned their
+salute, and rode on. This may show the spirit of Italy at present.</p>
+
+<p>"My to-day's journal consists of what I omitted yesterday. 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.</p>
+
+<p>"They say that the Piedmontese have at length risen&mdash;<i>&ccedil;a ira!</i></p>
+
+<p>"Read S * *. Of Dante he says, 'that at no time has the greatest and
+most national of all<span class="pagenum"><a id="page93" name="page93"></a>Pg 93</span> 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. <i>Not</i> a favourite! Why, they talk Dante&mdash;write Dante&mdash;and
+think and dream Dante at this moment (1821) to an excess, which would be
+ridiculous, but that he deserves it.</p>
+
+<p>"In the same style this German talks of gondolas on the Arno&mdash;a precious
+fellow to dare to speak of Italy!</p>
+
+<p>"He says also that Dante's chief defect is a want, in a word, of gentle
+feelings. Of gentle feelings!&mdash;and Francesca of Rimini&mdash;and the father's
+feelings in Ugolino&mdash;and Beatrice&mdash;and 'La Pia!' Why, there is
+gentleness 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&mdash;but who <i>but</i> Dante could have introduced any
+'gentleness' at all into <i>Hell</i>? Is there any in Milton's? No&mdash;and
+Dante's Heaven is all love, and glory, and majesty.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"One o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>"I have found out, however, where the German is right&mdash;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!&mdash;he might be sure. But it is very
+well for a S * *. I feel sleepy, and may as well get me to bed.
+To-morrow there will be fine weather.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay."<br /></span>
+</div></div><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page94" name="page94"></a>Pg 94</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"January 30. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"The Count P.G. this evening (by commission from the C<sup>i</sup>.) transmitted to
+me the new <i>words</i> for the next six months. * * * and * * *. The new
+sacred word is * * *&mdash;the reply * * *&mdash;the rejoinder * * *. The former
+word (now changed) was * * *&mdash;there is also * * *&mdash;* * *.<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> Things
+seem fast coming to a crisis&mdash;<i>&ccedil;a ira!</i></p>
+
+<p>"We talked over various matters of moment and movement. These I
+omit;&mdash;if they come to any thing, they will speak for themselves. After
+these, we spoke of Kosciusko. Count R.G. told me that he has seen the
+Polish officers in the Italian war burst into tears on hearing his name.</p>
+
+<p>"Something must be up in Piedmont&mdash;all the letters and papers are
+stopped. Nobody knows any thing, 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.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"January, 31. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"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 Contesse G.'s divorce, and all its process<span class="pagenum"><a id="page95" name="page95"></a>Pg 95</span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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'&mdash;speaking of the <i>passions</i>. If this
+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?</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"Midnight.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been reading Grimm's Correspondence. He repeats frequently, in
+speaking of a poet, or a man of genius in any department, even in music,
+(Gretry, for instance,) that he must have 'une ame qui se tourmente, un
+esprit violent.' How far this may be true, I know not; but if it were, I
+should be a poet 'per eccellenza;' for I have always had 'une ame,'
+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 <i>should</i> be, it is not worth while,
+for what are <i>they</i> worth? what have they done?</p>
+
+<p>"Grimm, however, is an excellent critic and literary historian. His
+Correspondence form the annals of the literary part of that age of
+France, with much of her politics; and, still more, of her<span class="pagenum"><a id="page96" name="page96"></a>Pg 96</span> 'way of
+life.' He is as valuable, and far more entertaining than Muratori or
+Tiraboschi&mdash;I had almost said, than Ginguen&eacute;&mdash;but there we should pause.
+However, 'tis a great man in its line.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur St. Lambert has</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'Et lorsqu'&agrave; ses regards la lumi&egrave;re est ravie,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Il n'a plus, en mourant, &agrave; perdre que la vie.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This is, word for word, Thomson's</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'And dying, all we can resign is breath,'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"February 2. 1821</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;I may say,
+in actual despair and despondency, in all respects&mdash;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&mdash;calculating, however, some lost from the bursting out and
+effervescence and over-flowing of the soda-water, in drawing the corks,
+or<span class="pagenum"><a id="page97" name="page97"></a>Pg 97</span> striking off the necks of the bottles from mere thirsty impatience.
+At present, I have <i>not</i> the thirst; but the depression of spirits is no
+less violent.</p>
+
+<p>"I read in Edgeworth's Memoirs of something similar (except that his
+thirst expended itself on <i>small beer</i>) in the case of Sir F.B.
+Delaval;&mdash;but then he was, at least, twenty years older. What is
+it?&mdash;liver? In England, 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.</p>
+
+<p>"What I feel most growing upon me are laziness, and a disrelish more
+powerful than indifference. It I rouse, it is into fury. I presume that
+I shall end (if not earlier by accident, or some such termination) like
+Swift&mdash;'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 <i>begun life</i> at the very period (thirty-three) when I feel
+quite an <i>old sort</i> of feel.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! there is an organ playing in the street&mdash;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<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a>.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page98" name="page98"></a>Pg 98</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>"February 5. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"At last, 'the kiln's in a low.' 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.</p>
+
+<p>"This afternoon&mdash;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.
+Returned&mdash;dined&mdash;read&mdash;went out&mdash;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 <i>harness</i> and portmanteaus necessary for the
+horses.</p>
+
+<p>"Read some of Bowles's dispute about Pope, with all the replies and
+rejoinders. Perceive that my name has 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.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"February 9. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"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 C<sup>i</sup> 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 15th inst.
+Instead of this, from some previous information or otherwise, 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
+Nea<span class="pagenum"><a id="page99" name="page99"></a>Pg 99</span>politans had sent on their own instructions and intentions, all
+calculated for the <i>tenth</i> and <i>eleventh</i>, on which days a general
+rising was to take place, under the supposition that the Barbarians
+could not advance before the 15th.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>last</i>, 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. <i>Here</i>, the public spirit is
+excellent, provided it be kept up. This will be seen by the event.</p>
+
+<p>"It is probable that Italy will be delivered from the Barbarians if the
+Neapolitans will but stand firm, and are united among themselves. <i>Here</i>
+they appear so.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"February 10. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"Day passed as usual&mdash;nothing new. Barbarians still in march&mdash;not well
+equipped, and, of course, not well received on their route. There is
+some talk of a commotion at Paris.</p>
+
+<p>"Rode out between four and six&mdash;finished my letter to Murray on Bowles's
+pamphlets&mdash;added postscript. Passed the evening as usual&mdash;out till
+eleven&mdash;and subsequently at home.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"February 11. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"Wrote&mdash;had a copy taken of an extract from Petrarch's Letters, with
+reference to the conspiracy of the Doge, M. Faliero, containing the
+poet's opinion<span class="pagenum"><a id="page100" name="page100"></a>Pg 100</span> of the matter. Heard a heavy firing of cannon towards
+Comacchio&mdash;the Barbarians rejoicing for their principal pig's birthday,
+which is to-morrow&mdash;or Saint day&mdash;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.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"February 13. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Was elected yesterday 'Socio' of the Carnival ball society. This is the
+fifth carnival that I have passed. In the four former, I racketed a good
+deal. In the present, I have been as sober as Lady Grace herself.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"February 14. 1821</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;partly without, in conversazione&mdash;partly at home.</p>
+
+<p>"Heard the particulars of the late fray at Russi, a town not far from
+this. It is exactly the fact of Rom&#275;o and Giulietta&mdash;<i>not</i> Rom&#277;o,
+as the Barbarian writes it. Two families of Contadini (peasants) are at
+feud. At a ball, the younger part of the families<span class="pagenum"><a id="page101" name="page101"></a>Pg 101</span> 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,&mdash;pretty well for two families, methinks&mdash;and all
+<i>fact</i>, of the last week. Another assassination has taken place at
+Cesenna,&mdash;in all about <i>forty</i> in Romagna within the last three months.
+These people retain much of the middle ages.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"February 15. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"Last night finished the first act of Sardanapalus. To-night, or
+to-morrow, I ought to answer letters.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"February 16. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"Last night Il Conte P.G. sent a man with a bag full of bayonets, some
+muskets, and some hundreds of cartridges to my house, without apprizing
+me, though I had 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<sup>i</sup>.
+asked me to purchase some arms for a certain few of our ragamuffins. I
+did so immediately, and ordered ammunition, &amp;c. and they were armed
+accordingly. Well&mdash;the rising is prevented by the Barbarians marching a
+week sooner than appointed; and an <i>order</i> is issued, and in force, by
+the Government, 'that all<span class="pagenum"><a id="page102" name="page102"></a>Pg 102</span> persons having arms concealed, &amp;c. &amp;c. shall
+be liable to,' &amp;c. &amp;c.&mdash;and what do my friends, the patriots, do two
+days afterwards? 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"At nine went out&mdash;at eleven returned. Beat the crow for stealing the
+falcon's victuals. Read 'Tales of my Landlord'&mdash;wrote a letter&mdash;and
+mixed a moderate beaker of water with other ingredients.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"February 18. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"The news are that the Neapolitans have broken a bridge, and slain four
+pontifical carabiniers, whilk carabiniers 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 towards the Barbarians. If it be even so, in a
+short time 'there will be news o' thae craws,' as Mrs. Alison Wilson
+says of Jenny Blane's 'unco cockernony' in the 'Tales of my Landlord.'</p>
+
+<p>"In turning over Grimm's Correspondence to-day,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page103" name="page103"></a>Pg 103</span> I found a thought of
+Tom Moore's in a song of Maupertuis to a female Laplander.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'Et tous les lieux,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O&ugrave; sont ses yeux,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Font la Zone br&ucirc;lante.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This is Moore's,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'And those eyes make my climate, wherever I roam.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>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&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'Le soleil luit,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Des jours sans nuit<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bient&ocirc;t il nous destine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mais ces longs jours<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seront trop courts,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pass&eacute;s pr&egrave;s des Christine.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This is the <i>thought reversed</i>, of the last stanza of the ballad on
+Charlotte Lynes, given in Miss Seward's Memoirs of Darwin, which is
+pretty&mdash;I quote from memory of these last fifteen years.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">"'For my first night I'll go<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To those regions of snow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the sun for six months never shines;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And think, even then,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He too soon came again,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To disturb me with fair Charlotte Lynes.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"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,
+cart<span class="pagenum"><a id="page104" name="page104"></a>Pg 104</span>ridges, and what not. I suppose that they consider me as a dep&ocirc;t,
+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&mdash;the very <i>poetry</i> of politics. Only think&mdash;a free Italy!!! Why,
+there has been nothing like it since the days of Augustus. I reckon the
+times of C&aelig;sar (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&mdash;and since!&mdash;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.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"February 19. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"Came home solus&mdash;very high wind&mdash;lightning&mdash;moonshine&mdash;solitary
+stragglers muffled in cloaks&mdash;women in mask&mdash;white houses&mdash;clouds
+hurrying over the sky, like spilt milk blown out of the pail&mdash;altogether
+very poetical. It is still blowing hard&mdash;the tiles flying, and the house
+rocking&mdash;rain splashing&mdash;lightning flashing&mdash;quite a fine Swiss Alpine
+evening, and the sea roaring in the distance.</p>
+
+<p>"Visited&mdash;conversazione. All the women frightened by the squall: they
+<i>won't</i> go to the masquerade because it lightens&mdash;the pious reason!</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page105" name="page105"></a>Pg 105</span> them
+beaten&mdash;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&mdash;<i>all</i> small and solitary nations (except the Spaniards and
+German Lutherans), and there is yet a resurrection for Italy, and a hope
+for the world.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"February 20. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>the Forest</i> in a few days, and have invited me, as one of the
+C<sup>i</sup>. It is to be in <i>the Forest</i> of Boccacio's and Dryden's 'Huntsman'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<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> degli Onesti' (Dryden has turned him
+into Guido Cavalcanti&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"Within these few days I have read, but not written.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page106" name="page106"></a>Pg 106</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>"February 21, 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"As usual, rode&mdash;visited, &amp;c. 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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"February 23, 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"Almost ditto with yesterday&mdash;rode, &amp;c.&mdash;visited&mdash;wrote nothing&mdash;read
+Roman History.</p>
+
+<p>"Had a curious letter from a fellow, who informs me that the Barbarians
+are ill-disposed towards me. He is 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.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"February 24, 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"Rode, &amp;c. as usual. The secret intelligence arrived this morning from
+the frontier to the C<sup>i</sup>. is as bad as possible. The <i>plan</i> has
+missed&mdash;the Chiefs are betrayed, military, as well as civil&mdash;and the
+Neapolitans not only have <i>not</i> moved, but have<span class="pagenum"><a id="page107" name="page107"></a>Pg 107</span> declared to the P.
+government, and to the Barbarians, that they know nothing of the
+matter!!!</p>
+
+<p>"Thus the world goes; and thus the Italians are always lost for lack of
+union among themselves. What is to be done <i>here</i>, between the two
+fires, and cut off from the Northern frontier, is not decided. My
+opinion was,&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"I always had an idea that it would be <i>bungled</i>; 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.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"February 25. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"Came home&mdash;my head aches&mdash;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.
+But, as Squire Sullen says, 'My head aches consumedly: Scrub, bring me a
+dram!' Drank some Imola wine, and some punch.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Log-book continued</i><a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a>.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"February 27. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been a day without continuing the log, because I could not find
+a blank book. At length I recollected this.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page108" name="page108"></a>Pg 108</span></p>
+
+<p>"Rode, &amp;c.&mdash;dined&mdash;wrote down an additional stanza for the 5th canto of
+D.J. which I had composed in bed this morning. Visited <i>l'Amica</i>. We are
+invited, on the night of the Veglione (next Domenica) with the Marchesa
+Clelia Cavalli and the Countess Spinelli Rusponi. I promised to go. Last
+night there was a row at the ball, of which I am a 'socio.' The
+Vice-legate had the imprudent insolence to introduce <i>three</i> of his
+servants in masque&mdash;<i>without tickets,</i> 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 farther, and the
+whole city would have been in arms, and the government driven out of it.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page109" name="page109"></a>Pg 109</span> elegant. The present, at this season, reminds
+one of Gray's stanza, omitted from his elegy:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'Here scatter'd oft, the <i>earliest</i> of the year,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">By hands unseen, are showers of violets found;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The red-breast loves to build and warble here,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And little footsteps lightly print the ground.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>As fine a stanza as any in his elegy. I wonder that he could have the
+heart to omit it.</p>
+
+<p>"Last night I suffered horribly&mdash;from an indigestion, I believe. I
+<i>never</i> sup&mdash;that is, never at home. But, last 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, <i>not</i> 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 somewhat 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&mdash;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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page110" name="page110"></a>Pg 110</span> to rouse them, and yet could not&mdash;and this is the
+<i>Soul!!!</i> I should believe that it was married to the body, if they did
+not sympathise 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us hope the best&mdash;it is the grand possession."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>During the two months comprised in this Journal, some of the Letters of
+the following series were written. The reader must, therefore, be
+prepared to find in them occasional notices of the same train of events.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 404. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, January 2. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"Your entering into my project for the Memoir is pleasant to me.
+But I doubt (contrary to my dear Mad<sup>e</sup> Mac F * *, whom I always
+loved, and always shall&mdash;not only because I really <i>did</i> feel
+attached to her <i>personally</i>, but because she and about a dozen
+others of that sex were all who stuck by me in the grand conflict
+of 1815)&mdash;but I doubt, I say, whether the Memoir could appear in my
+lifetime;&mdash;and, indeed, I had rather it did not; for a man always
+<i>looks dead</i> after his Life has appeared, and I should certes not
+survive the appearance of mine. The first part I cannot consent to
+alter, even although Mad<sup>e</sup>. de S.'s opinion of B.C. and my<span class="pagenum"><a id="page111" name="page111"></a>Pg 111</span> remarks
+upon Lady C.'s beauty (which is surely great, and I suppose that I
+have said so&mdash;at least, I ought) should go down to our
+grandchildren in unsophisticated nakedness.</p>
+
+<p>"As to Madame de S * *, I am by no means bound to be her
+beadsman&mdash;she was always more civil to me in person than during my
+absence. Our dear defunct friend, M * * L * *<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a>, who was<span class="pagenum"><a id="page112" name="page112"></a>Pg 112</span> too
+great a bore ever to lie, assured me upon his tiresome word of
+honour, that, at Florence, the said Madame de S * * was
+open-<i>mouthed</i> against me; and when asked, in <i>Switzerland</i>, <i>why</i>
+she had changed her opinion, replied, with laudable sincerity, that
+I had named her in a sonnet with Voltaire, Rousseau, &amp;c. &amp;c. and
+that she could not help it through decency. Now, I have not
+forgotten this, but I have been generous,&mdash;as mine acquaintance,
+the late Captain Whitby, of the navy, used to say to his seamen
+(when 'married to the gunner's daughter')&mdash;'two dozen, and let you
+off easy.' The 'two dozen' were with the cat-o'-nine tails;&mdash;the
+'let you off easy' was rather his own opinion than that of the
+patient.</p>
+
+<p>"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 Lissa in 1811. He was brave, but a
+disciplinarian. When he left his frigate, he left a <i>parrot</i>, which
+was taught by the crew the following sounds&mdash;(it must be remarked
+that Captain Whitby was the image of Fawcett the actor, in voice,
+face, and figure, and that he squinted).</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"The Parrot <i>loquitur</i>.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"'Whitby! Whitby! funny eye! funny eye! two dozen, and let you off
+easy. Oh you &mdash;&mdash;!'</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page113" name="page113"></a>Pg 113</span></p>
+
+<p>"Now, if Madame de B. has a parrot, it had better be taught a
+French parody of the same sounds.</p>
+
+<p>"With regard to our purposed Journal, I will call it what you
+please, but it should be a newspaper, to make it <i>pay</i>. We can call
+it 'The Harp,' if you like&mdash;or any thing.</p>
+
+<p>"I feel exactly as you do about our 'art<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a>,'but it 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.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page114" name="page114"></a>Pg 114</span></p>
+
+<p>"I wish you to think seriously of the Journal scheme&mdash;for I am as
+serious as one can be, in this world, about any thing. As to
+matters here, they are high and mighty&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall remain here till May or June, and, unless 'honour comes
+unlocked for,' we may perhaps meet, in France or England, within
+the year.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, I cannot explain to you existing circumstances, as they
+open all letters.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you set me right about your curst 'Champs Elys&eacute;es?'&mdash;are they
+'&eacute;s' or '&eacute;es' 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."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 405. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, January 4. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"I just see, by the papers of Galignani, that there is a new
+tragedy of great expectation, by Barry<span class="pagenum"><a id="page115" name="page115"></a>Pg 115</span> Cornwall. Of what I have
+read of his works Hiked the <i>Dramatic</i> Sketches, but thought his
+Sicilian Story and Marcian Colonna, in rhyme, quite spoilt, by I
+know not what affectation of Wordsworth, 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 (Barry Cornwall is not
+his <i>true</i> name) was a schoolfellow 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 Marino Faliero. 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,&mdash;who are full of gross faults, pardoned only for the
+beauty of their language,&mdash;but by writing naturally and
+<i>regularly</i>, and producing <i>regular</i> tragedies, like the <i>Greeks</i>;
+but not in <i>imitation</i>,&mdash;merely the outline of their conduct,
+adapted to our own times and circumstances, and of course <i>no</i>
+chorus.</p>
+
+<p>"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
+'<i>essentially undramatic</i>,' and I am not at all clear that they are
+not right. If Marino Faliero don't fall&mdash;in the perusal&mdash;I shall,
+perhaps, try again (but not for the stage); and, as I think that
+<i>love</i> 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, <i>furious, criminal</i>, and <i>hapless</i>, it ought not<span class="pagenum"><a id="page116" name="page116"></a>Pg 116</span> to
+make a tragic subject. When it is melting and maudlin, it <i>does</i>,
+but it ought not to do; it is then for the gallery and second-price
+boxes.</p>
+
+<p>"If you want to have a notion of what I am trying, take up a
+<i>translation</i> of any of the <i>Greek</i> 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,' &amp;c. and do not
+judge me by your old mad 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&mdash;always excepting
+Ben Jonson, who was a scholar and a classic. Or, take up a
+translation of Alfieri, and try the interest, &amp;c. of these my new
+attempts in the old line, by <i>him</i> in <i>English</i>; and then tell me
+fairly your opinion. But don't measure me by YOUR OWN <i>old</i> or
+<i>new</i> tailors' yards. Nothing so easy as intricate confusion of
+plot and rant. Mrs. Centlivre, in comedy, has <i>ten times the bustle
+of Congreve</i>; but are they to be compared? and yet she drove
+Congreve from the theatre."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 406. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, January 19. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours of the 29th ultimo hath arrived. I must, really and
+seriously request that you will beg of Messrs. Harris or Elliston
+to let the Doge alone: it<span class="pagenum"><a id="page117" name="page117"></a>Pg 117</span> is <i>not</i> an acting play; it will not
+serve <i>their</i> purpose; it will destroy <i>yours</i> (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.</p>
+
+<p>"I have already sent you by last post a short protest<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> to the
+public (against this proceeding); in case that <i>they</i> 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&mdash;<i>pirates</i> who <i>will</i>
+publish, and <i>players</i> who <i>will</i> act&mdash;when there are thousands of
+worthy men who can get neither bookseller nor manager for love nor
+money.</p>
+
+<p>"You never answered me a word about <i>Galignani</i>. If you mean to use
+the two <i>documents, do</i>; if not, <i>burn</i> them. I do not choose to
+leave them in any one's possession: suppose some one found them<span class="pagenum"><a id="page118" name="page118"></a>Pg 118</span>
+without the letters, what would they <i>think</i>? why, that <i>I</i> had
+been doing the <i>opposite</i> of what I <i>have</i> <i>done</i>, to wit, referred
+the whole thing to you&mdash;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 <i>me</i> it
+can be no interest one way or the other.<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a></p>
+
+<p>"The <i>third</i> canto of Don Juan is 'dull,' but you must really put
+up with it: if the two first and the two following are tolerable,
+what do you expect? particularly as I neither dispute with you on
+it as a matter of criticism, nor as a matter of business.</p>
+
+<p>"Besides, what am I to understand? you and Douglas Kinnaird, and
+others, write to me, that the two first published cantos are among
+the best that I ever wrote, and are reckoned so; Augusta writes
+that they are thought '<i>execrable</i>' (bitter word <i>that</i> for an
+author&mdash;eh, Murray?) as a <i>composition</i> even, and that she had
+heard so much against them that she would <i>never read them</i>, 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 ostentation, they may
+perhaps succeed.</p>
+
+<p>"Pray publish the Dante and the <i>Pulci</i> (the <i>Prophecy of Dante</i>, I
+mean). I look upon the Pulci as my grand performance.<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a> The
+remainder of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page119" name="page119"></a>Pg 119</span> 'Hints,' where be they? Now, bring them all out
+about the same time, otherwise 'the <i>variety</i>' you wot of will be
+less obvious.</p>
+
+<p>"I am in bad humour: some obstructions in business with those
+plaguy trustees, who object to an advantageous loan which I was to
+furnish to a nobleman on mortgage, because his property is in
+<i>Ireland</i>, have shown me how a man is treated in his absence. Oh,
+if I <i>do</i> come back, I will make some of those who little dream of
+it <i>spin</i>&mdash;or they or I shall go down."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 407. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"January 20. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"I did not think to have troubled you with the plague and postage
+of a <i>double letter</i> this time, but I have just read in an <i>Italian
+paper</i>, 'That Lord Byron has a tragedy coming out,' &amp;c. &amp;c. &amp;c. and
+that the Courier and Morning Chronicle, &amp;c. &amp;c. are pulling one
+another to pieces about it and him, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I do reiterate and desire, that every thing<span class="pagenum"><a id="page120" name="page120"></a>Pg 120</span> may be done to
+prevent it from coming out on <i>any theatre</i>, 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 <i>must publish in case of need</i>; and I require you
+even in <i>your own name</i> (if my honour is dear to you) to declare
+that such representation would be contrary to my <i>wish and to my
+judgment</i>. If you do not wish to drive me mad altogether, you will
+hit upon some way to prevent this.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>"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 Aeschylus. I speak of course humbly, and with the
+greatest sense of the distance of time and merit between the two
+performances; but merely to show the absurdity of the attempt.</p>
+
+<p>"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
+<i>not</i> be a party against a man, who is also a <i>popular</i> writer&mdash;at
+least a successful? Why, all parties would be a party against."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 408. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, January 20. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"If Harris or Elliston persist, after the remonstrance which I
+desired you and Mr. Kinnaird to<span class="pagenum"><a id="page121" name="page121"></a>Pg 121</span> make on my behalf, and which I
+hope will be sufficient&mdash;but <i>if</i>, I say, they <i>do persist</i>, then I
+pray you to <i>present in person</i> the enclosed letter to the Lord
+Chamberlain: I have said <i>in person</i>, because otherwise I shall
+have neither answer nor knowledge that it has reached its address,
+owing to 'the insolence of office.'</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you would speak to Lord Holland, and to all my friends and
+yours, to interest themselves in preventing this cursed attempt at
+representation.</p>
+
+<p>"God help me! at this distance, I am treated like a corpse or a
+fool by the few people that I thought I could rely upon; and I
+<i>was</i> a fool to think any better of them than of the rest of
+mankind.</p>
+
+<p>"Pray write. Yours, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>suppressed altogether</i>, and only <i>forty
+copies struck off privately</i> for presents to my friends. What curst
+fools those speculating buffoons must be <i>not</i> to see that it is
+unfit for their fair&mdash;or their booth!"</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 409. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, January 22. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Through life's road, &amp;c. &amp;c.<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a></p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page122" name="page122"></a>Pg 122</span></p>
+
+<p>"Have you heard that the 'Braziers' Company have, or mean to
+present an address at Brandenburgh House, 'in armour,' and with all
+possible variety and splendour of brazen apparel?</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"The Braziers, it seems, are preparing to pass<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">An address, and present it themselves all in brass&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">A superfluous pageant&mdash;for, by the Lord Harry,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">They'll find where they're going much more than they carry.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There's an Ode for you, is it not?&mdash;worthy</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"Of * * * *, the grand metaquizzical poet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">A man of vast merit, though few people know it;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">The perusal of whom (as I told <i>you</i> at Mestri)<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">I owe, in great part, to my passion for pastry.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"Mestri and Fusina are the 'trajects, or common ferries,' to
+Venice; but it was from Fusina that you and I embarked, though 'the
+wicked necessity of rhyming' has made me press Mestri into the
+voyage.</p>
+
+<p>"So, you have had a book dedicated to you? I am glad of it, and
+shall be very happy to see the volume.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>right</i> over published poetry, are determined
+to enact, whether I will or no, with their own alterations by Mr.
+Dibdin, 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 hisses, nor
+the insolence of their applause. I write only for the <i>reader</i>, and
+care for nothing but the <i>silent</i> approba<span class="pagenum"><a id="page123" name="page123"></a>Pg 123</span>tion of those who close
+one's book with good humour and quiet contentment.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, if you would also write to our friend Perry, to beg of him to
+mediate with Harris and Elliston to <i>forbear</i> 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, <i>has</i> shown them; and,
+if it were ever so fit, I will never have any thing to do willingly
+with the theatres.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours ever, in haste," &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 410. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, January 27. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"I differ from you about the <i>Dante</i>, 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 <i>title</i>.
+The play may be good or bad, but I flatter myself that it is
+original as a picture of <i>that</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad of Foscolo's approbation.</p>
+
+<p>"Excuse haste. I believe I mentioned to you that&mdash;I forget what it
+was; but no matter.</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks for your compliments of the year. I hope that it will be
+pleasanter than the last. I speak with reference to <i>England</i> only,
+as far as regards myself, <i>where</i> I had every kind of
+disappointment&mdash;lost an important law-suit&mdash;and the trustees of
+Lady Byron refusing to allow of an ad<span class="pagenum"><a id="page124" name="page124"></a>Pg 124</span>vantageous loan to be made
+from my property to Lord Blessington, &amp;c. &amp;c. 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 <i>here</i>, else I should have taken the liberty of
+Hannibal's ring.</p>
+
+<p>"Pray thank Gifford for all his goodnesses. The winter is as cold
+here as Parry's polarities. I must now take a canter in the forest;
+my horses are waiting.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours ever and truly."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 411. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, February 2. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"Your letter of excuses has arrived. I receive the letter, but do
+not admit the excuses, except 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.</p>
+
+<p>"In the last speech of the Doge, there occurs (I think, from
+memory) the phrase</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"'And Thou who makest and unmakest suns:'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>change this to</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"'And Thou who kindlest and who quenchest suns;'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page125" name="page125"></a>Pg 125</span> quite a minister of state. Mind if some of
+these days you are not thrown out. * * will not be always a Tory,
+though Johnson says the first Whig was the devil.</p>
+
+<p>"You have learnt one secret from Mr. Galignani's (somewhat tardily
+acknowledged) correspondence: this is, that an <i>English</i> author may
+dispose of his exclusive copyright in <i>France</i>&mdash;a fact of some
+consequence (in <i>time of peace</i>), in the case of a popular writer.
+Now I will tell you what <i>you</i> shall do, and take no advantage of
+you, though you were scurvy enough never to acknowledge 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 <i>sou</i> on <i>my</i> account.</p>
+
+<p>"Recollect that I 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 the English booksellers, and I desire no interest out of that
+country.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, that's fair and open, and a little handsomer than your
+<i>dodging</i> 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&mdash;a crum of the old
+loaf. You have no right to act suspiciously with me, for I have
+given you no reason. I shall always be frank with you; as, for
+instance, whenever you talk with the votaries of Apollo
+arithmetically, it should be in<span class="pagenum"><a id="page126" name="page126"></a>Pg 126</span> guineas, not pounds&mdash;to poets, as
+well as physicians, and bidders at auctions.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall say no more at this present, save that I am,</p>
+
+<p>"Yours, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>"P.S. If you venture, as you say, to Ravenna this year, 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,' which are rather frequent here of late
+among the native parties. But perhaps your visit may be
+anticipated; 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."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 412. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, February 16, 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"In the month of March will arrive from Barcelona <i>Signor Curioni</i>,
+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.</p>
+
+<p>"The fifth is so far from being the last of Don Juan, 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 <i>Anacharsis Cloots</i>, in the French Revolution.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page127" name="page127"></a>Pg 127</span> 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 'Werter-faced man' in Germany, so as to
+show the different ridicules of the society in each of those
+countries, and to have displayed him gradually <i>g&acirc;t&eacute;</i> and <i>blas&eacute;</i>
+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 tradition says hell: but
+it is probably only an allegory of the other state. You are now in
+possession of my notions on the subject.</p>
+
+<p>"You say the Doge will not be popular: did I ever write for
+<i>popularity</i>? 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 <i>too French</i>, like those who succeded the older writers. It
+appears to me, that good English, and a severer approach to the
+rules, might combine something not dishonourable 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 its
+popularity, but does not persuade me that it is <i>therefore</i> faulty.
+Whatever faults it has will arise from deficiency in the conduct,
+rather than in the conception, which is simple and severe.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page128" name="page128"></a>Pg 128</span>"So <i>you epigrammatise</i> upon <i>my epigram</i>? I will <i>pay</i> you for
+<i>that</i>, mind if I don't, some day. I never let any one off in the
+long run (<i>who first begins</i>). Remember * * *, 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!</p>
+
+<p>"In the Letter on Bowles (which I sent by Tuesday's post) after the
+words '<i>attempts had been made</i>' (alluding to the republication of
+'English Bards'), add the words, '<i>in Ireland</i>;' for I believe that
+English pirates did not begin their attempts till after I had left
+England the second time. Pray attend to this. Let me know what you
+and your synod think on Bowles.</p>
+
+<p>"I did not think the second <i>seal</i> so bad; surely it is far better
+than the Saracen's head with which you have sealed your <i>last
+letter</i>; the larger, in <i>profile</i>, was surely much better than
+that.</p>
+
+<p>"So Foscolo says he will get you a <i>seal cut</i> better in Italy? he
+means a <i>throat</i>&mdash;that is the only thing they do dexterously. The
+Arts&mdash;all but Canova's, and Morghen's, and <i>Ovid</i>'s (I don't <i>mean
+poetry</i>),&mdash;are as low as need be: look at the seal which I gave to
+William Bankes, and own it. How came George Bankes to quote
+'English Bards' in the House of Commons? All the world keep
+flinging that poem in my face.</p>
+
+<p>"Belzoni <i>is</i> a grand traveller, and his English is very prettily
+broken.</p>
+
+<p>"As for news, the Barbarians are marching on Naples, and if they
+lose a single battle, all Italy will<span class="pagenum"><a id="page129" name="page129"></a>Pg 129</span> be up. It will be like the
+Spanish row, if they have any bottom.</p>
+
+<p>"'Letters opened?&mdash;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 <i>con amore</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours," &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 413. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, February 21. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"In the forty-fourth page, volume first, of Turner's Travels (which
+you lately sent me), it is stated that 'Lord Byron, when he
+expressed such confidence of its practicability, seems to have
+forgotten that Leander swam both ways, with and against the tide;
+whereas <i>he</i> (Lord Byron) only performed the easiest part of the
+task by swimming with it from Europe to Asia.' I certainly could
+not have forgotten, what is known to every schoolboy, that Leander
+crossed in the night and returned towards the morning. My object
+was, to ascertain that the Hellespont could be crossed <i>at all</i> 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 <i>tide</i> was <i>not</i> in our favour; on the contrary, the
+great difficulty was to bear up against the current, which, so far
+from helping us into the Asiatic side, set us down right towards
+the Archipelago. Neither Mr. Ekenhead,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page130" name="page130"></a>Pg 130</span> myself, nor, I will venture
+to add, any person on board the frigate, from Captain 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, 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>must</i> arrive in the Archipelago,
+if left to the current, although a strong wind in the Asiatic
+direction might have such an effect occasionally.</p>
+
+<p>"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 possible, 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
+<i>three</i> and <i>four</i>, owing to the force of the stream. I can<span class="pagenum"><a id="page131" name="page131"></a>Pg 131</span> 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
+probability. It is not quite fair in him to infer, that because
+<i>he</i> failed, Leander could not succeed. There are still four
+instances on record: a Neapolitan, a young Jew, Mr. Ekenhead, and
+myself; the two last done in the presence of hundreds of <i>English</i>
+witnesses.</p>
+
+<p>"With regard to the difference of the <i>current,</i> I perceived none;
+it is favourable to the swimmer on neither 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 practicable. Any young
+man, in good and tolerable skill in swimming, might succeed in it
+from <i>either</i> side. I was three hours in swimming across the Tagus,
+which is much more hazardous, being two hours longer than the
+Hellespont. Of what may be done in swimming, I will mention one
+more instance. In 1818, the Chevalier Mengaldo (a gentleman of
+Bassano), a good swimmer, wished to swim with my friend Mr.
+Alexander Scott and myself. As he seemed particularly 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 consequence, as there was
+a gondola to<span class="pagenum"><a id="page132" name="page132"></a>Pg 132</span> hold his clothes and pick him up. Scott swam on till
+past the Rialto, where he got out, less from fatigue than from
+<i>chill,</i> having been four hours in the water, without rest or stay,
+except what is to be obtained by floating on one's back&mdash;this being
+the <i>condition</i> of our performance. I continued my course on to
+Santa Chiara, comprising 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, <i>four hours</i> and
+<i>twenty minutes</i>. To this match, and during the greater part of its
+performance, Mr. Hoppner, 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 <i>accurately</i> ascertain; it was of course
+considerable.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>four</i> hours in the water.
+Mengaldo might be about thirty years of age; Scott about
+six-and-twenty.</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page133" name="page133"></a>Pg 133</span> 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 <i>Asiatic</i> side of the strait. He tried to swim
+directly across, instead of going higher up to take the vantage: he
+might as well have tried to <i>fly</i> over Mount Athos.</p>
+
+<p>"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. Whether he <i>attempted</i> it or <i>not</i>
+is another question, because he might have had a small <i>boat</i> to
+save him the trouble.</p>
+
+<p>"I am yours very truly,</p>
+
+<p>"BYRON.</p>
+
+<p>"P.S. Mr. Turner says that the swimming from Europe to Asia was
+'the <i>easiest</i> 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. Turner, '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,
+however, is not so extremely wide, even where it broadens above and
+below the forts. As the frigate was stationed some time in<span class="pagenum"><a id="page134" name="page134"></a>Pg 134</span> the
+Dardanelles waiting for the firman, I bathed often in the strait
+subsequently to our traject, and generally on the Asiatic side,
+without perceiving the greater strength of the opposite stream by
+which the diplomatic traveller palliates his own failure. Our
+amusement in the small bay which opens immediately below the
+Asiatic fort was to <i>dive</i> for the LAND tortoises, which we flung
+in on purpose, as they amphibiously crawled along the bottom.
+<i>This</i> does not argue any greater violence of current than on the
+European shore. With regard to the <i>modest</i> insinuation that we
+chose the European side as 'easier,' I appeal to Mr. Hobhouse and
+Captain 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. Turner'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. Turner 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 '<i>exhausted</i>,' though I believe he is the
+first modern Tory who ever swam '<i>against</i> the stream for half the
+time."<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a></p></div>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page135" name="page135"></a>Pg 135</span></p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 414. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, February 22. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"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 particularly to inform his children
+and heirs, that of their 'Literary Gazette,' to which I subscribed
+more than <i>two</i> months ago, I have only received one <i>number</i>,
+notwithstanding 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. If not, let me have my
+francs. They were paid by Missiaglia, the <i>W</i>enetian 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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,&mdash;I write with my spurs putting
+on. My horses are at the door, and an Italian Count waiting to
+accompany me in my ride.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours, &amp;c.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page136" name="page136"></a>Pg 136</span></p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p class="center">"BOWLES AND CAMPBELL.</p>
+
+<p>"To the air of '<i>How now, Madame Flirt</i>,' in the Beggars' Opera.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">BOWLES. "Why, how now, saucy Tom,<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">If you thus must ramble,<br /></span>
+<span class="i9">I will publish some<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">Remarks on Mr. Campbell.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">CAMPBELL. "Why, how now, Billy Bowles,<br /></span>
+<span class="i11">&amp;c. &amp;c. &amp;c."<br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 415. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"March 2. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"This was the beginning of a letter which I meant for Perry, but
+stopped 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."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>TO MR. PERRY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, January 22. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Sir,</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page137" name="page137"></a>Pg 137</span> 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,' &amp;c. which was never intended for such an
+exhibition, and I trust will never undergo it. It is certainly
+unfit for it. I have never written but for the solitary <i>reader</i>,
+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 <i>right</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 the buzzing of the other.</p>
+
+<p>"This may not seem a courteous comparison, but I have no other
+ready; and it occurs naturally."</p></div><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page138" name="page138"></a>Pg 138</span></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 416. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, Marzo, 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Moray,</p>
+
+<p>"In my packet of the 12th instant, in the last sheet (<i>not</i> the
+<i>half</i> sheet), last page, <i>omit</i> the sentence which (defining, or
+attempting to define, what and who are gentlemen) 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,' &amp;c. &amp;c. I say,
+omit the whole of that sentence, because, like the 'cosmogony, or
+creation of the world,' in the 'Vicar of Wakefield,' it is not much
+to the purpose.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;'I do not mean that they should
+write in the style of the song by a person of quality, or <i>parle
+euphuism</i>; but there is a <i>nobility</i> of thought and expression to
+be found no less in Shakspeare, Pope, and Burns, than in Dante,
+Alfieri,' &amp;c. &amp;c. and so on. Or, if you please, perhaps you had
+better omit the whole of the latter digression on the <i>vulgar</i>
+poets, and insert only as far as the end of the sentence on Pope's
+Homer, where I prefer it to Cowper's, and quote Dr. Clarke in
+favour of its accuracy.</p>
+
+<p>"Upon all these points, take an opinion; take the sense (or
+nonsense) of your learned visitants, and act thereby. I am very
+tractable&mdash;in PROSE.</p>
+
+<p>"Whether I have made out the case for Pope, I know not; but I am
+very sure that I have been<span class="pagenum"><a id="page139" name="page139"></a>Pg 139</span> zealous in the attempt. If it comes to
+the proofs we shall beat the blackguards. I will show more
+<i>imagery</i> 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 <i>Sporus</i>,&mdash;now, do just
+<i>read</i> them over&mdash;the subject is of no consequence (whether it be
+<i>satire</i> or epic)&mdash;we are talking of <i>poetry</i> and <i>imagery</i> from
+<i>nature</i> and <i>art</i>. Now, mark the images separately and
+arithmetically:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+"'1. The thing of <i>silk</i>.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">2. <i>Curd</i> of <i>ass</i>'s milk.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">3. The <i>butterfly</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">4. The <i>wheel</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">5. Bug with gilded wings.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">6. <i>Painted</i> child of dirt.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">7. Whose <i>buzz</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">8. Well-bred <i>spaniels</i>.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">9. <i>Shallow streams run dimpling.</i></span><br />
+10. Florid impotence.<br />
+11. <i>Prompter. Puppet squeaks.</i><br />
+12. <i>The ear of Eve.</i><br />
+13. <i>Familiar toad.</i><br />
+14. <i>Half froth, half venom, splits</i> himself abroad.<br />
+15. <i>Fop</i> at the <i>toilet</i>.<br />
+16. <i>Flatterer</i> at the <i>board</i>.<br />
+17. <i>Amphibious thing</i>.<br />
+18. Now <i>trips a lady</i>.<br />
+19. Now <i>struts a lord</i>.<br />
+20. A <i>cherub's face</i>.<br />
+21. A <i>reptile</i> all the rest.<br />
+22. The <i>Rabbins</i>.<br />
+23. Pride that <i>licks the dust</i>.<br />
+</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"'Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Wit that can creep, and <i>pride</i> that <i>licks the dust</i>.'<br /></span>
+</div></div><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page140" name="page140"></a>Pg 140</span></p>
+
+<p>"Now, is there a line of all the passage without the most
+<i>forcible</i> imagery (for his purpose)? Look at the <i>variety</i>&mdash;at the
+<i>poetry</i> of the passage&mdash;at the <i>imagination</i>: there is hardly a
+line from which a painting might not be made, and <i>is</i>. 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 fellows are
+trying against Pope.</p>
+
+<p>"Ask Mr. Gifford if, in the fifth act of 'The Doge,' you could not
+contrive (where the sentence of the <i>Veil</i> is passed) to insert the
+following lines in Marino Faliero's answer?</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"But let it be so. It will be in vain:<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">The veil which blackens o'er this blighted name,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And hides, or seems to hide, these lineaments,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Shall draw more gazers than the thousand portraits<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Which glitter round it in their painted trappings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Your delegated slaves&mdash;the people's tyrants.<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"Yours, truly, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>"P.S. Upon <i>public</i> 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 Naples by these fellows.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish to propose to <i>Holmes</i>, the miniature painter, to come out
+to me this spring. I will pay his expenses, and any sum in reason.
+I wish him to take my daughter's picture (who is in a convent)<span class="pagenum"><a id="page141" name="page141"></a>Pg 141</span> and
+the Countess G.'s, and the head of a peasant girl, which latter
+would make a study for Raphael. It is a complete <i>peasant</i> face,
+but an <i>Italian</i> 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 face while it lasts. Madame
+G. is also very handsome, but it is quite in a different
+style&mdash;completely blonde and fair&mdash;very uncommon in Italy; yet not
+an <i>English</i> fairness, but more like a Swede or a Norwegian. Her
+figure, too, particularly the bust, is uncommonly good. It must be
+<i>Holmes</i>; 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."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 417. TO MR. HOPPNER.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, April 3. 1821;</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks for the translation. I have sent you some books, which I do
+not know whether you have read or no&mdash;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; and as she was
+now four years old complete, and quite above the control of the
+servants&mdash;and as a <i>man</i> living without any woman at the head of
+his house cannot much attend to a nursery&mdash;I had no resource but to
+place her for a time (at a high pension too) in the convent of
+Bagna-Cavalli (twelve<span class="pagenum"><a id="page142" name="page142"></a>Pg 142</span> miles off), where the air is good, and where
+she will, at least, have her learning advanced, and her morals and
+religion inculcated.<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a> I had also another reason;&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"It is also fit that I should add that I by no means intended, nor
+intend, to give a <i>natural</i> child an <i>English</i> 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 <i>place</i>
+where she now is&mdash;it is the best I could find for the present; but
+I have no prejudices in its favour.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not speak of politics, because it seems a hopeless subject,
+as long as those scoundrels are<span class="pagenum"><a id="page143" name="page143"></a>Pg 143</span> to be permitted to bully states
+out of their independence. Believe me,</p>
+
+<p>"Yours ever and truly.</p>
+
+<p>"P.S. There is a report here of a change in France; but with what
+truth is not yet known.</p>
+
+<p>"P.S. My respects to Mrs. H. I <i>have</i> 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 <i>good</i>
+opinion is the only rational one which a man should entertain of
+the whole sex&mdash;up to <i>thirty</i>, the worst possible opinion a man can
+have of them in <i>general</i>, the better for himself. Afterwards, it
+is a matter of no importance to them, nor to him either, what
+opinion he entertains&mdash;his day is over, or, at least, should be.</p>
+
+<p>"You see how sober I am become."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 418. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, April 21. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>much</i>, if
+<i>any</i>, of it should be published. Upon this point you can consult
+with Mr. Gifford, and think twice before you publish it at all.</p>
+
+<p>Yours truly,</p>
+
+<p>B.</p>
+
+<p>"P.S. You may make my subscription for Mr. Scott's widow, &amp;c.
+<i>thirty</i> instead of the proposed <i>ten</i> pounds; but do not put down
+<i>my name</i>; put down N.N. only. The reason is, that, as I have
+mentioned him in the enclosed pamphlet, it would look indelicate. I
+would give more, but my disappoint<span class="pagenum"><a id="page144" name="page144"></a>Pg 144</span>ments last year about Rochdale
+and the transfer from the funds render me more economical for the
+present."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 419. TO MR. SHELLEY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, April 26. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"The child continues doing well, and the accounts are regular and
+favourable. It is gratifying to me that you and Mrs. Shelley do not
+disapprove of the step which I have taken, which is merely
+temporary.</p>
+
+<p>"I am very sorry to hear what you say of Keats&mdash;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 unnecessary 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 inordinate self-love he
+would probably have not been very happy. I read the review of
+'Endymion' in the Quarterly. It was severe,&mdash;but surely not so
+severe as many reviews in that and other journals upon others.</p>
+
+<p>"I recollect the effect on me of the Edinburgh on my first poem; it
+was rage, and resistance, and redress&mdash;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 <i>resistance</i> before he
+goes into the arena.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page145" name="page145"></a>Pg 145</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"'Expect not life from pain nor danger free,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Nor deem the doom of man reversed for thee.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"You know my opinion of that <i>second-hand</i> school of poetry. You
+also know my high opinion of your own poetry,&mdash;because it is of
+<i>no</i> school. I read Cenci&mdash;but, besides that I think the <i>subject</i>
+essentially <i>un</i>dramatic, I am not an admirer of our old
+dramatists, <i>as models</i>. I deny that the English have hitherto had
+a drama at all. Your Cenci, however, was a work of power, and
+poetry. As to <i>my</i> drama, pray revenge yourself upon it, by being
+as free as I have been with yours.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;or that he was alive and
+so sensitive&mdash;I should have omitted some remarks upon his poetry,
+to which I was provoked by his <i>attack</i> upon <i>Pope</i>, and my
+disapprobation of <i>his own</i> style of writing.</p>
+
+<p>"You want me to undertake a great poem&mdash;I have not the inclination
+nor the power. As I grow older, the indifference&mdash;<i>not</i> to life,
+for we love it by instinct&mdash;but to the stimuli of life, increases.
+Besides, this late failure of the Italians has latterly
+disappointed me for many reasons,&mdash;some public, some personal. My
+respects to Mrs. S.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours ever.</p>
+
+<p>"P.S. Could not you and I contrive to meet this summer? Could not
+you take a run here <i>alone</i>?"</p></div><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page146" name="page146"></a>Pg 146</span></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 420. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, April 26. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"I sent you by last <i>postis</i> a large packet, which will <i>not</i> 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.'</p>
+
+<p>"Well, have you published the Tragedy? and does the Letter take?</p>
+
+<p>"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 suburbing, 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 (which produced
+the English Bards, &amp;c.) knocked me down&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"You see the Italians have made a sad business of it,&mdash;all owing to
+treachery and disunion amongst themselves. It has given me great
+vexation. The execrations heaped upon the Neapolitans by the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page147" name="page147"></a>Pg 147</span> other
+Italians are quite in unison with those of the rest of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>"P.S. Your latest packet of books is on its way here, but not
+arrived. Kenilworth excellent. Thanks for the pocket-books, of
+which 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.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not at present in the very highest health,&mdash;spring probably;
+so I have lowered my diet and taken to Epsom salts.</p>
+
+<p>"As you say my <i>prose</i> is good, why don't you treat with <i>Moore</i>
+for the reversion of the Memoirs?&mdash;<i>conditionally, recollect</i>; not
+to be published before decease. <i>He</i> has the permission to dispose
+of them, and I advised him to do so."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 421. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, April 28. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"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,&mdash;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 ran write but little, as all
+letters are opened. In <i>mine</i><span class="pagenum"><a id="page148" name="page148"></a>Pg 148</span> they shall always find <i>my</i>
+sentiments, but nothing that can lead to the oppression of others.</p>
+
+<p>"You will please to recollect that the Neapolitans are nowhere now
+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.</p>
+
+<p>"And now let us be literary;&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"Lady Noel has, as you say, been dangerously ill; but it may
+console you to learn that she is dangerously well again.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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
+<i>that</i> and maccaroni are their forte, and 'motley their only<span class="pagenum"><a id="page149" name="page149"></a>Pg 149</span>
+wear.' However, there are some high spirits among them still. Pray
+write. And believe me," &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 422. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, May 3. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"Though I wrote to you on the 28th ultimo, I must acknowledge yours
+of this day, with the lines<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a>. 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 <i>heel</i> of
+the boot with their betters at the top of it. I assure you that
+there are some loftier spirits.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"So, you have got the Letter on Bowles<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a>? I do not recollect to
+have said any thing of <i>you</i> that could offend,&mdash;certainly, nothing
+intentionally. As for * *, 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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page150" name="page150"></a>Pg 150</span> be something of regret for your
+approbation of Bowles. And did you <i>not</i> approve, as he says? Would
+I had known that before! I would have given him some more
+gruel.<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a> My intention was to make fun of all these fellows; but
+how I succeeded, I don't know.</p>
+
+<p>"As to Pope, I have always regarded him as the greatest name in our
+poetry. Depend upon it, the rest are barbarians. 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page151" name="page151"></a>Pg 151</span> Murray's other publications (of mine), I know
+nothing,&mdash;nor whether he has published. He was to have done so a
+month ago. I wish you would do something,&mdash;or that we were
+together.</p>
+
+<p>"Ever yours and affectionately,</p>
+
+<p>"B."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It was at this time that he began, under the title of "Detached
+Thoughts," that Book of Notices or Memorandums, from which, in the
+course of these pages, I have extracted so many curious illustrations of
+his life and opinions, and of which the opening article is as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Amongst various Journals, Memoranda, Diaries, &amp;c. 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 proclamations, oaths, and resolutions, and my lower rooms of their
+hidden weapons, of most calibres,&mdash;and partly because I had filled my
+paper-book.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page152" name="page152"></a>Pg 152</span>
+into barbarism: at present, I have neither the time nor the temper.
+However the <i>real</i> Italians are not to blame; merely the scoundrels at
+the <i>heel of the boot</i>, which the <i>Hun</i> now wears, and will trample them
+to ashes with for their servility. I have risked myself with the others
+<i>here</i>, 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!&mdash;<i>Here</i> in Romagna, the efforts were necessarily limited to
+preparations and good intentions, until the Germans were fairly engaged
+in <i>equal</i> warfare&mdash;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 its
+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.'"</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 423. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, May 10. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"I have just got your packet. I am obliged to Mr. Bowles, and Mr.
+Bowles is obliged to me, for having restored him to good-humour. He
+is to<span class="pagenum"><a id="page153" name="page153"></a>Pg 153</span> write, and you to publish, what you please,&mdash;<i>motto</i> and
+subject. I desire nothing but fair play for all parties. Of course,
+after the new tone of Mr. Bowles, you will <i>not</i> publish my
+<i>defence of Gilchrist</i>: it would be brutal to do so after his
+urbanity, for it is rather too rough, like his own attack upon
+Gilchrist. You may tell him what I say there of <i>his Missionary</i>
+(it is praised, as it deserves). However, and if there are any
+passages <i>not personal</i> to Bowles, and yet bearing upon the
+question, you may add them to the reprint (if it is reprinted) of
+my first Letter to you. Upon this consult Gifford; and, above all,
+don't let any thing be added which can <i>personally</i> affect Mr.
+Bowles.</p>
+
+<p>"In the enclosed notes, of course what I say of the <i>democracy</i> of
+poetry cannot apply to Mr. Bowles, but to the Cockney and water
+washing-tub schools.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope and trust that Elliston <i>won't</i> be permitted to act the
+drama. Surely <i>he</i> might have the grace to wait for Kean's return
+before he attempted it; though, <i>even then</i>, <i>I</i> should be as much
+against the attempt as ever.</p>
+
+<p>"I have got a small packet of books, but neither Waldegrave,
+Oxford, nor Scott's novels among them. Why don't you republish
+Hodgson's Childe Harold's Monitor and Latino-mastix? They are
+excellent. Think of this&mdash;they are all for <i>Pope</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours," &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The controversy, in which Lord Byron, with so much grace and
+good-humour, thus allowed himself to be disarmed by the courtesy of his
+antagonist, it<span class="pagenum"><a id="page154" name="page154"></a>Pg 154</span> is not my intention to run the risk of reviving by any
+enquiry into its origin or merits. In all such discussions on matters of
+mere taste and opinion, where, on one side, it is the aim of the
+disputants to elevate the object of the contest, and on the other, to
+depreciate it, Truth will usually be found, like Shakspeare's gatherer
+of samphire on the cliff, "halfway down." Whatever judgment, however,
+may be formed respecting the controversy itself, of the urbanity and
+gentle feeling on both sides, which (notwithstanding some slight trials
+of this good understanding afterwards) led ultimately to the result
+anticipated in the foregoing letter, there can be but one opinion; and
+it is only to be wished that such honourable forbearance were as sure of
+imitators as it is, deservedly, of eulogists. In the lively pages thus
+suppressed, when ready fledged for flight, with a power of self-command
+rarely exercised by wit, there are some passages, of a general nature,
+too curious to be lost, which I shall accordingly proceed to extract for
+the reader.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"Pope himself 'sleeps well&mdash;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. * * *</p>
+
+<p>"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.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page155" name="page155"></a>Pg 155</span>
+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,&mdash;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
+<i>she</i> 'could at no time have regarded <i>Pope personally</i> 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&mdash;friends of the most opposite dispositions, ages,
+and talents&mdash;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; and Spence's description of his last moments is
+at least as edifying as the more ostentatious account of the deathbed of
+Addison.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page156" name="page156"></a>Pg 156</span> 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 remarkable or a
+celebrated character, might well have pretended to all the attachment
+which a reasonable man would desire of an amiable woman.</p>
+
+<p>"Pope, in fact, wherever he got it, appears to have understood the sex
+well. Bolingbroke, 'a judge of the subject,' says Warton, thought his
+'Epistle on the Characters of Women' his 'masterpiece.' And even with
+respect to the grosser passion, which takes occasionally the name of
+'<i>romantic</i>,' accordingly as the degree of sentiment elevates it above
+the definition of love by Buffon, it may be remarked, that it does not
+always depend upon personal appearance, 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.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page157" name="page157"></a>Pg 157</span></p>
+
+<p>"But, apropos of Pope.&mdash;Voltaire tells us that the Marechal Luxembourg
+(who had precisely Pope's figure) was not only somewhat too amatory for
+a great man, but fortunate in his attachments. La Vali&egrave;re, the passion
+of Louis XIV. 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:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'Lumine Acon dextro, capta est Leonilla sinistro,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Et potis est forma vincere uterque Deos:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Blande puer, lumen quod habes concede sorori,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Sic tu c&aelig;cus Amor, sic erit illa Venus.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'Vanessa, aged scarce a score.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sighs for a gown of <i>forty-four</i>.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"For my own part, I am of the opinion of Pausanias, that success in love
+depends upon Fortune.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page158" name="page158"></a>Pg 158</span> 'They particularly renounce Celestial Venus, into
+whose temple, &amp;c. &amp;c. &amp;c. I remember, too, to have seen a building in
+&AElig;gina in which there is a statue of Fortune, holding a horn of Amalthea;
+and near here 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 submit in other particulars), that Fortune is one of the
+Fates, and that in a certain respect she is more powerful than her
+sisters.'&mdash;See Pausanias, Achaics, book vii. chap. 26 page 246.
+'Taylor's Translation.'</p>
+
+<p>"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 Strafford)
+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.</p>
+
+<p>"In regard 'to the strange mixture of indecent, and sometimes <i>profane</i>
+levity, which his conduct and language <i>often</i> exhibited,' and which so
+much shocks the tone of <i>Pope</i>, than the tone of the <i>time</i>. With the
+exception of the correspondence of Pope and his friends, not many
+private letters of the period<span class="pagenum"><a id="page159" name="page159"></a>Pg 159</span> have come down to us; but those, such as
+they are&mdash;a few scattered scraps from Farquhar and others&mdash;are more
+indecent and coarse than any thing in Pope's letters. The comedies of
+Congreve, Vanbrugh, Farquhar, Gibber, &amp;c. 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 every body
+understood <i>that</i>, but few could talk rationally upon less common
+topics.' The refinement of latter days,&mdash;which is perhaps the
+consequence of vice, which wishes to mask and soften itself, as much as
+of virtuous civilisation,&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>To the extract that follows I beg to call the particular attention of
+the reader. Those who at all remember the peculiar bitterness and
+violence with which the gentleman here commemorated assailed Lord Byron,
+at a crisis when both his heart and fame were most vulnerable, will, if
+I am not mistaken, feel a thrill of pleasurable admiration in reading
+these sentences, such as alone can convey any adequate notion of the
+proud, generous pleasure that must have been felt in writing them.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page160" name="page160"></a>Pg 160</span></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"Poor Scott is now no more. 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, '<i>squeel</i>') 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&mdash;when the whole periodical press (I
+mean the daily and weekly, <i>not</i> the <i>literary</i> 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,'&mdash;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 griefs by the loss of his son, and had known, by experience, the
+bitterness of 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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page161" name="page161"></a>Pg 161</span> 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 James 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."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>In reference to some complaints made by Mr. Bowles, in his Pamphlet, of
+a charge of "hypochondriacism" which he supposed to have been brought
+against him by his assailant, Mr. Gilchrist, the noble writer thus
+proceeds:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"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?&mdash;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 Moli&egrave;re, was atrabilarious,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page162" name="page162"></a>Pg 162</span> and Moli&egrave;re 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,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'Nor best, nor wisest, are exempt from thee;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Folly&mdash;Folly's only free.' PENROSE.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"Mendelsohn 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.'</p>
+
+<p>"In page 14. we have a large assertion, that 'the Eloisa alone is
+sufficient to convict him (Pope) of <i>gross licentiousness</i>.' Thus, out
+it comes at last&mdash;Mr. B. does accuse Pope of 'gross licentiousness,' and
+grounds the charge upon a poem. The <i>licentiousness</i> is a 'grand
+peut-&ecirc;tre,' according to the turn of the times being:&mdash;the <i>grossness</i> 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 with,
+at the same time, such true and intense passion. Is the 'Atys' of
+Catullus <i>licentious</i>? 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.</p>
+
+<p>"The 'licentiousness' of the story was <i>not</i> Pope's,&mdash;it was a fact. All
+that it had of gross he has softened; all that it had of indelicate he
+has puri<span class="pagenum"><a id="page163" name="page163"></a>Pg 163</span>fied; 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 <i>coarse</i> 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)&mdash;all that we have of
+ancient, all that we have of modern poetry, sinks into nothing compared
+with him in this production.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us hear no more of this trash about 'licentiousness.' Is not
+'Anacreon' taught in our schools?&mdash;translated, praised, and edited? 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!'&mdash;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
+<i>reasoning</i> upon the <i>passions</i>; where<span class="pagenum"><a id="page164" name="page164"></a>Pg 164</span>as poetry is in itself passion,
+and does not systematise. It assails, but does not argue; it may be
+wrong, but it does not assume pretensions to optimism."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bowles having, in his pamphlet, complained of some anonymous
+communication which he had received, Lord Byron thus comments on the
+circumstance.</p>
+
+<p>"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 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;&mdash;the adder is
+<i>deaf</i>. The best reply to an anonymous intimation 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 <i>literary</i> life only;&mdash;were I to add
+<i>personal</i>, I might double the amount of <i>anonymous</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 denunciation was addressed to
+the Cardinal Legate of Romagna, instead of to * * * *. I append the
+menace in all its barbaric but literal Italian, that Mr. B. may be<span class="pagenum"><a id="page165" name="page165"></a>Pg 165</span>
+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 Heatherblutter' (see Waverley), as ever Mr.
+B.'s glory was from an editor. I am, nevertheless, on horseback and
+lonely for some hours (<i>one</i> of them twilight) in the forest daily; and
+this, because it was my 'custom in the afternoon,' 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."</p>
+
+<p>The following just tribute to my Reverend Friend's merits as a poet I
+have peculiar pleasure in extracting:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Bowles has no reason to 'succumb' but to Mr. Bowles. As a poet, the
+author of 'The Missionary' may compete with the foremost of his
+contemporaries. Let it be recollected, that all my previous opinions of
+Mr. Bowles s poetry were <i>written</i> long before the publication of his
+<i>last</i> and best poem; and that a poet's last poem should be his best, is
+his highest praise. But, however, he may duly and honorably rank with
+his living rivals," &amp;c. &amp;c. &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>Among various Addenda for this pamphlet, sent at different times to Mr.
+Murray, I find the following curious passages:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"It is worthy of remark that, after all this outcry about '<i>in-door</i>
+nature' and 'artificial images,' Pope was the principal inventor of that
+boast of the English, <i>Modern Gardening</i>. He divides this honour with
+Milton. Hear Warton:&mdash;'It hence appears<span class="pagenum"><a id="page166" name="page166"></a>Pg 166</span> that this <i>enchanting</i> art of
+modern gardening, in which this kingdom claims a preference over every
+nation in Europe, chiefly owes <i>its origin</i> and its improvements to two
+great poets, Milton and <i>Pope</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>"Walpole (no friend to Pope) asserts that Pope formed <i>Kent's</i> 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 <i>Pope's</i> at Twickenham. Warton
+applauds 'his singular effort of art and taste, in impressing so much
+variety and scenery on a spot of five acres.' Pope was the <i>first</i> who
+ridiculed the 'formal, French, Dutch, false and unnatural taste in
+gardening,' both in <i>prose</i> and verse. (See, for the former, 'The
+Guardian.')</p>
+
+<p>"'Pope has given not only some of our <i>first</i> but <i>best</i> rules and
+observations on <i>Architecture</i> and <i>Gardening</i>.' (See Warton's Essay,
+vol. ii. p. 237, &amp;c.&amp;c.)</p>
+
+<p>"Now, is it not a shame, after this, to hear our Lakers in '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 <i>England</i> 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 <i>Stowe</i>. 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 <i>Kent's</i> works
+was also<span class="pagenum"><a id="page167" name="page167"></a>Pg 167</span> planned on the model of Pope's,&mdash;at least in the opening and
+retiring shades of Venus's Vale.'</p>
+
+<p>"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 Lord Bathurst's is carved,
+'Here Pope sang,'&mdash;he composed beneath it. Bolingbroke, in one of his
+letters, represents them both writing in a hayfield. 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, <i>somewhat
+poetical</i>.' Now if nothing existed but this little anecdote, it would
+suffice to prove Pope's taste for <i>Nature</i>, and the impression which he
+had made on a common-minded man. But I have already quoted Warton and
+Walpole (<i>both</i> his enemies), and, were it necessary, I could amply
+quote Pope himself for such tributes to <i>Nature</i> as no poet of the
+present day has even approached.</p>
+
+<p>"His various excellence is really wonderful: architecture, painting,
+<i>gardening</i>, all are alike subject to his genius. Be it remembered, that
+English <i>gardening</i> is the purposed perfectioning of niggard <i>Nature</i>,
+and that without it England is but a hedge-and-ditch,
+double-post-and-rail, Hounslow-heath and Clapham-common sort of a
+country, since the prin<span class="pagenum"><a id="page168" name="page168"></a>Pg 168</span>cipal 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'&mdash;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&mdash;in the
+present day, then, there have sprung up two sorts of Naturals;&mdash;the
+Lakers, who whine about Nature because they live in Cumberland; and
+their <i>under-sect</i> (which some one has maliciously called the 'Cockney
+School'), who are enthusiastical for the country because they live in
+London. It is to be observed, that the rustical founders are rather
+anxious to disclaim any connection with their metropolitan followers,
+whom they ungraciously review, and call cockneys, atheists, foolish
+fellows, bad writers, and other hard names, not less ungrateful than
+unjust. I can understand the pretensions of the aquatic gentlemen of
+Windermere to what Mr. B * * terms '<i>entusumusy</i>' for lakes, and
+mountains, and daffodils, and buttercups; but I should be glad to be
+apprised of the foundation of the London propensities of their imitative
+brethren to the same' high argument.' Southey, Wordsworth, 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&mdash;of earth, and sea, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page169" name="page169"></a>Pg 169</span> Nature&mdash;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
+<i>brick</i>?</p>
+
+<p>"When they have really seen life&mdash;when they have felt it&mdash;when they have
+travelled beyond the far distant boundaries of the wilds of
+Middlesex&mdash;when they have overpassed the Alps of Highgate, and traced to
+its sources the Nile of the New River&mdash;then, and not till then, can it
+properly be permitted to them to despise Pope; who had, if not <i>in
+Wales</i>, been <i>near</i> it, when he described so beautifully the
+'<i>artificial</i>' works of the Benefactor of Nature and mankind, the 'Man
+of Ross,' 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.</p>
+
+<p>"If they had said nothing of <i>Pope</i>, they might have remained 'alone
+with their glory' for aught I should have said or thought about them or
+their nonsense. But if they interfere with the little 'Nightingale' of
+Twickenham, they may find others who will bear it&mdash;<i>I</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page170" name="page170"></a>Pg 170</span> neglecting, religion, he has assembled all
+that a good and great man can gather together of moral wisdom clothed in
+consummate beauty. Sir William Temple observes, 'That of all the members
+of mankind that live within the compass of a thousand years, for one man
+that is born capable of making a <i>great poet</i> there may be a <i>thousand</i>
+born capable of making as great generals and ministers of state as any
+in story.' 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 <i>Pope</i>. A
+thousand years will roll away before such another can be hoped for in
+our literature. But it can <i>want</i> them&mdash;he himself is a literature.</p>
+
+<p>"One word upon his so brutally abused translation of Homer. 'Dr. Clarke,
+whose critical exactness is well known, has <i>not been</i> able to point out
+above three or four mistakes <i>in the sense</i> 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, 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.</p>
+
+<p>"The grand distinction of the under forms of the new school of poets is
+their <i>vulgarity</i>. By this I do not mean that they are coarse, but
+'shabby-genteel,' as it is termed. A man may be <i>coarse</i> and yet<span class="pagenum"><a id="page171" name="page171"></a>Pg 171</span> not
+<i>vulgar</i>, and the reverse. Burns is often coarse, but never <i>vulgar</i>.
+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 <i>finery</i> that the new under school are <i>most</i> 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 clothes
+might be better cut, and his boots the best blackened, of the
+two;&mdash;probably because he made the one or cleaned the other with his own
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>"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. * * They may be
+honourable and <i>gentlemanly</i> 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 '<i>flash and the swell</i>,' the Spanish
+muleteer, the wandering Turkish dervise, the Scotch Highlander, and the
+Albanian robber;&mdash;to say nothing of the curious varieties of Italian
+social life. Far be it from me to presume that there are now, or can be,
+such a thing as an <i>aristocracy</i> of <i>poets</i>; but there <i>is</i> a nobility
+of thought and of style, open to all<span class="pagenum"><a id="page172" name="page172"></a>Pg 172</span> stations, and derived partly from
+talent, and partly from education,&mdash;which is to be found in Shakspeare,
+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, I should
+say that it is only to be defined by <i>examples</i>&mdash;of those who have it,
+and those who have it not. In <i>life</i>, I should say that most <i>military</i>
+men have it, and few <i>naval</i>; 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 <i>fencing</i>-masters have more of it than
+dancing-masters, and singers than players; and that (if it be not <i>an
+Irishism</i> 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
+<i>make</i> entirely a poet or a poem; but neither poet nor poem will ever be
+good for any thing without it. It is the <i>salt</i> of society, and the
+seasoning of composition. <i>Vulgarity</i> is far worse than downright
+<i>black-guardism</i>; 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;&mdash;but is he ever
+<i>vulgar</i>? No. You see the man of education, the gentleman, and the
+scholar, sporting with his subject,&mdash;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, gentlemen,
+is the <i>Eagle</i> of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page173" name="page173"></a>Pg 173</span> the <i>Sun</i>, from Archangel in Russia: the <i>otterer</i> it
+is, the <i>igherer</i> he flies.'"</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>In a note on a passage relative to Pope's lines upon Lady Mary W.
+Montague, he says&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I think that I could show, if necessary, that Lady Mary W. Montague was
+also greatly to blame in that quarrel, <i>not</i> for having rejected, but
+for having encouraged him; but I would rather decline the task&mdash;though
+she should have remembered her own line, '<i>He comes too near, that comes
+to be denied.</i>' I admire her so much&mdash;her beauty, her talents&mdash;that I
+should do this reluctantly. I, besides, am so attached to the very name
+of <i>Mary</i>, that as Johnson once said, 'If you called a dog <i>Harvey</i>, I
+should love him;' so, if you were to call a female of the same species
+'Mary,' I should love it better than others (biped or quadruped) of the
+same sex with a different appellation. She was an extraordinary woman:
+she could translate <i>Epictetus</i>, and yet write a song worthy of
+Aristippus. The lines,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'And when the long hours of the public are past,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And we meet, with champaigne and a chicken, at last,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May every fond pleasure that moment endear.'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be banish'd afar both discretion and fear!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forgetting or scorning the airs of the crowd,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He may cease to be formal, and I to be proud,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till,' &amp;c. &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There, Mr. Bowles!&mdash;what say you to such a supper with such a woman? and
+her own description too? Is not her '<i>champaigne and chicken</i>' worth a
+forest or two? Is it not poetry? It appears to me that this<span class="pagenum"><a id="page174" name="page174"></a>Pg 174</span> stanza
+contains the '<i>pur&eacute;e</i>' of the whole philosophy of Epicurus:&mdash;I mean the
+<i>practical</i> philosophy of his school, not the precepts of the master;
+for I have been too long at the university not to know that the
+philosopher was himself 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,&mdash;instead of writing some lines, which are to be condemned if
+false, and regretted if true."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 424. TO MR. HOPPNER.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, May 11. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"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, where she seems healthy and happy, for the present;
+but I shall feel much obliged if you will <i>enquire</i>, 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, 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.</p>
+
+<p>"The place is a country town in a good air, where there is a large
+establishment for education, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page175" name="page175"></a>Pg 175</span> many children, some of
+considerable rank, placed in it. As a <i>country</i> town, it is less
+liable to objections of every kind. It has always appeared to me,
+that the moral defect in Italy does <i>not</i> proceed from a
+<i>conventual</i> education,&mdash;because, to my certain knowledge, they
+come out of their convents innocent even to <i>ignorance</i> of moral
+evil,&mdash;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 throwing 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 attachment: this is, I believe, the case also in France.
+And after all, what is the higher society of England? According 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
+<i>best</i>), no way of life can be more corrupt. In Italy, however, it
+is, or rather <i>was</i>, more <i>systematised</i>; but <i>now</i>, they
+themselves are ashamed of <i>regular</i> Serventism. In England, the
+only homage which they pay to virtue is hypocrisy. I speak of
+course of the <i>tone</i> of high life,&mdash;the middle ranks may be very
+virtuous.</p>
+
+<p>"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, &amp;c.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page176" name="page176"></a>Pg 176</span></p>
+
+<p>"P.S. I gave to a musician<i>er</i> a letter for you some time ago&mdash;has
+he presented himself? Perhaps you could introduce him to the
+Ingrains and other dilettanti. He is simple and unassuming&mdash;two
+strange things in his profession&mdash;and he fiddles like Orpheus
+himself or Amphion: 'tis a pity that he can't make Venice dance
+away from the brutal tyrant who tramples upon it."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 425. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"May 14. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"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) <i>forced</i>
+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&mdash;what they could not help, nor I
+neither&mdash;a <i>forced</i> representation by a speculating manager. It is
+a pity that you did not show them its <i>unfitness</i> for the stage
+before the play was <i>published</i>, and exact a promise from the
+managers not to act it. In case of their refusal, we would not have
+published it at all. But this is too late.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page177" name="page177"></a>Pg 177</span></p>
+
+<p>"P.S. I enclose Mr. Bowles's letters: thank him in my name for
+their candour and kindness.&mdash;Also a letter for Hodgson, which pray
+forward. The Milan paper states that I '<i>brought forward the
+play!!!</i>' This is 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.</p>
+
+<p>"You will of course <i>not</i> publish my defence of Gilchrist, as,
+after Bowles's good humour upon the subject, it would be too
+savage.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me hear from you the particulars; for, as yet, I have only the
+simple fact.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 426. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"May 14. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"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, notwithstanding all my remonstrances
+through all my friends (and yourself among the rest), the managers
+persisted in attempting the tragedy, and that it has been
+'unanimously hissed!!' This is the consolatory phrase of the Milan
+paper, (which<span class="pagenum"><a id="page178" name="page178"></a>Pg 178</span> detests me cordially, and abuses me, on all
+occasions, as a Liberal,) with the addition that <i>I</i> 'brought the
+play out' of my own good will.</p>
+
+<p>"All this is vexatious enough, and seems a sort of dramatic
+Calvinism&mdash;predestined damnation, without a sinner's own fault. I
+took all the pains poor mortal could to prevent this inevitable
+catastrophe&mdash;partly by appeals of all kinds up to the Lord
+Chamberlain, and partly to the fellows themselves. But, as
+remonstrance was vain, complaint is useless. I do not understand
+it&mdash;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 30th. They must have been in a <i>hell</i> of
+a hurry for this damnation, 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;have occasioned a
+divorce&mdash;have had my poesy disparaged by Murray and the critics&mdash;my
+fortune refused to be placed on an advantageous settlement (in
+Ireland) by the trustees&mdash;my life threatened last month (they put
+about a paper here to excite an attempt at my assassination,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page179" name="page179"></a>Pg 179</span> on
+account of politics, and a notion which the priests disseminated
+that I was in a league against the Germans,)&mdash;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.' 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you know John Keats? They say that he was killed by a review
+of him in the Quarterly&mdash;if he be dead, which I really don't know.
+I don't understand that <i>yielding</i> sensitiveness. What I feel (as
+at this present) is an immense rage for eight-and-forty hours, and
+then, as usual&mdash;unless this time it should last longer. I must get
+on horseback to quiet me. Yours, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>"Francis I. wrote, after the battle of Pavia, 'All is lost except
+our honour.' A hissed author may reverse it&mdash;'<i>Nothing</i> is lost,
+except our honour.' But the horses are waiting, and the paper full.
+I wrote last week to you."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 427. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, May 19. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"By the papers of Thursday, and two letters of Mr. Kinnaird, I
+perceive that the Italian gazette had lied most <i>Italically</i>, and
+that the drama had <i>not</i> been hissed, and that my friends <i>had</i>
+interfered to prevent<span class="pagenum"><a id="page180" name="page180"></a>Pg 180</span> 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 expenses. The reason
+of the Lombard lie was that the Austrians&mdash;who keep up an
+Inquisition throughout Italy, and a <i>list of names</i> of all who
+think or speak of any thing but in favour of their despotism&mdash;have
+for five years past abused me in every form in the Gazette of
+Milan, &amp;c. I wrote to you a week ago on the subject.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I should be glad to know what compensation Mr. Elliston would
+make me, not only for dragging my writings on the stage in <i>five</i>
+days, but for being the cause that I was kept for <i>four</i> days (from
+Sunday to Thursday morning, the only post-days) in the <i>belief</i>
+that the <i>tragedy</i> had been acted and 'unanimously hissed;' and
+this with the addition that <i>I</i> '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 my brains out in a fit of rage,&mdash;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&mdash;I know not what<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a>.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page181" name="page181"></a>Pg 181</span></p>
+
+<p>"I wrote to you to keep up your spirits, for reproach is useless
+always, and irritating&mdash;but my<span class="pagenum"><a id="page182" name="page182"></a>Pg 182</span> feelings were very much hurt, to be
+dragged like a gladiator to the fate of a gladiator by that
+'<i>retiarius</i>,' Mr. Elliston. As to his defence and offers of
+compensation, what is all this to the purpose? It is like Louis the
+Fourteenth, who insisted upon buying at any price Algernon Sydney's
+horse, and, on his 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.</p>
+
+<p>"I have now written nearly three <i>acts</i> of another (intending 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.</p>
+
+<p>"If we succeed, well: if not, previous to any future publication,
+we will request a <i>promise</i> not to be acted, which I would even pay
+for (as money is<span class="pagenum"><a id="page183" name="page183"></a>Pg 183</span> their object), or I will not publish&mdash;which,
+however, you will probably not much regret.</p>
+
+<p>"The Chancellor 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.</p>
+
+<p>"There is a most rattling thunder-storm pelting away at this
+present writing; so that I write neither by day, nor by candle, nor
+torchlight, but by <i>lightning</i> light: 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
+the 'Bold Thunder' and 'Brisk Lightning' in person.&mdash;<i>Three</i> of us
+would be too many. There it goes&mdash;<i>flash</i> again! but</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"I tax not you, ye elements, with unkindness;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">I never gave ye <i>franks</i>, nor <i>call'd</i> upon you;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>as I have done by and upon Mr. Elliston.</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you not write? You should at least send me a line of
+particulars: I know nothing yet but by Galignani and the Honourable
+Douglas.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, and how does our Pope controversy go on? and the pamphlet?
+It is impossible to write any news: the Austrian scoundrels rummage
+all letters.</p>
+
+<p>"P.S. I could have sent you a good deal of gossip and some <i>real</i>
+information, were it not that all letters pass through the
+Barbarians' inspection,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page184" name="page184"></a>Pg 184</span> and I have no wish to inform <i>them</i> of any
+thing but my utter abhorrence of them and theirs. They have only
+conquered by treachery, however."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 428. TO ME. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, May 20. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>truth</i>
+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 <i>not</i> bring forward his play, but opposed the same; and,
+secondly, it was <i>not</i> 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&mdash;the latest date of my letters. You will oblige me, then, by
+causing Mr. Gazette of France to contradict himself, which, I
+suppose, he is used to. I never answer a foreign <i>criticism</i>; but
+this is a mere matter of fact, and not of <i>opinions</i>. I presume
+that you have English and French interest enough to do this for
+me&mdash;though, to be sure, as it is nothing but the <i>truth</i> which we
+wish to state, the insertion may be more difficult.</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page185" name="page185"></a>Pg 185</span> one of '<i>ours</i>,'
+to set this affair in its real aspect. Believe me always yours ever
+and most affectionately,</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Byron.</span>"</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 429. TO MR. HOPPNER.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, May 25. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"I am very much pleased with what you say of Switzerland, 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 <i>out</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 '<i>list</i>.' I
+care nothing for <i>their criticism</i>, but the matter of fact. I have
+written <i>four</i> acts of another tragedy, so you see they <i>can't</i>
+bully me.</p>
+
+<p>"You know, I suppose, that they actually keep a <i>list</i> of all
+individuals in Italy who dislike them&mdash;it must be numerous. Their
+suspicions and actual alarms, about my conduct and presumed
+intentions in the late row, were truly ludicrous&mdash;though, not to
+bore you, I touched upon them lightly. They believed, and still
+believe here, or affect to believe<span class="pagenum"><a id="page186" name="page186"></a>Pg 186</span> it, that the whole plan and
+project of rising was settled by me, and the <i>means</i> furnished, &amp;c.
+&amp;c. All this was more fomented by the barbarian agents, who are
+numerous here (one of them was stabbed yesterday, by the way, but
+not dangerously):&mdash;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."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 430. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, May 25. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Moray,</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>un</i>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
+<i>coal-heaver</i>), while all this kick-up has been going on about the
+play? You SHABBY fellow!!! Were it not for two letters from Douglas
+Kinnaird, I should have been as ignorant as you are negligent.</p>
+
+<p>"So, I hear Bowles has been abusing Hobhouse?<span class="pagenum"><a id="page187" name="page187"></a>Pg 187</span> If that's the case,
+he has broken the truce, like Morillo's successor, and I will cut
+him out, as Cochrane did the Esmeralda.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>Queen</i> and <i>Pavilion</i>
+occur, but it is not an allusion to his Britannic Majesty, as you
+may tremulously imagine. This you will one day see (if I finish
+it), as I have made Sardanapalus <i>brave</i>, (though voluptuous, as
+history represents him,) and also as <i>amiable</i> as my poor powers
+could render him:&mdash;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
+<i>not</i> for <i>the stage</i>. Yours, in haste and hatred, you shabby
+correspondent! N."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 431. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, May 28. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"Since my last of the 26th or 25th, I have dashed off my fifth act
+of the tragedy called 'Sardanapalus.' But now comes the copying
+over, which may prove heavy work&mdash;heavy to the writer as to the
+reader. I have written to you at least six times sans answer, which
+proves you to be a&mdash;bookseller. I pray you to send me a copy of Mr.
+<i>Wrangham</i>'s reformation of '<i>Langhorne</i>'s Plutarch.' I have the
+Greek, which is somewhat small of print, and the Italian, which is
+too heavy in style, and as<span class="pagenum"><a id="page188" name="page188"></a>Pg 188</span> false as a Neapolitan patriot
+proclamation. I pray you also to send me a Life, published some
+years ago, of the <i>Magician Apollonius</i> of Tyana. It is in English,
+and I think edited or written by what Martin Marprelate calls '<i>a
+bouncing priest</i>.' I shall trouble you no farther with this sheet
+than with the postage. Yours, &amp;c. N.</p>
+
+<p>"P.S. Since I wrote this, I determined to enclose it (as a half
+sheet) to Mr. Kinnaird, who will have the goodness to forward it.
+Besides, it saves sealing-wax."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 432. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, May 30. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Moray,</p>
+
+<p>"You say you have written often: I have only received yours of the
+eleventh, which is very short. By this post, <i>five</i> packets, I send
+you the tragedy of Sardanapalus, which is written in a rough hand:
+perhaps Mrs. Leigh can help you to decipher it. You will please to
+acknowledge it by return of post. You will remark that the
+<i>unities</i> are all <i>strictly</i> observed. The scene passes in the same
+<i>hall</i> always: the time, a <i>summer's night</i>, about nine hours, or
+less, though it begins before sunset and ends after sun-rise. In
+the third act, when Sardanapalus calls for a <i>mirror</i> to look at
+himself in his armour, recollect to quote the Latin passage from
+<i>Juvenal</i> upon <i>Otho</i> (a similar character, who did the same
+thing): Gifford will help you to it. The trait is perhaps too
+familiar, but it is historical, (of <i>Otho</i>, at least,) and natural
+in an effeminate character."</p></div><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page189" name="page189"></a>Pg 189</span></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 433. TO MR. HOPPNER.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, May 31. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"I enclose you another letter, which will only confirm what I have
+said to you.</p>
+
+<p>"About Allegra'&mdash;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 <i>alphabet</i> imparted in her convent.</p>
+
+<p>"What you say of the <i>Dante</i> is the first I have heard of it&mdash;all
+seeming to be merged in the <i>row</i> about the tragedy. Continue
+it!&mdash;Alas! what could Dante himself <i>now</i> prophesy about Italy? I
+am glad you like it, however, but doubt that you will be singular
+in your opinion. My <i>new</i> tragedy is completed.</p>
+
+<p>"The B * * is <i>right</i>,&mdash;I ought to have mentioned her <i>humour</i> and
+<i>amiability</i>, but I thought at her <i>sixty</i>, beauty would be most
+agreeable or least likely. However, 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 have
+no private nor personal dislike to <i>Venice</i>, 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Believe me, ever, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>"P.S. Did you receive two letters of Douglas Kinnaird's in an
+endorse from me? Remember me to Mengaldo, Soranzo, and all who care
+that I should remember them. The letter alluded to in the
+en<span class="pagenum"><a id="page190" name="page190"></a>Pg 190</span>closed, 'to the <i>Cardinal</i>,' 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 information as I had about him, which I trust will get him
+out again, that is to say, if they give him a fair hearing.</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>am</i> content with the article. Pray, did you receive, some posts
+ago, Moore's lines which I enclosed to you, written at Paris?"</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 434. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, June 4. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>recovery</i> of Lady * *:'&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"Behold the blessings of a lucky lot&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">My play is damn'd, and Lady * * <i>not</i>.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"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 <i>fitted</i> for the stage by Mr. Dibdin,
+who is the tailor upon such occasions, and will have taken measure<span class="pagenum"><a id="page191" name="page191"></a>Pg 191</span>
+with his usual accuracy. I hear that it is still continued to be
+performed&mdash;a piece of obstinacy for which it is some consolation to
+think that the discourteous histrio will be out of pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"You will be surprised to hear that I have finished another tragedy
+in <i>five</i> acts, observing all the unities strictly. It is called
+'Sardanapalus,' and was sent by last post to England. It is <i>not
+for</i> the stage, any more than the other was intended for it&mdash;and I
+shall take better care <i>this</i> time that they don't get hold on't.</p>
+
+<p>"I have also sent, two months ago, a further letter on Bowles, &amp;c.;
+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 somewhat too full of' pastime and prodigality.' I
+learn from some private letters of Bowles's, that <i>you</i> were 'the
+gentleman in asterisks.' Who would have dreamed it? you see what
+mischief that clergyman has done by printing notes without names.
+How the deuce was I to suppose that the first four asterisks meant
+'Campbell' and <i>not</i> 'Pope,' and that the blank signature meant
+Thomas Moore<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a>? You see what comes of being<span class="pagenum"><a id="page192" name="page192"></a>Pg 192</span> familiar with
+parsons. His answers have not yet reached me, but I understand from
+Hobhouse, that<span class="pagenum"><a id="page193" name="page193"></a>Pg 193</span> <i>he</i> (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.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you receive my letters with the two or three concluding sheets
+of Memoranda?</p>
+
+<p>"There are no news here to interest much. A German spy (<i>boasting</i>
+himself such) was stabbed last week, but <i>not</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"A row the other night, about a lady of the place, between her
+various lovers, occasioned a midnight discharge of pistols, but
+nobody wounded. Great scandal, however&mdash;planted by her lover&mdash;<i>to
+be</i> 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 <i>found out</i>. She is a pretty woman&mdash;a
+Countess * * * *&mdash;a fine old Visigoth name, or Ostrogoth.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page194" name="page194"></a>Pg 194</span></p>
+
+<p>"The Greeks! what think you? They are my old acquaintances&mdash;but
+what to think I know not. Let us hope howsomever.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours,</p>
+
+<p>"B."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 435. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, June 22. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"Your dwarf of a letter came yesterday. That is right;&mdash;keep to
+your 'magnum opus '&mdash;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,&mdash;for I think you and I draw better
+together, in the social line, than any two other living authors.</p>
+
+<p>"I forgot to ask you, if you had seen your own panegyric in the
+correspondence of Mrs. Waterhouse and Colonel Berkeley? To be sure
+<i>their</i> moral is not quite exact; but <i>your passion</i> is fully
+effective; and all poetry of the Asiatic kind&mdash;I mean Asiatic, as
+the Romans called <i>Asiatic</i> oratory,' and not because the scenery
+is Oriental&mdash;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&mdash;in the first place, on account of this said
+<i>passion</i>; and, in the second, that they mayn't discover that there
+was a better poet than papa.</p>
+
+<p>"You say nothing of politics&mdash;but, alas! what can be said?</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page195" name="page195"></a>Pg 195</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"The world is a bundle of hay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Mankind are the asses who pull,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Each tugs it a different way,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">And the greatest of all is John Bull!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"How do you call your new project? I have sent Murray a new
+tragedy, ycleped 'Sardanapalus,' writ according to Aristotle&mdash;all,
+save the chorus&mdash;could not reconcile me to that. I have begun
+another, and am in the second act;&mdash;so you see I saunter on as
+usual.</p>
+
+<p>"Bowles's answers have reached me; but I can't go on disputing for
+ever,&mdash;particularly in a polite manner. I suppose he will take
+being <i>silent</i> for <i>silenced</i>. He has been so civil that I can't
+find it in my liver to be facetious with him,&mdash;else I had a savage
+joke or two at his service. * * *</p>
+
+<p>"I can't send you the little journal, because it is in boards, and
+I can't trust it per post. Don't suppose it is any thing
+particular; but it will show the <i>intentions</i> of the natives at
+that time&mdash;and one or two other things, chiefly personal, like the
+former one.</p>
+
+<p>"So, Longman don't <i>bite</i>.&mdash;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?</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page196" name="page196"></a>Pg 196</span></p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;it is my only consolation.
+I made the Milanese fellows contradict their lie, which they did
+with the grace of people used to it.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>"B."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 436. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, July 5. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"How could you suppose that I ever would allow any thing that
+<i>could</i> be said on your account to weigh with <i>me</i>? I only regret
+that Bowles had not <i>said</i> 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&mdash;&mdash;n the controversy!</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">"D&mdash;&mdash;n Twizzle,<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">D&mdash;&mdash;n the bell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And d&mdash;&mdash;n the fool who rung it&mdash;Well!<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">From all such plagues I'll quickly be deliver'd.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"I have had a friend of your Mr. Irving's&mdash;a very pretty lad&mdash;a Mr.
+Coolidge, of Boston&mdash;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,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page197" name="page197"></a>Pg 197</span> instead of a man
+of this world. I can never get people to understand that poetry is
+the expression of <i>excited passion</i>, 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 <i>shave</i> themselves in
+such a state?</p>
+
+<p>"I have had a curious letter to-day from a girl in 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, &amp;c. &amp;c. &amp;c. It is signed simply N.N. A. and has
+not a word of 'cant' or preachment in it upon <i>any</i> 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 <i>burn</i> her <i>letter</i>&mdash;which, by the way, I can <i>not</i>
+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 <i>Norway</i> (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.</p>
+
+<p>"I am now in the fifth act of 'Foscari,' being the third tragedy in
+twelve months, besides <i>proses</i>; 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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page198" name="page198"></a>Pg 198</span> 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 &mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Ever, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>"If we were together, I should publish both my plays (periodically)
+in our <i>joint</i> journal. It should be our plan to publish all our
+best things in that way."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>In the Journal entitled "Detached Thoughts," I find the tribute to his
+genius which he here mentions, as well as some others, thus
+interestingly dwelt upon.</p>
+
+<p>"As far as fame goes (that is to say, <i>living</i> fame) I have had my
+share, perhaps&mdash;indeed, <i>certainly</i>&mdash;more than my deserts.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>English</i> verse, from <i>Drontheim</i> in Norway,
+written by a Norwegian, and full of the usual compliments, &amp;c. &amp;c. It is
+still somewhere amongst my papers. In the same month I received an
+invitation into <i>Holstein</i> from a Mr. Jacobsen (I think) of Hamburgh:
+also, by the same medium, a translation of Medora's song in The Corsair
+by a Westphalian baroness (<i>not</i> '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:&mdash;as they
+concerned her more than me. I sent<span class="pagenum"><a id="page199" name="page199"></a>Pg 199</span> them to her, together with Mr.
+Jacobsen's letter. It was odd enough to receive an invitation to pass
+the <i>summer</i> in <i>Holstein</i> while in <i>Italy</i>, from people I never knew.
+The letter was addressed to Venice. Mr. Jacobsen talked to me of the
+'wild roses growing in the Holstein summer.' Why then did the Cimbri and
+Teutones emigrate?</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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 mansion of strangers and foreigners, attached to me by no tie
+but that of mind and rumour.</p>
+
+<p>"As far as <i>fame</i> 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 <i>decent</i> rank in life; but, on the
+whole, I take it that such equipoise is the condition of humanity."</p>
+
+<p>Of the visit, too, of the American gentleman, he thus speaks in the same
+Journal.</p>
+
+<p>"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 appearances; 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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page200" name="page200"></a>Pg 200</span>
+servant of my family (Joe Murray), and told me that <i>he</i> (Mr. Coolidge)
+had obtained a copy of my bust from Thorwaldsen 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 rased from
+the street called after him in Dublin); I say that I was more flattered
+by it, because it was <i>single, unpolitical</i>, and was without motive or
+ostentation,&mdash;the pure and warm feeling of a boy for the poet he
+admired. It must have been expensive, though;&mdash;<i>I</i> would not pay the
+price of a Thorwaldsen bust for any human head and shoulders, except
+Napoleon's, or my children's, or some '<i>absurd womankind's</i>,' as
+Monkbarns calls them,&mdash;or my sister's. If asked <i>why</i>, then, I sat for
+my own?&mdash;Answer, that it was at the particular request of J.C. Hobhouse,
+Esq. and for no one else. A <i>picture</i> is a different matter;&mdash;every body
+sits for their picture;&mdash;but a bust looks like putting up pretensions to
+permanency, and smacks something of a hankering for <i>public</i> fame rather
+than private remembrance.</p>
+
+<p>"Whenever an American requests to see me (which is not unfrequently), I
+comply, firstly, because I respect a people who acquired their freedom
+by their firmness without excess; and, secondly, 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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page201" name="page201"></a>Pg 201</span> two the
+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."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 437. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, July 6. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"In agreement with a wish expressed by Mr. Hobhouse, it is my
+determination to omit the stanza upon the <i>horse of Semiramis</i> in
+the fifth Canto of Don Juan. I mention this in case you are, or
+intend to be, the publisher of the remaining Cantos.</p>
+
+<p>"At the particular request of the Contessa G. I have promised <i>not</i>
+to continue Don Juan. You will therefore look upon these three
+Cantos as the last of the 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 <i>not</i> protect <i>Rousseau</i>, nor one who did not dislike
+De Grammont, Gil Bias, and all the comedy of the passions, when
+brought out naturally. But 'king's blood must keep word,' as
+Serjeant Bothwell says."</p></div><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page202" name="page202"></a>Pg 202</span></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER, 438. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"July 14. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"I trust that Sardanapalus will not be mistaken for a <i>political</i>
+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 dramatise, like the Greeks (a <i>modest</i>
+phrase), striking passages of history, as they did of history and
+mythology. You will find all this very <i>un</i>like Shakspeare; and so
+much the better in one sense, for I look upon him to be the <i>worst</i>
+of models<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a>, 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 <i>poetry</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not very well, and I write in the midst of unpleasant scenes
+here: they have, without trial or process, banished several of the
+first inhabitants of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page203" name="page203"></a>Pg 203</span> the cities&mdash;here and all around the Roman
+states&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"You are very niggardly in your letters.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours truly,</p>
+
+<p>"B."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 439. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, July 22. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"The printer has done wonders;&mdash;he has read what I cannot&mdash;my own
+handwriting.</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>oppose</i> the 'delay till winter:' I am particularly anxious to
+print while the <i>winter theatres</i> are <i>closed</i>, to gain time, in
+case they try their former piece of politeness. Any <i>loss</i> shall be
+considered in our contract, whether occasioned by the season or
+other causes; but print away, and publish.</p>
+
+<p>"I think they must own that I have more <i>styles</i> than one.
+'Sardanapalus' is, however, almost a comic character: but, for that
+matter, so is Richard the Third. Mind the <i>unities</i>, which are my
+great object of research. I am glad that Gifford likes it: as for
+'the million,' you see I have carefully consulted any thing but the
+<i>taste</i> of the day for extravagant 'coups de th&eacute;&acirc;tre.' Any probable
+loss, as I said before, will be allowed for in our accompts. The
+reviews (except one or two&mdash;Blackwood's, for instance) are cold
+enough; but never mind those fellows: I shall send them to the
+right about, if I take it into my head. I always found the English<span class="pagenum"><a id="page204" name="page204"></a>Pg 204</span>
+<i>baser</i> in some things than any other nation. You stare, but it's
+true as to gratitude,&mdash;perhaps because they are prouder, and proud
+people hate obligations.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>your
+address</i> to me <i>here</i>, as usual, and quickly. What you will <i>not</i>
+be sorry to hear is, that the <i>poor</i> of the place, hearing that I
+meant to go, got together a petition to the Cardinal to request
+that <i>he</i> would request me to <i>remain</i>. 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 <i>the officer</i> was out of uniform, and in the <i>wrong</i>
+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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page205" name="page205"></a>Pg 205</span> reproof would be sufficient. I reproved him; and yet, after
+this, the shabby dog complained to the <i>Government</i>,&mdash;after being
+quite satisfied, as he said. <i>This</i> roused me, and I gave them a
+remonstrance which had some effect. The captain has been
+reprimanded, the servant released, and the business at present
+rests there."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Among the victims of the "black sentence and proscription" by which the
+rulers of Italy were now, as appears from the above letters, avenging
+their late alarm upon all who had even in the remotest degree
+contributed to it, the two Gambas were, of course, as suspected Chiefs
+of the Carbonari of Romagna, included. About the middle of July, Madame
+Guiccioli, in a state of despair, wrote to inform Lord Byron that her
+father, in whose palazzo she was at that time residing, had just been
+ordered to quit Ravenna within twenty-four hours, and that it was the
+intention of her brother to depart the following morning. The young
+Count, however, was not permitted to remain even so long, being arrested
+that very night, and conveyed by soldiers to the frontier; and the
+Contessa herself, in but a few days after, found that she also must join
+the crowd of exiles. The prospect of being again separated from her
+noble friend seems to have rendered banishment little less fearful, in
+her eyes, than death. "This alone," she says in a letter to him, "was
+wanting to fill up the measure of my despair. Help me, my dear Byron,
+for I am in a situation most terrible; and without you, I can resolve
+upon nothing. * * has just been with<span class="pagenum"><a id="page206" name="page206"></a>Pg 206</span> me, having been sent by * * to
+tell me that I must depart from Ravenna before next Tuesday, as my
+husband has had recourse to Rome, for the purpose of either forcing me
+to return to him, or else putting me in a convent; and the answer from
+thence is expected in a few days. I must not speak of this to any
+one,&mdash;I roust escape by night; for, if my project should be discovered,
+it will be impeded, and my passport (which the goodness of Heaven has
+permitted me, I know not how, to obtain) will be taken from me. Byron! I
+am in despair!&mdash;If I must leave you here without knowing when I shall
+see you again, if it is your will that I should suffer so cruelly, I am
+resolved to remain. They may put me in a convent; I shall die,&mdash;but&mdash;but
+then you cannot aid me, and I cannot reproach you. I know not what they
+tell me, for my agitation overwhelms me;&mdash;and why? Not because I fear my
+present danger, but solely, I call Heaven to witness, solely because I
+must leave you."</p>
+
+<p>Towards the latter end of July, the writer of this tender and truly
+feminine letter found herself forced to leave Ravenna,&mdash;the home of her
+youth, as it was, now, of her heart,&mdash;uncertain whither to go, or where
+she should again meet Lord Byron. After lingering for a short time at
+Bologna, under a faint expectation that the Court of Rome might yet,
+through some friendly mediation<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a>, be induced to<span class="pagenum"><a id="page207" name="page207"></a>Pg 207</span> rescind its order
+against her relatives, she at length gave up all hope, and joined her
+father and brother at Florence.</p>
+
+<p>It has been already seen, from Lord Byron's letters, that he had himself
+become an object of strong suspicion to the Government, and it was,
+indeed, chiefly in their desire to rid themselves of his presence, that
+the steps taken against the Gamba family had originated;&mdash;the constant
+benevolence which he exercised towards the poor of Ravenna being likely,
+it was feared, to render him dangerously popular among a people unused
+to charity on so enlarged a scale. "One of the principal causes," says
+Madame Guiccioli, "of the exile of my relatives, was in reality the idea
+that Lord Byron would share the banishment of his friends. Already the
+Government were averse to Lord Byron's residence at Ravenna; knowing his
+opinions, fearing his influence, and also exaggerating the extent of his
+means for giving effect to them. They fancied that he provided money for
+the purchase of arms, &amp;c. and that he contributed pecuniarily to the
+wants of the Society. The truth is, that, when called upon to exercise
+his beneficence, he made no enquiries as to the political and religious
+opinions of those who required his aid. Every un<span class="pagenum"><a id="page208" name="page208"></a>Pg 208</span>happy and needy object
+had an equal share in his benevolence. The Anti-Liberals, however,
+insisted upon believing that he was the principal support of Liberalism
+in Romagna, and were desirous of his departure; but, not daring to exact
+it by any direct measure, they were in hopes of being able indirectly to
+force him into this step."<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a></p>
+
+<p>After stating the particulars of her own hasty departure, the lady
+proceeds:&mdash;"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
+com<span class="pagenum"><a id="page209" name="page209"></a>Pg 209</span>fort; but two days always elapsed between his writing and my
+receiving them; and this idea embittered 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<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a>."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 440. TO MR. HOPPNER.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, July 23. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"This country being in a state of proscription, and all my friends
+exiled or arrested&mdash;the whole family<span class="pagenum"><a id="page210" name="page210"></a>Pg 210</span> of Gamba obliged to go to
+Florence for the present&mdash;the father and son for politics&mdash;(and the
+Guiccioli, because menaced with a <i>convent</i>, as her father is <i>not</i>
+here,) I have determined to remove to Switzerland, and they also.
+Indeed, my life here is not supposed to be particularly safe&mdash;but
+that has been the case for this twelvemonth past, and is therefore
+not the primary consideration.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>Jura</i> side
+of the lake of Geneva, furnished, and with stabling (for <i>me</i> 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&mdash;and both&mdash;but the son in
+particular&mdash;very fine fellows. <i>This</i> I know, for I have seen them
+lately in very awkward situations&mdash;<i>not</i> pecuniary, but
+personal&mdash;and they behaved like heroes, neither yielding nor
+retracting.</p>
+
+<p>"You have no idea what a state of oppression this country is
+in&mdash;they arrested above a thousand of high and low throughout
+Romagna&mdash;banished some and confined others, without <i>trial</i>,
+<i>process</i>, or even <i>accusation</i>!! Every body says they would have
+done the same by me if they dared proceed openly. My motive,
+however, for remaining, is because <i>every one</i> of my acquaintance,
+to the amount of hundreds almost, have been exiled.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page211" name="page211"></a>Pg 211</span></p>
+
+<p>"Will you do what you can in looking out for a couple of houses
+<i>furnished</i>, and conferring with Hentsch for us? We care nothing
+about society, and are only anxious for a temporary and tranquil
+asylum and individual freedom.</p>
+
+<p>"Believe me, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>"P.S. Can you give me an idea of the comparative expenses of
+Switzerland and Italy? which I have forgotten. I speak merely of
+those of decent <i>living, horses</i>, &amp;c. and not of luxuries or high
+living. Do <i>not</i>, however, decide any thing positively till I have
+your answer, as I can then know how to think upon these topics of
+transmigration, &amp;c. &amp;c. &amp;c."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 441. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, July 30. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"Enclosed is the best account of the Doge Faliero, which was only
+sent to me from an old MS. 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. You will see also that' he spoke very
+little, and those only words of rage and disdain,' <i>after</i> 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 MS. than in the play. I wish that I had met<span class="pagenum"><a id="page212" name="page212"></a>Pg 212</span> with it
+in time. Do not forget this note, with a translation.</p>
+
+<p>"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, <i>vous pleures</i>.' Recollect this.</p>
+
+<p>"I am so busy here about those poor proscribed exiles, 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours ever, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>"P.S. Please to append the letter about <i>the Hellespont</i> as a note
+to your next opportunity of the verses on Leander, &amp;c. &amp;c. &amp;c. in
+Childe Harold. Don't forget it amidst your multitudinous
+avocations, which I think of celebrating in a Dithyrambic Ode to
+Albemarle Street.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you aware that Shelley has written an Elegy on Keats, and
+accuses the Quarterly of killing him?</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"'Who kill'd John Keats?'<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">'I,' says the Quarterly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">So savage and Tartarly;<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">''Twas one of my feats.'<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"'Who shot the arrow?'<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">'The poet-priest Milman<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">(So ready to kill man),<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Or Southey or Barrow.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"You know very well that I did not approve of Keats's poetry, or
+principles of poetry, or of his<span class="pagenum"><a id="page213" name="page213"></a>Pg 213</span> abuse of Pope; but, as he is dead,
+omit <i>all</i> that is said <i>about him</i> 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;&mdash;you Review
+people have no more right to kill than any other footpads. However,
+he who would die of an article in a Review would probably have died
+of something else equally trivial. The same thing nearly happened
+to Kirke White, who died afterwards of a consumption."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 442. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, August 2. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"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 disputants. Did you receive this letter? It imports me
+to know that our letters are not intercepted or mislaid.</p>
+
+<p>"Your Berlin drama <a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> is an honour, unknown since the days of
+Elkanah Settle, whose 'Emperor 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,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page214" name="page214"></a>Pg 214</span> on account of that and a
+frontispiece, which he dared to put before his play.</p>
+
+<p>"Was not your showing the Memoranda to * * somewhat perilous? Is
+there not a facetious allusion or two which might as well be
+reserved for posterity?</p>
+
+<p>"I know S * * well&mdash;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 S * *'s on Rome,
+from which they say that I <i>might</i> have taken some ideas. I give
+you my honour that I never saw it except in that criticism, which
+gives, I think, three or four stanzas, sent them (they say) for the
+nonce by a correspondent&mdash;perhaps himself. The fact is easily
+proved; for I don't understand German, and there was, I believe, no
+translation&mdash;at least, it was the first time that I ever heard of,
+or saw, either translation or original.</p>
+
+<p>"I remember having some talk with S * * 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&mdash;'I meditate a terrible vengeance against the French&mdash;I
+will prove that Moli&egrave;re is no poet<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a>.'</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see why you should talk of 'declining.'<span class="pagenum"><a id="page215" name="page215"></a>Pg 215</span> 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 <i>nothing</i>, for I would rather not say unpleasant
+<i>personal</i> things to anyone&mdash;but, as it was the pleasant <i>truth</i>, I
+tell it you. If you had led my life, indeed, changing climates and
+connections&mdash;<i>thinning</i> yourself with fasting and
+purgatives&mdash;besides the wear and tear of the vulture passions, and
+a very bad temper besides, you might talk in this way&mdash;but <i>you</i>! I
+know no man who looks so well for his years, or who deserves to
+look better and 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.</p>
+
+<p>"I am, at present, occupied principally about these unhappy
+proscriptions and exiles, which have taken place here on account of
+politics. 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. I was not present&mdash;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.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page216" name="page216"></a>Pg 216</span> I would gladly have given a
+much greater sum than that will come to that he had never been
+hurt. Pray, let me hear from you, and excuse haste and hot weather.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>"You may have probably seen all sorts of attacks upon me in some
+gazettes in England some months ago. 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 <i>every</i> thing.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>English</i> investigation has
+stopped them. Had it been a poor native, the suspicion were enough,
+as it has been for hundreds.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you write on Napoleon? 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. <i>Ecco</i> a translation literal of a French epigram.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"Egle, beauty and poet, has two little crimes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">She makes her own face, and does <i>not</i> make her rhymes.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"I am going to ride, having been warned not to ride in a particular
+part of the forest, on account of the ultra-politicians.</p>
+
+<p>"Is there no chance of your return to England, and of <i>our</i>
+Journal? I would have published the two plays in it&mdash;two or three
+scenes per number&mdash;<span class="pagenum"><a id="page217" name="page217"></a>Pg 217</span>and, indeed, <i>all</i> of mine in it. If you went
+to England, I would do so still."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>About this time Mr. Shelley, who had now fixed his residence at Pisa,
+received a letter from Lord Byron, earnestly requesting to see him, in
+consequence of which he immediately set out for Ravenna; and the
+following extracts from letters, written during his stay with his noble
+friend, will be read with that double feeling of interest which is
+always sure to be excited in hearing one man of genius express his
+opinions of another.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, August 7. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"I arrived last night at ten o'clock, and sat up talking with Lord
+Byron until five this morning: I then went to sleep, and now awake
+at eleven; and having despatched my breakfast as quick as possible,
+mean to devote the interval until twelve, when the post departs, to
+you.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord Byron is very well, and was delighted, to see me. He has in
+fact completely recovered his health, and lives a life totally the
+reverse of that which he led at Venice. He has a permanent sort of
+liaison with the Contessa Guiccioli, who is now at Florence, and
+seems from her letters to be a very amiable woman. She is waiting
+there until something shall be decided as to their emigration to
+Switzerland or stay in Italy, which is yet undetermined on either
+side. She was compelled to escape from the Papal territory in great
+haste, as measures had already been taken to place her in a
+convent, where she would have been unrelentingly confined<span class="pagenum"><a id="page218" name="page218"></a>Pg 218</span> for
+life. The oppression of the marriage contract as existing in the
+laws and opinions of Italy, though less frequently exercised, is
+far severer than that of England.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord Byron had almost destroyed himself at Venice. His state of
+debility was such that he was unable to digest any food: he was
+consumed by hectic fever, and would speedily have perished but for
+this attachment, which reclaimed him from the excesses into which
+he threw himself, from carelessness and pride, rather than taste.
+Poor fellow I he is now quite well, and immersed in politics and
+literature. He has given me a number of the most interesting
+details on the former subject; but we will not speak of them in a
+letter. Fletcher is here, and&mdash;as if, like a shadow, he waxed and
+waned with the substance of his master&mdash;has also revived his good
+looks, and from amidst the unseasonable grey hairs, a fresh harvest
+of flaxen locks has put forth.</p>
+
+<p>"We talked a great deal of poetry and such matters last night; and,
+as usual, differed&mdash;and I think more than ever. He affects to
+patronise a system of criticism fit only for the production of
+mediocrity; and, although all his finer poems and passages have
+been produced in defiance of this system, yet I recognise the
+pernicious effects of it in the Doge of Venice; and it will cramp
+and limit his future efforts, however great they may be, unless he
+gets rid of it. I have read only parts of it, or rather he himself
+read them to me, and gave me the plan of the whole.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page219" name="page219"></a>Pg 219</span></p>
+
+<p>"Ravenna, August 15. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"We ride out in the evening through the pine forests which divide
+the city from the sea. Our way of life is this, and I have
+accommodated myself to it without much difficulty:&mdash;Lord Byron gets
+up at two&mdash;breakfasts&mdash;we talk, read, &amp;c. until six&mdash;then we ride
+at eight, and after dinner sit talking until four or five in the
+morning. I get up at twelve, and am now devoting the interval
+between my rising and his to you.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord Byron is greatly improved in every respect&mdash;in genius, in
+temper, in moral views, in health and happiness. His connection
+with La Guiccioli has been an inestimable benefit to him. He lives
+in considerable splendour, but within his income, which is now
+about four thousand a year, one thousand of which he devotes to
+purposes of charity. He has had mischievous passions, but these he
+seems to have subdued; and he is becoming, what he should be, a
+virtuous man. The interest which he took in the politics of Italy,
+and the actions he performed in consequence of it, are subjects not
+fit to be written, but are such as will delight and surprise you.</p>
+
+<p>"He is not yet decided to go to Switzerland, a place, indeed,
+little fitted for him: the gossip and the cabals of those
+Anglicised coteries would torment him as they did before, and might
+exasperate him into a relapse of libertinism, which, he says, he
+plunged into not from taste, but from despair. La Guiccioli and her
+brother (who is Lord Byron's friend and confidant, and acquiesces
+perfectly in her connection with him) wish to go to Switzerland,
+as<span class="pagenum"><a id="page220" name="page220"></a>Pg 220</span> Lord Byron says, merely from the novelty and pleasure of
+travelling. Lord Byron prefers Tuscany or Lucca, and is trying to
+persuade them to adopt his views. He has made <i>me</i> write a long
+letter to her to engage her to remain. An odd thing enough for an
+utter stranger to write on subjects of the utmost delicacy to his
+friend's mistress&mdash;but it seems destined that I am always to have
+some active part in every body's affairs whom I approach. I have
+set down, in tame Italian, the strongest reasons I can think of
+against the Swiss emigration. To tell you the truth, I should be
+very glad to accept as my fee his establishment in Tuscany. Ravenna
+is a miserable place: the people are barbarous and wild, and their
+language the most infernal <i>patois</i> that you can imagine. He would
+be in every respect better among the Tuscans.</p>
+
+<p>"He has read to me one of the unpublished cantos of Don Juan, which
+is astonishingly fine. It sets him not only above, but far above
+all the poets of the day. Every word has the stamp of immortality.
+This canto is in a style (but totally free from indelicacy, 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 degree, what I have long preached,&mdash;of
+producing something wholly new, and relative to the age, and yet
+surpassingly beautiful. It may be vanity, but I think I see the
+trace of my earnest exhortations to him, to create something wholly
+new. * * * *</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page221" name="page221"></a>Pg 221</span></p>
+
+<p>"I am sure, if I asked, it would not be refused; yet there is
+something in me that makes it impossible. Lord Byron and I are
+excellent friends; and were I reduced to poverty, or were I a
+writer who had no claim to a higher station than I possess, or did
+I possess a higher than I deserve, we should appear in all things
+as such, and I would freely ask him any favour. Such is not now the
+case: the demon of mistrust and of pride lurks between two persons
+in our situation, poisoning the freedom of our intercourse. This is
+a tax, and a heavy one, which we must pay for being human. I think
+the fault is not on my side; nor is it likely,&mdash;I being the weaker.
+I hope that in the next world these things will be better managed.
+What is passing in the heart of another rarely escapes the
+observation of one who is a strict anatomist of his own. * * *</p>
+
+<p>"Lord Byron here has splendid apartments in the palace of Count
+Guiccioli, who is one of the richest men in Italy. She is divorced,
+with an allowance of twelve thousand crowns a year;&mdash;a miserable
+pittance from a man who has a hundred and twenty thousand a year.
+There are two monkeys, five cats, eight dogs, and ten horses, all
+of whom (except the horses) walk about the house like the masters
+of it. Tita, the Venetian, is here, and operates as my valet&mdash;a
+fine fellow, with a prodigious black beard, who has stabbed two or
+three people, and is the most good-natured-looking fellow I ever
+saw.</p>
+
+<p>"Wednesday, Ravenna.</p>
+
+<p>"I told you I had written, by Lord Byron's desire,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page222" name="page222"></a>Pg 222</span> to La
+Guiccioli, to dissuade her and her family from Switzerland. Her
+answer is this moment arrived, and my representation seems to have
+reconciled them to the unfitness of the step. At the conclusion of
+a letter, full of all the fine things she says she has heard of me,
+is this request, which I transcribe:&mdash;'Signore, la vostra bont&agrave; mi
+fa ardita di chiedervi un favore, me lo accorderete voi? <i>Non
+partite da Ravenna senza Milord.</i>' Of course, being now, by all the
+laws of knighthood, captive to a lady's request, I shall only be at
+liberty on <i>my parole</i> until Lord Byron is settled at Pisa. I shall
+reply, of course, that the boon is granted, and that if Lord Byron
+is reluctant to quit Ravenna after I have made arrangements for
+receiving him at Pisa, I am bound to place myself in the same
+situation as now, to assail him with importunities to rejoin her.
+Of this there is fortunately no need; and I need not tell you that
+there is no fear that this chivalric submission of mine to the
+great general laws of antique courtesy, against which I never
+rebel, and which is my religion, should interfere with my soon
+returning, and long remaining with you, dear girl. * *</p>
+
+<p>"We ride out every evening as usual, and practise pistol-shooting
+at a pumpkin, and I am not sorry to observe that I approach towards
+my noble friend's exactness of aim. I have the greatest trouble to
+get away, and Lord Byron, as a reason for my stay, has urged, that
+without either me or the Guiccioli, he will certainly fall into his
+old habits. I then talk, and he listens to reason; and I earnestly
+hope that he is too well aware of the terrible and degrading<span class="pagenum"><a id="page223" name="page223"></a>Pg 223</span>
+consequences of his former mode of life, to be in danger from the
+short interval of temptation that will be left him."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 443. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, August 10. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"Your conduct to Mr. Moore is certainly very handsome; and I would
+not say so if I could help it, for you are not at present by any
+means in my good graces.</p>
+
+<p>"With regard to additions, &amp;c. 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 find easy access to all my papers and letters, and do
+<i>not neglect this</i> (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 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.</p>
+
+<p>"You must also have from Mr. Moore the correspondence between me
+and Lady B. to whom I offered the sight of all which regards
+herself in these papers. This is important. He has <i>her</i><span class="pagenum"><a id="page224" name="page224"></a>Pg 224</span> letter,
+and a copy of my answer. I would rather Moore edited me than
+another.</p>
+
+<p>"I sent you Valpy's letter to decide for yourself, and Stockdale's
+to amuse you. <i>I</i> am always loyal with you, as I was in Galignani's
+affair, and <i>you</i> with me&mdash;now and then.</p>
+
+<p>"I return you Moore's letter, which is very creditable to him, and
+you, and me.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours ever."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 444. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, August 16. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"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 *
+* more. One meets with none else among the English.</p>
+
+<p>"I wait the proofs of the MSS. with proper impatience.</p>
+
+<p>"So you have published, or mean to publish, the new Juans? Ar'n't
+you afraid of the Constitutional Assassination of Bridge Street?
+When first I saw the name of <i>Murray</i>, I thought it had been yours;
+but was solaced by seeing that your synonyme is an attorneo, and
+that you are not one of that atrocious crew.</p>
+
+<p>"I am in a great discomfort about the probable war, and with my
+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 robbing is<span class="pagenum"><a id="page225" name="page225"></a>Pg 225</span> the only fair resource left
+to a man of any principles; it is even honest, in comparison, by
+being undisguised.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Love to Gifford. Believe me, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>"P.S. I restore Smith's letter, whom thank for his good opinion. Is
+the bust by Thorwaldsen arrived?"</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 445. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, August 23. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>single circumstance</i> of it not
+taken from <i>fact</i>; not, indeed, from any <i>single</i> shipwreck, but
+all from actual facts of different wrecks<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a>.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page226" name="page226"></a>Pg 226</span> Almost all Don Juan
+is <i>real</i> life, either my own, or from people I knew. By the way,
+much of the description of the <i>furniture</i>, in Canto third, is
+taken from <i>Tully's Tripoli</i> (pray <i>note this</i>), and the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page227" name="page227"></a>Pg 227</span> rest from
+my own observation. Remember, 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. <i>I</i> 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 <i>excellent</i>
+book, I assure you, on Italy) calls Venice an <i>ocean Rome</i>: I have
+the very same expression in Foscari, and yet <i>you</i> know that the
+play was written months ago, and sent to England: the 'Italy' I
+received only on the 16th instant.</p>
+
+<p>"Your friend, like the public, is not aware, that my dramatic
+simplicity is <i>studiously</i> Greek, and must continue so: <i>no</i> reform
+ever succeeded at first<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a>. I admire the old English dramatists;
+but this is quite another field, and has nothing to do with theirs.
+I want to make a <i>regular</i> English drama, no matter whether for the
+stage or not, which is not my object,&mdash;but a <i>mental theatre</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours.</p>
+
+<p>"P.S. Can't accept your courteous offer.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"For Orford and for Waldegrave<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">You give much more than me you gave;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Which is not fairly to behave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i12">My Murray.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page228" name="page228"></a>Pg 228</span>
+<span class="i4">"Because if a live dog, 'tis said,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Be worth a lion fairly sped,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">A <i>live lord</i> must be worth <i>two</i> dead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i12">My Murray.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"And if as the opinion goes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Verse hath a better sale than prose&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Certes, I should have more than those,<br /></span>
+<span class="i12">My Murray.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"But now this sheet is nearly cramm'd,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">So, if <i>you will</i>, <i>I</i> sha'n't be shamm'd,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And if you <i>won't</i>, <i>you</i> may be damn'd,<br /></span>
+<span class="i12">My Murray.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"These matters must be arranged with Mr. Douglas Kinnaird. 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'&mdash;'flat public'&mdash;'don't go
+off'&mdash;'Lordship writes too much'&mdash;won't take advice'&mdash;'declining
+popularity'&mdash;deduction for the trade'&mdash;'make very
+little'&mdash;'generally lose by him'&mdash;'pirated edition'&mdash;'foreign
+edition'&mdash;'severe criticisms,' &amp;c. with other hints and howls for
+an oration, which I leave Douglas, who is an orator, to answer.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry for the Queen, and that's more than you are."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' /><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page229" name="page229"></a>Pg 229</span></p>
+
+<p><b>LETTER 446. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, August 24. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>you</i>, 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 himself (Shakspeare, to wit)&mdash;'that, like a Spartan, I
+would sell my <i>life</i> as <i>dearly</i> as possible'&mdash;it never was my
+intention to turn it to personal, pecuniary account, but to
+bequeath it to a friend&mdash;yourself&mdash;in the event of survivorship. I
+anticipated that period, because we happened to meet, and I urged
+you to make what was possible <i>now</i> by it, for reasons which are
+obvious. It has been no possible <i>privation</i> to me, and therefore
+does not require the acknowledgments you mention. So, for God's
+sake, don't consider it like * * *</p>
+
+<p>"By the way, when you write to Lady Morgan, will you thank her for
+her handsome speeches in her book about <i>my</i> books? I do not know
+her address. Her work is fearless and excellent on the subject of
+Italy&mdash;pray tell her so&mdash;and I know the country. I wish she had
+fallen in with <i>me</i>, I could have told her a thing or two that
+would have confirmed her positions.</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad you are satisfied with Murray, who seems to value dead
+lords more than live ones.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page230" name="page230"></a>Pg 230</span> I have just sent him the following answer
+to a proposition of his,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"For Orford and for Waldegrave, &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"The argument of the above is, that he wanted to 'stint me of my
+sizings,' as Lear says,&mdash;that is to say, <i>not</i> to propose an
+extravagant price for an extravagant poem, as is becoming. Pray
+take his guineas, by all means&mdash;<i>I</i> taught him that. He made me a
+filthy offer of <i>pounds</i> 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 <i>them</i>, as
+votaries of Apollo. I write to you in hurry and bustle, which I
+will expound in my next.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours ever, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>travelling</i>
+lawyer. They do enough, in that way, at home.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, poor Queen I but perhaps it is for the best, if Herodotus's
+anecdote is to be believed.</p>
+
+<p>"Remember me to any friendly Angles of our mutual acquaintance.
+What are you doing? Here I have had my hands full with tyrants and
+their victims. There never <i>was</i> such oppression, even in Ireland,
+scarcely!"</p></div><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page231" name="page231"></a>Pg 231</span></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 447. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, August 31. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"I have received the Juans, which are printed so <i>carelessly</i>,
+especially the fifth Canto, as to be disgraceful to me, and not
+creditable to you. It really must be <i>gone over again</i> with the
+<i>manuscript</i>, the errors are so gross;&mdash;words added&mdash;changed&mdash;so as
+to make cacophony and nonsense. You have been careless of this poem
+because some of your squad don't approve of it; but I tell you that
+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&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"And do not link two virtuous souls for life<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Into that <i>moral centaur</i> man and wife?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"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)&mdash;particularly the stanza upon the Turkish marriages; and
+I request that the whole be carefully gone over with the MS.</p>
+
+<p>"I never saw such stuff as is printed:&mdash;Gu<i>ll</i>eyaz instead of
+Gu<i>lb</i>eyaz, &amp;c. Are you aware that Gulbeyaz is a real name, and the
+other nonsense? I copied the <i>Cantos</i> out carefully, so that there
+is <i>no</i> excuse, as the printer read, or at least <i>prints</i>, the MS.
+of the plays without error.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page232" name="page232"></a>Pg 232</span></p>
+
+<p>"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, <i>it is poetry</i>. Your little envious knot of parson-poets may
+say what they please: time will show that I am not in this instance
+mistaken.</p>
+
+<p>"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 reason to see the infernal torture of words from the
+original. For instance the line&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"And <i>pair</i> their rhymes as Venus yokes her doves&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>is printed</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"And <i>praise</i> their rhymes, &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Also '<i>precarious</i>' for '<i>precocious</i>;' and this line, stanza 133.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"<i>And this strong extreme effect to tire no longer.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Now do turn to the manuscript and see if I ever wrote such a
+<i>line</i>: it is <i>not verse</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"I see in the last two numbers of the Quarterly a strong itching to
+assail me (see the review of 'The Etonian'); let it, and see if
+they sha'n't have enough of it. I do not allude to Gifford, who has
+always been my friend, and whom I do not consider as responsible
+for the articles written by others.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page233" name="page233"></a>Pg 233</span>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours.</p>
+
+<p>"P.S. I presume that you have <i>not</i> lost the <i>stanza</i> to which I
+allude? It was sent afterwards: look over my letters and find it."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 448.<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a> TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"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
+publications) will condemn in me the stupidity of your printer. For
+instance, in the notes to Canto fifth, 'the <i>Adriatic</i> shore of the
+Bosphorus' instead of the <i>Asiatic!!</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"The gods prosper you, and forgive you, for I can't."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 449. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, September 3. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"By Mr. Mawman (a paymaster in the corps, in which you and I are
+privates) I yesterday expedited<span class="pagenum"><a id="page234" name="page234"></a>Pg 234</span> to your address, under cover one,
+two paper books, containing the <i>Giaour</i>-nal, and a thing or two.
+It won't <i>all</i> do&mdash;even for the posthumous public&mdash;but extracts
+from it may. It is a brief and faithful chronicle of a month or
+so&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"If you have got the new Juans, recollect that there are some very
+gross printer's blunders, particularly in the fifth Canto,&mdash;such as
+'praise' for 'pair'&mdash;'precarious' for 'precocious'&mdash;'Adriatic' for
+'Asiatic'&mdash;'case' for 'chase'&mdash;besides gifts of additional words
+and syllables, which make but a cacophonous rhythmus. Put the pen
+through the said, as I would mine through * *'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
+<i>Longitude</i>,' he is in no danger of discovering it.</p>
+
+<p>"I am packing for Pisa&mdash;but direct your letters <i>here</i>, till
+further notice. Yours ever," &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>One of the "paper-books" mentioned in this letter as intrusted to Mr.
+Mawman for me, contained a portion, to the amount of nearly a hundred
+pages, of a prose story, relating the adventures of a young Andalusian
+nobleman, which had been begun by him, at Venice, in 1817. The following
+passage is all I shall extract from this amusing Fragment:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"A few hours afterwards we were very good friends, and a few days<span class="pagenum"><a id="page235" name="page235"></a>Pg 235</span>
+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
+ch&acirc;teau within a few weeks.</p>
+
+<p>"During her journey I received a very affectionate letter from
+Donna Josepha, apprising me of the welfare of herself and my son.
+On her arrival at the ch&acirc;teau, I received another still more
+affectionate, pressing me, in very fond, and rather foolish, terms,
+to join her immediately. As I was preparing to set out from
+Seville, I received a third&mdash;this was from her father, Don Jose di
+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&mdash;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&mdash;she
+replied, by express, that as reason had nothing to do with the
+matter, it was unnecessary to give any&mdash;but that she was an injured
+and excellent woman. I then enquired why she had written to me the
+two preceding affectionate letters, requesting me to come to
+Arragon. She answered, that was because she believed me out of my
+senses&mdash;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&mdash;a strait waistcoat.</p>
+
+<p>"I had nothing to reply to this piece of affection but a
+reiteration of my request for some lights upon<span class="pagenum"><a id="page236" name="page236"></a>Pg 236</span> the subject. I was
+answered that they would only be related to the Inquisition. In the
+mean 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 blamable. My case was
+supposed to comprise all the crimes which could, and several which
+could not, be committed, and little less than an auto-da-f&eacute; was
+anticipated as the result. But let no man say that we are abandoned
+by our friends in adversity&mdash;it was just the reverse. Mine thronged
+around me to condemn, advise, and console me with their
+disapprobation.&mdash;They told me all that was, would, or could be said
+on the subject. They shook their heads&mdash;they exhorted me&mdash;deplored
+me, with tears in their eyes, and&mdash;went to dinner."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 450. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, September 4. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"By Saturday's post, I sent you a fierce and furibund 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Yesterday I received Mr. &mdash;&mdash;, a friend of yours, and because he
+is a friend of <i>yours</i>; and that's more than I would do in an
+<i>English</i> 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 <i>Pisa</i> in a few weeks, and have sent and am<span class="pagenum"><a id="page237" name="page237"></a>Pg 237</span> sending
+off my chattels. It regretted me<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a> 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<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a>, alluded to in my Gilchrist defence.
+Hobhouse will make it out for you, and it will make you laugh, and
+him too, the <i>spelling</i> particularly. The '<i>Mericani</i>,' of whom
+they call me the 'Capo' (or Chief), mean 'Americans,' which is the
+name given in <i>Romagna</i> to a part of the Carbonari; that is to say,
+to the <i>popular</i> part, the <i>troops</i> of the Carbonari. They are
+originally a society of hunters in the forest, who took the name of
+Americans, but at present comprise some thousands, &amp;c.; 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
+would permit. They will rise again some day, for<span class="pagenum"><a id="page238" name="page238"></a>Pg 238</span> these fools of
+the government are blundering: they actually seem to know
+<i>nothing</i>; for they have arrested and banished many of their <i>own</i>
+party, and let others escape who are not their friends.</p>
+
+<p>"What think'st thou of Greece?</p>
+
+<p>"Address to me here as usual, till you hear further from me.</p>
+
+<p>"By Mawman I have sent a Journal to Moore; but it won't do for the
+public,&mdash;at least a great deal of it won't;&mdash;<i>parts</i> may.</p>
+
+<p>"I read over the Juans, which are excellent. Your squad are quite
+wrong; and so you will find by and by. 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 <i>note</i> I enclosed to
+you<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a>, which will explain why I agreed to discontinue it (at
+Madame G&mdash;&mdash;'s request); but<span class="pagenum"><a id="page239" name="page239"></a>Pg 239</span> you are so grand, and sublime, and
+occupied, that one would think, instead of publishing for 'the
+Board of <i>Longitude</i>,' that you were trying to discover it.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me hear that Gifford is <i>better</i>. He can't be spared either by
+you or me."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 451. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, September 12. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"By Tuesday's post, I forwarded, in three packets, the drama of
+Cain in three acts, of which I request the acknowledgment when
+arrived. To the last speech of <i>Eve</i>, in the last act (<i>i.e.</i> where
+she curses Cain), add these three lines to the concluding one&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"May the grass wither from thy foot! the woods<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Deny thee shelter! earth a home! the dust<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">A grave! the sun his light! and Heaven her God!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page240" name="page240"></a>Pg 240</span>
+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
+starting too many of your vagabonds at once. You may give them the
+start, for any thing I care.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you publish my <i>Pulci</i>&mdash;the best thing I ever
+wrote,&mdash;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 <i>can</i>. If ever I <i>do</i> return to England, (which I
+sha'n't, though,) I will write a poem to which 'English Bards,' &amp;c.
+shall be new milk, in comparison. 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!</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;Moore
+idling&mdash;S * * twaddling&mdash;W * * drivelling&mdash;C * * muddling&mdash;* *
+piddling&mdash;B * * quibbling, squabbling, and snivelling. * * will
+<i>do</i>, 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. B * * C * *
+will do better by-and-by, I dare say, if he don't get spoiled by
+green tea, and the praises of Pentonville and Paradise Row. The
+pity of these men is, that they never lived in <i>high life</i>, nor in
+<i>solitude</i>: there is no medium for the knowledge of the <i>busy</i> or
+the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page241" name="page241"></a>Pg 241</span> <i>still</i> world. If admitted into high life for a season, it is
+merely as spectators&mdash;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, <i>quarum partes fuimus</i>. Both of us have
+learnt by this much which nothing else could have taught us.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours.</p>
+
+<p>"P.S. I saw one of your brethren, another of the allied sovereigns
+of Grub Street, the other day, Mawman the Great, by whom I sent due
+homage to your imperial self. To-morrow'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, parsons, scribblers, and loungers.
+Some day I will give you a poetical catalogue of them."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 452. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, September 17. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"The enclosed lines<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a>, as you will directly perceive, are written
+by the Rev. W.L.B * *. Of course it is for <i>him</i> to deny them if
+they are not.</p>
+
+<p>"Believe me yours ever and most affectionately,</p>
+
+<p>"B.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page242" name="page242"></a>Pg 242</span></p>
+
+<p>"P.S. Can you forgive this? It is only a reply to your lines
+against my Italians. Of course I will <i>stand</i> by my lines against
+all men; but it is heart-breaking to see such things in a people as
+the reception of that unredeemed * * * * * * in an oppressed
+country. <i>Your</i> apotheosis is now reduced to a level with his
+welcome, and their gratitude to Grattan is cancelled by their
+atrocious adulation of this, &amp;c. &amp;c. &amp;c."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 453. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, September 19, 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"I am in all the sweat, dust, and blasphemy of an universal packing
+of all my things, furniture, &amp;c. for 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,' 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 <i>casa paterna</i>, or else, for decorum's sake, in a
+convent. As I could not say with Hamlet, 'Get thee to a nunnery,' I
+am preparing to follow them.</p>
+
+<p>"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.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page243" name="page243"></a>Pg 243</span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 English
+visiters; for which reason, after writing for some information
+about houses, upon hearing that there was a colony of English all
+over the cantons of Geneva, &amp;c. I immediately gave up the thought,
+and persuaded the Gambas to do the same.</p>
+
+<p>"By the last post I sent you 'The Irish Avatar,'&mdash;what think you?
+The last line&mdash;'a name never spoke but with curses or jeers'&mdash;must
+run either 'a name only uttered with curses or jeers,' or, 'a
+wretch never named but with curses or jeers.' Be<i>case</i> as <i>how</i>,
+'spoke' is not grammar, except in the House of Commons; and I doubt
+whether we can say 'a name <i>spoken</i>,' for <i>mentioned</i>. I have some
+doubts, too, about 'repay,'&mdash;'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 '<i>reward</i> him with shouts and a smile?'</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page244" name="page244"></a>Pg 244</span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"With respect to what Anna Seward calls 'the liberty of
+transcript,'&mdash;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
+<i>own</i> production, with her <i>own</i> signature, two years after having
+taken a copy, by permission of the authoress&mdash;with regard, 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 licentiousness of Verb and Noun as may tend to 'disparage my
+parts of speech' by the carelessness of the transcribblers.</p>
+
+<p>"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.'
+Therefore, if <i>they</i> meddle with it, it is at <i>their</i> peril. As for
+myself, I will answer any jontleman&mdash;though I by no means recognise
+a 'right of search' into an unpublished production and unavowed
+poem. The same applies to things published <i>sans</i> consent. I hope
+you like, at least, the concluding lines of the <i>Pome</i>?</p>
+
+<p>"What are you doing, and where are you? in England? Nail
+Murray&mdash;nail him to his own<span class="pagenum"><a id="page245" name="page245"></a>Pg 245</span> counter, till he shells out the
+thirteens. Since I wrote to you, I have sent him another
+tragedy&mdash;'Cain' by name&mdash;making three in MS. now in his hands, or
+in the printer's. It is in the Manfred, metaphysical style, and
+full of some Titanic declamation;&mdash;Lucifer being one of the dram.
+pers. 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 <i>not</i> by man till the Mosaic
+period, as, indeed, is proved by the strata of bones found;&mdash;those
+of all unknown animals, and known, being dug out, but none of
+mankind. I have, therefore, supposed Cain to be shown, in the
+<i>rational</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours," &amp;c.</p></div><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page246" name="page246"></a>Pg 246</span></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 454. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"September 20. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"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:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"Ever glorious Grattan! &amp;c. &amp;c. &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>I will tell you what to do. Get me twenty copies of the whole
+carefully and privately printed off, as <i>your</i> lines were on the
+Naples affair. Send me <i>six</i>, and distribute the rest according to
+your own pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>"I am in a fine vein, 'so full of pastime and prodigality!'&mdash;So
+here's to your health in a glass of grog. Pray write, that I may
+know by return of post&mdash;address to me at Pisa. The gods give you
+joy!</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 455 TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, September 20. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"You need not send 'The Blues,' which is a mere buffoonery, never
+meant for publication.<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a></p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page247" name="page247"></a>Pg 247</span></p>
+
+<p>"The papers to which I allude, in case of survivorship, are
+collections of letters, &amp;c. 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, <i>not</i> for the purpose of <i>abusing confidences</i>, nor
+of <i>hurting</i> the feelings of correspondents living, nor 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 Hobhouse 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, &amp;c.&mdash;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 <i>not</i> know, that my
+maternal grandfather (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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page248" name="page248"></a>Pg 248</span> apparent cause, as he was rich,
+respected, and of considerable intellectual resources, hardly forty
+years of age, and not at all addicted to any unhinging vice. It
+was, however, but a strong suspicion, owing to the manner of his
+death and his melancholy temper. The <i>second had</i> 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 afterwards. I think, then, that
+I may call this dejection <i>constitutional</i>. I had always been told
+that I resembled more my maternal grandfather than any of my
+<i>father's</i> family&mdash;that is, in the gloomier part of his temper, for
+he was what you call a good-natured man, and I am not.</p>
+
+<p>"The Journal here I sent to Moore the other day; but as it is a
+mere diary, only <i>parts</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>not</i> on the stage) with the reader.
+The simplicity of plot is intentional, and the avoidance of <i>rant</i>
+also, as also the compression of the speeches in the more severe
+situations. What I seek to show in 'The Foscaris' is the
+<i>suppressed</i> passions, rather than the rant of the present day. For
+that matter&mdash;</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page249" name="page249"></a>Pg 249</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i9">"Nay, if thou'lt mouth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">I'll rant as well as thou&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>would not be difficult, as I think I have shown in my younger
+productions&mdash;<i>not dramatic</i> 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 that subject being so different. How is
+he?&mdash;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
+<i>Reviews</i>, as I can work them at their own weapons.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>"Address to me at <i>Pisa</i>, 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."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 456. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, September 24. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been thinking over our late correspondence, and wish to
+propose to you the following articles for our future:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"1stly. That you shall write to me of yourself, of the health,
+wealth, and welfare of all friends; but of <i>me</i> (<i>quoad me</i>) little
+or nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"2dly. 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 reimbursed for the same.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page250" name="page250"></a>Pg 250</span></p>
+
+<p>"3dly. That you shall not send me any modern, or (as they are
+called) <i>new</i> publications, in <i>English whatsoever</i>, save and
+excepting any writing, prose or verse, of (or reasonably presumed
+to be of) Walter Scott, Crabbe, Moore, Campbell, Rogers, Gifford,
+Joanna Baillie, <i>Irving</i> (the American), Hogg, Wilson (Isle of
+Palms man), or <i>any</i> especial <i>single</i> work of fancy which is
+thought to be of considerable merit; <i>Voyages</i> and <i>Travels</i>,
+provided that they are <i>neither in Greece, Spain, Asia Minor,
+Albania, nor Italy</i>, will be welcome. Having travelled the
+countries mentioned, I know that what is said of them can convey
+nothing farther which I desire to know about them.&mdash;No other
+English works whatsoever.</p>
+
+<p>"4thly. That you send me no periodical works whatsoever&mdash;<i>no</i>
+Edinburgh, Quarterly, Monthly, nor any review, magazine, or
+newspaper, English or foreign, of any description.</p>
+
+<p>"5thly. That you send me no opinions whatsoever, either <i>good</i>,
+<i>bad</i>, or <i>indifferent</i>, of yourself, or your friends, or others,
+concerning any work, or works, of mine, past, present, or to come.</p>
+
+<p>"6thly. That all negotiations in matters of business between you
+and me pass through the medium of the Hon. Douglas Kinnaird, my
+friend and trustee, or Mr. Hobhouse, as 'alter ego,' and tantamount
+to myself during my absence&mdash;or presence.</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page251" name="page251"></a>Pg 251</span> reading:
+who thinks of the <i>grand article of last year</i> in any <i>given
+Review</i>? In the next place, if they regard myself, they tend to
+increase <i>egotism</i>. If favourable, I do not deny that the praise
+<i>elates</i>, and if unfavourable, that the abuse <i>irritates</i>. The
+latter may conduct me to inflict a species of satire which would
+neither do good to you nor to your friends: <i>they</i> may smile <i>now</i>,
+and so may <i>you</i>; 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
+<i>not</i>; 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 legal friends. For the rest, I merely request to be left
+in ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>"The same applies to opinions, <i>good</i>, <i>bad</i>, or <i>indifferent</i>, of
+persons in conversation or correspondence. These do not
+<i>interrupt</i>, but they <i>soil</i> the <i>current</i> of my <i>mind</i>. I am
+sensitive enough, but <i>not</i> till I am <i>troubled</i>; 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 channels in the way
+of extract.</p>
+
+<p>"All these precautions <i>in</i> 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 <i>two years</i> (excepting two or<span class="pagenum"><a id="page252" name="page252"></a>Pg 252</span> three articles cut out
+and sent to <i>you</i> 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 do of Italy, and God knows <i>that</i> is
+little enough, with all your travels, &amp;c. &amp;c. &amp;c. The English
+travellers <i>know Italy as you</i> know Guernsey: how much is <i>that</i>?</p>
+
+<p>"If any thing occurs so violently gross or personal as requires
+notice, Mr. Douglas Kinnaird will let me <i>know</i>; but of <i>praise</i> I
+desire to hear <i>nothing</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"You will say, 'to what tends all this?' I will answer <span class="smcap">that</span>;&mdash;to
+keep my mind <i>free and unbiassed</i> by all paltry and personal
+irritabilities of praise or censure&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>cannot</i> observe these
+conditions, we shall cease to be correspondents,&mdash;but not
+<i>friends</i>, for I shall always be yours ever and truly,</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Byron.</span></p>
+
+<p>"P.S. I have taken these resolutions not from any irritation
+against you or <i>yours</i>, 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 <i>how I wrote there!</i>&mdash;In Italy I am out of the way of
+it too; but latterly, partly through my fault, and partly through
+your kindness in wishing<span class="pagenum"><a id="page253" name="page253"></a>Pg 253</span> to send me the <i>newest</i> and most
+periodical publications, I have had a crowd of Reviews, &amp;c. 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
+<i>this</i> I wish to avoid; for if ever I <i>do</i>, it will be a strong
+production; and I desire peace as long as the fools will keep their
+nonsense out of my way."<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a></p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 457. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"September 27. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"It was not Murray's fault. I did not send the MS. <i>overture</i>, but
+I send it now<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a>, and it may be<span class="pagenum"><a id="page254" name="page254"></a>Pg 254</span> restored;&mdash;or, at any rate, you
+may keep the original, and give any copies you please. I send it,
+as written, and as I <i>read</i> it to you&mdash;I have no other copy.</p>
+
+<p>"By last week's <i>two</i> posts, in two packets, I sent to your
+address, at <i>Paris</i>, a longish poem upon the late Irishism of your
+countrymen in their reception of * * *. Pray, have you received it?
+It is in 'the high Roman fashion,' and full of ferocious phantasy.
+As <i>you</i> could not well take up the matter with Paddy (being of the
+same nest), I have;&mdash;but I hope still that I have done justice to
+his great men and his good heart. As for * * *, you will find it
+laid on with a trowel. I delight in your 'fact historical'&mdash;is it a
+fact?</p>
+
+<p>"Yours, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>"P.S. You have not answered me about Schlegel&mdash;why not? Address to
+me at Pisa, whither I am going, to join the exiles&mdash;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&mdash;suppose a
+joint concern of you and me, like Sternhold and Hopkins!"</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 458. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"September 28. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"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,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page255" name="page255"></a>Pg 255</span>
+as I was ready to give back Lady Melbourne'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 refers to the two periods (1812 and 1814) when my
+marriage with her niece was in contemplation, and will tend to show
+what my real views and feelings were upon that subject.</p>
+
+<p>"You need not be alarmed; the 'fourteen years<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a>' will hardly
+elapse without some mortality amongst us; it is a long lease of
+life to speculate upon. So your 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.</p>
+
+<p>"I also wish to give you a hint or two (as you have really behaved
+very handsomely to Moore in the business, and are a fine fellow in
+your line) for your advantage. <i>If</i> by your own management you can
+extract any of my epistles from Lady &mdash;&mdash;, (* * * * * * *), they
+might be of use in your<span class="pagenum"><a id="page256" name="page256"></a>Pg 256</span> collection (sinking of course the <i>names</i>
+and <i>all such circumstances</i> as might hurt <i>living</i> feelings, or
+<i>those</i> of <i>survivors</i>); they treat of more topics than love
+occasionally.</p>
+
+<p>"I will tell you who may <i>happen</i> to have some letters of mine in
+their possession: Lord Powerscourt, some to his late brother; Mr.
+Long of&mdash;(I forget his place)&mdash;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 <i>Mistress</i> by this
+time, for she had a year or two more than I): <i>they</i> were <i>not</i>
+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 of Charles Gordon, now of
+Dulwich; and some few to Mrs. Chaworth; but these latter are
+probably destroyed or inaccessible.</p>
+
+<p>"I mention these people and particulars merely as <i>chances</i>. Most
+of them have probably destroyed the letters, which in fact are of
+little import, many of them written when very young, and several at
+school and college.</p>
+
+<p>"Peel (the <i>second</i> brother of the Secretary) was a correspondent
+of mine, and also Porter, the son of the Bishop of Clogher; Lord
+Clare a very voluminous one; William Harness (a friend of Milman's)
+another; Charles Drummond (son of the banker); William Bankes (the
+voyager), your friend: R.C. Dallas, Esq.; Hodgson; Henry Drury;
+Hobhouse you were already aware of.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page257" name="page257"></a>Pg 257</span></p>
+
+<p>"I have gone through this long list<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a> of</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"'The cold, the faithless, and the dead,'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>because I know that, like 'the curious in fish-sauce,' you are a
+researcher of such things.</p>
+
+<p>"Besides these, there are other occasional ones to literary men and
+so forth, complimentary, &amp;c. &amp;c. &amp;c. 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, in
+very English Etruscan; for I <i>speak</i> Italian<span class="pagenum"><a id="page258" name="page258"></a>Pg 258</span> very fluently, but
+write it carelessly and incorrectly to a degree."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 459. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"September 29. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"I send you two rough things, prose and verse, not much in
+themselves, but which will show, one of them, 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</p>
+
+<p>"Yours ever and truly,</p>
+
+<p>"B."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Of the two enclosures, mentioned in the foregoing note, one was a letter
+intended to be sent to Lady Byron relative to his money invested in the
+funds, of which the following are extracts:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, Marza 1mo, 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"I have received your message, through my sister's letter, about
+English security, &amp;c. &amp;c. It is considerate, (and true, even,) that
+such is to be found&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"At this distance&mdash;after this absence, and with my utter ignorance
+of affairs and business&mdash;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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page259" name="page259"></a>Pg 259</span> sister and her
+children, I should jump at most expedients.</p>
+
+<p>"What I told you is come to pass&mdash;the Neapolitan war is declared.
+Your funds will fall, and I shall be in consequence ruined. That's
+nothing&mdash;but my blood relations will be so. You and your child are
+provided for. Live and prosper&mdash;I wish so much to both. Live and
+prosper&mdash;you have the means. I think but of my real kin and
+kindred, who may be the victims of this accursed bubble.</p>
+
+<p>"You neither know nor dream of the consequences of this war. It is
+a war of <i>men</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 without being more troubled with me or my correspondence.
+Whatever happens, an individual is little, so the cause is
+forwarded.</p>
+
+<p>"I have no more to say to you on the score of affairs, or on any
+other subject."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The second enclosure in the note consisted of some verses, written by
+him, December 10th, 1820,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page260" name="page260"></a>Pg 260</span> on seeing the following paragraph in a
+newspaper:&mdash;"Lady Byron is this year the lady patroness at the annual
+Charity Ball given at the Town Hall at Hinckley, Leicestershire, and Sir
+G. Crewe, Bart, the principal steward." These verses are full of strong
+and indignant feeling,&mdash;every stanza concluding pointedly with the words
+"Charity Ball,"&mdash;and the thought that predominates through the whole may
+be collected from a few of the opening lines:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"What matter the pangs of a husband and father,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">If his sorrows in exile be great or be small,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So the Pharisee's glories around her she gather,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the Saint patronises her 'Charity Ball.'<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"What matters&mdash;a heart, which though faulty was feeling,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Be driven to excesses which once could appal&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That the Sinner should suffer is only fair dealing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As the Saint keeps her charity back for 'the Ball,'" &amp;c. &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 460. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"September&mdash;no&mdash;October 1. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"I am setting off for Pisa, if a slight incipient intermittent
+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, provided you raised your price upon
+him&mdash;as what Lady Holderness (my sister's grand<span class="pagenum"><a id="page261" name="page261"></a>Pg 261</span>mother, a
+Dutchwoman) used to call Augusta, her <i>Residee Legatoo</i>&mdash;so as to
+provide for us all: <i>my</i> bones with a splendid and larmoyante
+edition, and you with double what is extractable during my
+lifetime.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>one parent</i>, at least,
+an old stager.</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>should</i>, 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 insurances which Murray has sent me. I <i>really
+think</i> you should have more, if I evaporate within a reasonable
+time.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;it is as old as the hills in Italy,) called 'The
+Vision of of Judgment, by Quevedo Redivivus,' with this motto&mdash;</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page262" name="page262"></a>Pg 262</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"'A Daniel come to <i>judgment</i>, yea, a Daniel:<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"In this it is my intent to put the said George's Apotheosis in a
+Whig point of view, not forgetting the Poet Laureate for his
+preface and his other demerits.</p>
+
+<p>"I am just got to the pass where Saint Peter, hearing that the
+royal defunct had opposed Catholic Emancipation, rises up, and,
+interrupting Satan's oration, declares <i>he</i> will change places with
+Cerberus sooner than let him into heaven, while <i>he</i> has the keys
+thereof.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>fit</i> is as if one had got rid of one's body for good and
+all.</p>
+
+<p>"The gods go with you!&mdash;Address to Pisa.</p>
+
+<p>"Ever yours.</p>
+
+<p>"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</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">'When at eve thou rovest<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">By the star thou lovest.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But it was not in a romantic mood, as I should have been once; and
+yet it was a <i>new</i> 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 mountain of lead upon my<span class="pagenum"><a id="page263" name="page263"></a>Pg 263</span> heart,' which I believe to be
+constitutional, and that nothing will remove it but the same
+remedy."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 461. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"October 6. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"By this post I have sent my nightmare to balance the incubus of *
+* *'s impudent anticipation of the Apotheosis of George the Third.
+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.'</p>
+
+<p>"By the last two or three posts I have written to you at length. My
+<i>ague</i> 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&mdash;I am not intemperate in eating or drinking&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"How do <i>you</i> manage? I think you told me, at Venice, that your
+spirits did not keep up without a little claret. I <i>can</i> drink, and
+bear a good deal of wine (as you may recollect in England); but it
+don't exhilarate&mdash;it makes me savage and suspicious, and even
+quarrelsome. Laudanum has a similar effect; but I can take much of
+<i>it</i> without any effect<span class="pagenum"><a id="page264" name="page264"></a>Pg 264</span> at all. The thing that gives me the
+highest spirits (it seems absurd, but true) is a close of
+<i>salts</i>&mdash;I mean in the afternoon, after their effect.<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a> But one
+can't take <i>them</i> like champagne.</p>
+
+<p>"Excuse this old woman's letter; but my <i>lemancholy</i> don't depend
+upon health, for it is just the same, well or ill, or here or
+there.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours," &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 462. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, October 9. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"You will please to present or convey the enclosed poem to Mr.
+Moore. I sent him another copy to Paris, but he has probably left
+that city.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't forget to send me my first act of 'Werner' (if Hobhouse can
+find it amongst my papers)&mdash;send it by the post (to Pisa); and also
+cut out Harriet Lee's 'German's Tale' from the 'Canterbury Tales,'
+and send it in a letter also. I began that tragedy in 1815.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page265" name="page265"></a>Pg 265</span></p>
+
+<p>"By the way, you have a good deal of my prose tracts in MS.? Let me
+have proofs of them <i>all</i> again&mdash;I mean the controversial ones,
+including the last two or three years of time. Another
+question!&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"Send&mdash;Faber's Treatise on the Cabiri.</p>
+
+<p>"Sainte Croix's Myst&egrave;res du Paganisme (scarce, perhaps, but to be
+found, as Mitford refers to his work frequently).</p>
+
+<p>"A common Bible, of a good legible print (bound in russia). I
+<i>have</i> 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,&mdash;that
+is to say, the <i>Old</i> Testament, for the New struck me as a task,
+but the other as a pleasure. I speak as a <i>boy</i>, from the
+recollected impression of that period at Aberdeen in 1796.</p>
+
+<p>"Any novels of Scott, or poetry of the same. Ditto of Crabbe,
+Moore, and the Elect; but none of your curst common-place
+trash,&mdash;unless something<span class="pagenum"><a id="page266" name="page266"></a>Pg 266</span> starts up of actual merit, which may very
+well be, for 'tis time it should."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 463. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"October 20. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"If the errors <i>are</i> in the MS. write me down an ass: they are
+<i>not</i>, and I am content to undergo any penalty if they be. Besides,
+the <i>omitted</i> stanza (last but one or two), sent <i>afterwards</i>, was
+that in the MS. too?</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;a state of war.' It is so with all men. If I come to a
+friend, and say, 'Friend, lend me five hundred pounds,'&mdash;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, &amp;c. &amp;c. &amp;c. &amp;c. &amp;c. honestly
+worth a thousand pounds, you shall have them for five hundred,'
+what does Ditto say? why, he looks at them, he <i>hums</i>, he
+<i>ha's</i>,&mdash;he <i>humbugs</i>, if he can, to get a bargain as cheaply as he
+can, because <i>it is</i> 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,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page267" name="page267"></a>Pg 267</span> and I am only
+sorry that, not being a dog, I can't bite them.</p>
+
+<p>"I am filling another book for you with little anecdotes, to my own
+knowledge, or well authenticated, of Sheridan, Curran, &amp;c. 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours," &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 464. TO MR. ROGERS.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, October 21. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"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 winter, to which all my chattels, furniture, horses,
+carriages, and live stock are already removed, and I am preparing
+to follow.</p>
+
+<p>"The cause of this removal is, shortly, the exile or proscription
+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, &amp;c. to precede me. I
+have not here a seat or a bed hardly, except some jury chairs, and
+tables, and a mattress for the week to come.</p>
+
+<p>"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, is
+spacious: it is on the Arno;) and I have four carriages, and as
+many<span class="pagenum"><a id="page268" name="page268"></a>Pg 268</span> saddle-horses (such as they are in these parts), with all
+other conveniences, at your command, as also their owner. If you
+could 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 <i>San Marco</i>. If you arrive
+first, wait till I come up, which will be (barring accidents) on
+Saturday or Sunday at farthest.</p>
+
+<p>"I presume you are alone in your voyages. Moore is in London
+<i>incog.</i> according to my latest advices from those climes.</p>
+
+<p>"It is better than a lustre (five years and six months and some
+days, more or less) since we met; and, like the man from Tadcaster
+in the farce ('Love laughs at Locksmiths'), 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, Sheridan,
+Curran, &amp;c. &amp;c. almost every body of much name of the old school.
+But 'so am not I, said the foolish fat scullion,' therefore let us
+make the most of our remainder.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me find two lines from you at 'the hostel or inn.'</p>
+
+<p>"Yours ever, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>"B."</p></div><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page269" name="page269"></a>Pg 269</span></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 465. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ravenna, Oct. 28. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"''Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,' and in three hours
+more I have to set out on my way to Pisa&mdash;sitting up all night to
+be sure of rising. I have just made them take off my
+bed-clothes&mdash;blankets inclusive&mdash;in case of temptation from the
+apparel of sheets to my eyelids.</p>
+
+<p>"Samuel Rogers is&mdash;or is to be&mdash;at Bologna, as he writes from
+Venice.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought our Magnifico would 'pound you,' if possible. He is
+trying to 'pound' me, too; but I'll specie the rogue&mdash;or, at least,
+I'll have the odd shillings out of him in keen iambics.</p>
+
+<p>"Your approbation of 'Sardanapalus' is agreeable, for more reasons
+than one. Hobhouse is pleased to think as you do of it, and so do
+some others&mdash;but the 'Arimaspian,' whom, like 'a Gryphon in the
+wilderness,' I will 'follow for his gold' (as I exhorted you to do
+before), did or doth disparage it&mdash;'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.</p>
+
+<p>"I see the way that he and his Quarterly people are tending&mdash;they
+want a <i>row</i> with me, and they shall have it. I only regret that I
+am not in England for the <i>nonce</i>; 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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page270" name="page270"></a>Pg 270</span> the corruption, and
+infamy, and patronage of their master rogues and slave renegadoes,
+if they do once rouse me up,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"'They had better gall the devil, Salisbury.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"I have that for two or three of them, which they had better not
+move me to put in motion;&mdash;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 <i>min</i>ded such
+things. At present, I <i>rate</i> them at their true value; but, from
+natural temper and bile, am not able to keep quiet.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me hear from you on your return from Ireland, which ought to
+be ashamed to see you, after her Brunswick blarney. I am of
+Longman's opinion, that you should allow your friends to liquidate
+the Bermuda claim. Why should you throw away the two thousand
+<i>pounds</i> (of the <i>non</i>-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 <i>your debt</i>&mdash;it was
+a piece of swindling <i>against</i> you. As to * * * *, and the 'what
+noble creatures!<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a><span class="pagenum"><a id="page271" name="page271"></a>Pg 271</span> &amp;c. &amp;c.' it is all very fine and very well,
+but, till you can persuade me that there is <i>no credit</i>, and no
+<i>self-applause</i> to be obtained by being of use to a celebrated man,
+I must retain the same opinion of the human <i>species</i>, which I do
+of our friend M<sup>s</sup>. Spe<i>cie</i>."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>In the month of August, Madame Guiccioli had joined her father at Pisa,
+and was now superintending the preparations at the Casa Lanfranchi,&mdash;one
+of the most ancient and spacious palaces of that city,&mdash;for the
+reception of her noble friend. "He left Ravenna," says this lady, "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 displeasure at this step. 'If your father should be
+recalled,' he said, '<i>I immediately return</i> to Ravenna; and if he is
+recalled <i>previous</i> to my departure, <i>I remain</i>.' 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&mdash;'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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page272" name="page272"></a>Pg 272</span>
+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!"<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id="FNanchor_60_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a></p>
+
+<p>After describing his mode of life while at Ravenna, the lady thus
+proceeds:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"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 actions he was
+continually performing. Many families (in Ravenna principally) owed to
+him the few prosperous days they ever enjoyed. His arrival in that town
+was spoken of as a piece of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page273" name="page273"></a>Pg 273</span> public good fortune, and his departure as a
+public calamity; and this is the life which many attempted to asperse as
+that of a libertine. 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 most
+pure, and rendering homage in his <i>acts</i> to every virtue&mdash;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 excessive 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 contradictions 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."<a name="FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a></p>
+
+<p>At Bologna, according to the appointment made between them, Lord Byron
+and Mr. Rogers met; and the record which this latter gentleman has, in
+his Poem on Italy, preserved of their meeting, conveys so vivid a
+picture of the poet at this period, with, at the same time, so just and
+feeling a tribute to his memory, that, narrowed as my limits are now
+becoming, I cannot refrain from giving the sketch entire.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' /><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page274" name="page274"></a>Pg 274</span></p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"<b>BOLOGNA.</b></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'Twas night; the noise and bustle of the day<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were o'er. The mountebank no longer wrought<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Miraculous cures&mdash;he and his stage were gone;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he who, when the crisis of his tale<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Came, and all stood breathless with hope and fear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sent round his cap; and he who thrumm'd his wire<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And sang, with pleading look and plaintive strain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Melting the passenger. Thy thousand cries <a name="FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So well portray'd and by a son of thine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose voice had swell'd the hubbub in his youth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were hush'd, BOLOGNA, silence in the streets,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The squares, when hark, the clattering of fleet hoofs;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And soon a courier, posting as from far,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Housing and holster, boot and belted coat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And doublet stain'd with many a various soil,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stopt and alighted. 'Twas where hangs aloft<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That ancient sign, the Pilgrim, welcoming<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All who arrive there, all perhaps save those<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Clad like himself, with staff and scallop-shell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Those on a pilgrimage: and now approach'd<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wheels, through the lofty porticoes resounding,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Arch beyond arch, a shelter or a shade<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the sky changes. To the gate they came;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, ere the man had half his story done,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mine host received the Master&mdash;one long used<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To sojourn among strangers, every where<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Go where he would, along the wildest track)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Flinging a charm that shall not soon be lost,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And leaving footsteps to be traced by those<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who love the haunts of Genius; one who saw,<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a id="page275" name="page275"></a>Pg 275</span>
+<span class="i0">Observed, nor shunn'd the busy scenes of life,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But mingled not; and mid the din, the stir,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lived as a separate Spirit.<br /></span>
+<span class="i11">"Much had pass'd<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Since last we parted; and those five short years&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Much had they told! His clustering locks were turn'd<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Grey; nor did aught recall the youth that swam<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From Sestos to Abydos. Yet his voice,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still it was sweet; still from his eye the thought<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Flash'd lightning-like, nor lingered on the way,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Waiting for words. Far, far into the night<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We sat, conversing&mdash;no unwelcome hour,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The hour we met; and, when Aurora rose,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rising, we climb'd the rugged Apennine.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">"Well I remember how the golden sun<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fill'd with its beams the unfathomable gulfs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As on we travell'd, and along the ridge,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Mid groves of cork, and cistus, and wild fig,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His motley household came.&mdash;Not last nor least,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Battista, who upon the moonlight-sea<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Venice had so ably, zealously<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Served, and at parting, thrown his oar away<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To follow through the world; who without stain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had worn so long that honourable badge<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id="FNanchor_63_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The gondolier's, in a Patrician House<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Arguing unlimited trust.&mdash;Not last nor least,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou, though declining in thy beauty and strength,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Faithful Moretto, to the latest hour<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Guarding his chamber-door, and now along<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The silent, sullen strand of MISSOLONGHI<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Howling in grief.<br /></span>
+<span class="i7">"He had just left that Place<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a id="page276" name="page276"></a>Pg 276</span>
+<span class="i0">Of old renown, once in the ADRIAN sea<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">RAVENNA; where from DANTE'S sacred tomb<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He had so oft, as many a verse declares<a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Drawn inspiration; where at twilight-time,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through the pine-forest wandering with loose rein,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wandering and lost, he had so oft beheld<a name="FNanchor_66_66" id="FNanchor_66_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(What is not visible to a poet's eye?)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The spectre-knight, the hell-hounds, and their prey,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The chase, the slaughter, and the festal mirth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Suddenly blasted. 'Twas a theme he loved,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But others claim'd their turn; and many a tower,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shatter'd uprooted from its native rock,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its strength the pride of some heroic age,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Appear'd and vanish'd (many a sturdy steer<a name="FNanchor_67_67" id="FNanchor_67_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yoked and unyoked), while, as in happier days,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He pour'd his spirit forth. The past forgot,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All was enjoyment. Not a cloud obscured<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Present or future.<br /></span>
+<span class="i7">"He is now at rest;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And praise and blame fall on his ear alike,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now dull in death. Yes, BYRON, thou art gone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gone like a star that through the firmament<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shot and was lost, in its eccentric course<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dazzling, perplexing. Yet thy heart, methinks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was generous, noble&mdash;noble in its scorn<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of all things low or little; nothing there<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sordid or servile. If imagined wrongs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pursued thee, urging thee sometimes to do<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Things long regretted, oft, as many know,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">None more than I, thy gratitude would build<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On slight foundations: and, if in thy life<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a id="page277" name="page277"></a>Pg 277</span>
+<span class="i0">Not happy, in thy death thou surely wert,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy wish accomplish'd; dying in the land<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where thy young mind had caught ethereal fire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dying in GREECE, and in a cause so glorious!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">"They in thy train&mdash;ah, little did they think,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As round we went, that they so soon should sit<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mourning beside thee, while a Nation mourn'd,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Changing her festal for her funeral song;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That they so soon should hear the minute-gun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As morning gleam'd on what remain'd of thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Roll o'er the sea, the mountains, numbering<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy years of joy and sorrow.<br /></span>
+<span class="i12">"Thou art gone;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he who would assail thee in thy grave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, let him pause! For who among us all,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tried as thou wert&mdash;even from thine earliest years,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When wandering, yet unspoilt, a highland boy&mdash;Tried<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">as thou wert, and with thy soul of flame;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pleasure, while yet the down was on thy cheek,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Uplifting, pressing, and to lips like thine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her charmed cup&mdash;ah, who among us all<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Could say he had not err'd as much, and more?"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>On the road to Bologna he had met with his early and dearest friend,
+Lord Clare, and the following description of their short interview is
+given in his "Detached Thoughts."</p>
+
+<p>"Pisa, November 5. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"'There is a strange coincidence sometimes in the little things of this
+world, Sancho,' says Sterne in a letter (if I mistake not), and so I
+have often found it.</p>
+
+<p>"Page 128. article 91. of this collection, I had alluded to my friend
+Lord Clare in terms such as my feelings suggested. About a week or two
+after<span class="pagenum"><a id="page278" name="page278"></a>Pg 278</span>wards 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.</p>
+
+<p>"This meeting annihilated for a moment all the years between the present
+time and the days of <i>Harrow</i>. It was a new and inexplicable feeling,
+like rising from the grave, to me. Clare, too, was much agitated&mdash;more
+in <i>appearance</i> than was 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 on 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 Bologna, because
+the people with whom he was travelling could not wait longer.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not speak from personal experience only, but from all I have ever
+heard of him from others, during absence and distance."</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page279" name="page279"></a>Pg 279</span></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>After remaining a day at Bologna, Lord Byron crossed the Apennines with
+Mr. Rogers; and I find the following note of their visit together to the
+Gallery at Florence:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I revisited the Florence Gallery, &amp;c. My former impressions were
+confirmed; but there were too many visiters there to allow one to <i>feel</i>
+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 Rogers that it 'felt like being in the watchhouse.' I
+left him to make his obeisances to some of his acquaintances, and
+strolled on alone&mdash;the only four minutes I could snatch of any feeling
+for the works around me. I do not mean to apply this to a <i>t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te</i>
+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
+<span class="smcap">former</span> I have not much,) but to the crowd of jostling starers and
+travelling talkers around me.</p>
+
+<p>"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,'&mdash;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.'</p>
+
+<p>"In the Pitti Palace, I did not omit Goldsmith's prescription 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.'"</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page280" name="page280"></a>Pg 280</span></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 466. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Pisa, November 3. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"The two passages cannot be altered without making Lucifer talk
+like the Bishop of Lincoln, which would not be in the character of
+the former. The notion is from Cuvier (that of the <i>old worlds</i>),
+as I have explained in an additional note to the preface. The other
+passage is also in character: if <i>nonsense</i>, 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,' &amp;c. do you really think such
+things ever led any body astray? Are these people more impious than
+Milton's Satan? or the Prometheus of &AElig;schylus? or even than the
+Sadducees of * *, the 'Fall of Jerusalem' * *? Are not Adam, Eve,
+Adah, and Abel, as pious as the catechism?</p>
+
+<p>"Gifford is too wise a man to think that such things can have any
+<i>serious</i> effect: <i>who</i> 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 kingdom, &amp;c. it would
+<i>elate</i> him: the object of the Demon is to <i>depress</i> 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 <i>internal</i>
+irritation, <i>not</i> premeditation, or envy of <i>Abel</i> (which would
+have made him contemptible), but from the rage and fury<span class="pagenum"><a id="page281" name="page281"></a>Pg 281</span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"His subsequent remorse is the natural effect of looking on his
+sudden deed. Had the <i>deed</i> been <i>premeditated</i>, his repentance
+would have been tardier.</p>
+
+<p>"Either dedicate it to Walter Scott, or, if you think he would like
+the dedication of 'The Foscaris' better, put the dedication to 'The
+Foscaris.' Ask him which.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>recast</i> any thing. I am like the tiger: if
+I miss the first spring, I go grumbling back to my jungle again;
+but if I do <i>hit</i>, it is crushing. * * * 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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
+<i>himself</i> for <i>thirteen years</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"The bust is not <i>my</i> property, but <i>Hobhouse</i>'s. I addressed it to
+you as an Admiralty man, great at the Custom-house. Pray deduct the
+expenses of the same, and all others.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours," &amp;c.</p></div><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page282" name="page282"></a>Pg 282</span></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 467. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Pisa, Nov. 9. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>never read</i> 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 <i>good</i> to <i>him</i>, who is a better judge than you or I.</p>
+
+<p>"Enclosed is a lyrical drama, (entitled 'A Mystery,' from its
+subject,) which, perhaps may arrive in time for the volume. You
+will find <i>it pious</i> enough, I trust,&mdash;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 <i>acts</i>,
+but called what I have sent <i>Part First</i>, 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.</p>
+
+<p>"I desire you to acknowledge the arrival of this packet by return
+of post, if you can conveniently, with a proof.</p>
+
+<p>"Your obedient, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><a id="page283" name="page283"></a>Pg 283</span>
+allowed that each is of a different kind, and in a different style;
+so that, including the prose and the Don Juans, &amp;c. I have at least
+sent you <i>variety</i> during the last year or two."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 468. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Pisa, November 16. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"There is here Mr. * *, an Irish genius, with whom we are
+acquainted. He hath written a really <i>excellent</i> Commentary on
+Dante, 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
+ventured delicately to hint,&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"But he is eager to publish all, and must be gratified, though the
+Reviewers will make him suffer more tortures than there are in his
+original. Indeed, the <i>Notes</i> are well worth publication; but he
+insists upon the translation 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, what shall we do for him? He says that he will risk part of
+the expense with the publisher.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page284" name="page284"></a>Pg 284</span> He will never rest till he is
+published and abused&mdash;for he has a high opinion of himself&mdash;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 <i>not</i> 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&mdash;the text
+is too tempting. * *</p>
+
+<p>"I have to thank you again, as I believe I did before, for your
+opinion of 'Cain,' &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>"You are right to allow &mdash;&mdash; to settle the claim; but I do not see
+why you should repay him out of your <i>legacy</i>&mdash;at least, not
+yet.<a name="FNanchor_68_68" id="FNanchor_68_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a> If you <i>feel</i> 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&mdash;that is, not till they make me.</p>
+
+<p>"I address this to you at Paris, as you desire. Reply soon, and
+believe me ever, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>"P.S. What I wrote to you about low spirits is, however, very true.
+At present, owing to the climate, &amp;c. (I can walk down into my
+garden, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page285" name="page285"></a>Pg 285</span> pluck my own oranges,&mdash;and, by the way, have got a
+diarrh&#339;a in consequence of indulging in this meridian luxury of
+proprietorship,) my spirits are much better. You seem to think that
+I could not have written the 'Vision,' &amp;c. under the influence of
+low spirits; but I think there you err.<a name="FNanchor_69_69" id="FNanchor_69_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a> A man's poetry is a
+distinct faculty, or Soul, and has no more to do with the every-day
+individual than the Inspiration with the Pythoness when removed
+from her tripod."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The correspondence which I am now about to insert, though long since
+published by the gentleman with whom it originated<a name="FNanchor_70_70" id="FNanchor_70_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a>, will, I have no
+doubt, even by those already acquainted with all the circumstances, be
+reperused with pleasure; as, among the many strange and affecting
+incidents with which these pages abound, there is not one, perhaps, so
+touching and singular as that to which the following letters refer.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page286" name="page286"></a>Pg 286</span><b>TO LORD BYRON.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Frome, Somerset, November 21. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"My Lord,</p>
+
+<p>"More than two years since, a lovely and beloved wife was taken
+from me, by lingering disease, after a very short union. She
+possessed unvarying gentleness and fortitude, and a piety so
+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 mention your agility on the
+rocks at Hastings.</p>
+
+<p>"'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
+transcendant 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 procure! Do Thou grant that his future example
+may be productive of far more<span class="pagenum"><a id="page287" name="page287"></a>Pg 287</span> extensive benefit than his past
+conduct and writings have been of evil; and may the Sun 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,
+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!&mdash;Cheer me in the path of duty;&mdash;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,
+deprived of the grand fountain of good, (a deep conviction of
+inborn sin, and firm belief in the efficacy of Christ's death for
+the salvation of those who trust in him, and really wish to serve
+him,) would soon dry up, and leave us barren of every virtue as
+before.</p>
+
+<p>"'July 31. 1814&mdash;Hastings.'</p>
+
+<p>"There is nothing, my Lord, in this extract which, in a literary
+sense, can <i>at all</i> interest you; but it may, perhaps, appear to
+you worthy of reflection how deep and expansive a concern for the
+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. Delamartine; but here is the
+<i>sublime</i>, my Lord;<span class="pagenum"><a id="page288" name="page288"></a>Pg 288</span> for this intercession was offered, on your
+account, to the supreme <i>Source</i> of happiness. It sprang from a
+faith more confirmed than that of the French poet: and from a
+charity which, in combination with faith, showed 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.</p>
+
+<p>"It would add <i>nothing</i>, 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.</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">John Sheppard.</span>"</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>However romantic, in the eyes of the cold and worldly, the piety of this
+young person may appear, it were to be wished that the truly Christian
+feeling which dictated her prayer were more common among all who profess
+the same creed; and that those indications of a better nature, so
+visible even through the clouds of his character, which induced this
+innocent young woman to pray for Byron, while living, could have the
+effect of inspiring others with more charity towards his memory, now
+that he is dead.</p>
+
+<p>The following is Lord Byron's answer to this affecting communication.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page289" name="page289"></a>Pg 289</span></p>
+
+<p><b>LETTER 469. TO MR. SHEPPARD.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Pisa, December 8. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"Sir,</p>
+
+<p>"I have received your letter. I need not say, that the extract
+which it contains has affected me, because it would imply a want of
+all feeling to have read it with indifference. Though I am not
+quite <i>sure</i> that it was intended by the writer for <i>me</i>, 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 <i>pleasure</i>&mdash;because your brief
+and simple picture of the life and demeanour of the excellent
+person whom I trust you will again meet, cannot be contemplated
+without 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 reading 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 believers in the Gospel have a great
+advantage over all others,&mdash;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 de<span class="pagenum"><a id="page290" name="page290"></a>Pg 290</span>pend upon <i>himself</i>: <i>who</i> can say, I <i>will</i> believe this,
+that, or the other? and least of all, that which he least can
+comprehend. 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 this point of view, I would not
+exchange the prayer of the deceased in my behalf for the united
+glory of Homer, C&aelig;sar, and Napoleon, could such be accumulated upon
+a living head. Do me at least the justice to suppose, that</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"'Video meliora proboque,'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>however the 'deteriora sequor' may have been applied to my conduct.</p>
+
+<p>"I have the honour to be</p>
+
+<p>"Your obliged and obedient servant,</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Byron.</span></p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page291" name="page291"></a>Pg 291</span></p>
+
+<p>"P.S. I do not know that I am addressing a clergyman; 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."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 470. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Pisa, December 4. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"By extracts in the English papers,&mdash;in your holy ally, Galignani's
+'Messenger,'&mdash;I perceive that 'the two greatest examples of human
+vanity in the present age' are, firstly, 'the ex-Emperor Napoleon,'
+and, secondly, 'his Lordship, &amp;c. the noble poet,'meaning your
+humble servant, 'poor guiltless I.'</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Napoleon! he little dreamed to what vile comparisons the turn
+of the wheel would reduce him!</p>
+
+<p>"I have got here into a famous old feudal palazzo, on 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
+<i>new</i> 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 <i>walled up</i>; for there is but one possible passage,
+broken through the wall, and then<span class="pagenum"><a id="page292" name="page292"></a>Pg 292</span> meant to be closed again upon
+the inmate. The house belonged to the Lanfranchi family, (the same
+mentioned by Ugolino in his dream, as his persecutor with
+Sismondi,) and has had a fierce owner or two in its time. The
+staircase, &amp;c. is said to have been built by Michel Agnolo. It is
+not yet cold enough for a fire. What a climate!</p>
+
+<p>"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 (<i>myself</i>); 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours," &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 471. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Pisa, December 10. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"I have remarked a curious coincidence, which almost looks like a
+fatality.</p>
+
+<p>"My <i>mother</i>, my <i>wife</i>, my <i>daughter</i>, my <i>half-sister</i>, my
+<i>sisters mother</i>, my <i>natural daughter</i> (as far at least as <i>I</i> am
+concerned), and <i>myself</i>, are all only children.</p>
+
+<p>"My father, by his first marriage with Lady Conyers (an only
+child), had only my sister; and by his second marriage with an only
+child, an only<span class="pagenum"><a id="page293" name="page293"></a>Pg 293</span> child again. Lady Byron, as you know, was one also,
+and so is my daughter, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>"Is not this rather odd&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours, &amp;c. B."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 472. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Pisa, December 12. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;that is, of good
+<i>serious</i> humour, so as not to let the cat out of the bag.<a name="FNanchor_71_71" id="FNanchor_71_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a> I
+wish <i>you</i> would undertake it. I will forgive and <i>indulge</i> you
+(like a Pope) beforehand, for any thing ludicrous, that might keep
+those fools in their own dear belief that a man is a <i>loup garou</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose I told you that the Giaour story had actually some
+foundation on facts; or, if I did not,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page294" name="page294"></a>Pg 294</span> you will one day find it in
+a letter of Lord Sligo's, written to me <i>after</i> 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 <i>real</i> 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 <i>real</i> adventures is that they
+involve living people&mdash;else Mrs. &mdash;&mdash;'s, &mdash;&mdash;'s, &amp;c. are as 'german
+to the matter' as Mr. Maturin could desire for his novels. * * * *</p>
+
+<p>"The consummation you mentioned for poor * * was near taking place
+yesterday. Riding pretty sharply after Mr. Medwin and myself, in
+turning the corner of a lane between Pisa and the hills, he was
+spilt,&mdash;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 a-head 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&mdash;the usual excuse of floored equestrians. As * *
+piques himself upon his horsemanship, and his horse is really a
+pretty horse enough, I long for his personal narrative,&mdash;as I never
+yet met the man who would <i>fairly claim a tumble</i> as his own
+property.</p>
+
+<p>"Could not you send me a printed copy of the 'Irish Avatar?'&mdash;I do
+not know what has become of Rogers since we parted at Florence.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't let the Angles keep you from writing. Sam told me that you
+were somewhat dissipated in<span class="pagenum"><a id="page295" name="page295"></a>Pg 295</span> Paris, which I can easily believe. Let
+me hear from you at your best leisure.</p>
+
+<p>"Ever and truly, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>"P.S. December 13.</p>
+
+<p>"I enclose you some lines written not long ago, which you may do
+what you like with, as they are very harmless.<a name="FNanchor_72_72" id="FNanchor_72_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a> 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.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page296" name="page296"></a>Pg 296</span></p>
+
+<p>"You must really get * * published&mdash;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 <i>man</i> from being <i>burnt</i>. 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. * * is gone
+to see what can be done.</p>
+
+<p>"B."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 473. TO MR. SHELLEY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"December 12. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Shelley,</p>
+
+<p>"Enclosed is a note for you from &mdash;&mdash;. 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 <i>remonstrance</i> is of course out of the question; but I do
+not see why a <i>temperate</i> remonstrance 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 interfere.
+But, as he goes to-morrow, you must be quick, or it will be
+useless. Make any use of my name that you please.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours ever," &amp;c</p></div><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page297" name="page297"></a>Pg 297</span></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 474. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I send you the two notes, which will tell you the story I allude
+to of the Auto da F&egrave;. Shelley's allusion to his 'fellow-serpent' 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."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>TO LORD BYRON.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Two o'clock, Tuesday Morning.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Lord,</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>every
+way</i> that I can imagine may have any success. Be assured of this.</p>
+
+<p>"Your Lordship's most truly,</p>
+
+<p>"* *.</p>
+
+<p>"P.S. To prevent <i>bavardage</i>, 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 in every way, both
+as to authority and truth."</p></div><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page298" name="page298"></a>Pg 298</span></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>TO LORD BYRON.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Thursday Morning.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Lord Byron,</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Ever faithfully yours,</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">P.B. Shelley.</span>"</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 475. TO SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Pisa, January 12. 1822.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Sir Walter,</p>
+
+<p>"I need not say how grateful I am for your letter, but I must own
+my ingratitude in not having written to you again long ago. Since I
+left England (and it is not for all the usual term of
+transportation) I have scribbled to five hundred blockheads on
+business, &amp;c. without difficulty, though with no great pleasure;
+and yet, with the notion of addressing you a hundred times in my
+head, and always in my heart, I have not done what I ought to have
+done. I can only account for it on the same principle of tremulous
+anxiety with which one sometimes makes love to a beautiful woman of
+our own degree, with whom one is enamoured in good earnest;
+whereas, we<span class="pagenum"><a id="page299" name="page299"></a>Pg 299</span> attack a fresh-coloured housemaid without (I speak, of
+course, of earlier times) any sentimental remorse or mitigation of
+our virtuous purpose.</p>
+
+<p>"I owe to you far more than the usual obligation for the courtesies
+of literature and common friendship; for you went out of your way
+in 1817 to do me a service, when it required not merely kindness,
+but courage to do so: to have been recorded by you in such a
+manner, would have been a proud memorial at any time, but at such a
+time when 'all the world and his wife,' as the proverb goes, were
+trying to trample upon me, was something still higher to my
+self-esteem,&mdash;I allude to the Quarterly Review of the Third Canto
+of Childe Harold, which Murray told me was written by you,&mdash;and,
+indeed, I should have known it without his information, as there
+could not be two who <i>could</i> and <i>would</i> have done this at the
+time. Had it been a common criticism, however eloquent or
+panegyrical, I should have felt pleased, undoubtedly, and grateful,
+but not to the extent which the extraordinary good-heartedness of
+the whole proceeding must induce in any mind capable of such
+sensations. The very <i>tardiness</i> of this acknowledgment will, at
+least, show that I have not forgotten the obligation; and I can
+assure you that my sense of it has been out at compound interest
+during the delay. I shall only add one word upon the subject, which
+is, that I think that you, and Jeffrey, and Leigh Hunt were the
+only literary men, of numbers whom I know (and some of whom I had
+served), who dared venture even an anonymous word in my favour just
+then: and that, of those three, I<span class="pagenum"><a id="page300" name="page300"></a>Pg 300</span> had never seen <i>one</i> at all&mdash;of
+the second much less than I desired&mdash;and that the third was under
+no kind of obligation to me, whatever; while the other <i>two</i> had
+been actually attacked by me on a former occasion; <i>one</i>, indeed,
+with some provocation, but the other wantonly enough. So you see
+you have been heaping 'coals of fire, &amp;c.' in the true gospel
+manner, and I can assure you that they have burnt down to my very
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad that you accepted the Inscription. I meant to have
+inscribed 'The Foscarini' to you instead; but first, I heard that
+'Cain' was thought the least bad of the two as a composition; and,
+2dly, I have abused S * * like a pickpocket, in a note to the
+Foscarini, and I recollected that he is a friend of yours (though
+not of mine), and that it would not be the handsome thing to
+dedicate to one friend any thing containing such matters about
+another. However, I'll work the Laureate before I have done with
+him, as soon as I can muster Billingsgate therefor. I like a row,
+and always did from a boy, in the course of which propensity, I
+must needs say, that I have found it the most easy of all to be
+gratified, personally and poetically. You disclaim 'jealousies;'
+but I would ask, as Boswell did of Johnson, 'of <i>whom could</i> you be
+<i>jealous</i>?'&mdash;of none of the living certainly, and (taking all and
+all into consideration) of which of the dead? I don't like to bore
+you about the Scotch novels, (as they call them, though two of them
+are wholly English, and the rest half so,) but nothing can or could
+ever persuade me, since I was the first ten minutes in<span class="pagenum"><a id="page301" name="page301"></a>Pg 301</span> your
+company, that you are <i>not</i> the man. To me those novels have so
+much of 'Auld lang syne' (I was bred a canny Scot till ten years
+old) that I never move without them; and when I removed from
+Ravenna to Pisa the other day, and sent on my library before, they
+were the only books that I kept by me, although I already have them
+by heart.</p>
+
+<p>"January 27. 1822.</p>
+
+<p>"I delayed till now concluding, in the hope that I should have got
+'The Pirate,' who is under way for me, but has not yet hove in
+sight. I hear that your daughter is married, and I suppose by this
+time you are half a grandfather&mdash;a young one, by the way. I have
+heard great things of Mrs. Lockhart's personal and mental charms,
+and much good of her lord: that you may live to see as many novel
+Scotts as there are Scots' novels, is the very bad pun, but sincere
+wish of</p>
+
+<p>"Yours ever most affectionately, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>"P.S. Why don't you take a turn in Italy? You would find yourself
+as well known and as welcome as in the Highlands among the natives.
+As for the English, you would be with them as in London; and I need
+not add, that I should be delighted to see you again, which is far
+more than I shall ever feel or say for England, or (with a few
+exceptions 'of kith, kin, and allies') any thing that it contains.
+But my 'heart warms to the tartan,' or to any thing of Scotland,
+which reminds me of Aberdeen and other parts, not so far from the
+Highlands as that town, about Invercauld and Braemar, where I was
+sent to drink<span class="pagenum"><a id="page302" name="page302"></a>Pg 302</span> goat's <i>fey</i> in 1795-6, in consequence of a
+threatened decline after the scarlet fever. But I am gossiping, so,
+good night&mdash;and the gods be with your dreams!</p>
+
+<p>"Pray, present my respects to Lady Scott, who may, perhaps,
+recollect having seen me in town in 1815.</p>
+
+<p>"I see that one of your supporters (for like Sir Hildebrand, I am
+fond of Guillin) is a <i>mermaid</i>; it is my <i>crest</i> too, and with
+precisely the same curl of tail. There's concatenation for you:&mdash;I
+am building a little cutter at Genoa, to go a cruising in the
+summer. I know <i>you</i> like the sea too."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 476. TO &mdash;&mdash;.</b><a name="FNanchor_73_73" id="FNanchor_73_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Pisa, February 6. 1822.</p>
+
+<p>"'Try back the deep lane,' till we find a publisher for the
+'Vision;' and if none such is to be found, print fifty copies at my
+expense, distribute them amongst my acquaintance, and you will soon
+see that the booksellers <i>will</i> publish them, even if we opposed
+them. That they are now afraid is natural, but I do not see that I
+ought to give way on that account. I know nothing of Rivington's
+'Remonstrance' by the 'eminent Churchman;' but I suppose he wants a
+living. I once heard of a preacher at Kentish Town against 'Cain.'
+The same outcry was raised against Priestley, Hume, Gibbon,
+Vol<span class="pagenum"><a id="page303" name="page303"></a>Pg 303</span>taire, and all the men who dared to put tithes to the question.</p>
+
+<p>"I have got S&mdash;&mdash;'s pretended reply, to which I am surprised that
+you do not allude. What remains to be done is to call him out. The
+question is, would he come? for, if he would not, the whole thing
+would appear ridiculous, if I were to take a long and expensive
+journey to no purpose.</p>
+
+<p>"You must be my second, and, as such, I wish to consult you.</p>
+
+<p>"I apply to you, as one well versed in the duello, or monomachie.
+Of course I shall come to England as privately as possible, and
+leave it (supposing that I was the survivor) in the same manner;
+having no other object which could bring me to that country except
+to settle quarrels accumulated during my absence.</p>
+
+<p>"By the last post I transmitted to you a letter upon some Rochdale
+toll business, from which there are moneys in prospect. My agent
+says two thousand pounds, but supposing it to be only one, or even
+one hundred, still they may be moneys; and I have lived long enough
+to have an exceeding respect for the smallest current coin of any
+realm, or the least sum, which, although I may not want it myself,
+may do something for others who may need it more than I.</p>
+
+<p>"They say that 'Knowledge is Power:'&mdash;I used to think so; but I now
+know that they meant '<i>money</i>:' and when Socrates declared, 'that
+all he knew was, that he knew nothing,' he merely intended to
+declare, that he had not a drachm in the Athenian world.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page304" name="page304"></a>Pg 304</span></p>
+
+<p>"The <i>circulars</i> are arrived, and circulating like the vortices (or
+vortexes) of Descartes. Still I have a due care of the needful, and
+keep a look out ahead, as my notions upon the score of moneys
+coincide with yours, and with all men's who have lived to see that
+every guinea is a philosopher's stone, or at least his
+<i>touch</i>-stone. You will doubt me the less, when I pronounce my firm
+belief, that <i>Cash</i> is <i>Virtue</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot reproach myself with much expenditure: my only extra
+expense (and it is more than I have spent upon myself) being a loan
+of two hundred and fifty pounds to &mdash;&mdash;; and fifty pounds worth of
+furniture, which I have bought for him; and a boat which I am
+building for myself at Genoa, which will cost about a hundred
+pounds more.</p>
+
+<p>"But to return. I am determined to have all the moneys I can,
+whether by my own funds, or succession, or lawsuit, or MSS. or any
+lawful means whatever.</p>
+
+<p>"I will pay (though with the sincerest reluctance) my remaining
+creditors, and every man of law, by instalments from the award of
+the arbitrators.</p>
+
+<p>"I recommend to you the notice in Mr. Hanson's letter, on the
+demands of moneys for the Rochdale tolls.</p>
+
+<p>"Above all, I recommend my interests to your honourable worship.</p>
+
+<p>"Recollect, too, that I expect some moneys for the various MSS. (no
+matter what); and, in short, 'Rem <i>quocunque modo</i>, Rem!'&mdash;the
+noble feeling of cupidity grows upon us with our years.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours ever," &amp;c.</p></div>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page305" name="page305"></a>Pg 305</span></p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 477. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Pisa, February 8. 1822.</p>
+
+<p>"Attacks upon me were to be expected, but I perceive one upon <i>you</i>
+in the papers, which I confess that I did not expect. How, or in
+what manner, <i>you</i> can be considered responsible for what <i>I</i>
+publish, I am at a loss to conceive.</p>
+
+<p>"If 'Cain' be 'blasphemous,' Paradise Lost is blasphemous; and the
+very words of the Oxford gentleman, 'Evil, be thou my good,' are
+from that very poem, from the mouth of Satan, and is there any
+thing more in that of Lucifer in the Mystery? Cain is nothing more
+than a drama, not a piece of argument. If Lucifer and Cain speak as
+the first murderer and the first rebel may be supposed to speak,
+surely all the rest of the personages talk also according to their
+characters&mdash;and the stronger passions have ever been permitted to
+the drama.</p>
+
+<p>"I have even avoided introducing the Deity as in Scripture, (though
+Milton does, and not very wisely either,) but have adopted his
+angel as sent to Cain instead, on purpose to avoid shocking any
+feelings on the subject by falling short of what all uninspired men
+must fall short in, viz. giving an adequate notion of the effect of
+the presence of Jehovah. The old Mysteries introduced him liberally
+enough, and all this is avoided in the new one.</p>
+
+<p>"The attempt to <i>bully you</i>, because they think it won't succeed
+with me, seems to me as atrocious an attempt as ever disgraced the
+times. What! when Gibbon's, Hume's, Priestley's, and Drummond's<span class="pagenum"><a id="page306" name="page306"></a>Pg 306</span>
+publishers have been allowed to rest in peace for seventy years,
+are you to be singled out for a work of <i>fiction</i>, not of history
+or argument? There must be something at the bottom of this&mdash;some
+private enemy of your own: it is otherwise incredible.</p>
+
+<p>"I can only say, 'Me, me; en adsum qui feci;'&mdash;that any proceedings
+directed against you, I beg, may be transferred to me, who am
+willing, and <i>ought</i>, to endure them all;&mdash;that if you have lost
+money by the publication, I will refund any or all of the
+copyright;&mdash;that I desire you will say that both <i>you</i> and <i>Mr.
+Gifford</i> remonstrated against the publication, as also Mr.
+Hobhouse;&mdash;that <i>I</i> alone occasioned it, and I alone am the person
+who, either legally or otherwise, should bear the burden. If they
+prosecute, I will come to England&mdash;that is, if, by meeting it in my
+own person, I can save yours. Let me know. You sha'n't suffer for
+me, if I can help it. Make any use of this letter you please.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours ever, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>"P.S. I write to you about all this row of bad passions and
+absurdities with the <i>summer</i> moon (for here our winter is clearer
+than your dog-days) lighting the winding Arno, with all her
+buildings and bridges,&mdash;so quiet and still!&mdash;What nothings are we
+before the least of these stars!"</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 478. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Pisa, February 19. 1822.</p>
+
+<p>"I am rather surprised not to have had an answer to my letter and
+packets. Lady Noel is dead, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page307" name="page307"></a>Pg 307</span> it is not impossible that I may
+have to go to England to settle the division of the Wentworth
+property, and what portion Lady B. is to have out of it; all which
+was left undecided by the articles of separation. But I hope not,
+if it can be done without,&mdash;and I have written to Sir Francis
+Burdett to be my referee, as he knows the property.</p>
+
+<p>"Continue to address here, as I shall not go if I can avoid it&mdash;at
+least, not on that account. But I may on another; for I wrote to
+Douglas Kinnaird to convey a message of invitation to Mr. Southey
+to meet me, either in England, or (as less liable to interruption)
+on the coast of France. This was about a fortnight ago, and I have
+not yet had time to have the answer. However, you shall have due
+notice; therefore continue to address to Pisa.</p>
+
+<p>"My agents and trustees have written to me to desire that I would
+take the name directly, so that I am yours very truly and
+affectionately,</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Noel Byron.</span></p>
+
+<p>"P.S. I have had no news from England, except on business; and
+merely know, from some abuse in that faithful <i>ex</i> and <i>de</i>-tractor
+Galignani, that the clergy are up against 'Cain.' There is (if I am
+not mistaken) some good church preferment on the Wentworth estates;
+and I will show them what a good Christian I am, by patronising and
+preferring the most pious of their order, should opportunity occur.</p>
+
+<p>"M. and I are but little in correspondence, and I know nothing of
+literary matters at present. I have been writing on business only
+lately. What are <i>you</i><span class="pagenum"><a id="page308" name="page308"></a>Pg 308</span> about? Be assured that there is no such
+coalition as you apprehend."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 479. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Pisa, February 20. 1822.<a name="FNanchor_74_74" id="FNanchor_74_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_74_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a></p>
+
+<p>"Your letter arrived since I wrote the enclosed. It is not likely,
+as I have appointed agents and arbitrators for the Noel estates,
+that I should proceed to England on that account,&mdash;though I may
+upon another, within stated. At any rate, <i>continue</i> you to address
+here till you hear further from me. I could wish <i>you</i> still to
+arrange for me, either with a London or Paris publisher, for the
+things, &amp;c. I shall not quarrel with any arrangement you may please
+to make.</p>
+
+<p>"I have appointed Sir Francis Burdett my arbitrator to decide on
+Lady Byron's allowance out of the Noel estates, which are estimated
+at seven thousand a year, and <i>rents</i> very well paid,&mdash;a rare thing
+at this time. It is, however, owing to their <i>consisting</i> chiefly
+in pasture lands, and therefore less affected by corn bills, &amp;c.
+than properties in tillage.</p>
+
+<p>"Believe me yours ever most affectionately,</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Noel Byron.</span></p>
+
+<p>"Between my own property in the funds, and my wife's in land, I do
+not know which <i>side</i> to cry out on in politics.</p>
+
+<p>"There is nothing against the immortality of the soul in 'Cain'
+that I recollect. I hold no such opinions;&mdash;but, in a drama, the
+first rebel and the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page309" name="page309"></a>Pg 309</span> first murderer must be made to talk according
+to their characters. However, the parsons are all preaching at it,
+from Kentish Town and Oxford to Pisa;&mdash;the scoundrels of priests,
+who do more harm to religion than all the infidels that ever forgot
+their catechisms!</p>
+
+<p>"I have not seen Lady Noel's death announced in Galignani.&mdash;How is
+that?"</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 480. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Pisa, February 28. 1822.</p>
+
+<p>"I begin to think that the packet (a heavy one) of five acts of
+'Werner,' &amp;c. can hardly have reached you, for your letter of last
+week (which I answered) did not allude to it, and yet I insured it
+at the post-office here.</p>
+
+<p>"I have no direct news from England, except on the Noel business,
+which is proceeding quietly, as I have appointed a gentleman (Sir
+F. Burdett) for my arbitrator. They, too, have said that they will
+recall the <i>lawyer</i> whom <i>they</i> had chosen, and will name a
+gentleman too. This is better, as the arrangement of the estates
+and of Lady B.'s allowance will thus be settled without quibbling.
+My lawyers are taking out a licence for the name and arms, which it
+seems I am to endue.</p>
+
+<p>"By another, and indirect, quarter, I hear that 'Cain' has been
+pirated, and that the Chancellor has refused to give Murray any
+redress. Also, that G.R. (<i>your</i> friend 'Ben') has expressed great
+personal indignation at the said poem. All this is<span class="pagenum"><a id="page310" name="page310"></a>Pg 310</span> curious enough,
+I think,&mdash;after allowing Priestley, Hume, and Gibbon, and
+Bolingbroke, and Voltaire to be published, without depriving the
+booksellers of their rights. I heard from Rome a day or two ago,
+and, with what truth I know not, that * * *.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours," &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 481. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Pisa, March 1. 1822.</p>
+
+<p>"As I still have no news of my 'Werner,' &amp;c. packet, sent to you on
+the 29th of January, I continue to bore you (for the fifth time, I
+believe) to know whether it has not miscarried. As it was fairly
+copied out, it will be vexatious if it be lost. Indeed, I insured
+it at the post-office to make them take more care, and directed it
+regularly to you at Paris.</p>
+
+<p>"In the impartial Galignani I perceive an extract from Blackwood's
+Magazine, in which it is said that there are people who have
+discovered that you and I are no poets. With regard to one of us, I
+know that this north-west passage to <i>my</i> magnetic pole had been
+long discovered by some sages, and I leave them the full benefit of
+their penetration. I think, as Gibbon says of his History, 'that,
+perhaps, a hundred years hence it may still continue to be abused.'
+However, I am far from pretending to compete or compare with that
+illustrious literary character.</p>
+
+<p>"But, with regard to <i>you</i>, I thought that you had always been
+allowed to be <i>a poet</i>, even by the stupid as well as the
+envious&mdash;a bad one, to be sure&mdash;immoral, florid, Asiatic, and
+diabolically popular,&mdash;<span class="pagenum"><a id="page311" name="page311"></a>Pg 311</span>but still always a poet, <i>nem. con.</i> This
+discovery therefore, has to me all the grace of novelty, as well as
+of consolation (according to Rochefoucault), to find myself
+<i>no</i>-poetised in such good company. I am content to 'err with
+Plato;' and can assure you very sincerely, that I would rather be
+received a <i>non</i>-poet with you, than be crowned with all the bays
+of (the <i>yet</i>-uncrowned) Lakers in their society. I believe you
+think better of those worthies than I do. I know them * * * * * *
+*.</p>
+
+<p>"As for Southey, the answer to my proposition of a meeting is not
+yet come. I sent the message, with a short note, to him through
+Douglas Kinnaird, and Douglas's response is not arrived. If he
+accepts, I shall have to go to England; but if not, I do not think
+the Noel affairs will take me there, as the arbitrators can settle
+them without my presence, and there do not seem to be any
+difficulties. The licence for the new name and armorial bearings
+will be taken out by the regular application, in such cases, to the
+Crown, and sent to me.</p>
+
+<p>"Is there a hope of seeing you in Italy again ever? What are you
+doing?&mdash;<i>bored</i> by me, I know; but I have explained <i>why</i> before. I
+have no correspondence now with London, except through relations
+and lawyers and one or two friends. My greatest friend, Lord Clare,
+is at Rome: we met on the road, and our meeting was quite
+sentimental&mdash;<i>really</i> pathetic on both sides. I have always loved
+him better than any <i>male</i> thing in the world."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The preceding was enclosed in that which follows.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page312" name="page312"></a>Pg 312</span></p>
+
+<p><b>LETTER 482. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Pisa, March 4. 1822.</p>
+
+<p>"Since I wrote the enclosed, I have waited another post, and now
+have your answer acknowledging the arrival of the packet&mdash;a
+troublesome one, I fear, to you in more ways than one, both from
+weight external and internal.</p>
+
+<p>"The unpublished things in your hands, in Douglas K.'s, and Mr.
+John Murray's, are, 'Heaven and Earth, a lyrical kind of Drama upon
+the Deluge, &amp;c.;'&mdash;'Werner,' <i>now with you</i>;&mdash;a translation of the
+First Canto of the Morgante Maggiore;&mdash;<i>ditto</i> of an Episode in
+Dante;&mdash;some stanzas to the Po, June 1st, 1819;&mdash;Hints from Horace,
+written in 1811, but a good deal, <i>since</i>, to be omitted;&mdash;several
+prose things, which may, perhaps, as well remain unpublished;&mdash;'The
+Vision, &amp;c. of Quevedo Redivivus' in verse.</p>
+
+<p>"Here you see is 'more matter for a May morning;' but how much of
+this can be published is for consideration. The Quevedo (one of my
+best in that line) has appalled the Row already, and must take its
+chance at Paris, if at all. The new Mystery is less speculative
+than 'Cain,' and very pious; besides, it is chiefly lyrical. The
+Morgante is the <i>best</i> translation that ever was or will be made;
+and the rest are&mdash;whatever you please to think them.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry you think Werner even <i>approaching</i> to any fitness for
+the stage, which, with my notions upon it, is very far from my
+present object. With regard to the publication, I have already
+explained<span class="pagenum"><a id="page313" name="page313"></a>Pg 313</span> that I have no exorbitant expectations of either fame or
+profit in the present instances; but wish them published because
+they are written, which is the common feeling of all scribblers.</p>
+
+<p>"With respect to 'Religion,' can I never convince you that I have
+no such opinions as the characters in that drama, which seems to
+have frightened every body? Yet <i>they</i> are nothing to the
+expressions in Goethe's Faust (which are ten times hardier), and
+not a whit more bold than those of Milton's Satan. My ideas of a
+character may run away with me: like all imaginative men, I, of
+course, embody myself with the character while I draw it, but not a
+moment after the pen is from off the paper.</p>
+
+<p>"I am no enemy to religion, but the contrary. As a proof, I am
+educating my natural daughter a strict Catholic in a convent of
+Romagna; for I think people can never have <i>enough</i> of religion, if
+they are to have any. I incline, myself, very much to the Catholic
+doctrines; but if I am to write a drama, I must make my characters
+speak as I conceive them likely to argue.</p>
+
+<p>"As to poor Shelley, who is another bugbear to you and the world,
+he is, to my knowledge, the <i>least</i> selfish and the mildest of
+men&mdash;a man who has made more sacrifices of his fortune and feelings
+for others than any I ever heard of. With his speculative opinions
+I have nothing in common, nor desire to have.</p>
+
+<p>"The truth is, my dear Moore, you live near the <i>stove</i> of society,
+where you are unavoidably influenced by its heat and its vapours. I
+did so once&mdash;<span class="pagenum"><a id="page314" name="page314"></a>Pg 314</span>and too much&mdash;and enough to give a colour to my whole
+future existence. As my success in society was <i>not</i>
+inconsiderable, I am surely not a prejudiced judge upon the
+subject, unless in its favour; but I think it, as now constituted,
+<i>fatal</i> to all great original undertakings of every kind. I never
+courted it <i>then</i>, when I was young and high in blood, and one of
+its 'curled darlings;' and do you think I would do so <i>now</i>, when I
+am living in a clearer atmosphere? One thing <i>only</i> might lead me
+back to it, and that is, to try once more if I could do any good in
+<i>politics</i>; but <i>not</i> in the petty politics I see now preying upon
+our miserable country.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not let me be misunderstood, however. If you speak your <i>own</i>
+opinions, they ever had, and will have, the greatest weight with
+<i>me</i>. But if you merely <i>echo</i> the 'monde,' (and it is difficult
+not to do so, being in its favour and its ferment,) I can only
+regret that you should ever repeat any thing to which I cannot pay
+attention.</p>
+
+<p>"But I am prosing. The gods go with you, and as much immortality of
+all kinds as may suit your present and all other existence.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours," &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 483. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Pisa, March 6. 1822.</p>
+
+<p>"The enclosed letter from Murray hath melted me; though I think it
+is against his own interest to wish that I should continue his
+connection. You may, therefore, send him the packet of <i>Werner,</i><span class="pagenum"><a id="page315" name="page315"></a>Pg 315</span>
+which will save you all further trouble. And pray, <i>can you</i>
+forgive me for the bore and expense I have already put upon you? At
+least, <i>say</i> so&mdash;for I feel ashamed of having given you so much for
+such nonsense.</p>
+
+<p>"The fact is, I cannot <i>keep</i> my <i>resentments,</i> though violent
+enough in their onset. Besides, now that all the world are at
+Murray on my account, I neither can nor ought to leave him; unless,
+as I really thought, it were better for <i>him</i> that I should.</p>
+
+<p>"I have had no other news from England, except a letter from Barry
+Cornwall, the bard, and my old school-fellow. Though I have
+sickened you with letters lately, believe me</p>
+
+<p>"Yours, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>"P.S. In your last letter you say, speaking of Shelley, that you
+would almost prefer the 'damning bigot' to the 'annihilating
+infidel.'<a name="FNanchor_75_75" id="FNanchor_75_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_75_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a> Shelley believes in immortality, however&mdash;but this by
+the way. Do you remember Frederick the Great's answer to the
+remonstrance of the villagers whose curate preached against the
+eternity of hell's torments? It was thus:&mdash;'If my faithful subjects
+of Schrausenhaussen prefer being eternally damned, let them.'</p>
+
+<p>"Of the two, I should think the long sleep better than the agonised
+vigil. But men, miserable as they are, cling so to any thing like
+life, that they probably would prefer damnation to quiet. Besides,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page316" name="page316"></a>Pg 316</span>
+they think themselves so <i>important</i> in the creation, that nothing
+less can satisfy their pride&mdash;the insects!"</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It is Dr. Clarke, I think, who gives, in his Travels, rather a striking
+account of a Tartar whom he once saw exercising a young, fiery horse,
+upon a spot of ground almost surrounded by a steep precipice, and
+describes the wantonness of courage with which the rider, as if
+delighting in his own peril, would, at times, dash, with loose rein,
+towards the giddy verge. Something of the same breathless apprehension
+with which the traveller viewed that scene, did the unchecked daring of
+Byron's genius inspire in all who watched its course,&mdash;causing them, at
+the same moment, to admire and tremble, and, in those more especially
+who loved him, awakening a sort of instinctive impulse to rush forward
+and save him from his own headlong strength. But, however natural it was
+in friends to give way to this feeling, a little reflection upon his now
+altered character might have forewarned them that such interference
+would prove as little useful to him as safe for themselves; and it is
+not without some surprise I look back upon my own temerity and
+presumption in supposing that, let loose as he was now, in the full
+pride and consciousness of strength, with the wide regions of thought
+outstretching before him, any representations that even friendship could
+make would have the power&mdash;or <i>ought</i> to have&mdash;of checking him. As the
+motives, however, by which I was actuated in my remonstrances to him may
+be left to speak for themselves, I shall, without dwelling any<span class="pagenum"><a id="page317" name="page317"></a>Pg 317</span> further
+upon the subject, content myself with laying before the reader a few
+such extracts from my own letters at this period<a name="FNanchor_76_76" id="FNanchor_76_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_76_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a> as may serve to
+explain some allusions in those just given.</p>
+
+<p>In writing to me under the date January 24th, it will be recollected
+that he says&mdash;"be assured that there is no such coalition as you
+apprehend." The following extracts from my previous communication to him
+will explain what this means:&mdash;"I heard some days ago that Leigh Hunt
+was on his way to you with all his family; and the idea seems to be,
+that you and Shelley and he are to conspire together in the Examiner. I
+cannot believe this,&mdash;and deprecate such a plan with all my might. Alone
+you may do any thing; but partnerships in fame, like those in trade,
+make the strongest party answerable for the deficiencies or
+delinquencies of the rest, and I tremble even for you with such a
+bankrupt <i>Co.</i>&mdash;* * *. They are both clever fellows, and Shelley I
+look upon as a man of real genius; but I must again say, that you could
+not give your enemies (the * * *'s, 'et hoc genus omne') a greater
+triumph than by forming such an unequal and unholy alliance. You are,
+single-handed, a match for the world,&mdash;which is saying a good deal, the
+world being, like Briareus, a very many-handed gentleman,&mdash;but, to be
+so, you must stand alone. Recollect that the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page318" name="page318"></a>Pg 318</span> scurvy buildings about St.
+Peter's almost seem to overtop itself."</p>
+
+<p>The notices of Cain, in my letters to him, were, according to their
+respective dates, as follow:&mdash;</p>
+
+
+<p>"September 30. 1821.</p>
+
+<p>"Since writing the above, I have read Foscari and Cain. The former does
+not please me so highly as Sardanapalus. It has the fault of all those
+violent Venetian stories, being unnatural and improbable, and therefore,
+in spite of all your fine management of them, appealing but remotely to
+one's sympathies. But Cain is wonderful&mdash;terrible&mdash;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 &AElig;schylus and his
+Prometheus!&mdash;here is the true spirit both of the Poet&mdash;and the Devil."</p>
+
+
+<p>"February 9. 1822.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not take it into your head, my dear B. that the tide is at all
+turning against you in England. Till I see some symptoms of people
+<i>forgetting</i> you a little, I will not believe that you lose ground. As
+it is, 'te veniente die, te, decedente,'&mdash;nothing is hardly talked of
+but you; and though good people sometimes bless themselves when they
+mention you, it is plain that even <i>they</i> think much more about you
+than, for the good of their souls, they ought. Cain, to be sure, <i>has</i>
+made a sensation; and, grand as it is, I regret, for many reasons, you
+ever wrote it. * * For myself, I would not give up the <i>poetry</i> of
+reli<span class="pagenum"><a id="page319" name="page319"></a>Pg 319</span>gion for all the wisest results that <i>philosophy</i> will ever arrive
+at. Particular sects and creeds are fair game enough for those who are
+anxious enough about their neighbours to meddle with them; but our faith
+in the Future is a treasure not so lightly to be parted with; and the
+dream of immortality (if philosophers will have it a dream) is one that,
+let us hope, we shall carry into our last sleep with us."<a name="FNanchor_77_77" id="FNanchor_77_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_77_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a></p>
+
+
+<p>"February 19. 1822.</p>
+
+<p>"I have written to the Longmans to try the ground, for I do <i>not</i> think
+Galignani the man for you. The only thing he can do is what we can do,
+ourselves, without him,&mdash;and that is, employ an English bookseller.
+Paris, indeed, might be convenient for such refugee works as are set
+down in the <i>Index Expurgatorius</i> of London; and if you have any
+political catamarans to explode, this is your place. But, <i>pray</i>, let
+them be only political ones. Boldness, and even licence, in politics,
+does good,&mdash;actual, present good; but, in religion, it profits neither
+here nor hereafter; and, for myself, such a horror have I of both
+extremes on this subject, that I know not <i>which</i> I hate most, the bold,
+damning bigot, or the bold, annihilating infidel. 'Furiosa res est in
+tenebris impetus;'&mdash;and much as we are in the dark, even the wisest of
+us, upon these matters, a little modesty, in unbelief as well as belief,
+best becomes us. You will easily guess that, in all this, I am thinking
+not so much of you, as of a friend and, at present, com<span class="pagenum"><a id="page320" name="page320"></a>Pg 320</span>panion of yours,
+whose influence over your mind (knowing you as I do, and knowing what
+Lady B. <i>ought</i> to have found out, that you are a person the most
+tractable to those who live with you that, perhaps, ever existed) I own
+I dread and deprecate most earnestly."<a name="FNanchor_78_78" id="FNanchor_78_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_78_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a></p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page321" name="page321"></a>Pg 321</span></p>
+
+<p>"March 16. 1822.</p>
+
+<p>"With respect to our Religious Polemics, I must try to set you right
+upon one or two points. In the first place, I do <i>not</i> identify you with
+the blasphemies of Cain no more than I do myself with the impieties of
+my Mokanna,&mdash;all I wish and implore is that you, who are such a powerful
+manufacturer of these thunderbolts, would not <i>choose</i> subjects that
+make it necessary to launch them. In the next place, were you even a
+decided atheist, I could not (except, perhaps, for the <i>decision</i> which
+is always unwise) blame you. I could only pity,&mdash;knowing from experience
+how dreary are the doubts with which even the bright, poetic view I am
+myself inclined to take of mankind and their destiny is now and then
+clouded. I look upon Cuvier's book to be a most desolating one in the
+conclusions to which it may lead some minds. But the young, the
+simple,&mdash;all those whose hearts one would like to keep unwithered,
+trouble their heads but little about Cuvier. <i>You</i>, however, have
+embodied him in poetry which every one reads; and, like the wind,
+blowing 'where you list,' carry this deadly chill, mixed up with your<span class="pagenum"><a id="page322" name="page322"></a>Pg 322</span>
+own fragrance, into hearts that should be visited only by the latter.
+This is what I regret, and what with all my influence I would deprecate
+a repetition of. <i>Now</i>, do you understand me?</p>
+
+<p>"As to your solemn peroration, 'the truth is, my dear Moore, &amp;c. &amp;c.'
+meaning neither more nor less than that I give into the cant of the
+world, it only proves, alas! the melancholy fact, that you and I are
+hundreds of miles asunder. Could you hear me speak my opinions instead
+of coldly reading them, I flatter myself there is still enough of
+honesty and fun in this face to remind you that your friend Tom
+Moore&mdash;whatever else he may be,&mdash;is no Canter."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 484. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Pisa, March 6. 1822.</p>
+
+<p>"You will long ago have received a letter from me (or should),
+declaring my opinion of the treatment you have met with about the
+recent publication. I think it disgraceful to those who have
+persecuted <i>you</i>. I make peace with you, though our war was for
+other reasons than this same controversy. I have written to Moore
+by this post to forward to you the tragedy of' Werner.' I shall not
+make or propose any present bargain about it or the new Mystery
+till we see if they succeed. If they don't sell (which is not
+unlikely), you sha'n't pay; and I suppose this is fair play, if you
+choose to risk it.</p>
+
+<p>"Bartolini, the celebrated sculptor, wrote to me to desire to take
+my bust: I consented, on condition that he also took that of the
+Countess Guiccioli.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page323" name="page323"></a>Pg 323</span> He has taken both, and I think it will be
+allowed that <i>hers</i> is beautiful. I shall make you a present of
+them both, to show that I don't bear malice, and as a compensation
+for the trouble and squabble you had about Thorwaldsen's. Of my own
+I can hardly speak, except that it is thought very like what I <i>now
+am</i>, which is different from what I was, of course, since you saw
+me. The sculptor is a famous one; and as it was done by <i>his own</i>
+particular request, will be done well, probably.</p>
+
+<p>"What is to be done about * * and his Commentary? He will die if he
+is <i>not</i> published; he will be damned, if he <i>is</i>; but that <i>he</i>
+don't mind. We must publish him.</p>
+
+<p>"All the <i>row</i> about <i>me</i> has no otherwise affected me than by the
+attack upon yourself, which is ungenerous in Church and State: but
+as all violence must in time have its proportionate re-action, you
+will do better by and by. Yours very truly,</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Noel Byron.</span>"</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 485. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Pisa, March 8. 1822.</p>
+
+<p>"You will have had enough of my letters by this time&mdash;yet one word
+in answer to your present missive. You are quite wrong in thinking
+that your '<i>advice</i>' had offended me; but I have already replied
+(if not answered) on that point.</p>
+
+<p>"With regard to Murray, as I really am the meekest and mildest of
+men since Moses (though the public and mine 'excellent wife' cannot
+find it<span class="pagenum"><a id="page324" name="page324"></a>Pg 324</span> out), I had already pacified myself and subsided back to
+Albemarle Street, as my yesterday's <i>ye</i>pistle will have informed
+you. But I thought that I had explained my causes of bile&mdash;at least
+to you. Some instances of vacillation, occasional neglect, and
+troublesome sincerity, real or imagined, are sufficient to put your
+truly great author and man into a passion. But reflection, with
+some aid from hellebore, hath already cured me 'pro tempore;' and,
+if it had not, a request from you and Hobhouse would have come upon
+me like two out of the 'tribus Anticyris,'&mdash;with which, however,
+Horace despairs of purging a poet. I really feel ashamed of having
+bored you so frequently and fully of late. But what could I do? You
+are a friend&mdash;an absent one, alas!&mdash;and as I trust no one more, I
+trouble you in proportion.</p>
+
+<p>"This war of 'Church and State' has astonished me more than it
+disturbs; for I really thought 'Cain' a speculative and hardy, but
+still a harmless, production. As I said before, I am really a great
+admirer of tangible religion; and am breeding one of my daughters a
+Catholic, that she may have her hands full. It is by far the most
+elegant worship, hardly excepting the Greek mythology. What with
+incense, pictures, statues, altars, shrines, relics, and the real
+presence, confession, absolution,&mdash;there is something sensible to
+grasp at. Besides, it leaves no possibility of doubt; for those who
+swallow their Deity, really and truly, in transubstantiation, can
+hardly find any thing else otherwise than easy of digestion.</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid that this sounds flippant, but I don't<span class="pagenum"><a id="page325" name="page325"></a>Pg 325</span> mean it to be
+so; only my turn of mind is so given to taking things in the absurd
+point of view, that it breaks out in spite of me every now and
+then. Still, I do assure you that I am a very good Christian.
+Whether you will believe me in this, I do not know; but I trust you
+will take my word for being</p>
+
+<p>"Very truly and affectionately yours, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>"P.S. Do tell Murray that one of the conditions of peace is, that
+he publisheth (or obtaineth a publisher for) * * *'s Commentary on
+Dante, against which there appears in the trade an unaccountable
+repugnance. It will make the man so exuberantly happy. He dines
+with me and half-a-dozen English to-day; and I have not the heart
+to tell him how the bibliopolar world shrink from his
+Commentary;&mdash;and yet it is full of the most orthodox religion and
+morality. In short, I make it a point that he shall be in print. He
+is such a good-natured, heavy-* * Christian, that we must give him
+a shove through the press. He naturally thirsts to be an author,
+and has been the happiest of men for these two months, printing,
+correcting, collating, dating, anticipating, and adding to his
+treasures of learning. Besides, he has had another fall from his
+horse into a ditch the other day, while riding out with me into the
+country."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 486. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Pisa, March 15. 1822.</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad that you and your friends approve of my letter of the
+8th ultimo. You may give it what<span class="pagenum"><a id="page326" name="page326"></a>Pg 326</span> publicity you think proper in the
+circumstances. I have since written to you twice or thrice.</p>
+
+<p>"As to 'a Poem in the old way,' I shall attempt of that kind
+nothing further. I follow the bias of my own mind, without
+considering whether women or men are or are not to be pleased; but
+this is nothing to my publisher, who must judge and act according
+to popularity.</p>
+
+<p>"Therefore let the things take their chance: if <i>they pay,</i> you
+will pay me in proportion; and if they don't, I must.</p>
+
+<p>"The Noel affairs, I hope, will not take me to England. I have no
+desire to revisit that country, unless it be to keep you out of a
+prison (if this can be effected by my taking your place), or
+perhaps to get myself into one, by exacting satisfaction from one
+or two persons who take advantage of my absence to abuse me.
+Further than this, I have no business nor connection with England,
+nor desire to have, <i>out</i> of my own family and friends, to whom I
+wish all prosperity. Indeed, I have lived upon the whole so little
+in England (about five years since I was one-and-twenty), that my
+habits are too continental, and your climate would please me as
+little as the society.</p>
+
+<p>"I saw the Chancellor's Report in a French paper. Pray, why don't
+they prosecute the translation of <i>Lucretius</i>? or the original with
+its</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"'Primus in orbe Deos fecit Timor,'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>or</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"'Tantum Religio potuit suadere malorum?'<br /></span>
+</div></div><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page327" name="page327"></a>Pg 327</span></p>
+
+<p>"You must really get something done for Mr. * *'s Commentary: what
+can I say to him?</p>
+
+<p>"Yours," &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 487. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Pisa, April 13. 1822.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Kinnaird writes that there has been an 'excellent Defence' of
+'Cain,' against 'Oxoniensis;' you have sent me nothing but a not
+very excellent <i>of</i>-fence of the same poem. If there be such a
+'Defender of the Faith,' you may send me his thirty-nine articles,
+as a counterbalance to some of your late communications.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you to publish, or not, what Moore and Mr. Kinnaird have in
+hand, and the 'Vision of Judgment?' If you publish the latter in a
+very cheap edition, so as to baffle the pirates by a low price, you
+will find that it will do. The 'Mystery' I look upon as good, and
+'Werner' too, and I expect that you will publish them speedily. You
+need not put your name to <i>Quevedo,</i> but publish it as a foreign
+edition, and let it make its way. Douglas Kinnaird has it still,
+with the preface, I believe.</p>
+
+<p>"I refer you to him for documents on the late row here. I sent them
+a week ago.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours," &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 488. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Pisa, April 18. 1822.</p>
+
+<p>"I have received the Defence of 'Cain.' Who is my Warburton?&mdash;for
+he has done for me what<span class="pagenum"><a id="page328" name="page328"></a>Pg 328</span> the bishop did for the poet against
+Crousaz. His reply seems to me conclusive; and if you understood
+your own interest, you would print it together with the poem.</p>
+
+<p>"It is very odd that I do not hear from you. I have forwarded to
+Mr. Douglas Kinnaird the documents on a squabble here, which
+occurred about a month ago. The affair is still going on; but they
+make nothing of it hitherto. I think, what with home and abroad,
+there has been hot water enough for one while. Mr. Dawkins, the
+English minister, has behaved in the handsomest and most
+gentlemanly manner throughout the whole business.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours ever, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>"P.S. I have got Lord Glenbervie's book, which is very amusing and
+able upon the topics which he touches upon, and part of the preface
+pathetic. Write soon."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 489. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Pisa, April 22. 1822.</p>
+
+<p>"You will regret to hear that I have received intelligence of the
+death of my daughter Allegra of a fever in the convent of Bagna
+Cavallo, where she was placed for the last year, to commence her
+education. It is a heavy blow for many reasons, but must be borne,
+with time.</p>
+
+<p>"It is my present intention to send her remains to England for
+sepulture in Harrow church (where I once hoped to have laid my
+own), and this is my reason for troubling you with this notice. I
+wish<span class="pagenum"><a id="page329" name="page329"></a>Pg 329</span> the funeral to be very private. The body is embalmed, and in
+lead. It will be embarked from Leghorn. Would you have any
+objection to give the proper directions on its arrival?</p>
+
+<p>"I am yours, &amp;c. N.B.</p>
+
+<p>"P.S. You are aware that Protestants are not allowed holy ground in
+Catholic countries."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 490. TO MR. SHELLEY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"April 23. 1822.</p>
+
+<p>"The blow was stunning and unexpected; for I thought the danger
+over, by the long interval between her stated amelioration and the
+arrival of the express. But I have borne up against it as I best
+can, and so far successfully, that I can go about the usual
+business of life with the same appearance of composure, and even
+greater. There is nothing to prevent your coming to-morrow; but,
+perhaps, to-day, and yester-evening, it was better not to have met.
+I do not know that I have any thing to reproach in my conduct, and
+certainly nothing in my feelings and intentions towards the dead.
+But it is a moment when we are apt to think that, if this or that
+had been done, such event might have been prevented,&mdash;though every
+day and hour shows us that they are the most natural and
+inevitable. I suppose that Time will do his usual work&mdash;Death has
+done his.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours ever, N.B."</p></div><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page330" name="page330"></a>Pg 330</span></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 491. TO SIR WALTER SCOTT.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Pisa, May 4. 1822.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Sir Walter,</p>
+
+<p>"Your account of your family is very pleasing: would that I 'could
+answer this comfort with the like!' but I have just lost my natural
+daughter, Allegra, by a fever. The only consolation, save time, is
+the reflection, that she is either at rest or happy; for her few
+years (only five) prevented her from having incurred any sin,
+except what we inherit from Adam.</p>
+
+<p>"'Whom the gods love, die young.'"</p>
+
+<p>"I need not say that your letters are particularly welcome, when
+they do not tax your time and patience; and now that our
+correspondence is resumed, I trust it will continue.</p>
+
+<p>"I have lately had some anxiety, rather than trouble, about an
+awkward affair here, which you may perhaps have heard of; but our
+minister has behaved very handsomely, and the Tuscan Government as
+well as it is possible for such a government to behave, which is
+not saying much for the latter. Some other English, and Scots, and
+myself, had a brawl with a dragoon, who insulted one of the party,
+and whom we mistook for an officer, as he was medalled and well
+mounted, &amp;c. but he turned out to be a sergeant-major. He called
+out the guard at the gates to arrest us (we being unarmed); upon
+which I and another (an Italian) rode through the said guard; but
+they succeeded in detaining others of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page331" name="page331"></a>Pg 331</span> the party. I rode to my
+house and sent my secretary to give an account of the attempted and
+illegal arrest to the authorities, and then, without dismounting,
+rode back towards the gates, which are near my present mansion.
+Half-way I met my man vapouring away and threatening to draw upon
+me (who had a cane in my hand, and no other arms). I, still
+believing him an officer, demanded his name and address, and gave
+him my hand and glove thereupon. A servant of mine thrust in
+between us (totally without orders), but let him go on my command.
+He then rode off at full speed; but about forty paces further was
+stabbed, and very dangerously (so as to be in peril), by some
+<i>Callum Beg</i> or other of my people (for I have some rough-handed
+folks about me), I need hardly say without my direction or
+approval. The said dragoon had been sabring our unarmed countrymen,
+however, at the <i>gate, after they were in arrest,</i> and held by the
+guards, and wounded one, Captain Hay, very severely. However, he
+got his paiks&mdash;having acted like an assassin, and being treated
+like one. <i>Who</i> wounded him, though it was done before thousands of
+people, they have never been able to ascertain, or prove, nor even
+the <i>weapon</i>; some said a <i>pistol</i>, an <i>air-gun</i>, a stiletto, a
+sword, a lance, a pitchfork, and what not. They have arrested and
+examined servants and people of all descriptions, but can make out
+nothing. Mr. Dawkins, our minister, assures me, that no suspicion
+is entertained of the man who wounded him having been instigated by
+me, or any of the party. I enclose you copies of the depositions of
+those with us, and Dr. Craufurd,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page332" name="page332"></a>Pg 332</span> a canny Scot (<i>not</i> an
+acquaintance), who saw the latter part of the affair. They are in
+Italian.</p>
+
+<p>"These are the only literary matters in which I have been engaged
+since the publication and row about 'Cain;'&mdash;but Mr. Murray has
+several things of mine in his obstetrical hands. Another Mystery&mdash;a
+Vision&mdash;a Drama&mdash;and the like. But <i>you won't</i> tell me what <i>you</i>
+are doing&mdash;however, I shall find you out, write what you will. You
+say that I should like your son-in-law&mdash;it would be very difficult
+for me to dislike any one connected with you; but I have no doubt
+that his own qualities are all that you describe.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry you don't like Lord Orford's new work. My aristocracy,
+which is very fierce, makes him a favourite of mine. Recollect that
+those 'little factions' comprised Lord Chatham and Fox, the father,
+and that <i>we</i> live in gigantic and exaggerated times, which make
+all under Gog and Magog appear pigmean. After having seen Napoleon
+begin like Tamerlane and end like Bajazet in our own time, we have
+not the same interest in what would otherwise have appeared
+important history. But I must conclude.</p>
+
+<p>"Believe me ever and most truly yours,</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Noel Byron.</span>"</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 492. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Pisa, May 17. 1822.</p>
+
+<p>"I hear that the Edinburgh has attacked the three dramas, which is
+a bad business for <i>you</i>; and I don't<span class="pagenum"><a id="page333" name="page333"></a>Pg 333</span> wonder that it discourages
+you. However, <i>that</i> volume may be trusted to <i>time</i>,&mdash;depend upon
+it. I read it over with some attention since it was published, and
+I think the time will come when it will be preferred to my other
+writings, though not immediately. I say this without irritation
+against the critics or criticism, whatever they may be (for I have
+not seen them); and nothing that has or may appear in Jeffrey's
+Review can make me forget that he stood by me for ten good years
+without any motive to do so but his own good-will.</p>
+
+<p>"I hear Moore is in town; remember me to him, and believe me</p>
+
+<p>"Yours truly, N.B.</p>
+
+<p>"P.S. If you think it necessary, you may send me the Edinburgh.
+Should there be any thing that requires an answer, I will reply,
+but <i>temperately</i> and <i>technically</i>; that is to say, merely with
+respect to the <i>principles</i> of the criticism, and not personally or
+offensively as to its literary merits."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 493. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Pisa, May 17. 1822.</p>
+
+<p>"I hear you are in London. You will have heard from Douglas
+Kinnaird (who tells me you have dined with him) as much as you
+desire to know of my affairs at home and abroad. I have lately lost
+my little girl Allegra by a fever, which has been a serious blow to
+me.</p>
+
+<p>"I did not write to you lately (except one letter to Murray's), not
+knowing exactly your 'where-<span class="pagenum"><a id="page334" name="page334"></a>Pg 334</span>abouts.' Douglas K. refused to forward
+my message to Mr. Southey&mdash;<i>why</i>, he himself can explain.</p>
+
+<p>"You will have seen the statement of a squabble, &amp;c.&amp;c.<a name="FNanchor_79_79" id="FNanchor_79_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_79_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a> What
+are you about? Let me hear from you at your leisure, and believe me
+ever yours,</p>
+
+<p>"N.B."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 494. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Montenero<a name="FNanchor_80_80" id="FNanchor_80_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_80_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a>, May 26. 1822.</p>
+
+<p>"Near Leghorn.</p>
+
+<p>"The body is embarked, in what ship I know not, neither could I
+enter into the details; but the Countess G.G. has had the goodness
+to give the necessary orders to Mr. Dunn, who superintends the
+embarkation, and will write to you. I wish it to be buried in
+Harrow church.</p>
+
+<p>"There is a spot in the church<i>yard</i>, near the footpath, on the
+brow of the hill looking towards Windsor, and a tomb under a large
+tree, (bearing the name of Peachie, or Peachey,) where I used to
+sit for hours and hours when a boy. This was my favourite spot;
+but, as I wish to erect a tablet to her memory, the body had better
+be deposited in the church. Near the door, on the left hand as you
+enter, there is a monument with a tablet containing these words:&mdash;</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page335" name="page335"></a>Pg 335</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"'When Sorrow weeps o'er Virtue's sacred dust,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Our tears become us, and our grief is just:<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Such were the tears she shed, who grateful pays<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">This last sad tribute of her love and praise.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>I recollect them (after seventeen years), not from any thing
+remarkable in them, but because from my seat in the gallery I had
+generally my eyes turned towards that monument. As near it as
+convenient I could wish Allegra to be buried, and on the wall a
+marble tablet placed, with these words:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">In Memory of</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Allegra,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Daughter of G.G. Lord Byron,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">who died at Bagna Cavallo,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">in Italy, April 20th, 1822,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">aged five years and three months.</span><br />
+<br />
+'I shall go to her, but she shall not return to me.'<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">2d Samuel, xii. 23.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>"The funeral I wish to be as private as is consistent with decency;
+and I could hope that Henry Drury will, perhaps, read the service
+over her. If he should decline it, it can be done by the usual
+minister for the time being. I do not know that I need add more
+just now.</p>
+
+<p>"Since I came here, I have been invited by the Americans on board
+their squadron, where I was received with all the kindness which I
+could wish, and with <i>more ceremony</i> than I am fond of. I found
+them finer ships than your own of the same class, well manned and
+officered. A number of American gentlemen also were on board at the
+time, and some ladies. As I was taking leave, an American<span class="pagenum"><a id="page336" name="page336"></a>Pg 336</span> lady
+asked me for a <i>rose</i> which I wore, for the purpose, she said, of
+sending to America something which I had about me, as a memorial. I
+need not add that I felt the compliment properly. Captain Chauncey
+showed me an American and very pretty edition of my poems, and
+offered me a passage to the United States, if I would go there.
+Commodore Jones was also not less kind and attentive. I have since
+received the enclosed letter, desiring me to sit for my picture for
+some Americans. It is singular that, in the same year that Lady
+Noel leaves by will an interdiction for my daughter to see her
+father's portrait for many years, the individuals of a nation, not
+remarkable for their liking to the English in particular, nor for
+flattering men in general, request me to sit for my
+'pourtraicture,' as Baron Bradwardine calls it. I am also told of
+considerable literary honours in Germany. Goethe, I am told, is my
+professed patron and protector. At Leipsic, this year, the highest
+prize was proposed for a translation of two cantos of Childe
+Harold. I am not sure that this was at <i>Leipsic</i>, but Mr. Rowcroft
+was my authority&mdash;a good German scholar (a young American), and an
+acquaintance of Goethe's.</p>
+
+<p>"Goethe and the Germans are particularly fond of Don Juan, which
+they judge of as a work of art. I had heard something of this
+before through Baron Lutzerode. The translations have been very
+frequent of several of the works, and Goethe made a comparison
+between Faust and Manfred.</p>
+
+<p>"All this is some compensation for your English<span class="pagenum"><a id="page337" name="page337"></a>Pg 337</span> native brutality,
+so fully displayed this year to its highest extent.</p>
+
+<p>"I forgot to mention a little anecdote of a different kind. I went
+over the Constitution (the Commodore's flag-ship), and saw, among
+other things worthy of remark, a little boy <i>born</i> on board of her
+by a sailor's wife. They had christened him 'Constitution Jones.'
+I, of course, approved the name; and the woman added, 'Ah, sir, if
+he turns out but half as good as his name!'</p>
+
+<p>"Yours ever," &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER. 495. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Montenero, near Leghorn, May 29. 1822.</p>
+
+<p>"I return you the proofs revised. Your printer has made one odd
+mistake:&mdash;'poor as a <i>mouse</i>,' instead of 'poor as a <i>miser</i>.' The
+expression may seem strange, but it is only a translation of
+'semper avarus eget.' You will add the Mystery, and publish as soon
+as you can. I care nothing for your 'season,' nor the <i>blue</i>
+approbations or disapprobations. All that is to be considered by
+you on the subject is as a matter of <i>business</i>; and if I square
+that to your notions (even to the running the risk entirely
+myself), you may permit me to choose my own time and mode of
+publication. With regard to the late volume, the present run
+against <i>it</i> or <i>me</i> may impede it for a time, but it has the vital
+principle of permanency within it, as you may perhaps one day
+discover. I wrote to you on another subject a few days ago.</p>
+
+<p>Yours, N.B.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page338" name="page338"></a>Pg 338</span></p>
+
+<p>"P.S. Please to send me the Dedication of Sardanapalus to Goethe. I
+shall prefix it to Werner, unless you prefer my putting another,
+stating that the former had been omitted by the publisher.</p>
+
+<p>"On the title-page of the present volume, put 'Published for the
+Author by J.M.'"</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 496. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Montenero, Leghorn, June 6. 1822.</p>
+
+<p>"I return you the revise of Werner, and expect the rest. With
+regard to the Lines to the Po, perhaps you had better put them
+quietly in a second edition (if you reach one, that is to say) than
+in the first; because, though they have been reckoned fine, and I
+wish them to be preserved, I do not wish them to attract IMMEDIATE
+observation, on account of the relationship of the lady to whom
+they are addressed with the first families in Romagna and the
+Marches.</p>
+
+<p>"The defender of 'Cain' may or may not be, as you term him, 'a tyro
+in literature:' however I think both you and I are under great
+obligation to him. I have read the Edinburgh review in Galignani's
+Magazine, and have not yet decided whether to answer them or not;
+for, if I do, it will be difficult for me not 'to make sport for
+the Philistines' by pulling down a house or two; since, when I once
+take pen in hand, I <i>must</i> say what comes uppermost, or fling it
+away. I have not the hypocrisy to pretend impartiality, nor the
+temper (as it is called) to keep always from saying what may not be
+pleasing<span class="pagenum"><a id="page339" name="page339"></a>Pg 339</span> to the hearer or reader. What do they mean by
+'<i>elaborate</i>?' Why, <i>you</i> know that they were written as fast as I
+could put pen to paper, and printed from the <i>original</i> MSS., and
+never revised but in the proofs: <i>look</i> at the <i>dates</i> and the MSS.
+themselves. Whatever faults they have must spring from
+carelessness, and not from labour. They said the same of 'Lara,'
+which I wrote while undressing after coming home from balls and
+masquerades, in the year of revelry 1814. Yours."</p>
+
+<p>"June 8. 1822.</p>
+
+<p>"You give me no explanation of your intention as to the 'Vision of
+Quevedo Redivivus,' one of my best things: indeed, you are
+altogether so abstruse and undecided lately, that I suppose you
+mean me to write 'John Murray, Esq., a Mystery,'&mdash;a composition
+which would not displease the clergy nor the trade. I by no means
+wish you to do what you don't like, but merely to say what you will
+do. The Vision <i>must</i> be published by some one. As to 'clamours,'
+the die is cast: and 'come one, come all,' we will fight it out&mdash;at
+least one of us."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 497. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Montenero, Villa Dupoy, near Leghorn, June 8. 1822.</p>
+
+<p>"I have written to you twice through the medium of Murray, and on
+one subject, <i>trite</i> enough,&mdash;the loss of poor little Allegra by a
+fever; on which topic I shall say no more&mdash;there is nothing but
+time.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page340" name="page340"></a>Pg 340</span></p>
+
+<p>"A few days ago, my earliest and dearest friend, Lord Clare, came
+over from Geneva on purpose to see me before he returned to
+England. As I have always loved him (since I was thirteen, at
+Harrow,) better than any (<i>male</i>) thing in the world, I need hardly
+say what a melancholy pleasure it was to see him for a <i>day</i> only;
+for he was obliged to resume his journey immediately. * * * Do you
+recollect, in the year of revelry 1814, the pleasantest parties and
+balls all over London? and not the least so at * *'s. Do you
+recollect your singing duets with Lady * *, and my flirtation with
+Lady * *, and all the other fooleries of the time? while * * was
+sighing, and Lady * * ogling him with her clear hazel eyes. <i>But</i>
+eight years have passed, and, since that time, * * has * * * * *
+*;&mdash;has run away with * * * * *; and <i>mysen</i> (as my Nottinghamshire
+friends call themselves) might as well have thrown myself out of
+the window while you were singing, as intermarried where I did. You
+and * * * * have come off the best of us. I speak merely of my
+marriage, and its consequences, distresses, and calumnies; for I
+have been much more happy, on the whole, <i>since</i>, than I ever could
+have been with * *.</p>
+
+<p>"I have read the recent article of Jeffrey in a faithful
+transcription of the impartial Galignani. I suppose the long and
+short of it is, that he wishes to provoke me to reply. But I won't,
+for I owe him a good turn still for his kindness by-gone. Indeed, I
+presume that the present opportunity of attacking me again was
+irresistible; and I can't blame him, know<span class="pagenum"><a id="page341" name="page341"></a>Pg 341</span>ing what human nature is.
+I shall make but one remark:&mdash;what does he mean by elaborate? The
+whole volume was written with the greatest rapidity, in the midst
+of evolutions, and revolutions, and persecutions, and proscriptions
+of all who interested me in Italy. They said the same of 'Lara,'
+which, <i>you</i> know, was written amidst balls and fooleries, and
+after coming home from masquerades and routs, in the summer of the
+sovereigns. Of all I have ever written, they are perhaps the most
+carelessly composed; and their faults, whatever they may be, are
+those of negligence, and not of labour. I do not think this a
+merit, but it is a fact.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours ever and truly, N.B.</p>
+
+<p>"P.S. You see the great advantage of my new signature;&mdash;it may
+either stand for 'Nota Bene' or 'Noel Byron,' and, as such, will
+save much repetition, in writing either books or letters. Since I
+came here, I have been invited on board of the American squadron,
+and treated with all possible honour and ceremony. They have asked
+me to sit for my picture; and, as I was going away, an American
+lady took a rose from me (which had been given to me by a very
+pretty Italian lady that very morning), because, she said, 'She was
+determined to send or take something which I had about me to
+America.' <i>There</i> is a kind of Lalla Rookh incident for you!
+However, all these American honours arise, perhaps, not so much
+from their enthusiasm for my 'Poeshie,' as their belief in my
+dislike to the English,&mdash;in which I have the satisfaction to
+coincide with them. I would rather, however, have<span class="pagenum"><a id="page342" name="page342"></a>Pg 342</span> a nod from an
+American, than a snuff-box from an emperor."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 498. TO MR. ELLICE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Montenero, Leghorn, June 12. 1822.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Ellice,</p>
+
+<p>"It is a long time since I have written to you, but I have not
+forgotten your kindness, and I am now going to tax it&mdash;I hope not
+too highly&mdash;but <i>don't</i> be alarmed, it is <i>not</i> a loan, but
+<i>information</i> which I am about to solicit. By your extensive
+connections, no one can have better opportunities of hearing the
+real state of <i>South</i> America&mdash;I mean Bolivar's country. I have
+many years had transatlantic projects of settlement, and what I
+could wish from you would be some information of the best course to
+pursue, and some letters of recommendation in case I should sail
+for Angostura. I am told that land is very cheap there; but though
+I have no great disposable funds to vest in such purchases, yet my
+income, such as it is, would be sufficient in any country (except
+England) for all the comforts of life, and for most of its
+luxuries. The war there is now over, and as I do not go there to
+<i>speculate</i>, but to settle, without any views but those of
+independence and the enjoyment of the common civil rights, I should
+presume such an arrival would not be unwelcome.</p>
+
+<p>"All I request of you is, not to <i>dis</i>courage nor <i>en</i>courage, but
+to give me such a statement as you think prudent and proper. I do
+not address my<span class="pagenum"><a id="page343" name="page343"></a>Pg 343</span> other friends upon this subject, who would only
+throw obstacles in my way, and bore me to return to England; which
+I never will do, unless compelled by some insuperable cause. I have
+a quantity of furniture, books, &amp;c. &amp;c. &amp;c. which I could easily
+ship from Leghorn; but I wish to 'look before I leap' over the
+Atlantic. Is it true that for a few thousand dollars a large tract
+of land may be obtained? I speak of <i>South</i> America, recollect. I
+have read some publications on the subject, but they seemed violent
+and vulgar party productions. Please to address your answer<a name="FNanchor_81_81" id="FNanchor_81_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_81_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a> to
+me at this place, and believe me ever and truly yours," &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>About this time he sat for his picture to Mr. West, an American artist,
+who has himself given, in one of our periodical publications, the
+following account of his noble sitter:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"On the day appointed, I arrived at two o'clock, and began the picture.
+I found him a bad sitter. He talked all the time, and asked a multitude
+of<span class="pagenum"><a id="page344" name="page344"></a>Pg 344</span> questions about America&mdash;how I liked Italy, what I thought of the
+Italians, &amp;c. When he was silent, he was a better sitter than before;
+for he assumed a countenance that did not belong to him, as though he
+were thinking of a frontispiece for Childe Harold. In about an hour our
+first sitting terminated, and I returned to Leghorn, scarcely able to
+persuade myself that this was the haughty misanthrope whose character
+had always appeared so enveloped in gloom and mystery; for I do not
+remember ever to have met with manners more gentle and attractive.</p>
+
+<p>"The next day I returned and had another sitting of an hour, during
+which he seemed anxious to know what I should make of my undertaking.
+Whilst I was painting, the window from which I received my light became
+suddenly darkened, and I heard a voice exclaim '&egrave; troppo bello!' I
+turned, and discovered a beautiful female stooping down to look in, the
+ground on the outside being on a level with the bottom of the window.
+Her long golden hair hung down about her face and shoulders, her
+complexion was exquisite, and her smile completed one of the most
+romantic-looking heads, set off as it was by the bright sun behind it,
+which I had ever beheld. Lord Byron invited her to come in, and
+introduced her to me as the Countess Guiccioli. He seemed very fond of
+her, and I was glad of her presence, for the playful manner which he
+assumed towards her made him a much better sitter.</p>
+
+<p>"The next day, I was pleased to find that the progress which I had made
+in his likeness had given<span class="pagenum"><a id="page345" name="page345"></a>Pg 345</span> satisfaction, for, when we were alone, he
+said that he had a particular favour to request of me&mdash;would I grant it?
+I said I should be happy to oblige him; and he enjoined me to the
+flattering task of painting the Countess Guiccioli's portrait for him.
+On the following morning I began it, and, after, they sat alternately.
+He gave me the whole history of his connection with her, and said that
+he hoped it would last for ever; at any rate, it should not be his fault
+if it did not. His other attachments had been broken off by no fault of
+his.</p>
+
+<p>"I was by this time sufficiently intimate with him to answer his
+question as to what I thought of him before I had seen him. He laughed
+much at the idea which I had formed of him, and said, 'Well, you find me
+like other people, do you not?' He often afterwards repeated, 'And so
+you thought me a finer fellow, did you?' I remember once telling him,
+that notwithstanding his vivacity, I thought myself correct in at least
+one estimate which I had made of him, for I still conceived that he was
+not a happy man. He enquired earnestly what reason I had for thinking
+so, and I asked him if he had never observed in little children, after a
+paroxysm of grief, that they had at intervals a convulsive or tremulous
+manner of drawing in a long breath. Wherever I had observed this, in
+persons of whatever age, I had always found that it came from sorrow. He
+said the thought was new to him, and that he would make use of it.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord Byron, and all the party, left Villa Rossa (the name of their
+house) in a few days, to pack up<span class="pagenum"><a id="page346" name="page346"></a>Pg 346</span> their things in their house at Pisa.
+He told me that he should remain a few days there, and desired me, if I
+could do any thing more to the pictures, to come and stay with him. He
+seemed at a loss where to go, and was, I thought, on the point of
+embarking for America. I was with him at Pisa for a few days; but he was
+so annoyed by the police, and the weather was so hot, that I thought it
+doubtful whether I could improve the pictures, and, taking my departure
+one morning before he was up, I wrote him an excuse from Leghorn. Upon
+the whole, I left him with an impression that he possessed an excellent
+heart, which had been misconstrued on all hands from little else than a
+reckless levity of manners, which he took a whimsical pride in opposing
+to those of other people."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 499. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Pisa, July 6. 1822.</p>
+
+<p>"I return you the revise. I have softened the part to which Gifford
+objected, and changed the name of Michael to Raphael, who was an
+angel of gentler sympathies. By the way, recollect to alter Michael
+to <i>Raphael</i> in the <i>scene</i> itself throughout, for I have only had
+time to do so in the list of the dramatis person&aelig;, and <i>scratch out
+all the pencil-marks</i>, to avoid puzzling the printers. I have given
+the '<i>Vision of Quevedo Redivivus</i>' to John Hunt, which will
+relieve you from a dilemma. He must publish it at his <i>own</i> risk,
+as it is at his own desire. Give<span class="pagenum"><a id="page347" name="page347"></a>Pg 347</span> him the <i>corrected</i> copy which
+Mr. Kinnaird had, as it is mitigated partly, and also the preface.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours," &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 500. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Pisa, July 8. 1822.</p>
+
+<p>"Last week I returned you the packet of proofs. You had, perhaps,
+better not publish in the same volume the <i>Po</i> and <i>Rimini</i>
+translation.</p>
+
+<p>"I have consigned a letter to Mr. John Hunt for the 'Vision of
+Judgment,' which you will hand over to him. Also the 'Pulci,'
+original and Italian, and any <i>prose</i> tracts of mine; for Mr. Leigh
+Hunt is arrived here, and thinks of commencing a periodical work,
+to which I shall contribute. I do not propose to you to be the
+publisher, because I know that you are unfriends; but all things in
+your care, except the volume now in the press, and the manuscript
+purchased of Mr. Moore, can be given for this purpose, according as
+they are wanted.</p>
+
+<p>"With regard to what you say about your 'want of memory,' I can
+only remark, that you inserted the note to Marino Faliero against
+my positive revocation, and that you omitted the Dedication of
+Sardanapalus to Goethe (place it before the volume now in the
+press), both of which were things not very agreeable to me, and
+which I could wish to be avoided in future, as they might be with a
+very little care, or a simple memorandum in your pocket-book.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page348" name="page348"></a>Pg 348</span></p>
+
+<p>"It is not impossible that I may have three or four cantos of Don
+Juan ready by autumn, or a little later, as I obtained a permission
+from my dictatress to continue it,&mdash;<i>provided always</i> it was to be
+more guarded and decorous and sentimental in the continuation than
+in the commencement. How far these conditions have been fulfilled
+may be seen, perhaps, by-and-by; but the embargo was only taken off
+upon these stipulations. You can answer at your leisure. Yours,"
+&amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 501. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Pisa, July 12. 1822.</p>
+
+<p>"I have written to you lately, but not in answer to your last
+letter of about a fortnight ago. I wish to know (and request an
+answer to <i>that</i> point) what became of the stanzas to Wellington
+(intended to open a canto of Don Juan with), which I sent you
+several months ago. If they have fallen into Murray's hands, he and
+the Tories will suppress them, as those lines rate that hero at his
+real value. Pray be explicit on this, as I have no other copy,
+having sent you the original; and if you have them, let me have
+<i>that</i> again, or a <i>copy</i> correct.</p>
+
+<p>"I subscribed at Leghorn two hundred Tuscan crowns to your Irishism
+committee; it is about a thousand francs, more or less. As Sir
+C.S., who receives thirteen thousand a year of the public money,
+could not afford more than a thousand livres out of his enormous
+salary, it would have appeared ostentatious in a private individual
+to pretend to<span class="pagenum"><a id="page349" name="page349"></a>Pg 349</span> surpass him; and therefore I have sent but the above
+sum, as you will see by the enclosed receipt.<a name="FNanchor_82_82" id="FNanchor_82_82"></a><a href="#Footnote_82_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a></p>
+
+<p>"Leigh Hunt is here, after a voyage of eight months, during which
+he has, I presume, made the Periplus of Hanno the Carthaginian, and
+with much the same speed. He is setting up a Journal, to which I
+have promised to contribute; and in the first number the 'Vision of
+Judgment, by Quevedo Redivivus,' will probably appear, with other
+articles.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you give us any thing? He seems sanguine about the matter, but
+(entre nous) I am not. I do not, however, like to put him out of
+spirits by saying so; for he is bilious and unwell. Do, pray,
+answer <i>this</i> letter immediately.</p>
+
+<p>"Do send Hunt any thing in prose or verse, of yours, to start him
+handsomely&mdash;any lyrical, <i>irical</i>, or what you please.</p>
+
+<p>"Has not your Potatoe Committee been blundering? Your advertisement
+says, that Mr. L. Callaghan (a queer name for a banker) hath been
+disposing of money in Ireland 'sans authority of the Committee.' I
+suppose it will end in Callaghan's calling out the Committee, the
+chairman of which carries pistols in his pocket, of course.</p>
+
+<p>"When you can spare time from <i>duetting, coquetting</i>, and
+claretting with your Hibernians of both<span class="pagenum"><a id="page350" name="page350"></a>Pg 350</span> sexes, let me have a line
+from you. I doubt whether Paris is a good place for the composition
+of your new poesy."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 502. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Pisa, August 8. 1822.</p>
+
+<p>"You will have heard by this time that Shelley and another
+gentleman (Captain Williams) were drowned about a month ago (a
+<i>month</i> yesterday), in a squall off the Gulf of Spezia. There is
+thus another man gone, about whom the world was ill-naturedly, and
+ignorantly, and brutally mistaken. It will, perhaps, do him justice
+<i>now</i>, when he can be no better for it.<a name="FNanchor_83_83" id="FNanchor_83_83"></a><a href="#Footnote_83_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a></p>
+
+<p>"I have not seen the thing you mention<a name="FNanchor_84_84" id="FNanchor_84_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_84_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a>, and only heard of it
+casually, nor have I any desire. The price is, as I saw in some
+advertisements, fourteen shillings, which is too much to pay for a
+libel on oneself. Some one said in a letter, that it was a Doctor
+Watkins, who deals in the life and libel line. It must have
+diminished your natural<span class="pagenum"><a id="page351" name="page351"></a>Pg 351</span> pleasure, as a friend (vide
+Rochefoucault), to see yourself in it.</p>
+
+<p>"With regard to the Blackwood fellows, I never published any thing
+against them; nor, indeed, have seen their magazine (except in
+Galignani's extracts) for these three years past. I once wrote, a
+good while ago, some remarks<a name="FNanchor_85_85" id="FNanchor_85_85"></a><a href="#Footnote_85_85" class="fnanchor">[85]</a> on their review of Don Juan, but
+saying very little about themselves, and these were <i>not</i>
+published. If you think that I ought to follow your example<a name="FNanchor_86_86" id="FNanchor_86_86"></a><a href="#Footnote_86_86" class="fnanchor">[86]</a>(and
+I like to be in your company when I can) in contradicting their
+impudence, you may shape this declaration of mine into a similar
+paragraph for me. It is possible that you may have seen the little
+I <i>did</i> write (and never published) at Murray's;&mdash;it contained much
+more about Southey than about the Blacks.</p>
+
+<p>"If you think that I ought to do any thing about Watkins's book, I
+should not care much about publishing <i>my Memoir now</i>, should it be
+necessary to counteract the fellow. But, in <i>that</i> case, I should
+like to look over the <i>press</i> myself. Let me know what you think,
+or whether I had better <i>not</i>;&mdash;at least, not the second part,
+which touches on the actual confines of still existing matters.</p>
+
+<p>"I have written three more Cantos of Don Juan, and am hovering on
+the brink of another (the ninth).<span class="pagenum"><a id="page352" name="page352"></a>Pg 352</span> The reason I want the stanzas
+again which I sent you is, that as these cantos contain a full
+detail (like the storm in Canto Second) of the siege and assault of
+Ismael, with much of sarcasm on those butchers in large business,
+your mercenary soldiery, it is a good opportunity of gracing the
+poem with * * *. With these things and these fellows, it is
+necessary, in the present clash of philosophy and tyranny, to throw
+away the scabbard. I know it is against fearful odds; but the
+battle must be fought; and it will be eventually for the good of
+mankind, whatever it may be for the individual who risks himself.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think of your Irish bishop? Do you remember Swift's
+line, 'Let me have a <i>barrack</i>&mdash;a fig for the <i>clergy</i>?' This seems
+to have been his reverence's motto. * * *</p>
+
+<p>"Yours," &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 503. TO MR. MOORE.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Pisa, August 27. 1822.</p>
+
+<p>"It is boring to trouble you with 'such small gear;' but it must be
+owned that I should be glad if you would enquire whether my Irish
+subscription ever reached the committee in Paris from Leghorn. My
+reasons, like Vellum's, 'are threefold:'&mdash;First, I doubt the
+accuracy of all almoners, or remitters of benevolent cash; second,
+I do suspect that the said Committee, having in part served its
+time to time-serving, may have kept back the acknowledgment of an
+obnoxious politician's name in their lists; and third, I feel
+pretty sure that I shall one day be<span class="pagenum"><a id="page353" name="page353"></a>Pg 353</span> twitted by the government
+scribes for having been a professor of love for Ireland, and not
+coming forward with the others in her distresses.</p>
+
+<p>"It is not, as you may opine, that I am ambitious of having my name
+in the papers, as I can have that any day in the week gratis. All I
+want is to know if the Reverend Thomas Hall did or did not remit
+my subscription (200 scudi of Tuscany, or about a thousand francs,
+more or less,) to the Committee at Paris.</p>
+
+<p>"The other day at Viareggio, I thought proper to swim off to my
+schooner (the Bolivar) in the offing, and thence to shore
+again&mdash;about three miles, or better, in all. As it was at mid-day,
+under a broiling sun, the consequence has been a feverish attack,
+and my whole skin's coming off, after going through the process of
+one large continuous blister, raised by the sun and sea together. I
+have suffered much pain; not being able to lie on my back, or even
+side; for my shoulders and arms were equally St. Bartholomewed. But
+it is over,&mdash;and I have got a new skin, and am as glossy as a snake
+in its new suit.</p>
+
+<p>"We have been burning the bodies of Shelley and Williams on the
+sea-shore, to render them fit for removal and regular interment.
+You can have no idea what an extraordinary effect such a funeral
+pile has, on a desolate shore, with mountains in the background and
+the sea before, and the singular appearance the salt and
+frankincense gave to the flame. All of Shelley was consumed, except
+his <i>heart</i>, which<span class="pagenum"><a id="page354" name="page354"></a>Pg 354</span> would not take the flame, and is now preserved
+in spirits of wine.</p>
+
+<p>"Your old acquaintance Londonderry has quietly died at North Cray!
+and the virtuous De Witt was torn in pieces by the populace! What a
+lucky * * the Irishman has been in his life and end.<a name="FNanchor_87_87" id="FNanchor_87_87"></a><a href="#Footnote_87_87" class="fnanchor">[87]</a> In him
+your Irish Franklin est mort!</p>
+
+<p>"Leigh Hunt is sweating articles for his new Journal; and both he
+and I think it somewhat shabby in <i>you</i> not to contribute. Will you
+become one of the <i>properrioters</i>? 'Do, and we go snacks.' I
+recommend you to think twice before you respond in the negative.</p>
+
+<p>"I have nearly (<i>quite three</i>) four new cantos of Don Juan ready. I
+obtained permission from the female Censor Morum of <i>my</i> morals to
+continue it, provided it were immaculate; so I have been as decent
+as need be. There is a deal of war&mdash;a siege, and all that, in the
+style, graphical and technical, of the shipwreck in Canto Second,
+which 'took,' as they say, in the Row.</p>
+
+<p>Yours, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>"P.S. That * * * Galignani has about ten lies in one paragraph. It
+was not a Bible that was found in Shelley's pocket, but John
+Keats's poems. However, it would not have been strange, for he was
+a great admirer of Scripture as a composition. <i>I</i> did not send my
+bust to the academy of New York; but I sat for my picture to young
+West,<span class="pagenum"><a id="page355" name="page355"></a>Pg 355</span> an American artist, at the request of some members of that
+Academy to <i>him</i> that he would take my portrait,&mdash;for the Academy,
+I believe.<a name="FNanchor_88_88" id="FNanchor_88_88"></a><a href="#Footnote_88_88" class="fnanchor">[88]</a></p>
+
+<p>"I had, and still have, thoughts of South America, but am
+fluctuating between it and Greece. I should have gone, long ago, to
+one of them, but for my liaison with the Countess G<sup>i</sup>.; for love, in
+these days, is little compatible with glory. <i>She</i> would be
+delighted to go too; but I do not choose to expose her to a long
+voyage, and a residence in an unsettled country, where I shall
+probably take a part of some sort."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Soon after the above letters were written, Lord Byron removed to Genoa,
+having taken a house, called the Villa Saluzzo, at Albaro, one of the
+suburbs of that city. From the time of the unlucky squabble with the
+serjeant-major at Pisa, his tranquillity had been considerably broken in
+upon, as well by the judicial enquiries consequent upon that event, as
+by the many sinister rumours and suspicions to which it gave rise.
+Though the wounded man had recovered, his friends all vowed vengeance
+with the dagger: and the sensation which the affair and its various
+consequences had produced was,&mdash;to Madame Guiccioli more particularly,
+from the<span class="pagenum"><a id="page356" name="page356"></a>Pg 356</span> situation in which her family stood, in regard to
+politics,&mdash;distressing and alarming. While the impression, too, of this
+event was still recent, another circumstance occurred which, though
+comparatively unimportant, had the unlucky effect of again drawing the
+attention of the Tuscans to their new visitors. During Lord Byron's
+short visit to Leghorn, a Swiss servant in his employ having quarrelled,
+on some occasion, with the brother of Madame Guiccioli, drew his knife
+upon the young Count, and wounded him slightly on the cheek. This
+affray, happening so soon after the other, was productive also of so
+much notice and conversation, that the Tuscan government, in its horror
+of every thing like disturbance, thought itself called upon to
+interfere; and orders were accordingly issued, that, within four days,
+the two Counts Gamba, father and son, should depart from Tuscany. To
+Lord Byron this decision was, in the highest degree, provoking and
+disconcerting; it being one of the conditions of the Guiccioli's
+separation from her husband, that she should thenceforward reside under
+the same roof with her father. After balancing in his mind between
+various projects,&mdash;sometimes thinking of Geneva, and sometimes, as we
+have seen, of South America,&mdash;he at length decided, for the present, to
+transfer his residence to Genoa.</p>
+
+<p>His habits of life, while at Pisa, had but very little differed, except
+in the new line of society into which his introduction to Shelley's
+friends led him,&mdash;from the usual monotonous routine in which, so
+singularly for one of his desultory disposition, the daily course<span class="pagenum"><a id="page357" name="page357"></a>Pg 357</span> of
+his existence had now, for some years, flowed. At two he usually
+breakfasted, and at three, or, as the year advanced, four o'clock, those
+persons who were in the habit of accompanying him in his rides, called
+upon him. After, occasionally, a game of billiards, he proceeded,&mdash;and,
+in order to avoid starers, in his carriage,&mdash;as far as the gates of the
+town, where his horses met him. At first the route he chose for these
+rides was in the direction of the Cascine and of the pine-forest that
+reaches towards the sea; but having found a spot more convenient for his
+pistol exercise on the road leading from the Porta alla Spiaggia to the
+east of the city, he took daily this course during the remainder of his
+stay. When arrived at the Podere or farm, in the garden of which they
+were allowed to erect their target, his friends and he dismounted, and,
+after devoting about half an hour to a trial of skill at the pistol,
+returned, a little before sunset, into the city.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord Byron," says a friend who was sometimes present at their
+practising, "was the best marksman. Shelley, and Williams, and
+Trelawney, often made as good shots as he&mdash;but they were not so certain;
+and he, though his hand trembled violently, never missed, for he
+calculated on this vibration, and depended entirely on his eye. Once
+after demolishing his mark, he set up a slender cane, whose colour,
+nearly the same as the gravel in which it was fixed, might well have
+deceived him, and at twenty paces he divided it with his bullet. His joy
+at a good shot, and his vexation at a failure, was great&mdash;and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page358" name="page358"></a>Pg 358</span> when we
+met him on his return, his cold salutation, or joyous laugh, told the
+tale of the day's success."</p>
+
+<p>For the first time since his arrival in Italy, he now found himself
+tempted to give dinner parties; his guests being, besides Count Gamba
+and Shelley, Mr. Williams, Captain Medwin, Mr. Taafe, and Mr.
+Trelawney;&mdash;and "never," as his friend Shelley used to say, "did he
+display himself to more advantage than on these occasions; being at once
+polite and cordial, full of social hilarity and the most perfect good
+humour; never diverging into ungraceful merriment, and yet keeping up
+the spirit of liveliness throughout the evening." About midnight his
+guests generally left him, with the exception of Captain Medwin, who
+used to remain, as I understand, talking and drinking with his noble
+host till far into the morning; and to the careless, half mystifying
+confidences of these nocturnal sittings, implicitly listened to and
+confusedly recollected, we owe the volume with which Captain Medwin,
+soon after the death of the noble poet, favoured the world.</p>
+
+<p>On the subject of this and other such intimacies formed by Lord Byron,
+not only at the period of which we are speaking, but throughout his
+whole life, it would be difficult to advance any thing more judicious,
+or more demonstrative of a true knowledge of his character, than is to
+be found in the following remarks of one who had studied him with her
+whole heart,&mdash;who had learned to regard him with the eyes of good sense,
+as well as of affection, and whose strong love, in short, was founded
+upon a basis the most cre<span class="pagenum"><a id="page359" name="page359"></a>Pg 359</span>ditable both to him and herself,&mdash;the being
+able to understand him.<a name="FNanchor_89_89" id="FNanchor_89_89"></a><a href="#Footnote_89_89" class="fnanchor">[89]</a></p>
+
+<p>"We continued in Pisa even more rigorously to absent ourselves from
+society. However, as there were a good many English in Pisa, he could
+not avoid becoming acquainted with various friends of Shelley, among
+which number was Mr. Medwin. They followed him in his rides, dined with
+him, and felt themselves happy, of course, in the apparent intimacy in
+which they lived with so renowned a man; but not one of them was
+admitted to any part of his friendship, which, indeed, he did not easily
+accord. He had a great affection for Shelley, and a great esteem for his
+character and talents; but he was not his friend in the most extensive
+sense of that word. Sometimes, when speaking of his friends and of
+friendship, as also of love, and of every other noble emotion of the
+soul, his expressions might inspire doubts concerning his sentiments and
+the goodness of his heart. The feeling of the moment regulated his
+speech, and, besides, he liked to play the part of singularity,&mdash;and
+sometimes worse,&mdash;more especially with those whom he suspected of
+endeavouring to make discoveries as to his real character; but it was
+only mean minds and superficial observers that could be deceived in him.
+It was necessary to<span class="pagenum"><a id="page360" name="page360"></a>Pg 360</span> consider his actions to perceive the contradiction
+they bore to his words: it was necessary to be witness of certain
+moments, during which unforeseen and involuntary emotion forced him to
+give himself entirely up to his feelings; and whoever beheld him then,
+became aware of the stores of sensibility and goodness of which his
+noble heart was full.</p>
+
+<p>"Among the many occasions <i>I</i> had of seeing him thus overpowered, I
+shall mention one relative to his feelings of friendship. A few days
+before leaving Pisa, we were one evening seated in the garden of the
+Palazzo Lanfranchi. A soft melancholy was spread over his countenance;
+he recalled to mind the events of his life; compared them with his
+present situation, and with that which it might have been if his
+affection for me had not caused him to remain in Italy, saying things
+which would have made earth a paradise for me, but that even then a
+presentiment that I should lose all this happiness tormented me. At this
+moment a servant announced Mr. Hobhouse. The slight shade of melancholy
+diffused over Lord Byron's face gave instant place to the liveliest joy;
+but it was so great, that it almost deprived him of strength. A fearful
+paleness came over his cheeks, and his eyes were filled with tears as he
+embraced his friend. His emotion was so great that he was forced to sit
+down.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord Clare's visit also occasioned him extreme delight. He had a great
+affection for Lord Clare, and was very happy during the short visit that
+he paid him at Leghorn. The day on which they separated was a melancholy
+one for Lord Byron.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page361" name="page361"></a>Pg 361</span> 'I have a presentiment that I shall never see him
+more,' he said, and his eyes filled with tears. The same melancholy came
+over him during the first weeks that succeeded to Lord Clare's
+departure, whenever his conversation happened to fall upon this
+friend."<a name="FNanchor_90_90" id="FNanchor_90_90"></a><a href="#Footnote_90_90" class="fnanchor">[90]</a></p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page362" name="page362"></a>Pg 362</span></p>
+
+<p>Of his feelings on the death of his daughter Allegra, this lady gives
+the following account:&mdash;"On the occasion also of the death of his
+natural daughter, I saw in his grief the excess of paternal kindness.
+His conduct towards this child was always that of a fond father; but no
+one would have guessed from his expressions that he felt this affection
+for her. He was dreadfully agitated by the first intelligence of her
+illness; and when afterwards that of her death arrived, I was obliged to
+fulfil the melan<span class="pagenum"><a id="page363" name="page363"></a>Pg 363</span>choly task of communicating it to him. The memory of
+that frightful moment is stamped indelibly on my mind. For several
+evenings he had not left his house, I therefore went to him. His first
+question was relative to the courier he had despatched for tidings of
+his daughter, and whose delay disquieted him. After a short interval of
+suspense, with every caution which my own sorrow suggested, I deprived
+him of all hope of the child's recovery. 'I understand,' said he,&mdash;'it
+is enough, say no more.' A mortal paleness spread itself over his face,
+his strength failed him, and he sunk into a seat. His look was fixed,
+and the expression such that I began to fear for his reason; he did not
+shed a tear, and his countenance manifested so hopeless, so profound, so
+sublime a sorrow, that at the moment he appeared a being of a nature
+superior to humanity. He remained immovable in the same attitude for an
+hour, and no consolation which I endeavoured to afford him seemed to
+reach his ears, far less his heart. But enough of this sad episode, on
+which I cannot linger, even after the lapse of so many years, without
+renewing in my own heart the awful wretchedness of that day. He desired
+to be left alone, and I was obliged to leave him. I found him on the
+following morning tranquillised, and with an expression of religious
+resignation on his features. 'She is more fortunate than we are,' he
+said; 'besides, her position in the world would scarcely have allowed
+her to be happy. It is God's will&mdash;let us mention it no more.' And from
+that day he would never pronounce her name; but became more anxious
+when<span class="pagenum"><a id="page364" name="page364"></a>Pg 364</span> he spoke of Ada,&mdash;so much so as to disquiet himself when the usual
+accounts sent him were for a post or two delayed."<a name="FNanchor_91_91" id="FNanchor_91_91"></a><a href="#Footnote_91_91" class="fnanchor">[91]</a></p><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page365" name="page365"></a>Pg 365</span></p>
+
+<p>The melancholy death of poor Shelley, which happened, as we have seen,
+also during this period, seems to have affected Lord Byron's mind, less
+with grief for the actual loss of his friend, than with bitter
+indignation against those who had, through life, so grossly
+misrepresented him; and never certainly was there an instance where the
+supposed absence of all religion in an individual was assumed so eagerly
+as an excuse for the absence of all charity in judging him. Though never
+personally acquainted with Mr. Shelley, I can join freely with those who
+most loved him in admiring the various excellences of his heart and
+genius, and lamenting the too early doom that robbed us of the mature
+fruits of both. His short life had been, like his poetry, a sort of
+bright erroneous dream,&mdash;false in the general principles on which it
+proceeded, though beautiful and attaching in most of the details. Had
+full time been allowed for the "over-light" of his imagination to have
+been tempered down by the judgment which, in him, was still in reserve,
+the world at large would have been taught to pay that high homage to his
+genius which those only who saw what he was capable of can now be
+expected to accord to it.</p>
+
+<p>It was about this time that Mr. Cowell, paying a visit to Lord Byron at
+Genoa, was told by him that some friends of Mr. Shelley, sitting
+together one evening, had seen that gentleman, distinctly, as they
+thought, walk into a little wood at Lerici, when at the same moment, as
+they afterwards discovered, he was far away in quite a different
+direction. "This,"<span class="pagenum"><a id="page366" name="page366"></a>Pg 366</span> added Lord Byron, in a low, awe-struck tone of
+voice, "was but ten days before poor Shelley died."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 504. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Genoa, October 9. 1822.</p>
+
+<p>"I have received your letter, and as you explain it, I have no
+objection, on <i>your</i> account, to omit those passages in the new
+Mystery (which were marked in the half-sheet sent the other day to
+Pisa), or the passage in <i>Cain</i>;&mdash;but why not be open and say so at
+<i>first</i>? You should be more straight-forward on every account.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been very unwell&mdash;four days confined to my bed in 'the
+worst inn's worst room,' at Lerici, with a violent rheumatic and
+bilious attack, constipation, and the devil knows what: no
+physician, except a young fellow, who, however, was kind and
+cautious, and that's enough.</p>
+
+<p>"At last I seized Thompson's book of prescriptions (a donation of
+yours), and physicked myself with the first dose I found in it; and
+after undergoing the ravages of all kinds of decoctions, sallied
+from bed on the fifth day to cross the Gulf to Sestri. The sea
+revived me instantly; and I ate the sailor's cold fish, and drank a
+gallon of country wine, and got to Genoa the same night after
+landing at Sestri, and have ever since been keeping well, but
+thinner, and with an occasional cough towards evening.</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid the Journal <i>is a bad</i> business, and won't do; but in
+it I am sacrificing <i>myself</i> for others&mdash;<span class="pagenum"><a id="page367" name="page367"></a>Pg 367</span><i>I</i> can have no advantage
+in it. I believe the <i>brothers Hunts</i> to be honest men; I am sure
+that they are poor ones; they have not a nap. They pressed me to
+engage in this work, and in an evil hour I consented. Still I shall
+not repent, if I can do them the least service. I have done all I
+can for Leigh Hunt since he came here; but it is almost
+useless:&mdash;his wife is ill, his six children not very tractable, and
+in the affairs of this world he himself is a child. The death of
+Shelley left them totally aground; and I could not see them in such
+a state without using the common feelings of humanity, and what
+means were in my power, to set them afloat again.</p>
+
+<p>"So Douglas Kinnaird is out of the way? He was so the last time I
+sent him a parcel, and he gives no previous notice. When is he
+expected again?</p>
+
+<p>"Yours, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>"P.S. Will you say at once&mdash;do you publish Werner and the Mystery
+or not? You never once allude to them.</p>
+
+<p>"That curst advertisement of Mr. J. Hunt is out of the limits. I
+did not lend him my name to be hawked about in this way.</p>
+
+<p>"However, I believe&mdash;at least, hope&mdash;that after all you may be a
+good fellow at bottom, and it is on this presumption that I now
+write to you on the subject of a poor woman of the name of <i>Yossy</i>,
+who is, or was, an author of yours, as she says, and published a
+book on Switzerland in 1816, patronised by the 'Court and Colonel
+M'Mahon.' But it seems that neither the Court nor the Colonel could
+get over the portentous price of three pounds, thirteen, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="page368" name="page368"></a>Pg 368</span>
+sixpence,' which alarmed the too susceptible public; and, in short,
+'the book died away,' and, what is worse, the poor soul's husband
+died too, and she writes with the man a corpse before her; but
+instead of addressing the bishop or Mr. Wilberforce, she hath
+recourse to that proscribed, atheistical, syllogistical,
+phlogistical person, <i>mysen</i>, as they say in Notts. It is strange
+enough, but the rascaille English who calumniate me in every
+direction and on every score, whenever they are in great distress
+recur to me for assistance. If I have had one example of this, I
+have had letters from a thousand, and as far as is in my power have
+tried to repay good for evil, and purchase a shilling's worth of
+salvation as long as my pocket can hold out.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, I am willing to do what I can for this unfortunate person;
+but her situation and her wishes (not unreasonable, however,)
+require more than can be advanced by one individual like myself;
+for I have many claims of the same kind just at present, and also
+some remnants of <i>debt</i> to pay in England&mdash;God, he knows, the
+<i>latter</i> how reluctantly! Can the Literary Fund do nothing for her?
+By your interest, which is great among the pious, I dare say that
+something might be collected. Can you get any of her books
+published? Suppose you took her as author in my place, now vacant
+among your ragamuffins; she is a moral and pious person, and will
+shine upon your shelves. But seriously, do what you can for her."</p></div><p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page369" name="page369"></a>Pg 369</span></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 505. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Genoa, 9bre 23. 1822.</p>
+
+<p>"I have to thank you for a parcel of books, which are very welcome,
+especially Sir Walter's gift of 'Halidon Hill.' You have sent me a
+copy of 'Werner,' but <i>without</i> the preface. If you have published
+it <i>without</i>, you will have plunged me into a very disagreeable
+dilemma, because I shall be accused of plagiarism from Miss Lee's
+German's Tale, whereas I have fully and freely acknowledged that
+the drama is entirely taken from the story.</p>
+
+<p>"I return you the Quarterly Review, uncut and unopened, not from
+disrespect or disregard or pique, but it is a kind of reading which
+I have some time disused, as I think the periodical style of
+writing hurtful to the habits of the mind, by presenting the
+superfices of too many things at once. I do not know that it
+contains any thing disagreeable to me&mdash;it may or it may not; nor do
+I return it on account that there <i>may</i> be an article which you
+hinted at in one of your late letters, but because I have left off
+reading these kind of works, and should equally have returned you
+any other number.</p>
+
+<p>"I am obliged to take in one or two abroad, because solicited to do
+so. The Edinburgh came before me by mere chance in Galignani's
+picnic sort of gazette, where he had inserted a part of it.</p>
+
+<p>"You will have received various letters from me lately, in a style
+which I used with reluctance; but you left me no other choice by
+your absolute refusal to communicate with a man you did not like
+upon<span class="pagenum"><a id="page370" name="page370"></a>Pg 370</span> the mere simple matter of transfer of a few papers of little
+consequence (except to their author), and which could be of no
+moment to yourself.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope that Mr. Kinnaird is better. It is strange that you never
+alluded to his accident, if it be true, as stated in the papers. I
+am yours, &amp;c. &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope that you have a milder winter than we have had here. We
+have had inundations worthy of the Trent or Po, and the conductor
+(Franklin's) of my house was struck (or supposed to be stricken) by
+a thunderbolt. I was so near the window that I was dazzled and my
+eyes hurt for several minutes, and everybody in the house felt an
+electric shock at the moment. Madame Guiccioli was frightened, as
+you may suppose.</p>
+
+<p>"I have thought since that your bigots would have 'saddled me with
+a judgment' (as Thwackum did Square when he bit his tongue in
+talking metaphysics), if any thing had happened of consequence.
+These fellows always forget Christ in their Christianity, and what
+he said when 'the tower of Siloam fell.'</p>
+
+<p>"To-day is the 9th, and the 10th is my surviving daughter's
+birth-day. I have ordered, as a regale, a mutton chop and a bottle
+of ale. She is seven years old, I believe. Did I ever tell you that
+the day I came of age I dined on eggs and bacon and a bottle of
+ale? For once in a way they are my favourite dish and drinkable,
+but as neither of them agree with me, I never use them but on great
+jubilees&mdash;once in four or five years or so.</p>
+
+<p>"I see somebody represents the Hunts and Mrs.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page371" name="page371"></a>Pg 371</span> Shelley as living in
+my house: it is a falsehood. They reside at some distance, and I do
+not see them twice in a month. I have not met Mr. Hunt a dozen
+times since I came to Genoa, or near it.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours ever," &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 506. TO MR. MURRAY.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Genoa, 10bre 25&deg;. 1822.</p>
+
+<p>"I had sent you back the Quarterly, without perusal, having
+resolved to read no more reviews, good, bad, or indifferent; but
+'who can control his fate?' Galignani, to whom my English studies
+are confined, has forwarded a copy of at least one half of it in
+his indefatigable catch-penny weekly compilation; and as, 'like
+honour, it came unlooked for,' I have looked through it. I must say
+that, upon the <i>whole</i>, that is, the whole of the <i>half</i> which I
+have read (for the other half is to be the segment of Galignani's
+next week's circular), it is extremely handsome, and any thing but
+unkind or unfair. As I take the good in good part, I must not, nor
+will not, quarrel with the bad. What the writer says of Don Juan is
+harsh, but it is inevitable. He must follow, or at least not
+directly oppose, the opinion of a prevailing, and yet not very
+firmly seated, party. A Review may and will direct and 'turn awry'
+the currents of opinion, but it must not directly oppose them. Don
+Juan will be known by and by, for what it is intended,&mdash;a <i>Satire</i>
+on <i>abuses</i> of the present states of society, and not an eulogy of
+vice. It may be now and then voluptuous: I can't help that.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page372" name="page372"></a>Pg 372</span>
+Ariosto is worse; Smollett (see Lord Strutwell in vol. 2d of
+Roderick Random) ten times worse; and Fielding no better. No girl
+will ever be seduced by reading Don Juan:&mdash;no, no; she will go to
+Little's poems and Rousseau's <i>romans</i> for that, or even to the
+immaculate De Sta&euml;l. They will encourage her, and not the Don, who
+laughs at that, and&mdash;and&mdash;most other things. But never mind&mdash;<i>&ccedil;a
+ir&agrave;!</i></p>
+
+<p>"Now, do you see what you and your friends do by your injudicious
+rudeness?&mdash;actually cement a sort of connection which you strove to
+prevent, and which, had the Hunts <i>prospered</i>, would not in all
+probability have continued. As it is, I will not quit them in their
+adversity, though it should cost me character, fame, money, and the
+usual <i>et cetera</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"My original motives I already explained (in the letter which you
+thought proper to show): they are the <i>true</i> ones, and I abide by
+them, as I tell you, and I told Leigh Hunt when he questioned me on
+the subject of that letter. He was violently hurt, and never will
+forgive me at bottom; but I can't help that. I never meant to make
+a parade of it; but if he chose to question me, I could only answer
+the plain truth: and I confess I did not see any thing in the
+letter to hurt him, unless I said he was 'a bore,' which I don't
+remember. Had their Journal gone on well, and I could have aided to
+make it better for them, I should then have left them, after my
+safe pilotage off a lee shore, to make a prosperous voyage by
+themselves. As it is, I can't, and would not, if I could, leave
+them among the breakers.</p>
+
+<p>"As to any community of feeling, thought, or<span class="pagenum"><a id="page373" name="page373"></a>Pg 373</span> opinion, between
+Leigh Hunt and me, there is little or none. We meet rarely, hardly
+ever; but I think him a good-principled and able man, and must do
+as I would be done by. I do not know what world he has lived in,
+but I have lived in three or four; but none of them like his Keats
+and kangaroo terra incognita. Alas! poor Shelley! how we would have
+laughed had he lived, and how we used to laugh now and then, at
+various things which are grave in the suburbs!</p>
+
+<p>"You are all mistaken about Shelley. You do not know how mild, how
+tolerant, how good he was in society; and as perfect a gentleman as
+ever crossed a drawing-room, when he liked, and where liked.</p>
+
+<p>"I have some thoughts of taking a run down to Naples (<i>solus</i>, or,
+at most, <i>cum sola</i>) this spring, and writing, when I have studied
+the country, a Fifth and Sixth Canto of Childe Harold: but this is
+merely an idea for the present, and I have other excursions and
+voyages in my mind. The busts<a name="FNanchor_92_92" id="FNanchor_92_92"></a><a href="#Footnote_92_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a> are finished: are you worthy of
+them?</p>
+
+<p>"Yours, &amp;c. N.B.</p>
+
+<p>"P.S. Mrs. Shelley is residing with the Hunts at some distance from
+me. I see them very seldom, and generally on account of their
+business.<span class="pagenum"><a id="page374" name="page374"></a>Pg 374</span> Mrs. Shelley, I believe, will go to England in the
+spring.</p>
+
+<p>"Count Gamba's family, the father and mother and daughter, are
+residing with me by Mr. Hill (the minister's) recommendation, as a
+safer asylum from the political persecutions than they could have
+in another residence; but they occupy one part of a large house,
+and I the other, and our establishments are quite separate.</p>
+
+<p>"Since I have read the Quarterly, I shall erase two or three
+passages in the latter six or seven cantos, in which I had lightly
+stroked over two or three of your authors; but I will not return
+evil for good. I liked what I read of the article much.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. J. Hunt is most likely the publisher of the new Cantos; with
+what prospects of success I know not, nor does it very much matter,
+as far as I am concerned; but I hope that it may be of use to him;
+he is a stiff, sturdy, conscientious man, and I like him; he is
+such a one as Prynne or Pym might be. I bear you no ill-will for
+declining the Don Juans.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you aided Madame de Yossy, as I requested? I sent her three
+hundred francs. Recommend her, will you, to the Literary Fund, or
+to some benevolence within your circles."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><b>LETTER 507. TO LADY &mdash;&mdash;.</b></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Albaro, November 10. 1822.</p>
+
+<p>"The Chevalier persisted in declaring himself an ill-used
+gentleman, and describing you as a kind of cold Calypso, who lead
+astray people of an amatory<span class="pagenum"><a id="page375" name="page375"></a>Pg 375</span> disposition without giving them any
+sort of compensation, contenting yourself, it seems, with only
+making <i>one</i> fool instead of two, which is the more approved method
+of proceeding on such occasions. For my part, I think you are quite
+right; and be assured from me that a woman (as society is
+constituted in England) who gives any advantage to a man may expect
+a lover, but will sooner or later find a tyrant; and this is not
+the man's fault either, perhaps, but is the necessary and natural
+result of the circumstances of society, which, in fact, tyrannise
+over the man equally with the woman; that is to say, if either of
+them have any feeling or honour.</p>
+
+<p>"You can write to me at your leisure and inclination. I have always
+laid it down as a maxim, and found it justified by experience, that
+a man and a woman make far better friendships than can exist
+between two of the same sex; but <i>these</i> with this condition, that
+they never have made, or are to make, love with each other. Lovers
+may, and, indeed, generally <i>are</i> enemies, but they never can be
+friends; because there must always be a spice of jealousy and a
+something of self in all their speculations.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, I rather look upon love altogether as a sort of hostile
+transaction, very necessary to make or to break matches, and keep
+the world going, but by no means a sinecure to the parties
+concerned.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, as my love perils are, I believe, pretty well over, and
+yours, by all accounts, are never to begin, we shall be the best
+friends imaginable, as far as both are concerned, and with this
+advantage, that<span class="pagenum"><a id="page376" name="page376"></a>Pg 376</span> we may both fall to loving right and left through
+all our acquaintance, without either sullenness or sorrow from that
+amiable passion which are its inseparable attendants.</p>
+
+<p>"Believe me," &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+
+<h5>END OF THE FIFTH VOLUME.</h5>
+
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a>
+      I had mistaken the name of the lady he enquired 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.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a>
+      While these sheets are passing through the press, a printed statement has
+      been transmitted to me by Lady Noel Byron, which the reader will find inserted
+      in the Appendix to this volume. (<i>First Edition</i>.)</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a>
+      As far as regards the poets of ancient times, this assertion is, perhaps,
+      right; though, if there be any truth in what &AElig;lian and Seneca have
+      left on record, of the obscurity, during their lifetime, of such men as
+      Socrates and Epicurus, it would seem to prove that, among the ancients,
+      contemporary fame was a far more rare reward of literary or philosophical
+      eminence than among us moderns. When the "Clouds" of Aristophanes was exhibited
+      before the assembled deputies of the towns of Attica, these personages,
+      as &AElig;lian tells us, were unanimously of opinion, that the character
+      of an unknown person, called Socrates, was uninteresting upon the stage;
+      and Seneca has given the substance of an authentic letter of Epicurus, in
+      which that philosopher declares that nothing hurt him so much, in the midst
+      of all his happiness, as to think that Greece,&mdash;"illa nobilis Gr&aelig;cia,"&mdash;so
+      far from knowing him, had scarcely even heard of his existence.&mdash;Epist.
+      79.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a>
+      I certainly ventured to differ from the judgment of my noble friend, no
+      less in his attempts to depreciate that peculiar walk of the art in which
+      he himself so grandly trod, than in the inconsistency of which I thought
+      him guilty, in condemning all those who stood up for particular "schools"
+      of poetry, and yet, at the same time, maintaining so exclusive a theory
+      of the art himself. How little, however, he attended to either the grounds
+      or degrees of my dissent from him, will appear by the following wholesale
+      report of my opinion, in his "Detached Thoughts:" </p>
+    <p>
+"One of my notions different from those of my contemporaries, is, that
+the present is not a high age of English poetry. There are <i>more</i> poets
+(soi-disant) than ever there were, and proportionally <i>less</i> poetry.
+</p><p>
+"This <i>thesis</i> 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 age of British
+poesy."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a>
+      Written by Lord Byron's early friend, the Rev. Francis Hodgson.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a>
+      The strange verses that follow are from a poem by Keats.&mdash;In a manuscript
+      note on this passage of the pamphlet, dated November 12. 1821, Lord Byron
+      says, "Mr. Keats died at Rome about a year after this was written, of a
+      decline produced by his having burst a blood-vessel on reading the article
+      on his 'Endymion' in the Quarterly Review. I have read the article before
+      and since; and, although it is bitter, I do not think that a man should
+      permit himself to be killed by it. But a young man little dreams what he
+      must inevitably encounter in the course of a life ambitious of public notice.
+      My indignation at Mr. Keats's depreciation of Pope has hardly permitted
+      me to do justice to his own genius, which, malgr&egrave; all the fantastic
+      fopperies of his style, was undoubtedly of great promise. His fragment of
+      'Hyperion' seems actually inspired by the Titans, and is as sublime as &AElig;schylus.
+      He is a loss to our literature; and the more so, as he himself, before his
+      death, is said to have been persuaded that he had not taken the right line,
+      and was reforming his style upon the more classical models of the language."</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a>
+      "It was at least a <i>grammar</i> 'school.'"</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a>
+      "So spelt by the author."</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a>
+      Mr. Galignani had applied to Lord Byron with the view of procuring from
+      him such legal right over those works of his Lordship of which he had hitherto
+      been the sole publisher in France, as would enable him to prevent others,
+      in future, from usurping the same privilege.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a>
+      Here follow some details respecting his friend Charles S. Matthews, which
+      have already been given in the first volume of this work.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a>
+      The ghost-story, in which he here professes such serious belief, forms the
+      subject of one of Mr. Rogers's beautiful Italian sketches.&mdash;See "Italy,"
+      p. 43. edit. 1830.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a>
+      A celebrated hair-dresser.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a>
+      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.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a>
+      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.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a>
+      "In quest' epoca venne a Ravenna di ritorno da Roma e Napoli il mio diletto
+      fratello Pietro. Egli era stato prevenuto da dei nemeci di Lord Byron contro
+      il di lui carattere; molto lo affligeva la mia intimit&agrave; con lui,
+      e le mie lettere non avevano riuscito a bene distruggere la cattiva impressione
+      ricevuta dei detrattori di Lord Byron. Ma appena lo vidde e lo conobbe egli
+      pure ricevesse quella impressione che non pu&ograve; essere prodotta da
+      dei pregi esteriori, ma solamente dall unione di tuttoci&ograve; che vi
+      &egrave; di pi&ugrave; bello e di pi&ugrave; grande nel cuore e nella mente
+      dell uomo. Svani ogni sua anteriore prevenzione contro di Lord Byron, e
+      la conformit&agrave; della loro idee e dei studii loro contribu&igrave;
+      a stringerli in quella amicizia che non doveva avere fine che colla loro
+      vita."</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a>
+      A draft of this Address, in his own handwriting, was found among his papers.
+      He is supposed to have intrusted 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 his Lordship
+      to supply him with money for his return. This man turned out afterwards
+      to have been a spy, and the above paper, if confided to him, fell most probably
+      into the hands of the Pontifical Government.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a>
+      "Un Inglese amico della libert&agrave; avendo sentito che i Napolitani permettono
+      anche agli stranieri di contribuire alia buona causa, bramerebbe l'onore
+      di vedere accettata la sua offerta di mille luigi, la quale egli azzarda
+      di fare. Gi&agrave; testimonio oculare non molto fa della tirannia dei Barbari
+      negli stati da loro occupati nell' Italia, egli vede con tutto l'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
+      &egrave; poca in se stessa, come bisogna che sia sempre quella di un individuo
+      ad una nazione, ma egli spera che non sar&agrave; l'ultima dalla parte dei
+      suoi compatriotti. La sua lontananza dalle frontiere, e il sentimento della
+      sua poca capacit&agrave; personale di contribuire efficacimente a servire
+      la nazione gl' impedisce di proporsi come degno della pi&ugrave; piccola
+      commissione che domanda dell' esperienza e del talento. Ma, se come semplice
+      volontario la sua presenza non fosse un incomodo a quello che l'accetasse
+      egli riparebbe a qualunque luogo indicato dal Governo Napolitano, per ubbidire
+      agli ordini e participare ai pericoli del suo superiore, senza avere altri
+      motivi che quello di dividere il destino di una brava nazione resistendo
+      alla se dicente Santa Allianza la quale aggiunge l'ippocrisia al despotismo."</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a>
+      Among his "Detached Thoughts" I find this general passion for liberty thus
+      strikingly expressed. After saying, in reference to his own choice of Venice
+      as a place of residence, "I remembered General Ludlow's domal inscription,
+      'Omne solum forti patria,' and sat down free in a country which had been
+      one of slavery for centuries," he adds, "But there is <i>no</i> freedom,
+      even for <i>masters</i>, 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 deserts,
+      and look on upon the first dance of their freedom. </p>
+    <p>
+"As to political slavery, so general, it is men's own fault: if they
+<i>will</i> 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 <i>first</i> spring, she is
+cowardly as the tiger, and retires to be hunted."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a>
+      Here follows a long passage, already extracted, relative to his early friend,
+      Edward Noel Long.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a>
+      In this, I rather think he was misinformed; whatever merit there may be
+      in the jest, I have not, as far as I can recollect, the slightest claim
+      to it.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a>
+      Thus marked, with impatient strokes of the pen, by himself in the original.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a>
+      In the original MS. these watch-words are blotted over so as to be illegible.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a>
+      In this little incident of the music in the streets thus touching so suddenly
+      upon the nerve of memory, and calling away his mind from its dark bodings
+      to a recollection of years and scenes the happiest, perhaps, of his whole
+      life, there is something that appears to me peculiarly affecting.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a>
+      In Boccacio, the name is, I think, Nastagio.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a>
+      In another paper-book.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a>
+      Of this gentleman, the following notice occurs in the "Detached Thoughts:"&mdash;"L
+      * * was a good man, a clever man, but a bore. My only revenge or consolation
+      used to be setting him by the ears with some vivacious person who hated
+      bores especially,&mdash;Madame de S&mdash;&mdash; or H&mdash;&mdash;, for
+      example. But I liked L * *; he was a jewel of a man, had he been better
+      set;&mdash;I don't mean <i>personally</i>, but less <i>tiresome</i>, 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 <i>before</i>, to pilot him; I am
+      absent at times, especially towards evening; and the consequence of this
+      pilotage was some narrow escapes to the M * * 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 <i>moveable</i>
+      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 <i>terra</i>fied by the charge; thrice
+      did I lose him in the grey of the gloaming, and was obliged to bring-to
+      to his distant signals of distance and distress;&mdash;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&mdash;of a second visit to Jamaica. </p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'I'd give the lands of Deloraine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dark Musgrave were alive again!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p>
+that is,&mdash;
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I would give many a sugar cane<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">M * * L * * were alive again!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a>
+      The following passage from the letter of mine, to which the above was an
+      answer, will best explain what follows:&mdash;With respect to the newspaper,
+      it is odd enough that Lord * * * * and myself had been (about a week or
+      two before I received your letter) speculating upon your assistance in a
+      plan somewhat similar, but more literary and less regularly-periodical in
+      its appearance. Lord * *, 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:&mdash;'
+      Comment, Monsieur,&mdash;sans y &ecirc;tre <i>oblig&eacute;</i>!' 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."</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a>
+      To the letter which enclosed this protest, and which has been omitted to
+      avoid repetitions, he had subjoined a passage from Spence's Anecdotes (p.
+      197. of Singer's edition), where Pope says, speaking of himself, "I had
+      taken such strong resolutions against any thing of that kind, from seeing
+      how much every body that <i>did</i> write for the stage was obliged to subject
+      themselves to the players and the town."&mdash;<i>Spence's Anecdotes</i>,
+      p. 22. </p>
+    <p>
+In the same paragraph, Pope is made to say, "After I had got acquainted
+with the town, I resolved never to write any thing for the stage, though
+solicited by many of my friends to do so, and particularly Betterton."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a>
+      No further step was ever taken in this affair; and the documents, which
+      were of no use whatever, are, I believe, still in Mr. Murray's possession.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a>
+      The self-will of Lord Byron was in no point more conspicuous than in the
+      determination with which he thus persisted in giving the preference to one
+      or two works of his own which, in the eyes of all other persons, were most
+      decided failures. Of this class was the translation from Pulci, so frequently
+      mentioned by him, which appeared afterwards in the Liberal, and which, though
+      thus rescued from the fate of remaining unpublished, roust for ever, I fear,
+      submit to the doom of being unread.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a>
+      Already given in his Journal.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a>
+      To the above letter, which was published at the time, Mr. Turner wrote a
+      reply, but, for reasons stated by himself, did not print it. At his request,
+      I give insertion to his paper in the Appendix.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a>
+      These lines&mdash;perhaps from some difficulty in introducing them&mdash;were
+      never inserted in the Tragedy.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a>
+      With such anxiety did he look to this essential part of his daughter's education,
+      that notwithstanding the many advantages she was sure to derive from the
+      kind and feminine superintendence of Mrs. Shelley, his apprehensions, lest
+      her feeling upon religious subjects might be disturbed by the conversation
+      of Shelley himself, prevented him from allowing her to remain under his
+      friend's roof.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a>
+      "Aye, down to the dust with them, slaves as they are," &amp;c. &amp;c.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a>
+      I had not, when I wrote, <i>seen</i> 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.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a>
+      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 <i>neither</i> of the extreme opinions into which, as it appeared
+      to me, my distinguished friends had diverged;&mdash;neither with Lord Byron
+      in that spirit of partisanship which led him to place Pope <i>above</i>
+      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.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a>
+      The account given, by Madame Guiccioli, of his anxiety on this occasion,
+      fully corroborates his own:&mdash;"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 those 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 relative 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:&mdash;'You will see here confirmation of what I told you
+      the other day! I am sacrificed in every way, without knowing the <i>why</i>
+      or the <i>wherefore</i>. 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;&mdash;in 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 <i>tragical</i> to me
+      as a <i>man</i> than as an <i>author</i>; for <i>you</i> 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!!!&mdash;here,
+      probably, at Ravenna?&mdash;and to whom? perhaps to Fletcher!!!&mdash;that
+      illustrious literary character,'" &amp;c. &amp;c.&mdash;"Ma per&ograve;
+      la sua tranquillit&agrave; era suo malgrado sovente alterata dalle publiche
+      vicende, e dagli attachi che spesso si direggevano a lui nei giornali come
+      ad autore principalmente. Era invano che egli protestava indifferenza per
+      codesti attachi. L'impressione non era &eacute; vero che momentanea, e purtroppo
+      per una nobile fierezza sdegnava sempre di rispondere ai suoi dettratori.
+      Ma per quanto fosse breve quella impressione era per&ograve; assai forte
+      per farlo molto soffrire e per affliggere quelli che lo amavano. Tuttoci&ograve;
+      che ebbe luogo per la rappresentazione del suo Marino Faliero lo inquict&ograve;
+      pure moltissimo e dietro ad un articolo di una Gazetta di Milano in cui
+      si parlava di quell' affare egli mi scrisse cos&igrave;&mdash;'Ecco la verit&agrave;
+      di ci&ograve; che io vi dissi pochi giorni fa, come vengo sacrificato in
+      tutte le maniere seza sapere il <i>perch&eacute;</i> e il <i>come</i>. La
+      tragedia di cui si parla non &egrave; (e non era mai) n&egrave; scritta
+      n&egrave; adattata al teatro; ma non &egrave; per&ograve; romantico il disegno,
+      &egrave; piuttosto regolare&mdash;regolarissimo per l' unit&agrave; del
+      tempo, c mancando poco a quella del sito. Voi sapete bene se io aveva intenzione
+      di farla rappresentare, poich&egrave; era scritta al vostro fianco e nei
+      momenti per certo pi&ugrave; <i>tragici</i> per me come <i>uomo</i> che
+      come <i>autore</i>,&mdash;perch&egrave; <i>voi</i> 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 <i>l'autore
+      ne fece la letlura!!!</i>&mdash;qu&igrave; forse? a Ravenna?&mdash;ed a
+      chi? forse a Fletcher!!!&mdash;quel illustre litterato,'" &amp;c. &amp;c.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a>
+      In their eagerness, like true controversialists, to avail themselves of
+      every passing advantage, and convert even straws into weapons on an emergency,
+      my two friends, during their short warfare, contrived to place me in that
+      sort of embarrassing position, the most provoking feature of which is, that
+      it excites more amusement 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 be stated, by "a gentleman of the highest literary," &amp;c.
+      &amp;c., 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;&mdash;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 authoritatively 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 designating 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,&mdash;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. </p>
+    <p>
+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;&mdash;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 conversation, told him at Venice, and
+which,&mdash;pleasant in itself, and, whether true or false,
+harmless,&mdash;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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a>
+      In venturing this judgment upon Shakspeare, Lord Byron but followed in the
+      footsteps of his great idol Pope. "It was mighty simple in Rowe," says this
+      poet, "to write a play now professedly in Shakspeare's style, that is, professedly
+      in the style of a bad age."&mdash;Spence, sect. 4. 1734-36. Of Milton, too,
+      Pope seems to have held pretty nearly the same opinion as that professed
+      by Lord Byron in some of these letters. See, in Spence, sect. 5 1737-39,
+      a passage on which his editor remarks&mdash;"Perhaps Pope did not relish
+      Shakspeare more than he seems to have done Milton."</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a>
+      Among the persons applied to by Lord Byron for their interest on this occasion
+      was the late Duchess of Devonshire, whose answer, dated from Spa, I found
+      among his papers. With the utmost readiness her Grace undertakes to write
+      to Rome on the subject, and adds, "Believe me also, my Lord, that there
+      is a character of justice, goodness, and benevolence, in the present Government
+      of Rome, which, if they are convinced of the just claims of the Conte de
+      Gamba and his son, will make them grant their request."</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a>
+      "Una delle principali 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. Gi&agrave; da qualche tempo la permanenza di Lord
+      Byron in Ravenna era mal gradita dal Governo conoscendosile sue opinione
+      e temendosila sua influenza, ed essaggiandosi anche i suoi mezzi per esercitar&igrave;a.
+      Si credeva che egli somministrasse danaro per provvedere armi, e che provvedesse
+      ai bisogni della Societ&agrave;. La verit&agrave; era che nello spargere
+      le sue beneficenze egli non s'informava delle opinioni politiche e religiose
+      di quello che aveva bisogno del suo soccorso; ogni misero ed ogni infelice
+      aveva un eguale diviso alia sua generosit&agrave;. 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."</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a>
+      "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
+      pu&ograve; dunque pensare cosa dovesse essere qual viaggio per me e cosa
+      io dovessi soffrire nella sua lontananza. Le sue lettere avrebbero potuto
+      essermi di conforto; ma quando io le riceveva era gi&agrave; trascorso lo
+      spazio di due giorni dal momenta in cui furono scritte, e questo pensiero
+      distruggeva tutto il bene che esse potevano farmi, e la mia anima era lacerata
+      dai pi&ugrave; crudeli timori. Frattanto era necessario per la di lui convenienza
+      che egli restasse ancora qualche tempo in Ravenna affinch&egrave; non avesse
+      a dirsi che egli pure ne era esigliato; ed oltreci&ograve; egli si era sominamente
+      affezionato a quel soggiorno e voleva innanzi di partire vedere esausiti
+      tutti i tentativi e tutte le speranze del ritorno dei miei parenti."</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a>
+      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.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a>
+      This threat has been since acted upon;&mdash;the critic in question having,
+      to the great horror of the French literati, pronounced Moli&egrave;re to
+      be a "farceur."</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a>
+      One of the charges of plagiarism brought against him by some scribblers
+      of the day was founded (as I have already observed in the first volume of
+      this work) on his having sought in the authentic records of real shipwrecks
+      those materials out of which he has worked his own powerful description
+      in the second Canto of Don Juan. With as much justice might the Italian
+      author, (Galeani, if I recollect right,) who wrote a Discourse on the Military
+      Science displayed by Tasso in his battles, have reproached that poet with
+      the sources from which he drew his knowledge:&mdash;with as much justice
+      might Puysegur and Segrais, who have pointed out the same merit in Homer
+      and Virgil, have withheld their praise because the science on which this
+      merit was founded must have been derived by the skill and industry of these
+      poets from others. </p>
+    <p>
+So little was Tasso ashamed of those casual imitations of other poets
+which are so often branded as plagiarisms, that, in his Commentary on
+his Rime, he takes pains to point out and avow whatever coincidences of
+this kind occur in his own verses.
+</p><p>
+While on this subject, I may be allowed to mention one single instance,
+where a thought that had lain perhaps indistinctly in Byron's memory
+since his youth, comes out so improved and brightened as to be, by every
+right of genius, his own. In the Two Noble Kinsmen of Beaumont and
+Fletcher (a play to which the picture of passionate friendship,
+delineated in the characters of Palamon and Arcite, would be sure to
+draw the attention of Byron in his boyhood,) we find the following
+passage:&mdash;
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">"Oh never<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall we two exercise, like twins of Honour,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our arms again, and <i>feel our fiery horses</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Like proud seas under us</i>."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p>
+Out of this somewhat forced simile, by a judicious transposition of the
+comparison, and by the substitution of the more definite word "waves"
+for "seas" the clear, noble thought in one of the Cantos of Childe
+Harold has been produced:&mdash;
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Once more upon the waters! yet once more!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the waves bound beneath me, as a steed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That knows his rider."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a>
+      "No man ever rose (says Pope) to any degree of perfection in writing but
+      through obstinacy and an inveterate resolution against the stream of mankind."</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a>
+      Written in the envelope of the preceding Letter.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a>
+      It will be observed, from this and a few other instances, that notwithstanding
+      the wonderful purity of English he was able to preserve in his writings,
+      while living constantly with persons speaking a different language, he had
+      already begun so far to feel the influence of this habit as to fall occasionally
+      into Italianisms in his familiar letters.&mdash;"I am in the case to know"&mdash;"I
+      have caused write"&mdash;"It regrets me," &amp;c.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a>
+      An anonymous letter which he had received, threatening him with assassination.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a>
+      In this note, so highly honourable to the fair writer, she says, "Remember,
+      my Byron, the promise you have made me. Never shall I be able to tell you
+      the satisfaction I feel from it, so great are the sentiments of pleasure
+      and confidence with which the sacrifice you have made has inspired me."
+      In a postscript to the note she adds, "I am only sorry that Don Juan was
+      not left in the infernal regions."&mdash;"Ricordati, mio Byron, della promessa
+      che mi hai fatta. Non potrei mai dirti la satisfazione ch' io ne provo!&mdash;sono
+      tanti i sentimenti di piacere e di confidenza che il tuo sacrificio m'inspira."&mdash;"Mi
+      reveresce solo che Don Giovanni non resti all' Inferno." </p>
+    <p>
+In enclosing the lady's note to Mr. Murray, July 4th, Lord B. says,
+"This is the note of acknowledgment for the promise not to continue Don
+Juan. She says, in the postscript, that she is only sorry that D.J. does
+not <i>remain</i> in Hell (or go there)".</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a>
+      "The Irish Avatar." In this copy the following sentence (taken from a letter
+      of Curran, in the able Life of that true Irishman, by his son) is prefixed
+      as a motto to the Poem,&mdash;"And Ireland, like a bastinadoed elephant,
+      kneeling to receive the paltry rider."&mdash;<i>Letter of Curran, Life</i>,
+      vol. ii. p. 336. At the end of the verses are these words:&mdash;"(Signed)
+      W.L. B * *, M.A., and written with a view to a Bishoprick."</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a>
+      This short satire, which is wholly unworthy of his pen, appeared afterwards
+      in the Liberal.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a>
+      It would be difficult to describe more strongly or more convincingly than
+      Lord Byron has done in this letter the sort of petty, but thwarting obstructions
+      and distractions which are at present thrown across the path of men of real
+      talent by that swarm of minor critics and pretenders with whom the want
+      of a vent in other professions has crowded all the walks of literature.
+      Nor is it only the writers of the day that suffer from this multifarious
+      rush into the mart;&mdash;the readers also, from having (as Lord Byron expresses
+      it in another letter) "the superficies of too many things presented to them
+      at once," come to lose by degrees their powers of discrimination; and, in
+      the same manner as the palate becomes confused in trying various wines,
+      so the public taste declines in proportion as the impressions to which it
+      is exposed multiply.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a>
+      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.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a>
+      He here adverts to a passing remark, in one of Mr. Murray's letters, that,
+      as his Lordship's "Memoranda" were not to be published in his lifetime,
+      the sum now paid for the work, 2100<i>l</i>. would most probably, upon a
+      reasonable calculation of survivorship, amount ultimately to no less than
+      8000<i>l</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a>
+      To all the persons upon this list who were accessible, application has,
+      of course, been made,&mdash;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
+      correspondent 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 accumulate 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 distinguished associate and intimate of the noble poet, from the very
+      outset to the close of his extraordinary career, have come forward cordially
+      to communicate whatever memorials they possessed of him,&mdash;trusting,
+      as I am willing to flatter myself, that they 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.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a>
+      It was, no doubt, from a similar experience of its effects that Dryden always
+      took physic when about to write any thing of importance. His caricature,
+      Bayes, is accordingly made to say, "When I have a grand design, I ever take
+      physic and let blood; for, when you would have pure swiftness of thought
+      and fiery flights of fancy, you must have a care of the pensive part;&mdash;in
+      short," &amp;c. &amp;c. </p>
+    <p>
+On this subject of the effects of medicine upon the mind and spirits,
+some curious facts and illustrations have been, with his usual research,
+collected by Mr. D'Israeli, in his amusing "Curiosities of Literature."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a>
+      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.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a>
+      "Egli era partito 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 dispiacere
+      di lasciare Ravenna. 'Se pap&agrave; &egrave; richiamato (mi scriveva egli)
+      io torno in quel istante a Ravenna, e se &egrave; richiamato <i>prima</i>
+      della mia partenza, <i>io non parto</i>.' In questa speranza egli differi
+      varii mesi a partire. Ma, finalmente, non potendo pi&ugrave; sperare il
+      nostro ritorno prossimo, egli mi scriveva&mdash;'Io parto molto mal volontieri
+      prevedendo dei mali assai grandi per voi altri e massime per voi; altro
+      non dico,&mdash;lo vedrete.' E in un altra lettera, 'Io lascio Ravenna cos&igrave;
+      mal volontieri, e cos&igrave; persuaso che la mia partenza non pu&ograve;
+      che condurre da un male ad un altro pi&ugrave; grande che non ho cuore di
+      scrivere altro in questo punto.' Egli mi scriveva allora sempre in Italiano
+      e trascrivo le sue precise parole&mdash;ma come quei suoi pressentimenti
+      si verificarono poi in appresso!</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a>
+      The leaf that contains the original of this extract I have unluckily mislaid.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a>
+      "See the Cries of Bologna, as drawn by Aunibal Caracci. He was of very humble
+      origin; and, to correct his brother's vanity, once sent him a portrait of
+      their father, the tailor, threading his needle."</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a>
+      "The principal gondolier, il fante di poppa, was almost always in the confidence
+      of his master, and employed on occasions that required judgment and address."</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a>
+      "Adrianum mare.&mdash;CICERO."</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_65_65" id="Footnote_65_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a>
+      "See the Prophecy of Dante."</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_66_66" id="Footnote_66_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a>
+      "See the tale as told by Boccaccio and Dryden."</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_67_67" id="Footnote_67_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a>
+      "They wait for the traveller's carriage at the foot of every hill."</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_68_68" id="Footnote_68_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a>
+      Having discovered that, while I was abroad, a kind friend had, without any
+      communication with myself, placed at the disposal 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. </p>
+    <p>
+It may seem obtrusive, I fear, to enter into this sort of personal
+details; but, without some few words of explanation, such passages as
+the above would be unintelligible.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_69_69" id="Footnote_69_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_69_69"><span class="label">[69]</span></a>
+      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. The author of the Night Thoughts
+      was a "fellow of infinite jest;" and of the pathetic Rowe, Pope says&mdash;"He
+      would laugh all day long&mdash;he would do nothing else but laugh."</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_70_70" id="Footnote_70_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_70_70"><span class="label">[70]</span></a>
+      See "Thoughts on Private Devotion," by Mr. Sheppard.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_71_71" id="Footnote_71_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71_71"><span class="label">[71]</span></a>
+      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 he but a fair satire on the disposition 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 been yet related or believed of him, and leaving even Goethe's
+      story of the double murder in Florence far behind.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_72_72" id="Footnote_72_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_72_72"><span class="label">[72]</span></a>
+      The following are the lines enclosed in this letter. In one of his Journals,
+      where they are also given, he has subjoined to them the following note:&mdash;"I
+      composed these stanzas (except the fourth, added now) a few days ago, on
+      the road from Florence to Pisa. </p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Oh, talk not to me of a name great in story;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The days of our youth are the days of our glory;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the myrtle and ivy of sweet two-and-twenty<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are worth all your laurels, though ever so plenty.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"What are garlands and crowns to the brow that is wrinkled?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Tis but as a dead flower with May-dew besprinkled.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then away with all such from the head that is hoary!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What care I for the wreaths that can <i>only</i> give glory?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Oh Fame! if I e'er took delight in thy praises,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Twas less for the sake of thy high-sounding phrases,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than to see the bright eyes of the dear One discover<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She thought that I was not unworthy to love her.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"<i>There</i> chiefly I sought thee, <i>there</i> only I found thee;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her glance was the best of the rays that surround thee;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When it sparkled o'er aught that was bright in my story,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I knew it was love, and I felt it was glory."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_73_73" id="Footnote_73_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_73_73"><span class="label">[73]</span></a>
+      This letter has been already published, with a few others, in a periodical
+      work, and is known to have been addressed to the late Mr. Douglas Kinnaird.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_74_74" id="Footnote_74_74"></a><a href="#FNanchor_74_74"><span class="label">[74]</span></a>
+      The preceding letter came enclosed in this.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_75_75" id="Footnote_75_75"></a><a href="#FNanchor_75_75"><span class="label">[75]</span></a>
+      It will be seen from the extract I shall give presently of the passage to
+      which he refers, that he wholly mistook my meaning.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_76_76" id="Footnote_76_76"></a><a href="#FNanchor_76_76"><span class="label">[76]</span></a>
+      It should have been mentioned before, that to the courtesy of Lord Byron's
+      executor, Mr. Hobhouse, who had the kindness to restore to me such letters
+      of mine as came into his hands, I am indebted for the power of producing
+      these and other extracts.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_77_77" id="Footnote_77_77"></a><a href="#FNanchor_77_77"><span class="label">[77]</span></a>
+      It is to this sentence Lord Byron refers at the conclusion of his letter,
+      March 4.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_78_78" id="Footnote_78_78"></a><a href="#FNanchor_78_78"><span class="label">[78]</span></a>
+      This passage having been shown by Lord Byron to Mr. Shelley, the latter
+      wrote, in consequence, a letter to a gentleman with whom I was then in habits
+      of intimacy, of which the following is an extract. The zeal and openness
+      with which Shelley always professed his unbelief render any scruple that
+      might otherwise be felt in giving publicity to such avowals unnecessary;
+      besides which, the testimony of so near and clear an observer to the state
+      of Lord Byron's mind upon religious subjects is of far too much importance
+      to my object to be, from any over-fastidiousness, suppressed. We have here,
+      too strikingly exemplified,&mdash;and in strong contrast, I must say, to
+      the line taken by Mr. Hunt in similar circumstances,&mdash;the good breeding,
+      gentle temper, and modesty for which Shelley was so remarkable, and of the
+      latter of which Dualities in particular the undeserved compliment to myself
+      affords a strong illustration, as showing how little this true poet had
+      yet learned to know his own place. </p>
+    <p>
+"Lord Byron has read me one or two letters of Moore to him, in which
+Moore speaks with great kindness of me; and of course I cannot but feel
+flattered by the approbation of a man, my inferiority to whom I am proud
+to acknowledge. Amongst other things, however, Moore, after giving Lord
+B, much good advice about public opinion, &amp;c. seems to deprecate my
+influence on his mind on the subject of religion, and to attribute the
+tone assumed in Cain to my suggestions. Moore cautions him against any
+influence on this particular with the most friendly zeal, and it is
+plain that his motive springs from a desire of benefiting Lord B.
+without degrading me. I think you know Moore. Pray assure him that I
+have not the smallest influence over Lord Byron in this particular; if I
+had, I certainly should employ it to eradicate from his great mind the
+delusions of Christianity, which, in spite of his reason, seem
+perpetually to recur, and to lay in ambush for the hours of sickness and
+distress. Cain was <i>conceived</i> many years ago, and begun before I saw
+him last year at Ravenna. How happy should I not be to attribute to
+myself, however indirectly, any participation in that immortal work!"</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_79_79" id="Footnote_79_79"></a><a href="#FNanchor_79_79"><span class="label">[79]</span></a>
+      Here follows a repetition of the details given on this subject to Sir Walter
+      Scott and others.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_80_80" id="Footnote_80_80"></a><a href="#FNanchor_80_80"><span class="label">[80]</span></a>
+      A hill, three or four miles from Leghorn, much resorted to, as a place of
+      residence during the summer months.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_81_81" id="Footnote_81_81"></a><a href="#FNanchor_81_81"><span class="label">[81]</span></a>
+      The answer which Mr. Ellice returned was, as might be expected, strongly
+      dissuasive of this design. The wholly disorganised state of the country
+      and its institutions, which it would take ages, perhaps, to restore even
+      to the degree of industry and prosperity which it had enjoyed under the
+      Spaniards, rendered Columbia, in his opinion, one of the last places in
+      the world to which a man desirous of peace and quiet, or of security for
+      his person and property, should resort to as an asylum. As long as Bolivar
+      lived and maintained his authority, every reliance, Mr. Ellice added, might
+      be placed on his integrity and firmness; but with his death a new &aelig;ra
+      of struggle and confusion would be sure to arise.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_82_82" id="Footnote_82_82"></a><a href="#FNanchor_82_82"><span class="label">[82]</span></a>
+      "Received from Mr. Henry Dunn the sum of two hundred Tuscan crowns (for
+      account of the Right Honourable Lord Noel Byron), for the purpose of assisting
+      the Irish poor. </p>
+    <p>
+"Thomas Hall.
+</p><p>
+"Leghorn, 9th July, 1822. Tuscan crowns, 200."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_83_83" id="Footnote_83_83"></a><a href="#FNanchor_83_83"><span class="label">[83]</span></a>
+      In a letter to Mr. Murray, of an earlier date, which has been omitted to
+      avoid repetitions, he says on the same subject, "You were all mistaken about
+      Shelley, who was, without exception, the <i>best</i> and least selfish man
+      I ever knew." There is also another passage in the same letter which, for
+      its perfect truth, I must quote:&mdash;"I have received your scrap, with
+      Henry Drury's letter enclosed. It is just like him&mdash;always kind and
+      ready to oblige his old friends."</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_84_84" id="Footnote_84_84"></a><a href="#FNanchor_84_84"><span class="label">[84]</span></a>
+      A book which had just appeared, entitled "Memoirs of the Right Hon. Lord
+      Byron."</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_85_85" id="Footnote_85_85"></a><a href="#FNanchor_85_85"><span class="label">[85]</span></a>
+      The remarkable pamphlet from which extracts have been already given in this
+      work.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_86_86" id="Footnote_86_86"></a><a href="#FNanchor_86_86"><span class="label">[86]</span></a>
+      It had been asserted in a late Number of Blackwood, that both Lord Byron
+      and myself were employed in writing satires against that Magazine.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_87_87" id="Footnote_87_87"></a><a href="#FNanchor_87_87"><span class="label">[87]</span></a>
+      The particulars of this event had, it is evident, not yet readied him.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_88_88" id="Footnote_88_88"></a><a href="#FNanchor_88_88"><span class="label">[88]</span></a>
+      This portrait, though destined for America, was, it appears, never sent
+      thither. A few copies of it have since been painted by Mr. West, but the
+      original picture was purchased by Mr. Joy, of Hartham Park, Wilts; who is
+      also the possessor of the original portrait of Madame Guiccioli, by the
+      same artist.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_89_89" id="Footnote_89_89"></a><a href="#FNanchor_89_89"><span class="label">[89]</span></a>
+      My poor Zimmerman, who now will understand thee?"&mdash;such was the touching
+      speech addressed to Zimmerman by his wife, on her death-bed; and there is
+      implied in these few words all that a man of morbid sensibility must be
+      dependant for upon the tender and self-forgetting tolerance of the woman
+      with whom he is united.</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_90_90" id="Footnote_90_90"></a><a href="#FNanchor_90_90"><span class="label">[90]</span></a>
+      "In Pisa abbiamo continuato anche pi&ugrave; rigorosaraente a vivere lontano
+      dalla societ&agrave;. Essendosi per&ograve; in Pisa molti Inglesi egli non
+      pot&egrave; escusarsi dal fare la conoscenza di varii amici di Shelley,
+      fra i quali uno fu Mr. Medwin. Essi lo seguitavano al passeggio, pranzavono
+      con lui e certamente si tenevano felici della apparente intimit&agrave;
+      che loro accordava un uomo cos&igrave; superiore. Ma nessuno di loro fu
+      ammesso mai a porta della sua amicizia, che egli non era facile a accordare.
+      Per Shelley egli aveva dell' affezione, e molta stima pel suo carattere
+      e pel suo talento, ma non era suo amico nel estensione del senso che si
+      deva dare alla parola amicizia. Talvolta parlando egli de' suoi amici, e
+      dell' amicizia, come pure dell' amore, e di ogni altro nobile sentimento
+      dell' anima, potevano i suoi discorsi far nascere dei dubbii sui veri suoi
+      sentimenti, e sulla bont&agrave; del suo core. Una impressione momentanea
+      regolava i suoi discorsi; e di pi&ugrave; egli amava anche a rappresentare
+      un personaggio bizzarro, e qualche volta anche peggio,&mdash;specialmente
+      con quelli che egli pensava volessero studiare e fare delle scoperte sul
+      suo carattere. Ma nell' inganno non poteva cadere che una piccola mente,
+      e un osservatore superficiale. Bisognava esaminare le sue azioni per sentire
+      tutta le contraddizione che era fra di esse e i suoi discorsi; bisognava
+      vederlo in certi momenti in cui per una emozione improvisa e pi&ugrave;
+      forte della sua volont&agrave; la sua anima si abbandonava interamente a
+      se stessa;&mdash;bisognava vederlo allora per scoprire i tesori di sensibilit&agrave;
+      e di bont&agrave; che erano &igrave;n quella nobile anima. </p>
+    <p>
+"Fra le tante volte che io l'ho veduto in simili circostanze ne
+ricorder&ograve; una che risguarda i suoi sentimenti di amicizia. Pochi giorni
+prima di lasciare Pisa eravamo verso sera insieme seduti nel giardino
+del Palazzo Lanfranchi. Una dolce malinconia era sparsa sul suo viso.
+Egli riandava col pensiero gli avvenimenti della sua vita e faceva il
+confronto colle attuale sue situazione e quella che avrebbe potuta
+essere se la sua affezione per me non lo avesse fatto restare in Italia;
+e diceva cose che avrebbero resa per me la terra un paradiso, se gi&agrave;
+sino d'allora il pressentimento di perdere tanta felicit&agrave; non mi avesse
+tormentata. In questo mentre un domestico annunci&ograve; Mr. Hobhouse. La
+leggiera tinta di malinconia sparsa sul viso di Byron fece, luogo
+subitamente alia pi&ugrave; viva gioia; ma essa fu cos&igrave; forte che gli tolse
+quasi le forze. Un pallore commovente ricoperse il suo volto, e nell'
+abbracciare il suo amico i suoi occhi erano pieni di lacrime di
+contento. E l'emozione fu cos&igrave; forte che egli fu obbligato di sedersi,
+sentendosi mancare le forze.
+</p><p>
+"La venuta pure di Lord Clare fu per lui un epoca di grande felicit&agrave;.
+Egli amava sommamente Lord Clare&mdash;egli era cos&igrave; felice in quel breve
+tempo che pass&ograve; presso di lui a Livorno, e il giorno in cui si
+separarono fu un giorno di grande tristezza per Lord Byron. 'Io ho il
+pressentimento che non lo vedr&ograve; piu,' diceva egli; e i suoi occhi si
+riempirano di lacrime; e in questo stato l'ho veduto per varii
+settimanie dopo la partenza di Lord Clare, ogni qual volta il discorso
+cadeva sopra di codesto il suo amico."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_91_91" id="Footnote_91_91"></a><a href="#FNanchor_91_91"><span class="label">[91]</span></a>
+      "Nell' occasione pure della morire della sua figlia naturale io ho veduto
+      nel suo dolore tuttoci&ograve; che vi &egrave; di pi&ugrave; profondo nella
+      tenerezza paterna. La sua condotta verso di codesta fanciulla era stata
+      sempre quella del padre il pi&ugrave; amoroso; ma dalle di lui parole non
+      si sarebbe giudicato che avesse tanta affezione per lei. Alia prima notizia
+      della di lei malattia egli fu sommamente agitato; giunse poi la notizia
+      della morte, ed io dovessi esercitare il tristo uficio di participarla a
+      Lord Byron. Quel sensibile momenta sar&agrave; indelebile nella mia memoria.
+      Egli non usciva da varii giorni la sera: io andai dunque da lui. La prima
+      domauda che egli mi fece fu relativa al Corriere che egli aveva spedito
+      per avere notizie della sua figlia, e di cui il retardo lo inquietava. Dopo
+      qualche momento di sospensione con tutta l'arte che sapeva suggerirmi il
+      mio proprio dotore gli tolsi ogni speranza della guarizione della fanciulla.
+      'Ho inteso,' disse egli&mdash;'basta cos&igrave;&mdash;non dite di pi&ugrave;'&mdash;e
+      un pallore mortale si sparse sul suo volto; le forze gli mancarono, e cadde
+      sopra una sedia d'appoggio. Il suo sguardo era fisso e tale che mi fece
+      temere per la sua ragione. Egli rimase in quello stato d'immobilit&agrave;
+      un' ora; e nessuna parola d&igrave; consolazione che io potessi indirezzargli
+      pareva penetrare le sue orecchie non che il suo core. Ma basta cos&igrave;
+      di questa trista detenzione nella quale non posso fermarmi dopo tanti anni
+      senza risvegliare d&igrave; nuovo nel mio animo le terribile sofferenze
+      di quel giorno. La mattin&agrave; lo trovai tranquillo, e con una espressione
+      di religiosa rassegnazione nel suo volto. 'Ella &egrave; pi&ugrave; felice
+      di noi,' diss' egli&mdash;'d'altronde la sua situazione nel mondo non le
+      avrebbe data forse felicit&agrave;. Dio ha voluto cos&igrave;&mdash;non
+      ne parliamo pi&ugrave;.' E da quel giorno in poi non ha pi&ugrave; voluto
+      proferire il nome di quella fanciulla. Ma &egrave; divenuto pi&ugrave; pensieroso
+      parlando di Adda, al punto di tormentarsi quando gli ritardavano di qualche
+      ordinario le di lei notizie."</p>
+  </div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+    <p><a name="Footnote_92_92" id="Footnote_92_92"></a><a href="#FNanchor_92_92"><span class="label">[92]</span></a>
+      Of the bust of himself by Bartollini he says, in one of the omitted letters
+      to Mr. Murray:&mdash;"The bust does not turn out a good one,&mdash;though
+      it may be like for aught I know, as it exactly resembles a superannuated
+      Jesuit." Again: "I assure you Bartollini's is dreadful, though my mind misgives
+      me that it is hideously like. If it is, I cannot be long for this world,
+      for it overlooks seventy."</p>
+  </div>
+
+
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters
+And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6), by (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
+
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+</body>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And
+Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6), by (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6)
+
+Author: (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
+
+Editor: Thomas Moore
+
+Release Date: August 27, 2005 [EBook #16609]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WRITINGS OF LORD BYRON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Taavi Kalju and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+LIFE
+
+OF
+
+LORD BYRON:
+
+WITH HIS LETTERS AND JOURNALS.
+
+BY THOMAS MOORE, ESQ.
+
+IN SIX VOLUMES.--VOL. V.
+
+NEW EDITION.
+
+
+LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 1854.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF VOL. V.
+
+LETTERS AND JOURNALS OF LORD BYRON, WITH NOTICES OF HIS LIFE, from
+October, 1820, to November, 1822.
+
+
+
+
+NOTICES
+
+OF THE
+
+LIFE OF LORD BYRON.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER 394. TO MR. 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 _Gail_, 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 received the French of
+     mine. Only think of being _traduced_ 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? 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, it seems, whom they have
+     christened 'Dieu-donne;'--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 'Little's Poems' or
+     'Don Juan.' If you don't write soon, I will 'make you a speech.'
+     Yours," &c.
+
+[Footnote 1: I had mistaken the name of the lady he enquired 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.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 395. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, 8bre 25 deg., 1820.
+
+     "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 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,
+     fourthly, 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 he gives of her admirers (as unfortunate) at the close of
+     'The Abbot.'
+
+     "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
+     O'Trigger's, most of whom are to be found in the old Scotch
+     Chronicles, Spalding, &c. 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.
+
+     "Yours.
+
+     "You had better not publish Blackwood and the Roberts' prose,
+     except what regards Pope;--you have let the time slip by."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Pamphlet in answer to Blackwood's Magazine, here mentioned, was
+occasioned by an article in that work, entitled "Remarks on Don Juan,"
+and though put to press by Mr. Murray, was never published. The writer
+in the Magazine having, in reference to certain passages in Don Juan,
+taken occasion to pass some severe strictures on the author's
+matrimonial conduct, Lord Byron, in his reply, enters at some length
+into that painful subject; and the following extracts from his
+defence,--if defence it can be called, where there has never yet been
+any definite charge,--will be perused with strong interest:--
+
+     "My learned brother proceeds to observe, that 'it is in vain for
+     Lord B. to attempt in any way to justify his own behaviour in that
+     affair: and now that he has so _openly_ and _audaciously_ invited
+     enquiry and reproach, we do not see any good reason why he should
+     not be plainly told so by the voice of his countrymen.' How far the
+     'openness' of an anonymous poem, and the 'audacity' of an imaginary
+     character, which the writer supposes to be meant for Lady B. may be
+     deemed to merit this formidable denunciation from their 'most sweet
+     voices,' I neither know nor care; but when he tells me that I
+     cannot 'in any way _justify_ my own behaviour in that affair,' I
+     acquiesce, because no man can '_justify_' himself until he knows of
+     what he is accused; and I have never had--and, God knows, my whole
+     desire has ever been to obtain it--any specific charge, in a
+     tangible shape, submitted to me by the adversary, nor by others,
+     unless the atrocities of public rumour and the mysterious silence
+     of the lady's legal advisers may be deemed such.[2] But is not the
+     writer content with what has been already said and done? Has not
+     'the general voice of his countrymen' long ago pronounced upon the
+     subject--sentence without trial, and condemnation without a
+     charge? Have I not been exiled by ostracism, except that the shells
+     which proscribed me were anonymous? Is the writer ignorant of the
+     public opinion and the public conduct upon that occasion? If he is,
+     I am not: the public will forget both long before I shall cease to
+     remember either.
+
+     "The man who is exiled by a faction has the consolation of thinking
+     that he is a martyr; he is upheld by hope and the dignity of his
+     cause, real or imaginary: he who withdraws from the pressure of
+     debt may indulge in the thought that time and prudence will
+     retrieve his circumstances: he who is condemned by the law has a
+     term to his banishment, or a dream of its abbreviation; or, it may
+     be, the knowledge or the belief of some injustice of the law or of
+     its administration in his own particular: but he who is outlawed by
+     general opinion, without the intervention of hostile politics,
+     illegal judgment, or embarrassed circumstances, whether he be
+     innocent or guilty, must undergo all the bitterness of exile,
+     without hope, without pride, without alleviation. This case was
+     mine. Upon what grounds the public founded their opinion, I am not
+     aware; but it was general, and it was decisive. Of me or of mine
+     they knew little, except that I had written what is called poetry,
+     was a nobleman, had married, became a father, and was involved in
+     differences with my wife and her relatives, no one knew why,
+     because the persons complaining refused to state their grievances.
+     The fashionable world was divided into parties, mine consisting of
+     a very small minority; the reasonable world was naturally on the
+     stronger side, which happened to be the lady's, as was most proper
+     and polite. The press was active and scurrilous; and such was the
+     rage of the day, that the unfortunate publication of two copies of
+     verses rather complimentary than otherwise to the subjects, of
+     both, was tortured into a species of crime, or constructive petty
+     treason. I was accused of every monstrous vice by public rumour and
+     private rancour: my name, which had been a knightly or a noble one
+     since my fathers helped to conquer the kingdom for William the
+     Norman, was tainted. I felt that, if what was whispered, and
+     muttered, and murmured, was true, I was unfit for England; if
+     false, England was unfit for me. I withdrew: but this was not
+     enough. In other countries, in Switzerland, in the shadow of the
+     Alps, and by the blue depth of the lakes, I was pursued and
+     breathed upon by the same blight. I crossed the mountains, but it
+     was the same; so I went a little farther, and settled myself by the
+     waves of the Adriatic, like the stag at bay, who betakes him to the
+     waters.
+
+     "If I may judge by the statements of the few friends who gathered
+     round me, the outcry of the period to which I allude was beyond all
+     precedent, all parallel, even in those cases where political
+     motives have sharpened slander and doubled enmity. I was advised
+     not to go to the theatres, lest I should be hissed, nor to my duty
+     in parliament, lest I should be insulted by the way; even on the
+     day of my departure, my most intimate friend told me afterwards
+     that he was under apprehensions of violence from the people who
+     might be assembled at the door of the carriage. However, I was not
+     deterred by these counsels from seeing Kean in his best characters,
+     nor from voting according to my principles; and, with regard to the
+     third and last apprehensions of my friends, I could not share in
+     them, not being made acquainted with their extent till some time
+     after I had crossed the Channel. Even if I had been so, I am not of
+     a nature to be much affected by men's anger, though I may feel hurt
+     by their aversion. Against all individual outrage, I could protect
+     or redress myself; and against that of a crowd, I should probably
+     have been enabled to defend myself, with the assistance of others,
+     as has been done on similar occasions.
+
+     "I retired from the country, perceiving that I was the object of
+     general obloquy; I did not indeed imagine, like Jean Jacques
+     Rousseau, that all mankind was in a conspiracy against me, though I
+     had perhaps as good grounds for such a chimera as ever he had; but
+     I perceived that I had to a great extent become personally
+     obnoxious in England, perhaps through my own fault, but the fact
+     was indisputable; the public in general would hardly have been so
+     much excited against a more popular character, without at least an
+     accusation or a charge of some kind actually expressed or
+     substantiated; for I can hardly conceive that the common and
+     every-day occurrence of a separation between man and wife could in
+     itself produce so great a ferment. I shall say nothing of the usual
+     complaints of 'being prejudged,' 'condemned unheard,' 'unfairness,'
+     'partiality,' and so forth, the usual changes rung by parties who
+     have had, or are to have, a trial; but I was a little surprised to
+     find myself condemned without being favoured with the act of
+     accusation, and to perceive in the absence of this portentous
+     charge or charges, whatever it or they were to be, that every
+     possible or impossible crime was rumoured to supply its place, and
+     taken for granted. This could only occur in the case of a person
+     very much disliked, and I knew no remedy, having already used to
+     their extent whatever little powers I might possess of pleasing in
+     society. I had no party in fashion, though I was afterwards told
+     that there was one--but it was not of my formation, nor did I then
+     know of its existence--none in literature; and in politics I had
+     voted with the Whigs, with precisely that importance which a Whig
+     vote possesses in these Tory days, and with such personal
+     acquaintance with the leaders in both houses as the society in
+     which I lived sanctioned, but without claim or expectation of
+     anything like friendship from any one, except a few young men of my
+     own age and standing, and a few others more advanced in life, which
+     last it had been my fortune to serve in circumstances of
+     difficulty. This was, in fact, to stand alone: and I recollect,
+     some time after, Madame de Stael said to me in Switzerland, 'You
+     should not have warred with the world--it will not do--it is too
+     strong always for any individual: I myself once tried it in early
+     life, but it will not do.' I perfectly acquiesce in the truth of
+     this remark; but the world had done me the honour to begin the war;
+     and, assuredly, if peace is only to be obtained by courting and
+     paying tribute to it, I am not qualified to obtain its countenance.
+     I thought, in the words of Campbell,
+
+        "'Then wed thee to an exil'd lot,
+        And if the world hath loved thee not,
+          Its absence may be borne.'
+
+     "I have heard of, and believe, that there are human beings so
+     constituted as to be insensible to injuries; but I believe that the
+     best mode to avoid taking vengeance is to get out of the way of
+     temptation. I hope that I may never have the opportunity, for I am
+     not quite sure that I could resist it, having derived from my
+     mother something of the '_perfervidum ingenium Scotorum_.' I have
+     not sought, and shall not seek it, and perhaps it may never come in
+     my path. I do not in this allude to the party, who might be right
+     or wrong; but to many who made her cause the pretext of their own
+     bitterness. She, indeed, must have long avenged me in her own
+     feelings, for whatever her reasons may have been (and she never
+     adduced them to me at least), she probably neither contemplated nor
+     conceived to what she became the means of conducting the father of
+     her child, and the husband of her choice.
+
+     "So much for 'the general voice of his countrymen:' I will now
+     speak of some in particular.
+
+     "In the beginning of the year 1817, an article appeared in the
+     Quarterly Review, written, I believe, by Walter Scott, doing great
+     honour to him, and no disgrace to me, though both poetically and
+     personally more than sufficiently favourable to the work and the
+     author of whom it treated. It was written at a time when a selfish
+     man would not, and a timid one dared not, have said a word in
+     favour of either; it was written by one to whom temporary public
+     opinion had elevated me to the rank of a rival--a proud
+     distinction, and unmerited; but which has not prevented me from
+     feeling as a friend, nor him from more than corresponding to that
+     sentiment. The article in question was written upon the third Canto
+     of Childe Harold, and after many observations, which it would as
+     ill become me to repeat as to forget, concluded with 'a hope that I
+     might yet return to England.' How this expression was received in
+     England itself I am not acquainted, but it gave great offence at
+     Rome to the respectable ten or twenty thousand English travellers
+     then and there assembled. I did not visit Rome till some time
+     after, so that I had no opportunity of knowing the fact; but I was
+     informed, long afterwards, that the greatest indignation had been
+     manifested in the enlightened Anglo-circle of that year, which
+     happened to comprise within it--amidst a considerable leaven of
+     Welbeck Street and Devonshire Place, broken loose upon their
+     travels--several really well-born and well-bred families, who did
+     not the less participate in the feeling of the hour. 'Why should he
+     return to England?' was the general exclamation--I answer _why_? It
+     is a question I have occasionally asked myself, and I never yet
+     could give it a satisfactory reply. I had then no thoughts of
+     returning, and if I have any now, they are of business, and not of
+     pleasure. Amidst the ties that have been dashed to pieces, there
+     are links yet entire, though the chain itself be broken. There are
+     duties, and connections, which may one day require my presence--and
+     I am a father. I have still some friends whom I wish to meet again,
+     and, it may be, an enemy. These things, and those minuter details
+     of business, which time accumulates during absence, in every man's
+     affairs and property, may, and probably will, recall me to England;
+     but I shall return with the same feelings with which I left it, in
+     respect to itself, though altered with regard to individuals, as I
+     have been more or less informed of their conduct since my
+     departure; for it was only a considerable time after it that I was
+     made acquainted with the real facts and full extent of some of
+     their proceedings and language. My friends, like other friends,
+     from conciliatory motives, withheld from me much that they could,
+     and some things which they _should_ have unfolded; however, that
+     which is deferred is not lost--but it has been no fault of mine
+     that it has been deferred at all.
+
+     "I have alluded to what is said to have passed at Rome merely to
+     show that the sentiment which I have described was not confined to
+     the English in England, and as forming part of my answer to the
+     reproach cast upon what has been called my 'selfish exile,' and my
+     'voluntary exile.' 'Voluntary' it has been; for who would dwell
+     among a people entertaining strong hostility against him? How far
+     it has been 'selfish' has been already explained."
+
+[Footnote 2: While these sheets are passing through the press, a printed
+statement has been transmitted to me by Lady Noel Byron, which the
+reader will find inserted in the Appendix to this volume. (_First
+Edition_.)]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The following passages from the same unpublished pamphlet will be found,
+in a literary point of view, not less curious.
+
+     "And here I wish to say a few words on the present state of English
+     poetry. That this is the age of the decline of English poetry will
+     be doubted by few who have calmly considered the subject. That
+     there are men of genius among the present poets makes little
+     against the fact, because it has been well said, that 'next to him
+     who forms the taste of his country, the greatest genius is he who
+     corrupts it.' No one has ever denied genius to Marino, who
+     corrupted not merely the taste of Italy, but that of all Europe for
+     nearly a century. The great cause of the present deplorable state
+     of English poetry is to be attributed to that absurd and systematic
+     depreciation of Pope, in which, for the last few years, there has
+     been a kind of epidemical concurrence. Men of the most opposite
+     opinions have united upon this topic. Warton and Churchill began
+     it, having borrowed the hint probably from the heroes of the
+     Dunciad, and their own internal conviction that their proper
+     reputation can be as nothing till the most perfect and harmonious
+     of poets--he who, having no fault, has had REASON made his
+     reproach--was reduced to what they conceived to be his level; but
+     even they dared not degrade him below Dryden. Goldsmith, and
+     Rogers, and Campbell, his most successful disciples; and Hayley,
+     who, however feeble, has left one poem 'that will not be willingly
+     let die' (the Triumphs of Temper), kept up the reputation of that
+     pure and perfect style; and Crabbe, the first of living poets, has
+     almost equalled the master. Then came Darwin, who was put down by a
+     single poem in the Antijacobin; and the Cruscans, from Merry to
+     Jerningham, who were annihilated (if _Nothing_ can be said to be
+     annihilated) by Gifford, the last of the wholesome English
+     satirists. * * *
+
+     "These three personages, S * *, W * *, and C * *, had all of them a
+     very natural antipathy to Pope, and I respect them for it, as the
+     only original feeling or principle which they have contrived to
+     preserve. But they have been joined in it by those who have joined
+     them in nothing else: by the Edinburgh Reviewers, by the whole
+     heterogeneous mass of living English poets, excepting Crabbe,
+     Rogers, Gifford, and Campbell, who, both by precept and practice,
+     have proved their adherence; and by me, who have shamefully
+     deviated in practice, but have ever loved and honoured Pope's
+     poetry with my whole soul, and hope to do so till my dying day. I
+     would rather see all I have ever written lining the same trunk in
+     which I actually read the eleventh book of a modern Epic poem at
+     Malta in 1811, (I opened it to take out a change after the paroxysm
+     of a tertian, in the absence of my servant, and found it lined with
+     the name of the maker, Eyre, Cockspur-street, and with the Epic
+     poetry alluded to,) than sacrifice what I firmly believe in as the
+     Christianity of English poetry, the poetry of Pope.
+
+     "Nevertheless, I will not go so far as * * in his postscript, who
+     pretends that no great poet ever had immediate fame, which, being
+     interpreted, means that * * is not quite so much read by his
+     contemporaries as might be desirable. This assertion is as false
+     as it is foolish. Homer's glory depended upon his present
+     popularity: he recited,--and without the strongest impression of
+     the moment, who would have gotten the Iliad by heart, and given it
+     to tradition? Ennius, Terence, Plautus, Lucretius, Horace, Virgil,
+     Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Sappho, Anacreon, Theocritus, all
+     the great poets of antiquity, were the delight of their
+     contemporaries.[3] The very existence of a poet, previous to the
+     invention of printing, depended upon his present popularity; and
+     how often has it impaired his future fame? Hardly ever. History
+     informs us, that the best have come down to us. The reason is
+     evident: the most popular found the greatest number of transcribers
+     for their MSS.; and that the taste of their contemporaries was
+     corrupt can hardly be avouched by the moderns, the mightiest of
+     whom have but barely approached them. Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, and
+     Tasso, were all the darlings of the contemporary reader. Dante's
+     poem was celebrated long before his death; and, not long after it,
+     States negotiated for his ashes, and disputed for the sites of the
+     composition of the Divina Commedia. Petrarch was crowned in the
+     Capitol. Ariosto was permitted to pass free by the public robber
+     who had read the Orlando Furioso. I would not recommend Mr. * * to
+     try the same experiment with his Smugglers. Tasso, notwithstanding
+     the criticisms of the Cruscanti, would have been crowned in the
+     Capitol, but for his death.
+
+     "It is easy to prove the immediate popularity of the chief poets of
+     the only modern nation in Europe that has a poetical language, the
+     Italian. In our own, Shakspeare, Spenser, Jonson, Waller, Dryden,
+     Congreve, Pope, Young, Shenstone, Thomson, Johnson, Goldsmith,
+     Gray, were all as popular in their lives as since. Gray's Elegy
+     pleased instantly, and eternally. His Odes did not, nor yet do they
+     please like his Elegy. Milton's politics kept him down; but the
+     Epigram of Dryden, and the very sale of his work, in proportion to
+     the less reading time of its publication, prove him to have been
+     honoured by his contemporaries. I will venture to assert, that the
+     sale of the Paradise Lost was greater in the first four years after
+     its publication than that of 'The Excursion,' in the same number,
+     with the difference of nearly a century and a half between them of
+     time, and of thousands in point of general readers.
+
+     "It may be asked, why, having this opinion of the present state of
+     poetry in England, and having had it long, as my friends and others
+     well know--possessing, or having possessed too, as a writer, the
+     ear of the public for the time being--I have not adopted a
+     different plan in my own compositions, and endeavoured to correct
+     rather than encourage the taste of the day. To this I would answer,
+     that it is easier to perceive the wrong than to pursue the right,
+     and that I have never contemplated the prospect 'of filling (with
+     Peter Bell, see its Preface,) permanently a station in the
+     literature of the country.' Those who know me best, know this, and
+     that I have been considerably astonished at the temporary success
+     of my works, having flattered no person and no party, and expressed
+     opinions which are not those of the general reader. Could I have
+     anticipated the degree of attention which has been accorded,
+     assuredly I would have studied more to deserve it. But I have lived
+     in far countries abroad, or in the agitating world at home, which
+     was not favourable to study or reflection; so that almost all I
+     have written has been mere passion,--passion, it is true, of
+     different kinds, but always passion: for in me (if it be not an
+     Irishism to say so) my _indifference_ was a kind of passion, the
+     result of experience, and not the philosophy of nature. Writing
+     grows a habit, like a woman's gallantry: there are women who have
+     had no intrigue, but few who have had but one only; so there are
+     millions of men who have never written a book, but few who have
+     written only one. And thus, having written once, I wrote on;
+     encouraged no doubt by the success of the moment, yet by no means
+     anticipating its duration, and I will venture to say, scarcely even
+     wishing it. But then I did other things besides write, which by no
+     means contributed either to improve my writings or my prosperity.
+
+     "I have thus expressed publicly upon the poetry of the day the
+     opinion I have long entertained and expressed of it to all who have
+     asked it, and to some who would rather not have heard it; as I told
+     Moore not very long ago, 'we are all wrong except Rogers, Crabbe,
+     and Campbell.'[4] Without being old in years, I am in days, and do
+     not feel the adequate spirit within me to attempt a work which
+     should show what I think right in poetry, and must content myself
+     with having denounced what is wrong. There are, I trust, younger
+     spirits rising up in England, who, escaping the contagion which has
+     swept away poetry from our literature, will recall it to their
+     country, such as it once was and may still be.
+
+     "In the mean time, the best sign of amendment will be repentance,
+     and new and frequent editions of Pope and Dryden.
+
+     "There will be found as comfortable metaphysics and ten times more
+     poetry in the 'Essay on Man,' than in the 'Excursion.' If you
+     search for passion, where is it to be found stronger than in the
+     epistle from Eloisa to Abelard, or in Palamon and Arcite? Do you
+     wish for invention, imagination, sublimity, character? seek them in
+     the Rape of the Lock, the Fables of Dryden, the Ode on Saint
+     Cecilia's Day, and Absalom and Achitophel: you will discover in
+     these two poets only, _all_ for which you must ransack innumerable
+     metres, and God only knows how many _writers_ of the day, without
+     finding a tittle of the same qualities,--with the addition, too, of
+     wit, of which the latter have none. I have not, however, forgotten
+     Thomas Brown the Younger, nor the Fudge Family, nor Whistlecraft;
+     but that is not wit--it is humour. I will say nothing of the
+     harmony of Pope and Dryden in comparison, for there is not a living
+     poet (except Rogers, Gifford, Campbell, and Crabbe) who can write
+     an heroic couplet. The fact is, that the exquisite beauty of their
+     versification has withdrawn the public attention from their other
+     excellences, as the vulgar eye will rest more upon the splendour of
+     the uniform than the quality of the troops. It is this very
+     harmony, particularly in Pope, which has raised the vulgar and
+     atrocious cant against him:--because his versification is perfect,
+     it is assumed that it is his only perfection; because his truths
+     are so clear, it is asserted that he has no invention; and because
+     he is always intelligible, it is taken for granted that he has no
+     genius. We are sneeringly told that he is the 'Poet of Reason,' as
+     if this was a reason for his being no poet. Taking passage for
+     passage, I will undertake to cite more lines teeming with
+     _imagination_ from Pope than from any two living poets, be they who
+     they may. To take an instance at random from a species of
+     composition not very favourable to imagination--Satire: set down
+     the character of Sporus, with all the wonderful play of fancy which
+     is scattered over it, and place by its side an equal number of
+     verses, from any two existing poets, of the same power and the same
+     variety--where will you find them?
+
+     "I merely mention one instance of many in reply to the injustice
+     done to the memory of him who harmonised our poetical language. The
+     attorneys clerks, and other self-educated genii, found it easier to
+     distort themselves to the new models than to toil after the
+     symmetry of him who had enchanted their fathers. They were besides
+     smitten by being told that the new school were to revive the
+     language of Queen Elizabeth, the true English; as every body in the
+     reign of Queen Anne wrote no better than French, by a species of
+     literary treason.
+
+     "Blank verse, which, unless in the drama, no one except Milton ever
+     wrote who could rhyme, became the order of the day,--or else such
+     rhyme as looked still blanker than the verse without it. I am aware
+     that Johnson has said, after some hesitation, that he could not
+     'prevail upon himself to wish that Milton had been a rhymer.' The
+     opinions of that truly great man, whom it is also the present
+     fashion to decry, will ever be received by me with that deference
+     which time will restore to him from all; but, with all humility, I
+     am not persuaded that the Paradise Lost would not have been more
+     nobly conveyed to posterity, not perhaps in heroic couplets,
+     although even _they_ could sustain the subject if well balanced,
+     but in the stanza of Spenser, or of Tasso, or in the terza rima of
+     Dante, which the powers of Milton could easily have grafted on our
+     language. The Seasons of Thomson would have been better in rhyme,
+     although still inferior to his Castle of Indolence; and Mr.
+     Southey's Joan of Arc no worse, although it might have taken up six
+     months instead of weeks in the composition. I recommend also to the
+     lovers of lyrics the perusal of the present laureate's odes by the
+     side of Dryden's on Saint Cecilia, but let him be sure to read
+     _first_ those of Mr. Southey.
+
+     "To the heaven-born genii and inspired young scriveners of the day
+     much of this will appear paradox; it will appear so even to the
+     higher order of our critics; but it was a truism twenty years ago,
+     and it will be a re-acknowledged truth in ten more. In the mean
+     time, I will conclude with two quotations, both intended for some
+     of my old classical friends who have still enough of Cambridge
+     about them to think themselves honoured by having had John Dryden
+     as a predecessor in their college, and to recollect that their
+     earliest English poetical pleasures were drawn from the 'little
+     nightingale' of Twickenham.
+
+     "The first is from the notes to a Poem of the 'Friends[5],' pages
+     181, 182.
+
+     "'It is only within the last twenty or thirty years that those
+     notable discoveries in criticism have been made which have taught
+     our recent versifiers to undervalue this energetic, melodious, and
+     moral poet. The consequences of this want of due esteem for a
+     writer whom the good sense of our predecessors had raised to his
+     proper station have been NUMEROUS AND DEGRADING ENOUGH. This is not
+     the place to enter into the subject, even as far as it _affects our
+     poetical numbers alone_, and there is matter of more importance
+     that requires present reflection.'
+
+     "The second is from the volume of a young person learning to write
+     poetry, and beginning by teaching the art. Hear him[6]:
+
+                        "'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[7]
+        Of _dolts_ to _smooth_, _inlay_, and _chip_, 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
+        Mark'd with most flimsy mottos, and in large
+        The name of _one_ Boileau.'
+
+     "A little before the manner of Pope is termed
+
+                        "'A _scism_[8],
+        Nurtured by _foppery_ and barbarism,
+        Made great Apollo blush for this his land.'
+
+     "I thought '_foppery_' was a consequence of _refinement_; but
+     _n'importe_.
+
+     "The above will suffice to show the notions entertained by the new
+     performers on the English lyre of him who made it most tunable,
+     and the great improvements of their own _variazioni_.
+
+     "The writer of this is a tadpole of the Lakes, a young disciple of
+     the six or seven new schools, in which he has learnt to write such
+     lines and such sentiments as the above. He says, 'easy was the
+     task' of imitating Pope, or it may be of equalling him, I presume.
+     I recommend him to try before he is so positive on the subject, and
+     then compare what he will have _then_ written and what he has _now_
+     written with the humblest and earliest compositions of Pope,
+     produced in years still more youthful than those of Mr. K. when he
+     invented his new 'Essay on Criticism,' entitled 'Sleep and Poetry'
+     (an ominous title), from whence the above canons are taken. Pope's
+     was written at nineteen, and published at twenty-two.
+
+     "Such are the triumphs of the new schools, and such their scholars.
+     The disciples of Pope were Johnson, Goldsmith, Rogers, Campbell,
+     Crabbe, Gifford, Matthias, Hayley, and the author of the Paradise
+     of Coquettes; to whom may be added Richards, Heber, Wrangham,
+     Bland, Hodgson, Merivale, and others who have not had their full
+     fame, because 'the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle
+     to the strong,' and because there is a fortune in fame as in all
+     other things. Now of all the new schools--I say _all_, for, 'like
+     Legion, they are many'--has there appeared a single scholar who has
+     not made his master ashamed of him? unless it be * *, who has
+     imitated every body, and occasionally surpassed his models. Scott
+     found peculiar favour and imitation among the fair sex: there was
+     Miss Holford, and Miss Mitford, and Miss Francis; but with the
+     greatest respect be it spoken, none of his imitators did much
+     honour to the original except Hogg, the Ettrick shepherd, until the
+     appearance of 'The Bridal of Triermain,' and 'Harold the
+     Dauntless,' which in the opinion of some equalled if not surpassed
+     him; and lo! after three or four years they turned out to be the
+     Master's own compositions. Have Southey, or Coleridge, or
+     Wordsworth, made a follower of renown? Wilson never did well till
+     he set up for himself in the 'City of the Plague.' Has Moore, or
+     any other living writer of reputation, had a tolerable imitator, or
+     rather disciple? Now it is remarkable that almost all the followers
+     of Pope, whom I have named, have produced beautiful and standard
+     works, and it was not the number of his imitators who finally hurt
+     his fame, but the despair of imitation, and the _ease_ of _not_
+     imitating him sufficiently. This, and the same reason which induced
+     the Athenian burgher to vote for the banishment of Aristides,
+     'because he was tired of always hearing him called _the Just_,'
+     have produced the temporary exile of Pope from the State of
+     Literature. But the term of his ostracism will expire, and the
+     sooner the better; not for him, but for those who banished him, and
+     for the coming generation, who
+
+        "Will blush to find their fathers were his foes."
+
+[Footnote 3: As far as regards the poets of ancient times, this
+assertion is, perhaps, right; though, if there be any truth in what
+AElian and Seneca have left on record, of the obscurity, during their
+lifetime, of such men as Socrates and Epicurus, it would seem to prove
+that, among the ancients, contemporary fame was a far more rare reward
+of literary or philosophical eminence than among us moderns. When the
+"Clouds" of Aristophanes was exhibited before the assembled deputies of
+the towns of Attica, these personages, as AElian tells us, were
+unanimously of opinion, that the character of an unknown person, called
+Socrates, was uninteresting upon the stage; and Seneca has given the
+substance of an authentic letter of Epicurus, in which that philosopher
+declares that nothing hurt him so much, in the midst of all his
+happiness, as to think that Greece,--"illa nobilis Graecia,"--so far
+from knowing him, had scarcely even heard of his existence.--Epist. 79.]
+
+[Footnote 4: I certainly ventured to differ from the judgment of my
+noble friend, no less in his attempts to depreciate that peculiar walk
+of the art in which he himself so grandly trod, than in the
+inconsistency of which I thought him guilty, in condemning all those who
+stood up for particular "schools" of poetry, and yet, at the same time,
+maintaining so exclusive a theory of the art himself. How little,
+however, he attended to either the grounds or degrees of my dissent from
+him, will appear by the following wholesale report of my opinion, in his
+"Detached Thoughts:"
+
+"One of my notions different from those of my contemporaries, 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 age of British
+poesy."]
+
+[Footnote 5: Written by Lord Byron's early friend, the Rev. Francis
+Hodgson.]
+
+[Footnote 6: The strange verses that follow are from a poem by
+Keats.--In a manuscript note on this passage of the pamphlet, dated
+November 12. 1821, Lord Byron says, "Mr. Keats died at Rome about a year
+after this was written, of a decline produced by his having burst a
+blood-vessel on reading the article on his 'Endymion' in the Quarterly
+Review. I have read the article before and since; and, although it is
+bitter, I do not think that a man should permit himself to be killed by
+it. But a young man little dreams what he must inevitably encounter in
+the course of a life ambitious of public notice. My indignation at Mr.
+Keats's depreciation of Pope has hardly permitted me to do justice to
+his own genius, which, malgre all the fantastic fopperies of his style,
+was undoubtedly of great promise. His fragment of 'Hyperion' seems
+actually inspired by the Titans, and is as sublime as AEschylus. He is a
+loss to our literature; and the more so, as he himself, before his
+death, is said to have been persuaded that he had not taken the right
+line, and was reforming his style upon the more classical models of the
+language."]
+
+[Footnote 7: "It was at least a _grammar_ 'school.'"]
+
+[Footnote 8: "So spelt by the author."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 396. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, 9bre 4. 1820.
+
+     "I have received from Mr. Galignani the enclosed letters,
+     duplicates and receipts, which will explain themselves.[9] As the
+     poems are your property by purchase, right, and justice, _all
+     matters of publication, &c. &c. are for you to decide upon_. I know
+     not how far my compliance with Mr. Galignani'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 farther, except, in my answer to
+     Mr. Galignani, to state that the letters, &c. &c. are sent to you,
+     and the causes thereof.
+
+     "If you can check these foreign pirates, do; if not, put the
+     permissive papers in the fire. I can have no view nor object
+     whatever, but to secure to you your property.
+
+     "Yours, &c.
+
+     "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
+     English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. They support Pope, I see, in
+     the Quarterly; let them continue to do so: it is a sin, and a
+     shame, and a _damnation_ to think that _Pope!!_ 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."
+
+[Footnote 9: Mr. Galignani had applied to Lord Byron with the view of
+procuring from him such legal right over those works of his Lordship of
+which he had hitherto been the sole publisher in France, as would enable
+him to prevent others, in future, from usurping the same privilege.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 397. TO MR. 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 producing so
+     little!
+
+     "Galignani sends me, post haste, a permission _for him, from me,_
+     to publish, &c. &c. 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 both let our
+     wits run away with our sentiments; for I am sure that we are both
+     Queen's men at bottom. 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 understand
+     me?--which is about to blow up the whole alphabet. 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' to any of your acquaintance, make a Melody of it,
+     that his ghost, like poor Yorick's, may have the satisfaction of
+     being plaintively pitied--or still more nobly commemorated, like
+     'Oh breathe not his name.' 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.
+
+        "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 the Deed of Separation, in the 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 _five_ since we were _two_.
+
+     "Pray excuse all this nonsense; for I must talk nonsense 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 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 _murdered me_--he has carried away my fine jubilee clothes.'
+
+     "So Bowles has been telling a story, too ('tis 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," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 393. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, 9bre 9 deg., 1820.
+
+     "The talent you approve of is an amiable one, and 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 enough to make a
+     _Gallery_. If '_the_ parson' 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 election
+        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 would not disrelish a sight of these light little humorous
+     things, and may be indulged now and then.
+
+     "Why, I do like one or two vices, to be sure; but I can back a
+     horse and fire a pistol 'without thinking or blinking' like Major
+     Sturgeon; I have fed at times for 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, as
+     at Venice, in 1818, or at least I _could do_, and have done it
+     ONCE.
+
+     "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.[10]
+
+     "Last week I sent you a correspondence with Galignani, and some
+     documents on your property. You have now, I think, an opportunity
+     of _checking_, or at least _limiting_, those _French
+     republications_. You may let all your authors publish what they
+     please _against me_ and _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
+     authenticated_ ('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.[11] She always appeared on
+     particular occasions, before the deaths of the family, &c. &c. I
+     heard Madame 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
+     of 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."
+
+[Footnote 10: Here follow some details respecting his friend Charles S.
+Matthews, which have already been given in the first volume of this
+work.]
+
+[Footnote 11: The ghost-story, in which he here professes such serious
+belief, forms the subject of one of Mr. Rogers's beautiful Italian
+sketches.--See "Italy," p. 43. edit. 1830.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 399. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, 9bre 18 deg., 1820.
+
+     "The death of Waite is a shock to the--teeth, as well as to the
+     feelings of all who knew him. Good God, he and _Blake_[12] 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 greatness, as
+     he who preserves the hair and the teeth is preferable to 'the
+     bloody blustering warrior' 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 clearing
+     _roots_ and _brushes_ now to be obtained? Pray obtain what
+     information you can upon these '_Tusc_ulan questions.' 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 with 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 tailor 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?
+
+     "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 tiger (in poesy), if I miss the
+     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 'The 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_ accordingly. I would rather give them
+     away than hack and hew them. I don't say that you are not right: I
+     merely repeat that I cannot better them. I must 'either make a
+     spoon, or spoil a horn;' and there's an end.
+
+     "Yours.
+
+     "P.S. Of the praises of that little * * * Keats. 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 praise of the Edinburgh than I was,
+     or more alive to their censure, as I showed in English Bards and
+     Scotch Reviewers. 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?' it is better sense and as much
+     poetry as Johnny Keats.
+
+     "Bowles must be _bowled_ down. 'Tis a sad match at cricket if he
+     can get any notches at Pope's expense. If he once get into
+     '_Lord's_ ground,' (to continue 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 Lord Ipswich and Brookman, on
+     our side."
+
+[Footnote 12: A celebrated hair-dresser.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 400. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, 9bre 23 deg., 1820.
+
+     "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. Whatever 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
+     Juan, they identify Don Juan as mine, which I don't think worth a
+     Chancery suit about my daughter's guardianship, as in your present
+     code a facetious poem is sufficient to take away a man's rights
+     over his family.
+
+     "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 BARBARIANS, and THEIR EMPEROR a FOOL, and themselves more fools
+     than he; all which they may send to Vienna for any thing I care.
+     They have got themselves masters of the Papal police, and are
+     bullying away; but some day or other they will pay for all: it may
+     not be very soon, because these unhappy Italians have no
+     consistency among themselves; but I suppose that Providence will
+     get tired of them at last, * *
+
+     "Yours," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 401. TO MR. 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 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 _now_, 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 discretionary
+     power[13]; 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 all, contradict_
+     any thing, if I have _mis_-stated; for my first object is the
+     truth, even at my own expense.
+
+     "I have some knowledge of your countryman Muley Moloch, the
+     lecturer. He wrote to me several letters 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 * * * but they
+     _won't_ 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, &c. &c. 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 * * * for the top of
+     Parnassus.
+
+     "These rogues are right--_we do_ laugh at _t'others_--eh?--don't
+     we?[14] You shall see--you shall see what things 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," &c.
+
+[Footnote 13: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 14: 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.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 402. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Ravenna, Dec. 9. 1820.
+
+     "I open my letter to tell you a fact, which will show the state of
+     this country better than I can. The commandant 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. 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
+     hinder us from going, as it is the custom for every body here, it
+     seems, to run 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 profession--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 up
+     stairs into my own quarter. 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. Every body conjectures 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, 'O Dio!' and 'Gesu!' two or three times, and
+     appeared to have suffered little. Poor fellow! he was a brave
+     officer, but had made himself much disliked by the people. I knew
+     him personally, and had met 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, &c.
+
+     "P.S. The lieutenant on duty by the body is smoking his pipe with
+     great composure.--A queer people this."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 403. TO MR. 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 qua 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.
+
+     "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 blackguards, 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 _Spectator_ and a
+     newspaper, why not?--only not on a _Sunday_. 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 'Gli,' or 'I 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!'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The year 1820 was an era signalised, as will be remembered, by the many
+efforts of the revolutionary spirit which, at that time, broke forth,
+like ill-suppressed fire, throughout the greater part of the South of
+Europe. In Italy, Naples had already raised the Constitutional standard,
+and her example was fast operating through the whole of that country.
+Throughout Romagna, secret societies, under the name of Carbonari, had
+been organised, which waited but the word of their chiefs to break out
+into open insurrection. We have seen from Lord Byron's Journal in 1814,
+what intense interest he took in the last struggles of Revolutionary
+France under Napoleon; and his exclamations, "Oh for a
+Republic!--'Brutus, thou sleepest!'" show the lengths to which, in
+theory at least, his political zeal extended. Since then, he had but
+rarely turned his thoughts to politics; the tame, ordinary vicissitude
+of public affairs having but little in it to stimulate a mind like his,
+whose sympathies nothing short of a crisis seemed worthy to interest.
+This the present state of Italy gave every promise of affording him;
+and, in addition to the great national cause itself, in which there was
+every thing that a lover of liberty, warm from the pages of Petrarch and
+Dante, could desire, he had also private ties and regards to enlist him
+socially in the contest. The brother of Madame Guiccioli, Count Pietro
+Gamba, who had been passing some time at Rome and Naples, was now
+returned from his tour; and the friendly sentiments with which,
+notwithstanding a natural bias previously in the contrary direction, he
+at length learned to regard the noble lover of his sister, cannot better
+be described than in the words of his fair relative herself.
+
+"At this time," says Madame Guiccioli, "my beloved brother, Pietro,
+returned to Ravenna from Rome and Naples. He had been prejudiced by some
+enemies of Lord Byron against his character, and my intimacy with him
+afflicted him greatly; nor had my letters succeeded in entirely
+destroying the evil impression which Lord Byron's detractors had
+produced. No sooner, however, had he seen and known him, than he became
+inspired with an interest in his favour, such as could not have been
+produced by mere exterior qualities, but was the result only of that
+union he saw in him of all that is most great and beautiful, as well in
+the heart as mind of man. From that moment every former prejudice
+vanished, and the conformity of their opinions and studies contributed
+to unite them in a friendship, which only ended with their lives."[15]
+
+The young Gamba, who was, at this time, but twenty years of age, with a
+heart full of all those dreams of the regeneration of Italy, which not
+only the example of Naples, but the spirit working beneath the surface
+all around him, inspired, had, together with his father, who was still
+in the prime of life, become enrolled in the secret bands now organising
+throughout Romagna, and Lord Byron was, by their intervention, admitted
+also among the brotherhood. The following heroic Address to the
+Neapolitan Government (written by the noble poet in Italian,[16] and
+forwarded, it is thought, by himself to Naples, but intercepted on the
+way,) will show how deep, how earnest, and expansive was his zeal in
+that great, general cause of Political Freedom, for which he soon after
+laid down his life among the marshes of Missolonghi.
+
+"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 thousand
+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 determination 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 individual 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 commanding 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."[17]
+
+It was during the agitation of this crisis, while surrounded by rumours
+and alarms, and expecting, every moment, to be summoned into the field,
+that Lord Byron commenced the Journal which I am now about to give; and
+which it is impossible to peruse, with the recollection of his former
+Diary of 1814 in our minds, without reflecting how wholly different, in
+all the circumstances connected with them, were the two periods at which
+these records of his passing thoughts were traced. The first he wrote at
+a time which may be considered, to use his own words, as "the most
+poetical part of his whole life,"--_not_ certainly, in what regarded the
+powers of his genius, to which every succeeding year added new force and
+range, but in all that may be said to constitute the poetry of
+character,--those fresh, unworldly feelings of which, in spite of his
+early plunge into experience, he still retained the gloss, and that
+ennobling light of imagination, which, with all his professed scorn of
+mankind, still followed in the track of his affections, giving a lustre
+to every object on which they rested. There was, indeed, in his
+misanthropy, as in his sorrows, at that period, to the full as much of
+fancy as of reality; and even those gallantries and loves in which he at
+the same time entangled himself partook equally, as I have endeavoured
+to show, of the same imaginative character. Though brought early under
+the dominion of the senses, he had been also early rescued from this
+thraldom by, in the first place, the satiety such excesses never fail to
+produce, and, at no long interval after, by this series of half-fanciful
+attachments which, though in their moral consequences to society,
+perhaps, still more mischievous, had the varnish at least of refinement
+on the surface, and by the novelty and apparent difficulty that invested
+them served to keep alive that illusion of imagination from which such
+pursuits derive their sole redeeming charm.
+
+With such a mixture, or rather predominance, of the ideal in his loves,
+his hates, and his sorrows, the state of his existence at that period,
+animated as it was, and kept buoyant, by such a flow of success, must be
+acknowledged, even with every deduction for the unpicturesque
+associations of a London life, to have been, in a high degree, poetical,
+and to have worn round it altogether a sort of halo of romance, which
+the events that followed were but too much calculated to dissipate. By
+his marriage, and its results, he was again brought back to some of
+those bitter realities of which his youth had had a foretaste. Pecuniary
+embarrassment--that ordeal, of all others, the most trying to delicacy
+and high-mindedness--now beset him with all the indignities that usually
+follow in its train; and he was thus rudely schooled into the advantages
+of _possessing_ money, when he had hitherto thought but of the generous
+pleasure of _dispensing_ it. No stronger proof, indeed, is wanting of
+the effect of such difficulties in tempering down even the most
+chivalrous pride, than the necessity to which he found himself reduced
+in 1816, not only of departing from his resolution never to profit by
+the sale of his works, but of accepting a sum of money, for copyright,
+from his publisher, which he had for some time persisted in refusing
+for himself, and, in the full sincerity of his generous heart, had
+destined for others.
+
+The injustice and malice to which he soon after became a victim had an
+equally fatal effect in disenchanting the dream of his existence. Those
+imaginary, or, at least, retrospective sorrows, in which he had once
+loved to indulge, and whose tendency it was, through the medium of his
+fancy, to soften and refine his heart, were now exchanged for a host of
+actual, ignoble vexations, which it was even more humiliating than
+painful to encounter. His misanthropy, instead of being, as heretofore,
+a vague and abstract feeling, without any object to light upon, and
+losing therefore its acrimony in diffusion, was now, by the hostility he
+came in contact with, condensed into individual enmities, and narrowed
+into personal resentments; and from the lofty, and, as it appeared to
+himself, philosophical luxury of hating mankind in the gross, he was now
+brought down to the self-humbling necessity of despising them in detail.
+
+By all these influences, so fatal to enthusiasm of character, and
+forming, most of them, indeed, a part of the ordinary process by which
+hearts become chilled and hardened in the world, it was impossible but
+that some material change must have been effected in a disposition at
+once so susceptible and tenacious of impressions. By compelling him to
+concentre himself in his own resources and energies, as the only stand
+now left against the world's injustice, his enemies but succeeded in
+giving to the principle of self-dependence within him a new force and
+spring which, however it added to the vigour of his character, could not
+fail, by bringing Self so much into action, to impair a little its
+amiableness. Among the changes in his disposition, attributable mainly
+to this source, may be mentioned that diminished deference to the
+opinions and feelings of others which, after this compulsory rally of
+all his powers of resistance, he exhibited. Some portion, no doubt, of
+this refractoriness may be accounted for by his absence from all those
+whose slightest word or look would have done more with him than whole
+volumes of correspondence; but by no cause less powerful and revulsive
+than the struggle in which he had been committed could a disposition
+naturally diffident as his was, and diffident even through all this
+excitement, have been driven into the assumption of a tone so
+universally defying, and so full, if not of pride in his own pre-eminent
+powers, of such a contempt for some of the ablest among his
+contemporaries, as almost implied it. It was, in fact, as has been more
+than once remarked in these pages, a similar stirring up of all the best
+and worst elements of his nature, to that which a like rebound against
+injustice had produced in his youth;--though with a difference in point
+of force and grandeur, between the two explosions, almost as great as
+between the outbreaks of a firework and a volcano.
+
+Another consequence of the spirit of defiance now roused in him, and one
+that tended, perhaps, even more fatally than any yet mentioned, to sully
+and, for a time, bring down to earth the romance of his character, was
+the course of life to which, outrunning even the licence of his youth,
+he abandoned himself at Venice. From this, as from his earlier excesses,
+the timely warning of disgust soon rescued him; and the connection with
+Madame Guiccioli which followed, and which, however much to be
+reprehended, had in it all of marriage that his real marriage wanted,
+seemed to place, at length, within reach of his affectionate spirit that
+union and sympathy for which, through life, it had thirsted. But the
+treasure came too late;--the pure poetry of the feeling had vanished;
+and those tears he shed so passionately in the garden at Bologna flowed
+less, perhaps, from the love which he felt at that moment, than from the
+saddening consciousness how differently he could have felt formerly. It
+was, indeed, wholly beyond the power, even of an imagination like his,
+to go on investing with its own ideal glories a sentiment which,--more
+from daring and vanity than from any other impulse,--he had taken such
+pains to tarnish and debase in his own eyes. Accordingly, instead of
+being able, as once, to elevate and embellish all that interested him,
+to make an idol of every passing creature of his fancy, and mistake the
+form of love, which he so often conjured up, for its substance, he now
+degenerated into the wholly opposite and perverse error of depreciating
+and making light of what, intrinsically, he valued, and, as the reader
+has seen, throwing slight and mockery upon a tie in which it was evident
+some of the best feelings of his nature were wrapped up. That foe to all
+enthusiasm and romance, the habit of ridicule, had, in proportion as he
+exchanged the illusions for the realities of life, gained further empire
+over him; and how far it had, at this time, encroached upon the loftier
+and fairer regions of his mind may be seen in the pages of Don
+Juan,--that diversified arena, on which the two Genii, good and evil,
+that governed his thoughts, hold, with alternate triumph, their
+ever-powerful combat.
+
+Even this, too, this vein of mockery,--in the excess to which, at last,
+he carried it,--was but another result of the shock his proud mind had
+received from those events that had cast him off, branded and
+heart-stricken, from country and from home. As he himself touchingly
+says,
+
+    "And if I laugh at any mortal thing,
+    'Tis that I may not weep."
+
+This laughter,--which, in such temperaments, is the near neighbour of
+tears,--served as a diversion to him from more painful vents of
+bitterness; and the same philosophical calculation which made the poet
+of melancholy, Young, declare that "he preferred laughing at the world
+to being angry with it," led Lord Byron also to settle upon the same
+conclusion; and to feel, in the misanthropic views he was inclined to
+take of mankind, that mirth often saved him the pain of hate.
+
+That, with so many drawbacks upon all generous effusions of sentiment,
+he should still have preserved so much of his native tenderness and
+ardour as is conspicuous, through all disguises, in his unquestionable
+love for Madame Guiccioli, and in the still more undoubted zeal with
+which he now entered, heart and soul, into the great cause of human
+freedom, wheresoever or by whomsoever asserted[18],--only shows how rich
+must have been the original stores of sensibility and enthusiasm which
+even a career such as his could so little chill or exhaust. Most
+consoling, too, is it to reflect that the few latter years of his life
+should have been thus visited with a return of that poetic lustre,
+which, though it never had ceased to surround the bard, had but too much
+faded away from the character of the man; and that while
+Love,--reprehensible as it was, but still Love,--had the credit of
+rescuing him from the only errors that disgraced his maturer years, for
+Liberty was reserved the proud but mournful triumph of calling the last
+stage of his glorious course her own, and lighting him, amidst the
+sympathies of the world, to his grave.
+
+Having endeavoured, in this comparison between his present and former
+self, to account, by what I consider to be their true causes, for the
+new phenomena which his character, at this period, exhibited, I shall
+now lay before the reader the Journal by which these remarks were more
+immediately suggested, and from which I fear they will be thought to
+have too long detained him.
+
+[Footnote 15: "In quest' epoca venne a Ravenna di ritorno da Roma e
+Napoli il mio diletto fratello Pietro. Egli era stato prevenuto da dei
+nemeci di Lord Byron contro il di lui carattere; molto lo affligeva la
+mia intimita con lui, e le mie lettere non avevano riuscito a bene
+distruggere la cattiva impressione ricevuta dei detrattori di Lord
+Byron. Ma appena lo vidde e lo conobbe egli pure ricevesse quella
+impressione che non puo essere prodotta da dei pregi esteriori, ma
+solamente dall unione di tuttocio che vi e di piu bello e di piu grande
+nel cuore e nella mente dell uomo. Svani ogni sua anteriore prevenzione
+contro di Lord Byron, e la conformita della loro idee e dei studii loro
+contribui a stringerli in quella amicizia che non doveva avere fine che
+colla loro vita."]
+
+[Footnote 16: A draft of this Address, in his own handwriting, was found
+among his papers. He is supposed to have intrusted 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 his Lordship to supply him with money for his
+return. This man turned out afterwards to have been a spy, and the above
+paper, if confided to him, fell most probably into the hands of the
+Pontifical Government.]
+
+[Footnote 17: "Un Inglese amico della liberta avendo sentito che i
+Napolitani permettono anche agli stranieri di contribuire alia buona
+causa, bramerebbe l'onore 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 nell' Italia,
+egli vede con tutto l'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 l'ultima dalla parte dei suoi
+compatriotti. La sua lontananza dalle frontiere, e il sentimento della
+sua poca capacita personale di contribuire 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
+l'accetasse egli riparebbe a qualunque luogo indicato dal Governo
+Napolitano, per ubbidire agli ordini e participare ai pericoli del suo
+superiore, senza avere altri motivi che quello di dividere il destino di
+una brava nazione resistendo alla se dicente Santa Allianza la quale
+aggiunge l'ippocrisia al despotismo."]
+
+[Footnote 18: Among his "Detached Thoughts" I find this general passion
+for liberty thus strikingly expressed. After saying, in reference to his
+own choice of Venice as a place of residence, "I remembered General
+Ludlow's domal inscription, 'Omne solum forti patria,' and sat down free
+in a country which had been one of slavery for centuries," he adds, "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 deserts, and look on upon the first dance of
+their freedom.
+
+"As to political slavery, so general, it is men'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 _first_ spring, she is
+cowardly as the tiger, and retires to be hunted."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY OF LORD BYRON. 1821.
+
+"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 d----d 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. Wych, grocer, at Tunbridge, sold
+some bacon, flour, cheese, and, it is believed, some plums, to some
+gipsy woman accused. He had on his counter (I quote faithfully) a
+_book_, the Life of _Pamela_, which he was _tearing_ for _waste_ paper,
+&c. &c. In the cheese was found, &c. and a _leaf_ of _Pamela wrapt round
+the bacon._' What would Richardson, the vainest and luckiest of _living_
+authors (_i.e._ while alive)--he who, with Aaron Hill, used to prophesy
+and chuckle over the presumed fall of Fielding (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 bookseller'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 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 Filippo--well received.
+
+"Two days ago the King of Naples passed through Bologna on his way to
+congress. My servant Luigi 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--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, &c. &c. here is nothing
+but spirits of wine, coloured accordingly. Did _not_ eat two apples,
+which were placed by way of dessert. Fed the two cats, the hawk, and the
+tame (but _not tamed_) _crow_. Read Mitford's History of
+Greece--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. 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 practicable to-morrow. Sent
+the papers to Alli.--grand events coming.
+
+"11 o' the clock and nine minutes. Visited La Contessa G. Nata G.G.
+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, patriotism,
+Alfieri, Madame Albany, and other branches of learning. Also Sallust's
+Conspiracy of Catiline, and the War of Jugurtha. At 9 came in her
+brother, Il Conte Pietro--at 10, her father, Conte Ruggiero.
+
+"Talked of various modes of warfare--of the Hungarian 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 7th 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.' One must not be particular, 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 afternoon) to copy out
+seven or eight apophthegms of Bacon, in which I have detected such
+blunders as a school-boy 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.
+
+
+"January 6. 1821.
+
+"Mist--thaw--slop--rain. No stirring out on horseback. 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--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 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 chivalry 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--drawing--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 hay-making 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
+_ennuye?_ 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 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 inebriation, 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 _ennuye_ 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. 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 incalculable combinations
+of a climate where heat and cold struggle for mastery. Head Spence, and
+turned over Roscoe, 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, Betti V. and her husband, and others.
+Pretty black-eyed woman that--_only_ nineteen--same age as Teresa, who
+is prettier, though.
+
+"The Count Pietro G. 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.' 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 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
+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.
+
+
+"January 8. 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 Il 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 (_I_ doubt him--_they_
+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. Tore a button in my new coat.
+
+"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. Difficulties 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, &c. considering all things.
+
+"Dined. Read Johnson's 'Vanity of Human 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 superfluous, and that Pope (the best of poets, _I_ think) would
+have begun at once, only changing the punctuation--
+
+    "'Survey mankind from China to Peru.'
+
+The former line, 'Let observation,' &c. is certainly heavy and useless.
+But 'tis a grand poem--and _so true!_--true as the 10th 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. 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, &c.
+&c. and that the Austrian barbarians are placed again on _war_ pay, and
+will march. Let them--'they come like sacrifices in their trim,' 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 visiters--news, _war_, or rumours
+of war. Consulted with P.G. &c. &c. 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
+unquenchedly 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 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. 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 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 11. 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.
+
+"Alli. 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!
+
+"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 'suma 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.' '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 Bryant had impugned its veracity. It is true
+I read 'Homer Travestied' (the first twelve books), because Hobhouse 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 _inaccuracy_ in
+costume and description is, that his Gertrude, &c. 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 any thing 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 (but with one day's interval), chequered with snow or heavy
+rain only, since the 30th 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 numberless 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 _melo_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 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,
+because 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 Contesse G. this evening,
+who will be curious to have the effigies of a man so celebrated.
+
+"How strange are our thoughts, &c. &c. &c.[19]
+
+[Footnote 19: Here follows a long passage, already extracted, relative
+to his early friend, Edward Noel Long.]
+
+
+"Midnight.
+
+"Read the Italian translation by Guido Sorelli of the German
+Grillparzer--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, 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 Muellner'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, and Italian translations. Of the _real_ language I know
+absolutely nothing,--except oaths learnt from postilions and officers in
+a squabble. I can _swear_ in German potently, when I
+like--'Sacrament--Verfluchter--Hundsfott'--and so forth; but I have
+little of their less 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 Stael_ish_, 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 the ninth vol.
+octavo, of Mitford's Greece, where he rather vindicates the memory of
+this last of the Assyrians.
+
+"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 the 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 _if_ 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 (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 important 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, the Capo Politico of the
+remaining 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 disputing
+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 the painter, 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 1st 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 descriptions of Ossian, are somewhat tiresome in real, prosaic
+perspective. Politics still mysterious.
+
+
+"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
+_unpaid_ 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 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 exhibitions of the succeeding year.
+
+"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. 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 bog-trotter,' &c. &c. Now I, who know Dr. Parr,
+and who know (_not_ by experience--for I never should have presumed so
+far as to contend with him--but by hearing him _with_ others, and _of_
+others) 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 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 remember 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 _sub_scribed and _circum_scribed
+'for the recall of Mr. Edgeworth to Ireland.'[20]
+
+"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
+postilion. However, the impression of intellect and prudence is
+profound--and may be useful.
+
+[Footnote 20: In this, I rather think he was misinformed; whatever merit
+there may be in the jest, I have not, as far as I can recollect, the
+slightest claim to it.]
+
+
+"January 20. 1821.
+
+"Rode--fired pistols. Read from Grimm's Correspondence. 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 pistols--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
+walking-stick, at twelve paces, with a single bullet--and all by _eye_
+and calculation; for my hand is not steady, 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 poetes
+comiques etaient gens bilieux et melancoliques; et que M. de Voltaire,
+qui est tres gai, n'a jamais fait que des tragedies--et que la comedie
+gaie est le seul genre ou il n'ait point reussi. C'est que celui qui rit
+et celui qui fait rire sont deux hommes fort differens.'--Vol. VI.
+
+"At this moment I feel as bilious as the best comic writer of them all,
+(even as Regnard 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
+Sardanapalus, 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.
+
+"It is three minutes past twelve.--'Tis the middle of night by the
+castle clock,' 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.
+
+
+"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.' The Cari. 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 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.'
+
+"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 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 individual 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 Ga. Gi. in despite of
+all I said and did to prevent it, _would_ separate from her husband, Il
+Cavalier Commendatore Gi. &c. &c. &c. and all on the account of 'P.P.
+clerk of this parish.' 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, &c. &c. &c.--
+
+    Many small articles make up a sum,
+    And hey ho for Caleb Quotem, oh!"
+
+
+"January 25. 1821.
+
+"Received a letter from Lord S.O. state secretary of the Seven
+Islands--a fine fellow--clever--dished in England 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. 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. Two thousand years since
+that sage's declaration of ignorance have not enlightened us more upon
+this important point; for, according 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 '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 '_Trecroci_.' 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_ ninety-five years old,
+she must recollect the Cardinal Alberoni, 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 _turbot_, (Friday, fast regularly and religiously,)
+which I wanted to eat all myself. Ate it.
+
+"Went out--found T. as usual--music. The gentlemen, 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,
+buffooning, 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 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 themselves, 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, _old_, and the master of the
+world.
+
+"_Memoranda._
+
+"What is Poetry?--The feeling of a Former world and Future.
+
+"_Thought 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 retrospect 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 -------------------------------------------------------------
+--------------------------------------------------------------------
+--------------------------------------------------------------------[21]
+
+"_Thought for a speech of Lucifer, in the tragedy of Cain:_--
+
+    "Were _Death_ an _evil_, would _I_ let thee _live_?
+    Fool! live as I live--as thy father lives,
+    And thy son's sons shall live for evermore.
+
+[Footnote 21: Thus marked, with impatient strokes of the pen, by himself
+in the original.]
+
+
+"Past Midnight. One o' the clock.
+
+"I have been reading W.F.S * * (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 pimples_--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, S * *,) 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. F. S * *. 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
+Wakefield, who found out that all the good things had been said already
+on the right side, and therefore 'dressed up some paradoxes' upon the
+wrong side--ingenious, but false, as he himself says--to which 'the
+learned world said nothing, nothing at all, sir.' The 'learned world,'
+however, _has_ said something to the brothers S * *.
+
+"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 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 yesterday. 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 risen--_ca ira!_
+
+"Read S * *. 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
+ridiculous, but that he deserves it.
+
+"In the same style this German talks of gondolas on the Arno--a precious
+fellow to dare to speak of Italy!
+
+"He says also that Dante's chief defect is a want, in 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
+gentleness 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 S * *. 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 * * *--* * *.[22] Things
+seem fast coming to a crisis--_ca ira!_
+
+"We talked over various matters of moment and movement. These I
+omit;--if they come to any thing, they will speak for themselves. After
+these, we spoke of Kosciusko. 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 letters and papers are
+stopped. Nobody knows any thing, 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.
+
+[Footnote 22: In the original MS. these watch-words are blotted over so
+as to be illegible.]
+
+
+"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 Contesse 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'--speaking of the _passions_. If this
+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 Correspondence. He repeats frequently, in
+speaking of a poet, or a man of genius in any department, even in music,
+(Gretry, for instance,) that he must have 'une ame qui se tourmente, un
+esprit violent.' How far this may be true, I know not; but if it were, I
+should be a poet 'per eccellenza;' for I have always had 'une ame,'
+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 form the annals of the literary part of that age of
+France, with much of her politics; and, still more, of her 'way of
+life.' He is as valuable, and far more entertaining than Muratori or
+Tiraboschi--I had almost said, than Ginguene--but there we should pause.
+However, 'tis a great man in its line.
+
+"Monsieur St. Lambert has
+
+    "'Et lorsqu'a ses regards la lumiere est ravie,
+    Il 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.
+
+
+"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 over-flowing 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 England, 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. It I rouse, 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[23].
+
+[Footnote 23: In this little incident of the music in the streets thus
+touching so suddenly upon the nerve of memory, and calling away his mind
+from its dark bodings to a recollection of years and scenes the
+happiest, perhaps, of his whole life, there is something that appears to
+me peculiarly affecting.]
+
+
+"February 5. 1821.
+
+"At last, 'the kiln's in a low.' 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.
+Returned--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 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 15th inst.
+Instead of this, from some previous information or otherwise, 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 15th.
+
+"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.
+
+
+"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 commotion at Paris.
+
+"Rode out between four and six--finished my letter to Murray on Bowles's
+pamphlets--added postscript. Passed the evening as usual--out till
+eleven--and subsequently at home.
+
+
+"February 11. 1821.
+
+"Wrote--had a copy taken of an extract from Petrarch's Letters, with
+reference to the conspiracy of the Doge, M. Faliero, containing the
+poet's opinion of the matter. Heard a heavy firing of cannon towards
+Comacchio--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. 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 without, 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
+_fact_, 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 Sardanapalus. To-night, or
+to-morrow, I ought to answer letters.
+
+
+"February 16. 1821.
+
+"Last night Il Conte P.G. sent a man with a bag full of bayonets, some
+muskets, and some hundreds of cartridges to my house, without apprizing
+me, though I had seen him not half an hour before. About ten days ago,
+when there was to be a rising here, the Liberals and my brethren Ci.
+asked me to purchase some arms for a certain few of our ragamuffins. I
+did so immediately, and ordered ammunition, &c. 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, &c. &c. shall
+be liable to,' &c. &c.--and what do my friends, the patriots, do two
+days afterwards? 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 carabiniers 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 towards the Barbarians. If it be even so, in a
+short time 'there will be news o' thae craws,' as Mrs. Alison Wilson
+says of Jenny Blane's 'unco cockernony' in the 'Tales of my Landlord.'
+
+"In turning over Grimm's Correspondence to-day, I found a thought of
+Tom Moore's in a song of Maupertuis 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;
+    Mais ces longs jours
+    Seront trop courts,
+    Passes pres des 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'll 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.
+
+
+"February 19. 1821.
+
+"Came home solus--very high wind--lightning--moonshine--solitary
+stragglers muffled in cloaks--women in mask--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
+Ci. It is to be in _the Forest_ of Boccacio's and Dryden's 'Huntsman'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 [24] degli Onesti' (Dryden has turned 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.
+
+[Footnote 24: In Boccacio, the name is, I think, Nastagio.]
+
+
+"February 21, 1821.
+
+"As usual, rode--visited, &c. 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, &c.--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 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, &c. as usual. The secret intelligence arrived this morning from
+the frontier to the Ci. 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 Northern 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.
+But, as Squire Sullen says, 'My head aches consumedly: Scrub, bring me a
+dram!' Drank some Imola wine, and some punch.
+
+
+"_Log-book continued_[25].
+
+[Footnote 25: In another paper-book.]
+
+
+"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, &c.--dined--wrote down an additional stanza for the 5th canto of
+D.J. which I had composed in bed this morning. Visited _l'Amica_. We are
+invited, on the night of the Veglione (next Domenica) with the Marchesa
+Clelia Cavalli and the Countess Spinelli Rusponi. I promised to go. Last
+night there was a row at the ball, of which I am a 'socio.' The
+Vice-legate had the imprudent 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 farther, and the
+whole city would have been in arms, and the government driven out of it.
+
+"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.
+
+"Last night I suffered horribly--from an indigestion, I believe. I
+_never_ sup--that is, never at home. But, last 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 somewhat 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 should believe that it was married to the body, if they did
+not sympathise 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+During the two months comprised in this Journal, some of the Letters of
+the following series were written. The reader must, therefore, be
+prepared to find in them occasional notices of the same train of events.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 404. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Ravenna, January 2. 1821.
+
+     "Your entering into my project for the Memoir is pleasant to me.
+     But I doubt (contrary to my dear Made Mac F * *, 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 although Made. de S.'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 * *, 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, M * * L * *[26], 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 * * was
+     open-_mouthed_ 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, Rousseau, &c. &c. 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 Lissa in 1811. He was brave, but a
+     disciplinarian. 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 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[27],'but it 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,' we may perhaps meet, in France or England, within
+     the year.
+
+     "Yours, &c.
+
+     "Of course, I cannot explain to you existing circumstances, as they
+     open all letters.
+
+     "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."
+
+[Footnote 26: Of this gentleman, the following notice occurs in the
+"Detached Thoughts:"--"L * * was a good man, a clever man, but a bore.
+My only revenge or consolation used to be setting him by the ears with
+some vivacious person who hated bores especially,--Madame de S---- or
+H----, for example. But I liked L * *; 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 M * * 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 _terra_fied by the
+charge; thrice did I lose him in the grey 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'd give the lands of Deloraine
+    Dark Musgrave were alive again!'
+
+that is,--
+
+    "I would give many a sugar cane
+    M * * L * * were alive again!"]
+
+[Footnote 27: The following passage from the letter of mine, to which
+the above was an answer, will best explain what follows:--With respect
+to the newspaper, it is odd enough that Lord * * * * and myself had been
+(about a week or two before I received your letter) speculating upon
+your assistance in a plan somewhat similar, but more literary and less
+regularly-periodical in its appearance. Lord * *, 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."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 405. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, January 4. 1821.
+
+     "I just see, by the papers of Galignani, that there is a new
+     tragedy of great expectation, by Barry Cornwall. Of what I have
+     read of his works Hiked the _Dramatic_ Sketches, but thought his
+     Sicilian Story and Marcian Colonna, in rhyme, quite spoilt, by I
+     know not what affectation of Wordsworth, 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 (Barry Cornwall is not
+     his _true_ name) was a schoolfellow 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 Marino Faliero. 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 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,' &c. and do not
+     judge me by your old mad 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
+     Ben Jonson, who was a scholar and a classic. Or, take up a
+     translation of Alfieri, and try the interest, &c. 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_ tailors' yards. Nothing so easy as intricate confusion of
+     plot and rant. Mrs. Centlivre, in comedy, has _ten times the bustle
+     of Congreve_; but are they to be compared? and yet she drove
+     Congreve from the theatre."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 406. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, January 19. 1821.
+
+     "Yours of the 29th ultimo 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[28] 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 thousands of
+     worthy 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 _I_ 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.[29]
+
+     "The _third_ canto of Don Juan is 'dull,' but you must really put
+     up with it: if the two first and the two following are tolerable,
+     what do you expect? particularly as I neither dispute with you on
+     it as a matter of criticism, nor as a matter of business.
+
+     "Besides, what am I to understand? you and Douglas Kinnaird, and
+     others, write to me, that the two first published cantos are among
+     the best that I ever wrote, and are reckoned so; Augusta 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 ostentation, 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.[30] 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 those
+     plaguy 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."
+
+[Footnote 28: To the letter which enclosed this protest, and which has
+been omitted to avoid repetitions, he had subjoined a passage from
+Spence's Anecdotes (p. 197. of Singer's edition), where Pope says,
+speaking of himself, "I had taken such strong resolutions against any
+thing of that kind, from seeing how much every body that _did_ write for
+the stage was obliged to subject themselves to the players and the
+town."--_Spence's Anecdotes_, p. 22.
+
+In the same paragraph, Pope is made to say, "After I had got acquainted
+with the town, I resolved never to write any thing for the stage, though
+solicited by many of my friends to do so, and particularly Betterton."]
+
+[Footnote 29: No further step was ever taken in this affair; and the
+documents, which were of no use whatever, are, I believe, still in Mr.
+Murray's possession.]
+
+[Footnote 30: The self-will of Lord Byron was in no point more
+conspicuous than in the determination with which he thus persisted in
+giving the preference to one or two works of his own which, in the eyes
+of all other persons, were most decided failures. Of this class was the
+translation from Pulci, so frequently mentioned by him, which appeared
+afterwards in the Liberal, and which, though thus rescued from the fate
+of remaining unpublished, roust for ever, I fear, submit to the doom of
+being unread.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 407. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "January 20. 1821.
+
+     "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 Lord Byron has a tragedy coming out,' &c. &c. &c. and
+     that the Courier and Morning Chronicle, &c. &c. are pulling one
+     another to pieces about it and him, &c.
+
+     "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 to my
+     judgment_. If you do not wish to drive me mad altogether, you will
+     hit upon some way to prevent this.
+
+     "Yours, &c.
+
+     "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 Aeschylus. I speak of course humbly, and with the
+     greatest sense of the distance of time and merit between the two
+     performances; 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 408. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, January 20. 1821.
+
+     "If Harris or Elliston persist, after the remonstrance which I
+     desired you and Mr. 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_, because 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 preventing this cursed attempt at
+     representation.
+
+     "God help me! at this distance, I am treated like a corpse or a
+     fool by the few people that I thought I could rely upon; and I
+     _was_ a fool to think any better of them than of the rest of
+     mankind.
+
+     "Pray write. Yours, &c.
+
+     "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 altogether_, and only _forty
+     copies struck off privately_ for presents to my friends. What curst
+     fools those speculating buffoons must be _not_ to see that it is
+     unfit for their fair--or their booth!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 409. TO MR. 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, &c. &c.[31]
+
+     "Have you heard that the 'Braziers' Company have, or mean to
+     present an address at Brandenburgh House, '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 * * * *, 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 embarked, 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, 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 hisses, nor
+     the insolence of their applause. I write only for the _reader_, and
+     care for nothing but the _silent_ approbation 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," &c.
+
+[Footnote 31: Already given in his Journal.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 410. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, January 27. 1821.
+
+     "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 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.
+
+     "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 law-suit--and the trustees of
+     Lady Byron refusing to allow of an advantageous loan to be made
+     from my property to Lord Blessington, &c. &c. 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 _here_, else I should have taken the liberty of
+     Hannibal's ring.
+
+     "Pray thank Gifford for all his goodnesses. The winter is as cold
+     here as Parry's polarities. I must now take a canter in the forest;
+     my horses are waiting.
+
+     "Yours ever and truly."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 411. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, February 2. 1821.
+
+     "Your letter of excuses has arrived. I receive the letter, but do
+     not admit the excuses, except 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, 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. * * 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 acknowledge 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 I 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 the English booksellers, and I desire no interest out of that
+     country.
+
+     "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 crum of the old
+     loaf. You have no right to act suspiciously with me, for I have
+     given you no reason. I shall always be frank with you; as, for
+     instance, whenever you talk with the votaries of Apollo
+     arithmetically, 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, &c.
+
+     "P.S. If you venture, as you say, to Ravenna this year, 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,' which are rather frequent here of late
+     among the native parties. But perhaps your visit may be
+     anticipated; 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 412. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, February 16, 1821.
+
+     "In the month of March will arrive from Barcelona _Signor Curioni_,
+     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.
+
+     "The fifth is so far from being the last of Don Juan, 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 'Werter-faced man' 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 _blase_
+     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 tradition says hell: but
+     it is probably only an allegory of the other state. You are now in
+     possession of my notions on the subject.
+
+     "You say the Doge will not be popular: did I ever write for
+     _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 succeded the older writers. It
+     appears to me, that good English, and a severer approach to the
+     rules, might combine something not dishonourable 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 its
+     popularity, but does not persuade me that it is _therefore_ faulty.
+     Whatever faults it has will arise from deficiency in the conduct,
+     rather than in the conception, which is simple and severe.
+
+     "So _you epigrammatise_ upon _my epigram_? I will _pay_ you for
+     _that_, mind if I don't, some day. I never let any one off in the
+     long run (_who first begins_). Remember * * *, 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
+     English pirates did not begin their attempts till after I had left
+     England the second time. Pray attend to this. Let me know what you
+     and your synod think on Bowles.
+
+     "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 Morghen's, and _Ovid_'s (I don't _mean
+     poetry_),--are as low as need be: look at the seal which I gave to
+     William Bankes, and own it. How came George Bankes to quote
+     'English Bards' in the House of Commons? All the world keep
+     flinging that poem in my face.
+
+     "Belzoni _is_ a grand traveller, and his English is very prettily
+     broken.
+
+     "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 row, 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," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 413. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, February 21. 1821.
+
+     "In the forty-fourth page, volume first, of Turner's Travels (which
+     you lately sent me), it is stated that 'Lord Byron, when he
+     expressed such confidence of its practicability, seems to have
+     forgotten that Leander swam both ways, with and against the tide;
+     whereas _he_ (Lord Byron) only performed the easiest part of the
+     task by swimming with it from Europe to Asia.' I certainly could
+     not have forgotten, what is known to every schoolboy, 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 into 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 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, 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 _must_ 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 possible, 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 _four_, 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
+     probability. It is not quite fair in him to infer, that because
+     _he_ failed, Leander could not succeed. There are still four
+     instances 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 perceived none;
+     it is favourable to the swimmer on neither 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 practicable. Any young
+     man, in good 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
+     Hellespont. Of what may be done in swimming, I will mention one
+     more instance. In 1818, the Chevalier Mengaldo (a gentleman of
+     Bassano), a good swimmer, wished to swim with my friend Mr.
+     Alexander Scott and myself. As he seemed particularly 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 consequence, as there was
+     a gondola to hold his clothes and pick him up. Scott swam 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, comprising 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 its
+     performance, Mr. Hoppner, 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. He tried to swim
+     directly across, instead of going higher up to take the vantage: he
+     might as well have tried to _fly_ 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. Whether 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. Turner, '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,
+     however, is not so 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 perceiving the greater strength of the opposite stream by
+     which the diplomatic traveller palliates his own failure. Our
+     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 greater 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 and
+     Captain 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. Turner'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. Turner 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."[32]
+
+[Footnote 32: To the above letter, which was published at the time, Mr.
+Turner wrote a reply, but, for reasons stated by himself, did not print
+it. At his request, I give insertion to his paper in the Appendix.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 414. TO MR. 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 particularly 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_,
+     notwithstanding 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. If not, let me have my
+     francs. They were paid by Missiaglia, the _W_enetian 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, &c.
+
+     "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.
+
+        BOWLES. "Why, how now, saucy Tom,
+                  If you thus must ramble,
+                I will publish some
+                  Remarks on Mr. Campbell.
+
+        CAMPBELL. "Why, how now, Billy Bowles,
+                    &c. &c. &c."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 415. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "March 2. 1821.
+
+     "This was the beginning of a letter which I meant for Perry, but
+     stopped 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+TO MR. PERRY.
+
+     "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,' &c. which was never intended for such an
+     exhibition, and I trust will never undergo it. It is 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 the buzzing of the other.
+
+     "This may not seem a courteous comparison, but I have no other
+     ready; and it occurs naturally."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 416. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, Marzo, 1821.
+
+     "Dear Moray,
+
+     "In my packet of the 12th instant, in the last sheet (_not_ the
+     _half_ sheet), last page, _omit_ the sentence which (defining, or
+     attempting to define, what and who are gentlemen) 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,' &c. &c. I say,
+     omit the whole of that sentence, because, like the 'cosmogony, or
+     creation of the world,' in the 'Vicar of Wakefield,' 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 _parle
+     euphuism_; but there is a _nobility_ of thought and expression to
+     be found no less in Shakspeare, Pope, and Burns, than in Dante,
+     Alfieri,' &c. &c. 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 on 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_.
+       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.
+      11. _Prompter. Puppet squeaks._
+      12. _The ear of Eve._
+      13. _Familiar toad._
+      14. _Half froth, half venom, splits_ himself abroad.
+      15. _Fop_ at the _toilet_.
+      16. _Flatterer_ at the _board_.
+      17. _Amphibious thing_.
+      18. Now _trips a lady_.
+      19. Now _struts a lord_.
+      20. A _cherub's face_.
+      21. A _reptile_ all the rest.
+      22. The _Rabbins_.
+      23. Pride that _licks 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_ 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 fellows are
+     trying against Pope.
+
+     "Ask Mr. Gifford if, in the fifth act of 'The Doge,' you could not
+     contrive (where the sentence of the _Veil_ is passed) 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.[33]
+
+     "Yours, truly, &c.
+
+     "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 Naples by these fellows.
+
+     "I wish to propose to _Holmes_, the miniature painter, to come out
+     to me this spring. I will pay his expenses, 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 face while it lasts. Madame
+     G. is also very handsome, but it is quite in a different
+     style--completely 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."
+
+[Footnote 33: These lines--perhaps from some difficulty in introducing
+them--were never inserted in the Tragedy.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 417. TO MR. 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; and as she was
+     now four years old complete, and quite above the control of the
+     servants--and as a _man_ living without 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.[34] 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.
+
+     "P.S. There is a report here of a change in France; 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. Afterwards, 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."
+
+[Footnote 34: With such anxiety did he look to this essential part of
+his daughter's education, that notwithstanding the many advantages she
+was sure to derive from the kind and feminine superintendence of Mrs.
+Shelley, his apprehensions, lest her feeling upon religious subjects
+might be disturbed by the conversation of Shelley himself, prevented him
+from allowing her to remain under his friend's roof.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 418. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, April 21. 1821.
+
+     "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. Upon this point you can consult
+     with Mr. Gifford, and think twice before you publish it at all.
+
+     Yours truly,
+
+     B.
+
+     "P.S. You may make my subscription for Mr. Scott's widow, &c.
+     _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, it would look indelicate. I
+     would give more, but my disappointments last year about Rochdale
+     and the transfer from the funds render me more economical for the
+     present."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 419. TO MR. SHELLEY.
+
+     "Ravenna, April 26. 1821.
+
+     "The child continues doing well, and the accounts are regular and
+     favourable. It is gratifying to me that you 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--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 unnecessary 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 inordinate 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 poetry. You
+     also know my high opinion of your own poetry,--because it is of
+     _no_ school. I read Cenci--but, besides that I think the _subject_
+     essentially _un_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 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.
+
+     "P.S. Could not you and I contrive to meet this summer? Could not
+     you take a run here _alone_?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 420. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, April 26. 1821.
+
+     "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 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 suburbing, 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 (which produced
+     the English Bards, &c.) 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.
+
+     "Yours, &c.
+
+     "P.S. Your latest packet of books is on its way here, but not
+     arrived. Kenilworth excellent. Thanks for the pocket-books, of
+     which 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?--_conditionally, recollect_; not
+     to be published before decease. _He_ has the permission to dispose
+     of them, and I advised him to do so."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 421. TO MR. 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 ran write but little, as all
+     letters are opened. 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 nowhere now
+     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," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 422. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Ravenna, May 3. 1821.
+
+     "Though I wrote to you on the 28th ultimo, I must acknowledge yours
+     of this day, with the lines[35]. 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[36]? I do not recollect to
+     have said any thing of _you_ that could offend,--certainly, nothing
+     intentionally. As for * *, 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. And did you _not_ approve, as he says? Would
+     I had known that before! I would have given him some more
+     gruel.[37] 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 barbarians. 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."
+
+[Footnote 35: "Aye, down to the dust with them, slaves as they are," &c.
+&c.]
+
+[Footnote 36: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 37: 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 partisanship 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.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was at this time that he began, under the title of "Detached
+Thoughts," that Book of Notices or Memorandums, from which, in the
+course of these pages, I have extracted so many curious illustrations of
+his life and opinions, and of which the opening article is as follows:--
+
+"Amongst various Journals, Memoranda, Diaries, &c. 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 proclamations, 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 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 necessarily 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 its
+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.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 423. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, May 10. 1821.
+
+     "I have just got your packet. I am obliged to Mr. Bowles, and Mr.
+     Bowles is obliged to me, for having restored him to good-humour. He
+     is to write, 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. Bowles, you will _not_ publish my
+     _defence of Gilchrist_: it would be brutal to do so after his
+     urbanity, for it is rather too rough, like his own attack upon
+     Gilchrist. 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 first Letter to you. Upon this consult Gifford; and, above all,
+     don't let any thing be added which can _personally_ affect Mr.
+     Bowles.
+
+     "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.
+
+     "I hope and trust that Elliston _won't_ be permitted to act the
+     drama. Surely _he_ 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,
+     Oxford, nor Scott's novels among them. Why don't you republish
+     Hodgson's Childe Harold's Monitor and Latino-mastix? They are
+     excellent. Think of this--they are all for _Pope_.
+
+     "Yours," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The controversy, in which Lord Byron, with so much grace and
+good-humour, thus allowed himself to be disarmed by the courtesy of his
+antagonist, it is not my intention to run the risk of reviving by any
+enquiry into its origin or merits. In all such discussions on matters of
+mere taste and opinion, where, on one side, it is the aim of the
+disputants to elevate the object of the contest, and on the other, to
+depreciate it, Truth will usually be found, like Shakspeare's gatherer
+of samphire on the cliff, "halfway down." Whatever judgment, however,
+may be formed respecting the controversy itself, of the urbanity and
+gentle feeling on both sides, which (notwithstanding some slight trials
+of this good understanding afterwards) led ultimately to the result
+anticipated in the foregoing letter, there can be but one opinion; and
+it is only to be wished that such honourable forbearance were as sure of
+imitators as it is, deservedly, of eulogists. In the lively pages thus
+suppressed, when ready fledged for flight, with a power of self-command
+rarely exercised by wit, there are some passages, of a general nature,
+too curious to be lost, which I shall accordingly proceed to extract for
+the reader.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Pope himself 'sleeps well--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. * * *
+
+"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; 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 remarkable or a
+celebrated character, might well have pretended to all the 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, thought his
+'Epistle on the Characters of Women' his 'masterpiece.' 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, it may be remarked, that it does not
+always depend upon personal appearance, 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 Luxembourg
+(who had precisely Pope's figure) was not only somewhat too amatory for
+a great man, but fortunate in his attachments. La Valiere, the passion
+of Louis XIV. 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 Acon dextro, capta est Leonilla sinistro,
+      Et potis est forma vincere uterque Deos:
+    Blande puer, lumen quod habes concede sorori,
+      Sic tu caecus Amor, sic erit illa Venus.'
+
+"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 of _forty-four_.'
+
+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. 'They particularly renounce Celestial Venus, into
+whose temple, &c. &c. &c. I remember, too, to have seen a building in
+AEgina in which there is a statue of Fortune, holding a horn of Amalthea;
+and near here 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 submit 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 vii. 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 Strafford)
+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.
+
+"In regard 'to the strange mixture of indecent, and sometimes _profane_
+levity, which his conduct and language _often_ exhibited,' and which so
+much shocks the tone of _Pope_, than the tone of the _time_. With the
+exception of the correspondence 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 any thing in Pope's letters. The comedies of
+Congreve, Vanbrugh, Farquhar, Gibber, &c. 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 every body
+understood _that_, but few could talk rationally upon less common
+topics.' The refinement of latter 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To the extract that follows I beg to call the particular attention of
+the reader. Those who at all remember the peculiar bitterness and
+violence with which the gentleman here commemorated assailed Lord Byron,
+at a crisis when both his heart and fame were most vulnerable, will, if
+I am not mistaken, feel a thrill of pleasurable admiration in reading
+these sentences, such as alone can convey any adequate notion of the
+proud, generous pleasure that must have been felt in writing them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Poor Scott is now no more. 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, '_squeel_') 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 griefs by the loss of his son, and had known, by experience, the
+bitterness of 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 James 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In reference to some complaints made by Mr. Bowles, in his Pamphlet, of
+a charge of "hypochondriacism" which he supposed to have been brought
+against him by his assailant, Mr. Gilchrist, the noble writer thus
+proceeds:--
+
+"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.
+
+"Mendelsohn 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.'
+
+"In page 14. we have a large assertion, that 'the Eloisa alone is
+sufficient to convict him (Pope) 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 with,
+at the same time, 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 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? 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 systematise. It assails, but does not argue; it may be
+wrong, but it does not assume pretensions to optimism."
+
+Mr. Bowles having, in his pamphlet, complained of some anonymous
+communication which he had received, Lord Byron thus comments on the
+circumstance.
+
+"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 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 intimation 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 denunciation was addressed to
+the Cardinal Legate of Romagna, instead of to * * * *. 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 Heatherblutter' (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,' 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."
+
+The following just tribute to my Reverend Friend's merits as a poet I
+have peculiar pleasure in extracting:--
+
+"Mr. Bowles has no reason to 'succumb' but to Mr. Bowles. As a poet, the
+author of 'The Missionary' may compete with the foremost of his
+contemporaries. 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 honorably rank with
+his living rivals," &c. &c. &c.
+
+Among various Addenda for this pamphlet, sent at different times to Mr.
+Murray, I find the following curious passages:--
+
+"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 (no friend to Pope) asserts that Pope formed _Kent's_ 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 _Pope's_ at Twickenham. Warton
+applauds 'his singular effort of art and taste, in impressing so much
+variety and scenery on a spot of five acres.' Pope was the _first_ 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 _best_ rules and
+observations on _Architecture_ and _Gardening_.' (See Warton's Essay,
+vol. ii. p. 237, &c.&c.)
+
+"Now, is it not a shame, after this, to hear our Lakers in '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 _Stowe_. 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 _Kent's_ 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 Lord Bathurst's is carved,
+'Here Pope sang,'--he composed beneath it. Bolingbroke, in one of his
+letters, represents them both writing in a hayfield. 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, painting,
+_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 a
+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 enthusiastical for the country because they live in
+London. It is to be observed, that the rustical founders are rather
+anxious to disclaim any connection with their metropolitan followers,
+whom they ungraciously review, and call cockneys, atheists, foolish
+fellows, bad writers, and other hard names, not less ungrateful than
+unjust. I can understand the pretensions of the aquatic gentlemen of
+Windermere to what Mr. B * * terms '_entusumusy_' for lakes, and
+mountains, and daffodils, and buttercups; but I should be glad to be
+apprised of the foundation of the London propensities of their imitative
+brethren to the same' high argument.' Southey, Wordsworth, 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_?
+
+"When they have really seen 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 permitted 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,' 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.
+
+"If they had said nothing of _Pope_, they might have remained 'alone
+with their glory' for aught I should have said or thought about them or
+their nonsense. But if they interfere with the little 'Nightingale' of
+Twickenham, they may find others who will bear it--_I_ 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 clothed in
+consummate beauty. Sir William Temple observes, 'That of all the members
+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.' 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, 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 clothes
+might be 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. * * 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 are now, 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 Shakspeare,
+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, I 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 _fencing_-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 composition. _Vulgarity_ is far worse than downright
+_black-guardism_; 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_? 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, gentlemen,
+is the _Eagle_ of the _Sun_, from Archangel in Russia: the _otterer_ it
+is, the _igherer_ he flies.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In a note on a passage relative to Pope's lines upon Lady Mary W.
+Montague, he says--
+
+"I think that I could show, if necessary, that Lady Mary W. Montague was
+also greatly to blame in that quarrel, _not_ for having rejected, but
+for having encouraged him; but I would rather decline the task--though
+she should have remembered her own line, '_He 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 _Harvey_, I
+should love him;' so, if you were to call a female of the same species
+'Mary,' I should love it better than others (biped or quadruped) of the
+same sex with a different appellation. She was an extraordinary 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 banish'd 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,' &c. &c.
+
+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 '_puree_' 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 university not to know that the
+philosopher was himself 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 424. TO MR. HOPPNER.
+
+     "Ravenna, May 11. 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, 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, 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 throwing 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 attachment: this is, I believe, the case also in France.
+     And after all, what is the higher society of England? According 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, &c.
+
+     "P.S. I gave to a musician_er_ a letter for you some time ago--has
+     he presented himself? Perhaps you could introduce him to the
+     Ingrains and other dilettanti. He is simple and unassuming--two
+     strange things in his profession--and he fiddles like Orpheus
+     himself or Amphion: 'tis a pity that he can't make Venice dance
+     away from the brutal tyrant who tramples upon it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 425. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "May 14. 1821.
+
+     "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 manager. It is
+     a pity that you did not show them its _unfitness_ for the stage
+     before the play was _published_, and exact a promise from the
+     managers not to act it. In case of their refusal, we would not have
+     published it at all. But this is too late.
+
+     "Yours.
+
+     "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 I '_brought forward the
+     play!!!_' This is 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 426. TO MR. 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, notwithstanding all my remonstrances
+     through all my friends (and yourself among the rest), the managers
+     persisted in attempting the tragedy, and that it has been
+     'unanimously 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 _I_ '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 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 30th. They must have been in a _hell_ of
+     a hurry for this damnation, 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 assassination, 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.' 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 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, &c.
+
+     "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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 427. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, May 19. 1821.
+
+     "By the papers of Thursday, and two letters of Mr. Kinnaird, I
+     perceive that the Italian gazette had lied most _Italically_, and
+     that the drama had _not_ been hissed, and that my friends _had_
+     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 expenses. 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, &c. I wrote to you a week ago on the subject.
+
+     "Now I should be glad to know what compensation Mr. Elliston would
+     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 _I_ '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 my brains out 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[38].
+
+     "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
+     Fourteenth, who insisted upon buying at any price Algernon Sydney's
+     horse, and, on his 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 (intending 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 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
+     torchlight, but by _lightning_ light: 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
+     the 'Bold Thunder' and 'Brisk Lightning' in person.--_Three_ of us
+     would be too many. There it goes--_flash_ again! but
+
+        "I tax not you, ye elements, with unkindness;
+        I never gave ye _franks_, nor _call'd_ upon you;
+
+     as I have done by and upon Mr. Elliston.
+
+     "Why do you not write? You should at least send me a line of
+     particulars: I know nothing yet but by Galignani and the Honourable
+     Douglas.
+
+     "Well, and how does our Pope controversy go on? and the pamphlet?
+     It is impossible to write any news: the Austrian scoundrels rummage
+     all letters.
+
+     "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."
+
+[Footnote 38: The account given, by Madame Guiccioli, of his anxiety on
+this occasion, fully corroborates his own:--"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 those 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
+relative 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 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_; for _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!!!--here, probably, at Ravenna?--and to whom? perhaps to
+Fletcher!!!--that illustrious literary character,'" &c. &c.--"Ma pero la
+sua tranquillita era suo malgrado sovente alterata dalle publiche
+vicende, e dagli attachi che spesso si direggevano a lui nei giornali
+come ad autore principalmente. Era invano che egli protestava
+indifferenza per codesti attachi. L'impressione non era e vero che
+momentanea, e purtroppo per una nobile fierezza sdegnava sempre di
+rispondere ai suoi dettratori. Ma per quanto fosse breve quella
+impressione era pero assai forte per farlo molto soffrire e per
+affliggere quelli che lo amavano. Tuttocio che ebbe luogo per la
+rappresentazione del suo Marino Faliero lo inquicto pure moltissimo e
+dietro ad un articolo di una Gazetta di Milano in cui si parlava di
+quell' affare egli mi scrisse cosi--'Ecco la verita di cio che io vi
+dissi pochi giorni fa, come vengo sacrificato in tutte le maniere seza
+sapere il _perche_ e il _come_. La tragedia di cui si parla non e (e non
+era mai) ne scritta ne adattata al teatro; ma non e pero romantico il
+disegno, e piuttosto regolare--regolarissimo per l' unita del tempo, c
+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 _l'autore ne fece la
+letlura!!!_--qui forse? a Ravenna?--ed a chi? forse a Fletcher!!!--quel
+illustre litterato,'" &c. &c.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 428. TO ME. 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 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 429. TO MR. HOPPNER.
+
+     "Ravenna, May 25. 1821.
+
+     "I am very much pleased with what you say of Switzerland, 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.
+
+     "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, &c.
+     &c. All this was more fomented by the barbarian agents, who are
+     numerous here (one of them was stabbed yesterday, 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 430. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, May 25. 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 _un_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_), while all this kick-up has been going on about the
+     play? You SHABBY fellow!!! Were it not for two letters from Douglas
+     Kinnaird, I should have been as ignorant as you are negligent.
+
+     "So, I hear Bowles has been abusing Hobhouse? If that's the case,
+     he has broken the truce, like Morillo's successor, and I will cut
+     him out, as Cochrane did the Esmeralda.
+
+     "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 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 shabby
+     correspondent! N."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 431. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, May 28. 1821.
+
+     "Since my last of the 26th or 25th, I have dashed off my fifth act
+     of the tragedy called 'Sardanapalus.' 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 six times sans answer, which
+     proves you to be a--bookseller. I pray you to send me a copy of Mr.
+     _Wrangham_'s reformation of '_Langhorne_'s Plutarch.' 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 Apollonius_ of Tyana. It is in English,
+     and I think edited or written by what Martin Marprelate calls '_a
+     bouncing priest_.' I shall trouble you no farther with this sheet
+     than with the postage. Yours, &c. N.
+
+     "P.S. Since I wrote this, I determined to enclose it (as a half
+     sheet) to Mr. Kinnaird, who will have the goodness to forward it.
+     Besides, it saves sealing-wax."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 432. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, May 30. 1821.
+
+     "Dear Moray,
+
+     "You say you have written often: I have only received yours of the
+     eleventh, which is very short. By this post, _five_ packets, I send
+     you the tragedy of Sardanapalus, which is written in a rough hand:
+     perhaps Mrs. Leigh can help you to decipher 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 sun-rise. 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. The trait is perhaps too
+     familiar, but it is historical, (of _Otho_, at least,) and natural
+     in an effeminate character."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 433. TO MR. 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, however, but doubt that you will be singular
+     in your opinion. My _new_ tragedy is completed.
+
+     "The B * * is _right_,--I ought to have mentioned her _humour_ and
+     _amiability_, but I thought at her _sixty_, beauty would be most
+     agreeable or least likely. However, 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 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, &c.
+
+     "P.S. Did you receive two letters of Douglas Kinnaird's in an
+     endorse from me? Remember me to Mengaldo, Soranzo, 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 information 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?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 434. TO MR. 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 * *:'--
+
+        "Behold the blessings of a lucky lot--
+        My play is damn'd, and Lady * * _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, &c.;
+     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 somewhat 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 printing 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[39]? You see what comes of being familiar 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_ 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 discharge 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 * * * *--a fine old Visigoth name, or Ostrogoth.
+
+     "The Greeks! what think you? They are my old acquaintances--but
+     what to think I know not. Let us hope howsomever.
+
+     "Yours,
+
+     "B."
+
+[Footnote 39: In their eagerness, like true controversialists, to avail
+themselves of every passing advantage, and convert even straws into
+weapons on an emergency, my two friends, during their short warfare,
+contrived to place me in that sort of embarrassing position, the most
+provoking feature of which is, that it excites more amusement 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 be stated, by
+"a gentleman of the highest literary," &c. &c., 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 authoritatively 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 designating 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 conversation, 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.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 435. TO MR. 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 panegyric in the
+     correspondence of Mrs. Waterhouse and Colonel Berkeley? 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 mayn't 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? I have sent Murray a new
+     tragedy, ycleped 'Sardanapalus,' writ according to Aristotle--all,
+     save the chorus--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 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.
+
+     "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, &c.
+
+     "B."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 436. TO MR. 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 _me_? 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 deliver'd.
+
+     "I have had a friend of your Mr. Irving's--a very pretty lad--a Mr.
+     Coolidge, 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 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, &c. &c. &c. 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 _Norway_ (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, &c.
+
+     "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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the Journal entitled "Detached Thoughts," I find the tribute to his
+genius which he here mentions, as well as some others, thus
+interestingly dwelt upon.
+
+"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, &c. &c. It is
+still somewhere amongst my papers. In the same month I received an
+invitation into _Holstein_ from a Mr. Jacobsen (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.
+Jacobsen'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. Jacobsen 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 mansion 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."
+
+Of the visit, too, of the American gentleman, he thus speaks in the same
+Journal.
+
+"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 appearances; 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 Thorwaldsen 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 rased from
+the street called after him in Dublin); I say that I was more flattered
+by it, because it was _single, unpolitical_, 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;--_I_ would not pay the
+price of a 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 sat for
+my own?--Answer, that it was at the particular request of J.C. Hobhouse,
+Esq. 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 something of a hankering for _public_ fame rather
+than private remembrance.
+
+"Whenever an American requests to see me (which is not unfrequently), I
+comply, firstly, because I respect a people who acquired their freedom
+by their firmness without excess; and, secondly, 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
+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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 437. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, July 6. 1821.
+
+     "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. I mention this in case you are, or
+     intend to be, the publisher of the remaining Cantos.
+
+     "At the particular request of the Contessa G. I have promised _not_
+     to continue Don Juan. You will therefore look upon these three
+     Cantos as the last of the 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 Grammont, Gil Bias, and all the comedy of the passions, when
+     brought out naturally. But 'king's blood must keep word,' as
+     Serjeant Bothwell says."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER, 438. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "July 14. 1821.
+
+     "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 dramatise, like the Greeks (a _modest_
+     phrase), striking passages of history, as they did of history and
+     mythology. You will find all this very _un_like Shakspeare; and so
+     much the better in one sense, for I look upon him to be the _worst_
+     of models[40], 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 unpleasant scenes
+     here: they have, without trial or process, 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."
+
+[Footnote 40: In venturing this judgment upon Shakspeare, Lord Byron but
+followed in the footsteps of his great idol Pope. "It was mighty simple
+in Rowe," says this poet, "to write a play now professedly in
+Shakspeare's style, that is, professedly in the style of a bad
+age."--Spence, sect. 4. 1734-36. Of Milton, too, Pope seems to have held
+pretty nearly the same opinion as that professed by Lord Byron in some
+of these letters. See, in Spence, sect. 5 1737-39, a passage on which
+his editor remarks--"Perhaps Pope did not relish Shakspeare more than he
+seems to have done Milton."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 439. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, July 22. 1821.
+
+     "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 theatres_ are _closed_, 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 character: but, for that
+     matter, so is Richard the Third. Mind the _unities_, which are my
+     great object of research. I am glad that Gifford likes it: as for
+     'the million,' you see I have carefully consulted any thing 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 instance) are cold
+     enough; but never mind those fellows: I shall send them to the
+     right about, if I take it into my head. I 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 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. The captain has been
+     reprimanded, the servant released, and the business at present
+     rests there."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Among the victims of the "black sentence and proscription" by which the
+rulers of Italy were now, as appears from the above letters, avenging
+their late alarm upon all who had even in the remotest degree
+contributed to it, the two Gambas were, of course, as suspected Chiefs
+of the Carbonari of Romagna, included. About the middle of July, Madame
+Guiccioli, in a state of despair, wrote to inform Lord Byron that her
+father, in whose palazzo she was at that time residing, had just been
+ordered to quit Ravenna within twenty-four hours, and that it was the
+intention of her brother to depart the following morning. The young
+Count, however, was not permitted to remain even so long, being arrested
+that very night, and conveyed by soldiers to the frontier; and the
+Contessa herself, in but a few days after, found that she also must join
+the crowd of exiles. The prospect of being again separated from her
+noble friend seems to have rendered banishment little less fearful, in
+her eyes, than death. "This alone," she says in a letter to him, "was
+wanting to fill up the measure of my despair. Help me, my dear Byron,
+for I am in a situation most terrible; and without you, I can resolve
+upon nothing. * * has just been with me, having been sent by * * to
+tell me that I must depart from Ravenna before next Tuesday, as my
+husband has had recourse to Rome, for the purpose of either forcing me
+to return to him, or else putting me in a convent; and the answer from
+thence is expected in a few days. I must not speak of this to any
+one,--I roust escape by night; for, if my project should be discovered,
+it will be impeded, and my passport (which the goodness of Heaven has
+permitted me, I know not how, to obtain) will be taken from me. Byron! I
+am in despair!--If I must leave you here without knowing when I shall
+see you again, if it is your will that I should suffer so cruelly, I am
+resolved to remain. They may put me in a convent; I shall die,--but--but
+then you cannot aid me, and I cannot reproach you. I know not what they
+tell me, for my agitation overwhelms me;--and why? Not because I fear my
+present danger, but solely, I call Heaven to witness, solely because I
+must leave you."
+
+Towards the latter end of July, the writer of this tender and truly
+feminine letter found herself forced to leave Ravenna,--the home of her
+youth, as it was, now, of her heart,--uncertain whither to go, or where
+she should again meet Lord Byron. After lingering for a short time at
+Bologna, under a faint expectation that the Court of Rome might yet,
+through some friendly mediation [41], be induced to rescind its order
+against her relatives, she at length gave up all hope, and joined her
+father and brother at Florence.
+
+It has been already seen, from Lord Byron's letters, that he had himself
+become an object of strong suspicion to the Government, and it was,
+indeed, chiefly in their desire to rid themselves of his presence, that
+the steps taken against the Gamba family had originated;--the constant
+benevolence which he exercised towards the poor of Ravenna being likely,
+it was feared, to render him dangerously popular among a people unused
+to charity on so enlarged a scale. "One of the principal causes," says
+Madame Guiccioli, "of the exile of my relatives, was in reality the idea
+that Lord Byron would share the banishment of his friends. Already the
+Government were averse to Lord Byron's residence at Ravenna; knowing his
+opinions, fearing his influence, and also exaggerating the extent of his
+means for giving effect to them. They fancied that he provided money for
+the purchase of arms, &c. and that he contributed pecuniarily to the
+wants of the Society. The truth is, that, when called upon to exercise
+his beneficence, he made no enquiries as to the political and religious
+opinions of those who required his aid. Every unhappy and needy object
+had an equal share in his benevolence. The Anti-Liberals, however,
+insisted upon believing that he was the principal support of Liberalism
+in Romagna, and were desirous of his departure; but, not daring to exact
+it by any direct measure, they were in hopes of being able indirectly to
+force him into this step."[42]
+
+After stating the particulars of her own hasty departure, the lady
+proceeds:--"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 embittered 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[43]."
+
+[Footnote 41: Among the persons applied to by Lord Byron for their
+interest on this occasion was the late Duchess of Devonshire, whose
+answer, dated from Spa, I found among his papers. With the utmost
+readiness her Grace undertakes to write to Rome on the subject, and
+adds, "Believe me also, my Lord, that there is a character of justice,
+goodness, and benevolence, in the present Government of Rome, which, if
+they are convinced of the just claims of the Conte de Gamba and his son,
+will make them grant their request."]
+
+[Footnote 42: "Una delle principali 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 sua influenza, ed essaggiandosi anche i suoi
+mezzi per esercitaria. 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 religiose 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."]
+
+[Footnote 43: "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 lontananza. Le sue
+lettere avrebbero potuto essermi di conforto; ma quando io le riceveva
+era gia trascorso lo spazio di due giorni dal momenta 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 sominamente affezionato a quel
+soggiorno e voleva innanzi di partire vedere esausiti tutti i tentativi
+e tutte le speranze del ritorno dei miei parenti."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 440. TO MR. 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 _convent_, as her father is _not_
+     here,) I have determined 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 confined others, without _trial_,
+     _process_, or even _accusation_!! Every body says they would have
+     done the same by me if they dared proceed openly. My motive,
+     however, for remaining, is because _every one_ of my acquaintance,
+     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, &c.
+
+     "P.S. Can you give me an idea of the comparative expenses of
+     Switzerland and Italy? which I have forgotten. I speak merely of
+     those of decent _living, horses_, &c. 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
+     transmigration, &c. &c. &c."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 441. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, July 30. 1821.
+
+     "Enclosed is the best account of the Doge Faliero, which was only
+     sent to me from an old MS. 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. You will see also that' he spoke very
+     little, and those only words of rage and disdain,' _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 MS. than in the play. I wish that I had met with it
+     in time. Do not forget this note, with a translation.
+
+     "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 pleures_.' Recollect this.
+
+     "I am so busy here about those poor proscribed exiles, 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, &c.
+
+     "P.S. Please to append the letter about _the Hellespont_ as a note
+     to your next opportunity of the verses on Leander, &c. &c. &c. in
+     Childe Harold. Don't forget it amidst your multitudinous
+     avocations, which I think of celebrating in a Dithyrambic Ode to
+     Albemarle Street.
+
+     "Are you aware that Shelley has written an Elegy on Keats, and
+     accuses the Quarterly of killing him?
+
+        "'Who kill'd 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;--you Review
+     people have no more right to kill than any other footpads. However,
+     he who would die of an article in a Review would probably have died
+     of something else equally trivial. The same thing nearly happened
+     to Kirke White, who died afterwards of a consumption."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 442. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Ravenna, August 2. 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 disputants. Did you receive this letter? It imports me
+     to know that our letters are not intercepted or mislaid.
+
+     "Your Berlin drama [44] is an honour, unknown since the days of
+     Elkanah Settle, whose 'Emperor 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
+     frontispiece, which he dared to put before his play.
+
+     "Was not your showing the Memoranda to * * somewhat perilous? Is
+     there not a facetious allusion or two which might as well be
+     reserved for posterity?
+
+     "I know S * * 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 S * *'s on Rome,
+     from which they say that I _might_ have taken some ideas. I give
+     you my honour that I never saw it except in that criticism, which
+     gives, I think, three or four stanzas, sent them (they say) for the
+     nonce by a correspondent--perhaps himself. The fact is easily
+     proved; for I don't understand German, and there was, I believe, no
+     translation--at least, it was the first time that I ever heard of,
+     or saw, either translation or original.
+
+     "I remember having some talk with S * * 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[45].'
+
+     "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 anyone--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 _you_! I
+     know no man who looks so well for his years, or who deserves to
+     look better and 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. 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. 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 will come to that he had never been
+     hurt. Pray, let me hear from you, and excuse haste and hot weather.
+
+     "Yours, &c.
+
+     "You may have probably seen all sorts of attacks upon me in some
+     gazettes in England some months ago. 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? 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."
+
+[Footnote 44: 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.]
+
+[Footnote 45: This threat has been since acted upon;--the critic in
+question having, to the great horror of the French literati, pronounced
+Moliere to be a "farceur."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+About this time Mr. Shelley, who had now fixed his residence at Pisa,
+received a letter from Lord Byron, earnestly requesting to see him, in
+consequence of which he immediately set out for Ravenna; and the
+following extracts from letters, written during his stay with his noble
+friend, will be read with that double feeling of interest which is
+always sure to be excited in hearing one man of genius express his
+opinions of another.
+
+     "Ravenna, August 7. 1821.
+
+     "I arrived last night at ten o'clock, and sat up talking with Lord
+     Byron until five this morning: I then went to sleep, and now awake
+     at eleven; and having despatched my breakfast as quick as possible,
+     mean to devote the interval until twelve, when the post departs, to
+     you.
+
+     "Lord Byron is very well, and was delighted, to see me. He has in
+     fact completely recovered his health, and lives a life totally the
+     reverse of that which he led at Venice. He has a permanent sort of
+     liaison with the Contessa Guiccioli, who is now at Florence, and
+     seems from her letters to be a very amiable woman. She is waiting
+     there until something shall be decided as to their emigration to
+     Switzerland or stay in Italy, which is yet undetermined on either
+     side. She was compelled to escape from the Papal territory in great
+     haste, as measures had already been taken to place her in a
+     convent, where she would have been unrelentingly confined for
+     life. The oppression of the marriage contract as existing in the
+     laws and opinions of Italy, though less frequently exercised, is
+     far severer than that of England.
+
+     "Lord Byron had almost destroyed himself at Venice. His state of
+     debility was such that he was unable to digest any food: he was
+     consumed by hectic fever, and would speedily have perished but for
+     this attachment, which reclaimed him from the excesses into which
+     he threw himself, from carelessness and pride, rather than taste.
+     Poor fellow I he is now quite well, and immersed in politics and
+     literature. He has given me a number of the most interesting
+     details on the former subject; but we will not speak of them in a
+     letter. Fletcher is here, and--as if, like a shadow, he waxed and
+     waned with the substance of his master--has also revived his good
+     looks, and from amidst the unseasonable grey hairs, a fresh harvest
+     of flaxen locks has put forth.
+
+     "We talked a great deal of poetry and such matters last night; and,
+     as usual, differed--and I think more than ever. He affects to
+     patronise a system of criticism fit only for the production of
+     mediocrity; and, although all his finer poems and passages have
+     been produced in defiance of this system, yet I recognise the
+     pernicious effects of it in the Doge of Venice; and it will cramp
+     and limit his future efforts, however great they may be, unless he
+     gets rid of it. I have read only parts of it, or rather he himself
+     read them to me, and gave me the plan of the whole.
+
+     "Ravenna, August 15. 1821.
+
+     "We ride out in the evening through the pine forests which divide
+     the city from the sea. Our way of life is this, and I have
+     accommodated myself to it without much difficulty:--Lord Byron gets
+     up at two--breakfasts--we talk, read, &c. until six--then we ride
+     at eight, and after dinner sit talking until four or five in the
+     morning. I get up at twelve, and am now devoting the interval
+     between my rising and his to you.
+
+     "Lord Byron is greatly improved in every respect--in genius, in
+     temper, in moral views, in health and happiness. His connection
+     with La Guiccioli has been an inestimable benefit to him. He lives
+     in considerable splendour, but within his income, which is now
+     about four thousand a year, one thousand of which he devotes to
+     purposes of charity. He has had mischievous passions, but these he
+     seems to have subdued; and he is becoming, what he should be, a
+     virtuous man. The interest which he took in the politics of Italy,
+     and the actions he performed in consequence of it, are subjects not
+     fit to be written, but are such as will delight and surprise you.
+
+     "He is not yet decided to go to Switzerland, a place, indeed,
+     little fitted for him: the gossip and the cabals of those
+     Anglicised coteries would torment him as they did before, and might
+     exasperate him into a relapse of libertinism, which, he says, he
+     plunged into not from taste, but from despair. La Guiccioli and her
+     brother (who is Lord Byron's friend and confidant, and acquiesces
+     perfectly in her connection with him) wish to go to Switzerland,
+     as Lord Byron says, merely from the novelty and pleasure of
+     travelling. Lord Byron prefers Tuscany or Lucca, and is trying to
+     persuade them to adopt his views. He has made _me_ write a long
+     letter to her to engage her to remain. An odd thing enough for an
+     utter stranger to write on subjects of the utmost delicacy to his
+     friend's mistress--but it seems destined that I am always to have
+     some active part in every body's affairs whom I approach. I have
+     set down, in tame Italian, the strongest reasons I can think of
+     against the Swiss emigration. To tell you the truth, I should be
+     very glad to accept as my fee his establishment in Tuscany. Ravenna
+     is a miserable place: the people are barbarous and wild, and their
+     language the most infernal _patois_ that you can imagine. He would
+     be in every respect better among the Tuscans.
+
+     "He has read to me one of the unpublished cantos of Don Juan, which
+     is astonishingly fine. It sets him not only above, but far above
+     all the poets of the day. Every word has the stamp of immortality.
+     This canto is in a style (but totally free from indelicacy, 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 degree, what I have long preached,--of
+     producing something wholly new, and relative to the age, and yet
+     surpassingly beautiful. It may be vanity, but I think I see the
+     trace of my earnest exhortations to him, to create something wholly
+     new. * * * *
+
+     "I am sure, if I asked, it would not be refused; yet there is
+     something in me that makes it impossible. Lord Byron and I are
+     excellent friends; and were I reduced to poverty, or were I a
+     writer who had no claim to a higher station than I possess, or did
+     I possess a higher than I deserve, we should appear in all things
+     as such, and I would freely ask him any favour. Such is not now the
+     case: the demon of mistrust and of pride lurks between two persons
+     in our situation, poisoning the freedom of our intercourse. This is
+     a tax, and a heavy one, which we must pay for being human. I think
+     the fault is not on my side; nor is it likely,--I being the weaker.
+     I hope that in the next world these things will be better managed.
+     What is passing in the heart of another rarely escapes the
+     observation of one who is a strict anatomist of his own. * * *
+
+     "Lord Byron here has splendid apartments in the palace of Count
+     Guiccioli, who is one of the richest men in Italy. She is divorced,
+     with an allowance of twelve thousand crowns a year;--a miserable
+     pittance from a man who has a hundred and twenty thousand a year.
+     There are two monkeys, five cats, eight dogs, and ten horses, all
+     of whom (except the horses) walk about the house like the masters
+     of it. Tita, the Venetian, is here, and operates as my valet--a
+     fine fellow, with a prodigious black beard, who has stabbed two or
+     three people, and is the most good-natured-looking fellow I ever
+     saw.
+
+     "Wednesday, Ravenna.
+
+     "I told you I had written, by Lord Byron's desire, to La
+     Guiccioli, to dissuade her and her family from Switzerland. Her
+     answer is this moment arrived, and my representation seems to have
+     reconciled them to the unfitness of the step. At the conclusion of
+     a letter, full of all the fine things she says she has heard of me,
+     is this request, which I transcribe:--'Signore, la vostra bonta mi
+     fa ardita di chiedervi un favore, me lo accorderete voi? _Non
+     partite da Ravenna senza Milord._' Of course, being now, by all the
+     laws of knighthood, captive to a lady's request, I shall only be at
+     liberty on _my parole_ until Lord Byron is settled at Pisa. I shall
+     reply, of course, that the boon is granted, and that if Lord Byron
+     is reluctant to quit Ravenna after I have made arrangements for
+     receiving him at Pisa, I am bound to place myself in the same
+     situation as now, to assail him with importunities to rejoin her.
+     Of this there is fortunately no need; and I need not tell you that
+     there is no fear that this chivalric submission of mine to the
+     great general laws of antique courtesy, against which I never
+     rebel, and which is my religion, should interfere with my soon
+     returning, and long remaining with you, dear girl. * *
+
+     "We ride out every evening as usual, and practise pistol-shooting
+     at a pumpkin, and I am not sorry to observe that I approach towards
+     my noble friend's exactness of aim. I have the greatest trouble to
+     get away, and Lord Byron, as a reason for my stay, has urged, that
+     without either me or the Guiccioli, he will certainly fall into his
+     old habits. I then talk, and he listens to reason; and I earnestly
+     hope that he is too well aware of the terrible and degrading
+     consequences of his former mode of life, to be in danger from the
+     short interval of temptation that will be left him."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 443. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, August 10. 1821.
+
+     "Your conduct to Mr. Moore is certainly very handsome; 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, &c. 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 find easy 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 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 correspondence 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. _I_ 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 444. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, August 16. 1821.
+
+     "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 *
+     * more. One meets with none else among the English.
+
+     "I wait the proofs of the MSS. with proper impatience.
+
+     "So you have published, or mean to publish, the new Juans? Ar'n't
+     you afraid of the Constitutional Assassination of Bridge Street?
+     When first I saw the name of _Murray_, I thought it had been yours;
+     but was solaced by seeing that your synonyme is an attorneo, and
+     that you are not one of that atrocious crew.
+
+     "I am in a great discomfort about the probable war, and with my
+     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 robbing 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, &c.
+
+     "P.S. I restore Smith's letter, whom thank for his good opinion. Is
+     the bust by Thorwaldsen arrived?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 445. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, August 23. 1821.
+
+     "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[46]. 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 third, is
+     taken from _Tully's Tripoli_ (pray _note this_), and the rest from
+     my own observation. Remember, 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. _I_ 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) 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 16th instant.
+
+     "Your friend, like the public, is not aware, that my dramatic
+     simplicity is _studiously_ Greek, and must continue so: _no_ reform
+     ever succeeded at first[47]. 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 theatre_.
+
+     "Yours.
+
+     "P.S. Can't accept your courteous offer.
+
+        "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 cramm'd,
+        So, if _you will_, _I_ sha'n't be shamm'd,
+        And if you _won't_, _you_ may be damn'd,
+                              My Murray.
+
+     "These matters must be arranged with Mr. Douglas Kinnaird. 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'--deduction for the trade'--'make very
+     little'--'generally lose by him'--'pirated edition'--'foreign
+     edition'--'severe criticisms,' &c. with other hints and howls for
+     an oration, which I leave Douglas, who is an orator, to answer.
+
+     "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, and that's more than you are."
+
+[Footnote 46: One of the charges of plagiarism brought against him by
+some scribblers of the day was founded (as I have already observed in
+the first volume of this work) on his having sought in the authentic
+records of real shipwrecks those materials out of which he has worked
+his own powerful description in the second Canto of Don Juan. With as
+much justice might the Italian author, (Galeani, if I recollect right,)
+who wrote a Discourse on the Military Science displayed by Tasso in his
+battles, have reproached that poet with the sources from which he drew
+his knowledge:--with as much justice might Puysegur and Segrais, who
+have pointed out the same merit in Homer and Virgil, have withheld their
+praise because the science on which this merit was founded must have
+been derived by the skill and industry of these poets from others.
+
+So little was Tasso ashamed of those casual imitations of other poets
+which are so often branded as plagiarisms, that, in his Commentary on
+his Rime, he takes pains to point out and avow whatever coincidences of
+this kind occur in his own verses.
+
+While on this subject, I may be allowed to mention one single instance,
+where a thought that had lain perhaps indistinctly in Byron's memory
+since his youth, comes out so improved and brightened as to be, by every
+right of genius, his own. In the Two Noble Kinsmen of Beaumont and
+Fletcher (a play to which the picture of passionate friendship,
+delineated in the characters of Palamon and Arcite, would be sure to
+draw the attention of Byron in his boyhood,) we find the following
+passage:--
+
+           "Oh never
+    Shall we two exercise, like twins of Honour,
+    Our arms again, and _feel our fiery horses
+    Like proud seas under us_."
+
+Out of this somewhat forced simile, by a judicious transposition of the
+comparison, and by the substitution of the more definite word "waves"
+for "seas" the clear, noble thought in one of the Cantos of Childe
+Harold has been produced:--
+
+    "Once more upon the waters! yet once more!
+    And the waves bound beneath me, as a steed
+    That knows his rider."]
+
+[Footnote 47: "No man ever rose (says Pope) to any degree of perfection
+in writing but through obstinacy and an inveterate resolution against
+the stream of mankind."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 446. TO MR. 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 _you_, 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 himself (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 survivorship. 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 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, &c.
+
+     "The argument of the above is, that he wanted to 'stint me of my
+     sizings,' as Lear says,--that is to say, _not_ to propose an
+     extravagant price for an extravagant poem, as is becoming. Pray
+     take his guineas, by all means--_I_ 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, &c.
+
+     "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 I but perhaps it is for the best, if Herodotus's
+     anecdote is to be believed.
+
+     "Remember me to any friendly Angles of our mutual 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!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 447. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, August 31. 1821.
+
+     "I have received the Juans, which are printed so _carelessly_,
+     especially the fifth 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 squad don't approve of it; but I tell you that
+     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 MS.
+
+     "I never saw such stuff as is printed:--Gu_ll_eyaz instead of
+     Gu_lb_eyaz, &c. Are you aware that Gulbeyaz is a real name, and the
+     other nonsense? I copied the _Cantos_ out carefully, so that there
+     is _no_ excuse, as the printer read, or at least _prints_, the MS.
+     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, _it 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 reason 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, &c.
+
+     Also '_precarious_' for '_precocious_;' and this line, stanza 133.
+
+        "_And this strong extreme effect to tire no longer._
+
+     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'); let it, and see if
+     they sha'n't have enough of it. I do not allude to Gifford, who has
+     always been my friend, and whom I do not consider as responsible
+     for the articles written by others.
+
+     "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.
+
+     "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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 448.[48] TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "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
+     publications) 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 can't."
+
+[Footnote 48: Written in the envelope of the preceding Letter.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 449. TO MR. 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, containing the _Giaour_-nal, 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 syllables, which make but a cacophonous rhythmus. Put the pen
+     through the said, as I would mine through * *'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 _here_, till
+     further notice. Yours ever," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One of the "paper-books" mentioned in this letter as intrusted to Mr.
+Mawman for me, contained a portion, to the amount of nearly a hundred
+pages, of a prose story, relating the adventures of a young Andalusian
+nobleman, 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.
+     On her arrival at the chateau, I received another still more
+     affectionate, pressing me, in very fond, and rather foolish, terms,
+     to join her immediately. As I was preparing to set out from
+     Seville, I received a third--this was from her father, Don Jose di
+     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
+     replied, by express, that as reason had nothing to do with the
+     matter, it was unnecessary to give any--but that she was an injured
+     and excellent woman. I then enquired why she had written to me 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.
+
+     "I 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 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 blamable. My case was
+     supposed to comprise all the crimes which could, and several which
+     could not, be committed, and little less than an auto-da-fe was
+     anticipated as the result. But let no man say that we are abandoned
+     by our friends in adversity--it was just the reverse. Mine thronged
+     around me to condemn, advise, and console me with their
+     disapprobation.--They told me all that was, would, or could be said
+     on the subject. They shook their heads--they exhorted me--deplored
+     me, with tears in their eyes, and--went to dinner."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 450. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, September 4. 1821.
+
+     "By Saturday's post, I sent you a fierce and furibund 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.
+
+     "Yesterday I received Mr. ----, 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[49] 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[50], 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; that is to say,
+     to the _popular_ part, the _troops_ of the Carbonari. They are
+     originally a society of hunters in the forest, who took the name of
+     Americans, but at present comprise some thousands, &c.; 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
+     would 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.
+
+     "What think'st 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 squad are quite
+     wrong; and so you will find by and by. 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[51], 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 _Longitude_,' that you were trying to discover it.
+
+     "Let me hear that Gifford is _better_. He can't be spared either by
+     you or me."
+
+[Footnote 49: It will be observed, from this and a few other instances,
+that notwithstanding the wonderful purity of English he was able to
+preserve in his writings, while living constantly with persons speaking
+a different language, he had already begun so far to feel the influence
+of this habit as to fall occasionally into Italianisms in his familiar
+letters.--"I am in the case to know"--"I have caused write"--"It regrets
+me," &c.]
+
+[Footnote 50: An anonymous letter which he had received, threatening him
+with assassination.]
+
+[Footnote 51: In this note, so highly honourable to the fair writer, she
+says, "Remember, my Byron, the promise you have made me. Never shall I
+be able to tell you the satisfaction I feel from it, so great are the
+sentiments of pleasure and confidence with which the sacrifice you have
+made has inspired me." In a postscript to the note she adds, "I am only
+sorry that Don Juan was not left in the infernal regions."--"Ricordati,
+mio Byron, della promessa che mi hai fatta. Non potrei mai dirti la
+satisfazione ch' io ne provo!--sono tanti i sentimenti di piacere e di
+confidenza che il tuo sacrificio m'inspira."--"Mi reveresce solo che Don
+Giovanni non resti all' Inferno."
+
+In enclosing the lady's note to Mr. Murray, July 4th, Lord B. says,
+"This is the note of acknowledgment for the promise not to continue Don
+Juan. She says, in the postscript, that she is only sorry that D.J. does
+not _remain_ in Hell (or go there)".]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 451. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, September 12. 1821.
+
+     "By Tuesday's post, I forwarded, in three packets, the drama of
+     Cain in three acts, of which I request the acknowledgment 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
+     starting too many of your vagabonds at once. You may give them the
+     start, for any thing I care.
+
+     "Why don't you publish my _Pulci_--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
+     sha'n't, though,) I will write a poem to which 'English Bards,' &c.
+     shall be new milk, in comparison. 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--S * * twaddling--W * * drivelling--C * * muddling--* *
+     piddling--B * * quibbling, squabbling, and snivelling. * * 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. B * * C * *
+     will do better by-and-by, I dare say, if he don't get spoiled by
+     green tea, and the praises of Pentonville and Paradise Row. The
+     pity of these men is, that they never lived in _high life_, nor in
+     _solitude_: 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, _quarum partes fuimus_. Both of us have
+     learnt by this much which nothing else could have taught us.
+
+     "Yours.
+
+     "P.S. I saw one of your brethren, another of the allied sovereigns
+     of Grub Street, the other day, Mawman the Great, by whom I sent due
+     homage to your imperial self. To-morrow'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, parsons, scribblers, and loungers.
+     Some day I will give you a poetical catalogue of them."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 452. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Ravenna, September 17. 1821.
+
+     "The enclosed lines[52], 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 heart-breaking to see such things in a people as
+     the reception of that unredeemed * * * * * * 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, &c. &c. &c."
+
+[Footnote 52: "The Irish Avatar." In this copy the following sentence
+(taken from a letter of Curran, in the able Life of that true Irishman,
+by his son) is prefixed as a motto to the Poem,--"And Ireland, like a
+bastinadoed elephant, kneeling to receive the paltry rider."--_Letter of
+Curran, Life_, 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."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 453. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Ravenna, September 19, 1821.
+
+     "I am in all the sweat, dust, and blasphemy of an universal packing
+     of all my things, furniture, &c. for 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,' 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 preparing 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 English
+     visiters; for which reason, after writing for some information
+     about houses, upon hearing that there was a colony of English all
+     over the cantons of Geneva, &c. 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.' Be_case_ as _how_,
+     'spoke' is not grammar, except in the House of Commons; 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 regard, 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 licentiousness of Verb and Noun as may tend to 'disparage my
+     parts of speech' 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.'
+     Therefore, 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--'Cain' by name--making three in 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.
+     pers. 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," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 454. TO MR. 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! &c. &c. &c.
+
+     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 prodigality!'--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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 455 TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, September 20. 1821.
+
+     "You need not send 'The Blues,' which is a mere buffoonery, never
+     meant for publication.[53]
+
+     "The papers to which I allude, in case of survivorship, are
+     collections of letters, &c. 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 correspondents living, nor 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 Hobhouse 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, &c.--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 grandfather (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 addicted to any unhinging vice. It
+     was, however, but a strong suspicion, owing to the manner of his
+     death and 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 afterwards. I think, then, that
+     I may call this dejection _constitutional_. I had always been told
+     that I resembled more my maternal grandfather than any of my
+     _father's_ 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 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.
+
+     "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 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_ passions, rather than the rant of the present day. For
+     that matter--
+
+                      "Nay, if thou'lt mouth,
+        I'll rant as well as thou--
+
+     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 that 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, &c.
+
+     "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."
+
+[Footnote 53: This short satire, which is wholly unworthy of his pen,
+appeared afterwards in the Liberal.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 456. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, September 24. 1821.
+
+     "I have been thinking over our late correspondence, and wish to
+     propose to you the following articles for our future:--
+
+     "1stly. 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.
+
+     "2dly. 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 reimbursed for the same.
+
+     "3dly. 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 farther which I desire to know about them.--No other
+     English works whatsoever.
+
+     "4thly. That you send me no periodical works whatsoever--_no_
+     Edinburgh, Quarterly, Monthly, nor any review, magazine, or
+     newspaper, English or foreign, of any description.
+
+     "5thly. That you send 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.
+
+     "6thly. That all negotiations in matters of business between you
+     and me pass through the medium of the Hon. 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 legal friends. For the rest, I merely request to be left
+     in ignorance.
+
+     "The same applies to opinions, _good_, _bad_, or _indifferent_, 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 _troubled_; 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 channels 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 do of Italy, and God knows _that_ is
+     little enough, with all your travels, &c. &c. &c. The English
+     travellers _know Italy as you_ know Guernsey: how much is _that_?
+
+     "If any thing occurs so violently gross or personal as requires
+     notice, Mr. Douglas 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 mind _free 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 _cannot_ observe these
+     conditions, we shall cease to be correspondents,--but not
+     _friends_, for I shall always be yours ever and truly,
+
+     "BYRON.
+
+     "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 there!_--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, &c. 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."[54]
+
+[Footnote 54: It would be difficult to describe more strongly or more
+convincingly than Lord Byron has done in this letter the sort of petty,
+but thwarting obstructions and distractions which are at present thrown
+across the path of men of real talent by that swarm of minor critics and
+pretenders with whom the want of a vent in other professions has crowded
+all the walks of literature. Nor is it only the writers of the day that
+suffer from this multifarious rush into the mart;--the readers also,
+from having (as Lord Byron expresses it in another letter) "the
+superficies of too many things presented to them at once," come to lose
+by degrees their powers of discrimination; and, in the same manner as
+the palate becomes confused in trying various wines, so the public taste
+declines in proportion as the impressions to which it is exposed
+multiply.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 457. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "September 27. 1821.
+
+     "It was not Murray's fault. I did not send the MS. _overture_, but
+     I send it now[55], 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 * * *. 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;--but I hope still that I have done justice to
+     his great men and his good heart. As for * * *, you will find it
+     laid on with a trowel. I delight in your 'fact historical'--is it a
+     fact?
+
+     "Yours, &c.
+
+     "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!"
+
+[Footnote 55: 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.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 458. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "September 28. 1821.
+
+     "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 Melbourne'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 refers to the two periods (1812 and 1814) when my
+     marriage with her niece was in contemplation, and will tend to show
+     what my real views and feelings were upon that subject.
+
+     "You need not be alarmed; the 'fourteen years[56]' will hardly
+     elapse without some mortality amongst us; it is a long lease of
+     life to speculate upon. So your 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 Moore 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 Lady ----, (* * * * * * *), 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.
+
+     "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 a year or two more 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 of Charles Gordon, now of
+     Dulwich; and some few to Mrs. Chaworth; but these latter are
+     probably destroyed or inaccessible.
+
+     "I mention these people and particulars merely as _chances_. Most
+     of them have probably destroyed the letters, which in fact are of
+     little import, many of them written when very young, and several at
+     school and college.
+
+     "Peel (the _second_ brother of the Secretary) was a correspondent
+     of mine, and also Porter, the son of the Bishop of Clogher; Lord
+     Clare a very voluminous one; William Harness (a friend of Milman's)
+     another; Charles Drummond (son of the banker); William Bankes (the
+     voyager), your friend: R.C. Dallas, Esq.; Hodgson; Henry Drury;
+     Hobhouse you were already aware of.
+
+     "I have gone through this long list[57] 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, &c. &c. &c. 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, in
+     very English Etruscan; for I _speak_ Italian very fluently, but
+     write it carelessly and incorrectly to a degree."
+
+[Footnote 56: He here adverts to a passing remark, in one of Mr.
+Murray's letters, that, as his Lordship's "Memoranda" were not to be
+published in his lifetime, the sum now paid for the work, 2100_l_. would
+most probably, upon a reasonable calculation of survivorship, amount
+ultimately to no less than 8000_l_.]
+
+[Footnote 57: To all the persons upon this list who were accessible,
+application 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 correspondent 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 accumulate 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 distinguished
+associate and intimate of the noble poet, from the very outset to the
+close of his extraordinary career, have come forward cordially to
+communicate whatever memorials they possessed of him,--trusting, as I am
+willing to flatter myself, that they 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.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 459. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "September 29. 1821.
+
+     "I send you two rough things, prose and verse, not much in
+     themselves, but which will show, one of them, 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, mentioned in the foregoing note, one was a letter
+intended to be sent to Lady Byron relative to his money invested in the
+funds, of which the following are extracts:--
+
+     "Ravenna, Marza 1mo, 1821.
+
+     "I have received your message, through my sister's letter, about
+     English security, &c. &c. 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 consequence 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.
+
+     "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 without 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 in the note consisted of some verses, written by
+him, December 10th, 1820, on seeing the following paragraph in a
+newspaper:--"Lady Byron is this year the lady patroness at the annual
+Charity Ball given at the Town Hall at Hinckley, Leicestershire, and Sir
+G. Crewe, Bart, the principal steward." These verses are full of strong
+and indignant feeling,--every stanza concluding pointedly with the words
+"Charity Ball,"--and the thought that predominates through the whole may
+be collected from a few of the opening lines:--
+
+    "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,'" &c. &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 460. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "September--no--October 1. 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 intermittent
+     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, provided you raised your price upon
+     him--as what Lady Holderness (my sister's grandmother, a
+     Dutchwoman) used to call Augusta, her _Residee Legatoo_--so as to
+     provide for us all: _my_ bones with a splendid and larmoyante
+     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 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 'The
+     Vision of 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 Apotheosis 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 Emancipation, 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.
+
+     "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.'
+
+     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 mountain of lead upon my heart,' which I believe to be
+     constitutional, and that nothing will remove it but the same
+     remedy."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 461. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "October 6. 1821.
+
+     "By this post I have sent my nightmare to balance the incubus of *
+     * *'s impudent anticipation of the Apotheosis of George the Third.
+     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 _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. Laudanum has a similar effect; but I can take much of
+     _it_ without any effect at all. The thing that gives me the
+     highest spirits (it seems absurd, but true) is a close of
+     _salts_--I mean in the afternoon, after their effect.[58] 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," &c.
+
+[Footnote 58: It was, no doubt, from a similar experience of its effects
+that Dryden always took physic when about to write any thing of
+importance. His caricature, Bayes, is accordingly made to say, "When I
+have a grand design, I ever take physic and let blood; for, when you
+would have pure swiftness of thought and fiery flights of fancy, you
+must have a care of the pensive part;--in short," &c. &c.
+
+On this subject of the effects of medicine upon the mind and spirits,
+some curious facts and illustrations have been, with his usual research,
+collected by Mr. D'Israeli, in his amusing "Curiosities of Literature."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 462. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Ravenna, October 9. 1821.
+
+     "You will please to present or convey the enclosed poem to Mr.
+     Moore. I sent him another copy to Paris, but he has probably left
+     that city.
+
+     "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 Harriet Lee's 'German's Tale' from the 'Canterbury Tales,'
+     and send it in a letter also. I began that tragedy in 1815.
+
+     "By the way, you have a good deal of my prose tracts in MS.? 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 Crabbe,
+     Moore, and the Elect; but none of your curst common-place
+     trash,--unless something starts up of actual merit, which may very
+     well be, for 'tis time it should."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 463. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "October 20. 1821.
+
+     "If the errors _are_ in the MS. 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 MS. too?
+
+     "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.' It is so with all men. If I come to a
+     friend, and say, 'Friend, 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, &c. &c. &c. &c. &c. honestly
+     worth a thousand pounds, you shall have them for five hundred,'
+     what does Ditto say? why, he looks at them, he _hums_, he
+     _ha's_,--he _humbugs_, 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.
+
+     "I am filling another book for you with little anecdotes, to my own
+     knowledge, or well authenticated, of Sheridan, Curran, &c. 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.
+
+     "Yours," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 464. TO MR. ROGERS.
+
+     "Ravenna, October 21. 1821.
+
+     "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 winter, to which all my chattels, furniture, horses,
+     carriages, and live stock are already removed, and I am preparing
+     to follow.
+
+     "The cause of this removal is, shortly, the exile or proscription
+     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, &c. to precede me. I
+     have not here a seat or a bed hardly, except some jury chairs, and
+     tables, and a mattress 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, 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
+     could 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 climes.
+
+     "It is better than a lustre (five years and six months and some
+     days, more or less) since we met; and, like the man from Tadcaster
+     in the farce ('Love laughs at Locksmiths'), 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, Sheridan,
+     Curran, &c. &c. almost every body of much name of the old school.
+     But 'so am not I, said the foolish fat scullion,' therefore let us
+     make the most of our remainder.
+
+     "Let me find two lines from you at 'the hostel or inn.'
+
+     "Yours ever, &c.
+
+     "B."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 465. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Ravenna, Oct. 28. 1821.
+
+     "''Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,' and in three hours
+     more I have to set out on my way to Pisa--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. He is
+     trying to 'pound' me, too; 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' is agreeable, for more reasons
+     than one. Hobhouse is pleased to think as you do of it, and so do
+     some others--but the 'Arimaspian,' whom, like 'a Gryphon in the
+     wilderness,' 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 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 _min_ded 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 Brunswick blarney. I am of
+     Longman's opinion, that you should allow your friends to liquidate
+     the Bermuda claim. 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![59] &c. &c.' it is all very fine and very well,
+     but, till you can persuade me that there is _no 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 _species_, which I do
+     of our friend Ms. Spe_cie_."
+
+[Footnote 59: 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.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the month of August, Madame Guiccioli had joined her father at Pisa,
+and was now superintending the preparations at the Casa Lanfranchi,--one
+of the most ancient and spacious palaces of that city,--for the
+reception of her noble friend. "He left Ravenna," says this lady, "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 displeasure at this step. 'If your father should be
+recalled,' he said, '_I immediately return_ to Ravenna; and if he is
+recalled _previous_ to my departure, _I remain_.' 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!"[60]
+
+After describing his mode of life while at Ravenna, the lady thus
+proceeds:--
+
+"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 actions he was
+continually performing. Many families (in Ravenna principally) owed to
+him the few prosperous days they ever enjoyed. His arrival in that town
+was spoken of as a piece of public good fortune, and his departure as a
+public calamity; and this is the life which many attempted to asperse as
+that of a libertine. 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 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 excessive 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 contradictions 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."[61]
+
+At Bologna, according to the appointment made between them, Lord Byron
+and Mr. Rogers met; and the record which this latter gentleman has, in
+his Poem on Italy, preserved of their meeting, conveys so vivid a
+picture of the poet at this period, with, at the same time, so just and
+feeling a tribute to his memory, that, narrowed as my limits are now
+becoming, I cannot refrain from giving the sketch entire.
+
+[Footnote 60: "Egli era partito 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 dispiacere di lasciare Ravenna. 'Se papa e richiamato
+(mi scriveva egli) io torno in quel istante a Ravenna, e se e richiamato
+_prima_ della mia partenza, _io non parto_.' In questa speranza egli
+differi varii mesi a partire. Ma, finalmente, non potendo piu sperare il
+nostro ritorno prossimo, egli mi scriveva--'Io parto molto mal
+volontieri prevedendo dei mali assai grandi per voi altri e massime per
+voi; altro non dico,--lo vedrete.' E in un altra lettera, 'Io lascio
+Ravenna cosi mal volontieri, e cosi 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!]
+
+[Footnote 61: The leaf that contains the original of this extract I have
+unluckily mislaid.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"BOLOGNA.
+
+    "'Twas night; the noise and bustle of the day
+    Were o'er. The mountebank no longer wrought
+    Miraculous cures--he and his stage were gone;
+    And he who, when the crisis of his tale
+    Came, and all stood breathless with hope and fear,
+    Sent round his cap; and he who thrumm'd his wire
+    And sang, with pleading look and plaintive strain
+    Melting the passenger. Thy thousand cries [62],
+    So well portray'd and by a son of thine,
+    Whose voice had swell'd the hubbub in his youth,
+    Were hush'd, BOLOGNA, silence in the streets,
+    The squares, when hark, the clattering of fleet hoofs;
+    And soon a courier, posting as from far,
+    Housing and holster, boot and belted coat
+    And doublet stain'd with many a various soil,
+    Stopt and alighted. 'Twas where hangs aloft
+    That ancient sign, the Pilgrim, welcoming
+    All who arrive there, all perhaps save those
+    Clad like himself, with staff and scallop-shell,
+    Those on a pilgrimage: and now approach'd
+    Wheels, through the lofty porticoes resounding,
+    Arch beyond arch, a shelter or a shade
+    As the sky changes. To the gate they came;
+    And, ere the man had half his story done,
+    Mine host received the Master--one long used
+    To sojourn among strangers, every where
+    (Go where he would, along the wildest track)
+    Flinging a charm that shall not soon be lost,
+    And leaving footsteps to be traced by those
+    Who love the haunts of Genius; one who saw,
+    Observed, nor shunn'd the busy scenes of life,
+    But mingled not; and mid the din, the stir,
+    Lived as a separate Spirit.
+                                "Much had pass'd
+    Since last we parted; and those five short years--
+    Much had they told! His clustering locks were turn'd
+    Grey; 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
+    Flash'd 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.
+      "Well I remember how the golden sun
+    Fill'd with its beams the unfathomable gulfs
+    As on we travell'd, and along the ridge,
+    'Mid groves of cork, and cistus, and wild fig,
+    His motley household came.--Not last nor least,
+    Battista, who upon the moonlight-sea
+    Of Venice had so ably, zealously
+    Served, and at parting, thrown his oar away
+    To follow through the world; who without stain
+    Had worn so long that honourable badge[63],
+    The gondolier's, in a Patrician House
+    Arguing unlimited trust.--Not last nor least,
+    Thou, though declining in thy beauty and strength,
+    Faithful Moretto, to the latest hour
+    Guarding his chamber-door, and now along
+    The silent, sullen strand of MISSOLONGHI
+    Howling in grief.
+                      "He had just left that Place
+    Of old renown, once in the ADRIAN sea[64],
+    RAVENNA; where from DANTE'S sacred tomb
+    He had so oft, as many a verse declares[65],
+    Drawn inspiration; where at twilight-time,
+    Through the pine-forest wandering with loose rein,
+    Wandering and lost, he had so oft beheld[66]
+    (What is not visible to a poet's eye?)
+    The spectre-knight, the hell-hounds, and their prey,
+    The chase, the slaughter, and the festal mirth
+    Suddenly blasted. 'Twas a theme he loved,
+    But others claim'd their turn; and many a tower,
+    Shatter'd uprooted from its native rock,
+    Its strength the pride of some heroic age,
+    Appear'd and vanish'd (many a sturdy steer[67]
+    Yoked and unyoked), while, as in happier days,
+    He pour'd his spirit forth. The past forgot,
+    All was enjoyment. Not a cloud obscured
+    Present or future.
+                       "He is now at rest;
+    And praise and blame fall on his ear alike,
+    Now dull in death. Yes, BYRON, thou art gone,
+    Gone like a star that through the firmament
+    Shot and was lost, in its eccentric course
+    Dazzling, perplexing. Yet thy heart, methinks,
+    Was generous, noble--noble in its scorn
+    Of all things low or little; nothing there
+    Sordid or servile. If imagined wrongs
+    Pursued thee, urging thee sometimes to do
+    Things long regretted, oft, as many know,
+    None more than I, thy gratitude would build
+    On slight foundations: and, if in thy life
+    Not happy, in thy death thou surely wert,
+    Thy wish accomplish'd; dying in the land
+    Where thy young mind had caught ethereal fire,
+    Dying in GREECE, and in a cause so glorious!
+      "They in thy train--ah, little did they think,
+    As round we went, that they so soon should sit
+    Mourning beside thee, while a Nation mourn'd,
+    Changing her festal for her funeral song;
+    That they so soon should hear the minute-gun,
+    As morning gleam'd on what remain'd of thee,
+    Roll o'er the sea, the mountains, numbering
+    Thy years of joy and sorrow.
+                                 "Thou art gone;
+    And he who would assail thee in thy grave,
+    Oh, let him pause! For who among us all,
+    Tried as thou wert--even from thine earliest years,
+    When wandering, yet unspoilt, a highland boy--Tried
+    as thou wert, and with thy soul of flame;
+    Pleasure, while yet the down was on thy cheek,
+    Uplifting, pressing, and to lips like thine,
+    Her charmed cup--ah, who among us all
+    Could say he had not err'd as much, and more?"
+
+[Footnote 62: "See the Cries of Bologna, as drawn by Aunibal Caracci. He
+was of very humble origin; and, to correct his brother's vanity, once
+sent him a portrait of their father, the tailor, threading his needle."]
+
+[Footnote 63: "The principal gondolier, il fante di poppa, was almost
+always in the confidence of his master, and employed on occasions that
+required judgment and address."]
+
+[Footnote 64: "Adrianum mare.--CICERO."]
+
+[Footnote 65: "See the Prophecy of Dante."]
+
+[Footnote 66: "See the tale as told by Boccaccio and Dryden."]
+
+[Footnote 67: "They wait for the traveller's carriage at the foot of
+every hill."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the road to Bologna he had met with his early and dearest friend,
+Lord Clare, and the following description of their short interview is
+given in his "Detached Thoughts."
+
+"Pisa, November 5. 1821.
+
+"'There is a strange coincidence sometimes in the little things of this
+world, Sancho,' says Sterne in a letter (if I mistake not), and so I
+have often found it.
+
+"Page 128. article 91. of this collection, 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 was 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 on 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 Bologna, 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After remaining a day at Bologna, Lord Byron crossed the Apennines with
+Mr. Rogers; and I find the following note of their visit together to the
+Gallery at Florence:--
+
+"I revisited the Florence Gallery, &c. My former impressions were
+confirmed; but there were too many visiters there to allow one 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 Rogers that it 'felt like being in the watchhouse.' I
+left him to make his obeisances to some of his acquaintances, and
+strolled on alone--the only four minutes I could snatch of any feeling
+for the works around me. I do not mean to apply this to a _tete-a-tete_
+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 prescription 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.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 466. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Pisa, November 3. 1821.
+
+     "The two passages cannot be altered without making Lucifer talk
+     like the Bishop of Lincoln, which would not be in the character of
+     the former. The notion is from Cuvier (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,' &c. do you really think such
+     things ever led any body astray? Are these people more impious than
+     Milton's Satan? or the Prometheus of AEschylus? or even than the
+     Sadducees of * *, the 'Fall of Jerusalem' * *? 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 kingdom, &c. 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_ premeditation, 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.
+
+     "Either dedicate it to Walter Scott, or, if you think he 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 grumbling back to my jungle again;
+     but if I do _hit_, it is crushing. * * * 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 _Hobhouse_'s. I addressed it to
+     you as an Admiralty man, great at the Custom-house. Pray deduct the
+     expenses of the same, and all others.
+
+     "Yours," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 467. TO MR. 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.
+
+     "Enclosed is a lyrical drama, (entitled 'A Mystery,' from its
+     subject,) which, perhaps may arrive in time for the volume. 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, &c.
+
+     "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, including the prose and the Don Juans, &c. I have at least
+     sent you _variety_ during the last year or two."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 468. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Pisa, November 16. 1821.
+
+     "There is here Mr. * *, an Irish genius, with whom we are
+     acquainted. He hath written a really _excellent_ Commentary on
+     Dante, 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
+     ventured 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 than there are in his
+     original. Indeed, the _Notes_ are well worth publication; but he
+     insists upon the translation 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,' &c.
+
+     "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.[68] 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, &c.
+
+     "P.S. What I wrote to you about low spirits is, however, very true.
+     At present, owing to the climate, &c. (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
+     proprietorship,) my spirits are much better. You seem to think that
+     I could not have written the 'Vision,' &c. under the influence of
+     low spirits; but I think there you err.[69] A man's poetry is a
+     distinct faculty, or Soul, and has no more to do with the every-day
+     individual than the Inspiration with the Pythoness when removed
+     from her tripod."
+
+[Footnote 68: Having discovered that, while I was abroad, a kind friend
+had, without any communication with myself, placed at the disposal 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 explanation, such passages as
+the above would be unintelligible.]
+
+[Footnote 69: 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. The
+author of the Night Thoughts was a "fellow of infinite jest;" and of the
+pathetic Rowe, Pope says--"He would laugh all day long--he would do
+nothing else but laugh."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The correspondence which I am now about to insert, though long since
+published by the gentleman with whom it originated[70], will, I have no
+doubt, even by those already acquainted with all the circumstances, be
+reperused with pleasure; as, among the many strange and affecting
+incidents with which these pages abound, there is not one, perhaps, so
+touching and singular as that to which the following letters refer.
+
+TO LORD BYRON.
+
+     "Frome, Somerset, November 21. 1821.
+
+     "My Lord,
+
+     "More than two years since, a lovely and beloved wife was taken
+     from me, by lingering disease, after a very short union. She
+     possessed unvarying gentleness and fortitude, and a piety so
+     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 mention 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
+     transcendant 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 procure! 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
+     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,
+     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,
+     deprived of the grand fountain of good, (a deep conviction of
+     inborn sin, and firm belief in the efficacy of Christ's death for
+     the salvation of those who trust in him, and really wish to serve
+     him,) would soon dry up, and leave us barren of 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 reflection how deep and expansive a concern for the
+     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. Delamartine; 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, showed 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."
+
+[Footnote 70: See "Thoughts on Private Devotion," by Mr. Sheppard.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+However romantic, in the eyes of the cold and worldly, the piety of this
+young person may appear, it were to be wished that the truly Christian
+feeling which dictated her prayer were more common among all who profess
+the same creed; and that those indications of a better nature, so
+visible even through the clouds of his character, which induced this
+innocent young woman to pray for Byron, while living, could have the
+effect of inspiring others with more charity towards his memory, now
+that he is dead.
+
+The following is Lord Byron's answer to this affecting communication.
+
+LETTER 469. TO MR. SHEPPARD.
+
+     "Pisa, December 8. 1821.
+
+     "Sir,
+
+     "I have received your letter. I need not say, that the extract
+     which it contains has affected me, because 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 the life and demeanour of the excellent
+     person whom I trust you will again meet, cannot be contemplated
+     without 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 reading 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 believers 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
+     comprehend. 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 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 clergyman; 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 470. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Pisa, December 4. 1821.
+
+     "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, &c. the noble poet,'meaning your
+     humble servant, 'poor guiltless I.'
+
+     "Poor Napoleon! he little dreamed to what vile comparisons the turn
+     of the wheel would reduce him!
+
+     "I have got here into a famous old feudal palazzo, on 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
+     mentioned by Ugolino in his dream, as his persecutor with
+     Sismondi,) and has had a fierce owner or two in its time. The
+     staircase, &c. is said to have been built by Michel Agnolo. 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," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 471. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Pisa, December 10. 1821.
+
+     "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.
+
+     "I have remarked a curious coincidence, which almost looks like a
+     fatality.
+
+     "My _mother_, my _wife_, my _daughter_, my _half-sister_, my
+     _sisters mother_, my _natural daughter_ (as far at least as _I_ 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 an only
+     child, an only child again. Lady Byron, as you know, was one also,
+     and so is my daughter, &c.
+
+     "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.
+
+     "Yours, &c. B."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 472. TO MR. 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.[71] I
+     wish _you_ would undertake 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, 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, &c. are as 'german
+     to the matter' as Mr. Maturin could desire for his novels. * * * *
+
+     "The consummation you mentioned for poor * * was near taking place
+     yesterday. Riding pretty sharply 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 a-head 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 * *
+     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, &c.
+
+     "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 harmless.[72] 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 * * 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 _burnt_. 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. * * is gone
+     to see what can be done.
+
+     "B."
+
+[Footnote 71: 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 he but a fair satire on the disposition
+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 been yet related
+or believed of him, and leaving even Goethe's story of the double murder
+in Florence far behind.]
+
+[Footnote 72: The following are the lines enclosed in this letter. In
+one of his Journals, where they are also given, he has subjoined to them
+the following note:--"I composed these stanzas (except the fourth, added
+now) a few days ago, on the road from Florence to Pisa.
+
+    "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.
+
+    "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?
+
+    "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.
+
+    "_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."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 473. TO MR. 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_ remonstrance 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 interfere.
+     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," &c
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 474. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "I send you the two notes, which will tell you the story I allude
+     to of the Auto da Fe. Shelley's allusion to his 'fellow-serpent' 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.
+
+     "My 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 _every
+     way_ that I can imagine may have any success. Be assured of this.
+
+     "Your Lordship's most truly,
+
+     "* *.
+
+     "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 in 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."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 475. TO SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART.
+
+     "Pisa, January 12. 1822.
+
+     "My dear Sir Walter,
+
+     "I need not say how grateful I am for your letter, but I must own
+     my ingratitude in not having written to you again long ago. Since I
+     left England (and it is not for all the usual term of
+     transportation) I have scribbled to five hundred blockheads on
+     business, &c. without difficulty, though with no great pleasure;
+     and yet, with the notion of addressing you a hundred times in my
+     head, and always in my heart, I have not done what I ought to have
+     done. I can only account for it on the same principle of tremulous
+     anxiety with which one sometimes makes love to a beautiful woman of
+     our own degree, with whom one is enamoured in good earnest;
+     whereas, we attack a fresh-coloured housemaid without (I speak, of
+     course, of earlier times) any sentimental remorse or mitigation of
+     our virtuous purpose.
+
+     "I owe to you far more than the usual obligation for the courtesies
+     of literature and common friendship; for you went out of your way
+     in 1817 to do me a service, when it required not merely kindness,
+     but courage to do so: to have been recorded by you in such a
+     manner, would have been a proud memorial at any time, but at such a
+     time when 'all the world and his wife,' as the proverb goes, were
+     trying to trample upon me, was something still higher to my
+     self-esteem,--I allude to the Quarterly Review of the Third Canto
+     of Childe Harold, which Murray told me was written by you,--and,
+     indeed, I should have known it without his information, as there
+     could not be two who _could_ and _would_ have done this at the
+     time. Had it been a common criticism, however eloquent or
+     panegyrical, I should have felt pleased, undoubtedly, and grateful,
+     but not to the extent which the extraordinary good-heartedness of
+     the whole proceeding must induce in any mind capable of such
+     sensations. The very _tardiness_ of this acknowledgment will, at
+     least, show that I have not forgotten the obligation; and I can
+     assure you that my sense of it has been out at compound interest
+     during the delay. I shall only add one word upon the subject, which
+     is, that I think that you, and Jeffrey, and Leigh Hunt were the
+     only literary men, of numbers whom I know (and some of whom I had
+     served), who dared venture even an anonymous word in my favour just
+     then: and that, of those three, I had never seen _one_ at all--of
+     the second much less than I desired--and that the third was under
+     no kind of obligation to me, whatever; while the other _two_ had
+     been actually attacked by me on a former occasion; _one_, indeed,
+     with some provocation, but the other wantonly enough. So you see
+     you have been heaping 'coals of fire, &c.' in the true gospel
+     manner, and I can assure you that they have burnt down to my very
+     heart.
+
+     "I am glad that you accepted the Inscription. I meant to have
+     inscribed 'The Foscarini' to you instead; but first, I heard that
+     'Cain' was thought the least bad of the two as a composition; and,
+     2dly, I have abused S * * like a pickpocket, in a note to the
+     Foscarini, and I recollected that he is a friend of yours (though
+     not of mine), and that it would not be the handsome thing to
+     dedicate to one friend any thing containing such matters about
+     another. However, I'll work the Laureate before I have done with
+     him, as soon as I can muster Billingsgate therefor. I like a row,
+     and always did from a boy, in the course of which propensity, I
+     must needs say, that I have found it the most easy of all to be
+     gratified, personally and poetically. You disclaim 'jealousies;'
+     but I would ask, as Boswell did of Johnson, 'of _whom could_ you be
+     _jealous_?'--of none of the living certainly, and (taking all and
+     all into consideration) of which of the dead? I don't like to bore
+     you about the Scotch novels, (as they call them, though two of them
+     are wholly English, and the rest half so,) but nothing can or could
+     ever persuade me, since I was the first ten minutes in your
+     company, that you are _not_ the man. To me those novels have so
+     much of 'Auld lang syne' (I was bred a canny Scot till ten years
+     old) that I never move without them; and when I removed from
+     Ravenna to Pisa the other day, and sent on my library before, they
+     were the only books that I kept by me, although I already have them
+     by heart.
+
+     "January 27. 1822.
+
+     "I delayed till now concluding, in the hope that I should have got
+     'The Pirate,' who is under way for me, but has not yet hove in
+     sight. I hear that your daughter is married, and I suppose by this
+     time you are half a grandfather--a young one, by the way. I have
+     heard great things of Mrs. Lockhart's personal and mental charms,
+     and much good of her lord: that you may live to see as many novel
+     Scotts as there are Scots' novels, is the very bad pun, but sincere
+     wish of
+
+     "Yours ever most affectionately, &c.
+
+     "P.S. Why don't you take a turn in Italy? You would find yourself
+     as well known and as welcome as in the Highlands among the natives.
+     As for the English, you would be with them as in London; and I need
+     not add, that I should be delighted to see you again, which is far
+     more than I shall ever feel or say for England, or (with a few
+     exceptions 'of kith, kin, and allies') any thing that it contains.
+     But my 'heart warms to the tartan,' or to any thing of Scotland,
+     which reminds me of Aberdeen and other parts, not so far from the
+     Highlands as that town, about Invercauld and Braemar, where I was
+     sent to drink goat's _fey_ in 1795-6, in consequence of a
+     threatened decline after the scarlet fever. But I am gossiping, so,
+     good night--and the gods be with your dreams!
+
+     "Pray, present my respects to Lady Scott, who may, perhaps,
+     recollect having seen me in town in 1815.
+
+     "I see that one of your supporters (for like Sir Hildebrand, I am
+     fond of Guillin) is a _mermaid_; it is my _crest_ too, and with
+     precisely the same curl of tail. There's concatenation for you:--I
+     am building a little cutter at Genoa, to go a cruising in the
+     summer. I know _you_ like the sea too."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 476. TO ----.[73]
+
+     "Pisa, February 6. 1822.
+
+     "'Try back the deep lane,' till we find a publisher for the
+     'Vision;' and if none such is to be found, print fifty copies at my
+     expense, distribute them amongst my acquaintance, and you will soon
+     see that the booksellers _will_ publish them, even if we opposed
+     them. That they are now afraid is natural, but I do not see that I
+     ought to give way on that account. I know nothing of Rivington's
+     'Remonstrance' by the 'eminent Churchman;' but I suppose he wants a
+     living. I once heard of a preacher at Kentish Town against 'Cain.'
+     The same outcry was raised against Priestley, Hume, Gibbon,
+     Voltaire, and all the men who dared to put tithes to the question.
+
+     "I have got S----'s pretended reply, to which I am surprised that
+     you do not allude. What remains to be done is to call him out. The
+     question is, would he come? for, if he would not, the whole thing
+     would appear ridiculous, if I were to take a long and expensive
+     journey to no purpose.
+
+     "You must be my second, and, as such, I wish to consult you.
+
+     "I apply to you, as one well versed in the duello, or monomachie.
+     Of course I shall come to England as privately as possible, and
+     leave it (supposing that I was the survivor) in the same manner;
+     having no other object which could bring me to that country except
+     to settle quarrels accumulated during my absence.
+
+     "By the last post I transmitted to you a letter upon some Rochdale
+     toll business, from which there are moneys in prospect. My agent
+     says two thousand pounds, but supposing it to be only one, or even
+     one hundred, still they may be moneys; and I have lived long enough
+     to have an exceeding respect for the smallest current coin of any
+     realm, or the least sum, which, although I may not want it myself,
+     may do something for others who may need it more than I.
+
+     "They say that 'Knowledge is Power:'--I used to think so; but I now
+     know that they meant '_money_:' and when Socrates declared, 'that
+     all he knew was, that he knew nothing,' he merely intended to
+     declare, that he had not a drachm in the Athenian world.
+
+     "The _circulars_ are arrived, and circulating like the vortices (or
+     vortexes) of Descartes. Still I have a due care of the needful, and
+     keep a look out ahead, as my notions upon the score of moneys
+     coincide with yours, and with all men's who have lived to see that
+     every guinea is a philosopher's stone, or at least his
+     _touch_-stone. You will doubt me the less, when I pronounce my firm
+     belief, that _Cash_ is _Virtue_.
+
+     "I cannot reproach myself with much expenditure: my only extra
+     expense (and it is more than I have spent upon myself) being a loan
+     of two hundred and fifty pounds to ----; and fifty pounds worth of
+     furniture, which I have bought for him; and a boat which I am
+     building for myself at Genoa, which will cost about a hundred
+     pounds more.
+
+     "But to return. I am determined to have all the moneys I can,
+     whether by my own funds, or succession, or lawsuit, or MSS. or any
+     lawful means whatever.
+
+     "I will pay (though with the sincerest reluctance) my remaining
+     creditors, and every man of law, by instalments from the award of
+     the arbitrators.
+
+     "I recommend to you the notice in Mr. Hanson's letter, on the
+     demands of moneys for the Rochdale tolls.
+
+     "Above all, I recommend my interests to your honourable worship.
+
+     "Recollect, too, that I expect some moneys for the various MSS. (no
+     matter what); and, in short, 'Rem _quocunque modo_, Rem!'--the
+     noble feeling of cupidity grows upon us with our years.
+
+     "Yours ever," &c.
+
+[Footnote 73: This letter has been already published, with a few others,
+in a periodical work, and is known to have been addressed to the late
+Mr. Douglas Kinnaird.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 477. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Pisa, February 8. 1822.
+
+     "Attacks upon me were to be expected, but I perceive one upon _you_
+     in the papers, which I confess that I did not expect. How, or in
+     what manner, _you_ can be considered responsible for what _I_
+     publish, I am at a loss to conceive.
+
+     "If 'Cain' be 'blasphemous,' Paradise Lost is blasphemous; and the
+     very words of the Oxford gentleman, 'Evil, be thou my good,' are
+     from that very poem, from the mouth of Satan, and is there any
+     thing more in that of Lucifer in the Mystery? Cain is nothing more
+     than a drama, not a piece of argument. If Lucifer and Cain speak as
+     the first murderer and the first rebel may be supposed to speak,
+     surely all the rest of the personages talk also according to their
+     characters--and the stronger passions have ever been permitted to
+     the drama.
+
+     "I have even avoided introducing the Deity as in Scripture, (though
+     Milton does, and not very wisely either,) but have adopted his
+     angel as sent to Cain instead, on purpose to avoid shocking any
+     feelings on the subject by falling short of what all uninspired men
+     must fall short in, viz. giving an adequate notion of the effect of
+     the presence of Jehovah. The old Mysteries introduced him liberally
+     enough, and all this is avoided in the new one.
+
+     "The attempt to _bully you_, because they think it won't succeed
+     with me, seems to me as atrocious an attempt as ever disgraced the
+     times. What! when Gibbon's, Hume's, Priestley's, and Drummond's
+     publishers have been allowed to rest in peace for seventy years,
+     are you to be singled out for a work of _fiction_, not of history
+     or argument? There must be something at the bottom of this--some
+     private enemy of your own: it is otherwise incredible.
+
+     "I can only say, 'Me, me; en adsum qui feci;'--that any proceedings
+     directed against you, I beg, may be transferred to me, who am
+     willing, and _ought_, to endure them all;--that if you have lost
+     money by the publication, I will refund any or all of the
+     copyright;--that I desire you will say that both _you_ and _Mr.
+     Gifford_ remonstrated against the publication, as also Mr.
+     Hobhouse;--that _I_ alone occasioned it, and I alone am the person
+     who, either legally or otherwise, should bear the burden. If they
+     prosecute, I will come to England--that is, if, by meeting it in my
+     own person, I can save yours. Let me know. You sha'n't suffer for
+     me, if I can help it. Make any use of this letter you please.
+
+     "Yours ever, &c.
+
+     "P.S. I write to you about all this row of bad passions and
+     absurdities with the _summer_ moon (for here our winter is clearer
+     than your dog-days) lighting the winding Arno, with all her
+     buildings and bridges,--so quiet and still!--What nothings are we
+     before the least of these stars!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 478. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Pisa, February 19. 1822.
+
+     "I am rather surprised not to have had an answer to my letter and
+     packets. Lady Noel is dead, and it is not impossible that I may
+     have to go to England to settle the division of the Wentworth
+     property, and what portion Lady B. is to have out of it; all which
+     was left undecided by the articles of separation. But I hope not,
+     if it can be done without,--and I have written to Sir Francis
+     Burdett to be my referee, as he knows the property.
+
+     "Continue to address here, as I shall not go if I can avoid it--at
+     least, not on that account. But I may on another; for I wrote to
+     Douglas Kinnaird to convey a message of invitation to Mr. Southey
+     to meet me, either in England, or (as less liable to interruption)
+     on the coast of France. This was about a fortnight ago, and I have
+     not yet had time to have the answer. However, you shall have due
+     notice; therefore continue to address to Pisa.
+
+     "My agents and trustees have written to me to desire that I would
+     take the name directly, so that I am yours very truly and
+     affectionately,
+
+     "NOEL BYRON.
+
+     "P.S. I have had no news from England, except on business; and
+     merely know, from some abuse in that faithful _ex_ and _de_-tractor
+     Galignani, that the clergy are up against 'Cain.' There is (if I am
+     not mistaken) some good church preferment on the Wentworth estates;
+     and I will show them what a good Christian I am, by patronising and
+     preferring the most pious of their order, should opportunity occur.
+
+     "M. and I are but little in correspondence, and I know nothing of
+     literary matters at present. I have been writing on business only
+     lately. What are _you_ about? Be assured that there is no such
+     coalition as you apprehend."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 479. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Pisa, February 20. 1822.[74]
+
+     "Your letter arrived since I wrote the enclosed. It is not likely,
+     as I have appointed agents and arbitrators for the Noel estates,
+     that I should proceed to England on that account,--though I may
+     upon another, within stated. At any rate, _continue_ you to address
+     here till you hear further from me. I could wish _you_ still to
+     arrange for me, either with a London or Paris publisher, for the
+     things, &c. I shall not quarrel with any arrangement you may please
+     to make.
+
+     "I have appointed Sir Francis Burdett my arbitrator to decide on
+     Lady Byron's allowance out of the Noel estates, which are estimated
+     at seven thousand a year, and _rents_ very well paid,--a rare thing
+     at this time. It is, however, owing to their _consisting_ chiefly
+     in pasture lands, and therefore less affected by corn bills, &c.
+     than properties in tillage.
+
+     "Believe me yours ever most affectionately,
+
+     "NOEL BYRON.
+
+     "Between my own property in the funds, and my wife's in land, I do
+     not know which _side_ to cry out on in politics.
+
+     "There is nothing against the immortality of the soul in 'Cain'
+     that I recollect. I hold no such opinions;--but, in a drama, the
+     first rebel and the first murderer must be made to talk according
+     to their characters. However, the parsons are all preaching at it,
+     from Kentish Town and Oxford to Pisa;--the scoundrels of priests,
+     who do more harm to religion than all the infidels that ever forgot
+     their catechisms!
+
+     "I have not seen Lady Noel's death announced in Galignani.--How is
+     that?"
+
+[Footnote 74: The preceding letter came enclosed in this.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 480. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Pisa, February 28. 1822.
+
+     "I begin to think that the packet (a heavy one) of five acts of
+     'Werner,' &c. can hardly have reached you, for your letter of last
+     week (which I answered) did not allude to it, and yet I insured it
+     at the post-office here.
+
+     "I have no direct news from England, except on the Noel business,
+     which is proceeding quietly, as I have appointed a gentleman (Sir
+     F. Burdett) for my arbitrator. They, too, have said that they will
+     recall the _lawyer_ whom _they_ had chosen, and will name a
+     gentleman too. This is better, as the arrangement of the estates
+     and of Lady B.'s allowance will thus be settled without quibbling.
+     My lawyers are taking out a licence for the name and arms, which it
+     seems I am to endue.
+
+     "By another, and indirect, quarter, I hear that 'Cain' has been
+     pirated, and that the Chancellor has refused to give Murray any
+     redress. Also, that G.R. (_your_ friend 'Ben') has expressed great
+     personal indignation at the said poem. All this is curious enough,
+     I think,--after allowing Priestley, Hume, and Gibbon, and
+     Bolingbroke, and Voltaire to be published, without depriving the
+     booksellers of their rights. I heard from Rome a day or two ago,
+     and, with what truth I know not, that * * *.
+
+     "Yours," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 481. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Pisa, March 1. 1822.
+
+     "As I still have no news of my 'Werner,' &c. packet, sent to you on
+     the 29th of January, I continue to bore you (for the fifth time, I
+     believe) to know whether it has not miscarried. As it was fairly
+     copied out, it will be vexatious if it be lost. Indeed, I insured
+     it at the post-office to make them take more care, and directed it
+     regularly to you at Paris.
+
+     "In the impartial Galignani I perceive an extract from Blackwood's
+     Magazine, in which it is said that there are people who have
+     discovered that you and I are no poets. With regard to one of us, I
+     know that this north-west passage to _my_ magnetic pole had been
+     long discovered by some sages, and I leave them the full benefit of
+     their penetration. I think, as Gibbon says of his History, 'that,
+     perhaps, a hundred years hence it may still continue to be abused.'
+     However, I am far from pretending to compete or compare with that
+     illustrious literary character.
+
+     "But, with regard to _you_, I thought that you had always been
+     allowed to be _a poet_, even by the stupid as well as the
+     envious--a bad one, to be sure--immoral, florid, Asiatic, and
+     diabolically popular,--but still always a poet, _nem. con._ This
+     discovery therefore, has to me all the grace of novelty, as well as
+     of consolation (according to Rochefoucault), to find myself
+     _no_-poetised in such good company. I am content to 'err with
+     Plato;' and can assure you very sincerely, that I would rather be
+     received a _non_-poet with you, than be crowned with all the bays
+     of (the _yet_-uncrowned) Lakers in their society. I believe you
+     think better of those worthies than I do. I know them * * * * * *
+     *.
+
+     "As for Southey, the answer to my proposition of a meeting is not
+     yet come. I sent the message, with a short note, to him through
+     Douglas Kinnaird, and Douglas's response is not arrived. If he
+     accepts, I shall have to go to England; but if not, I do not think
+     the Noel affairs will take me there, as the arbitrators can settle
+     them without my presence, and there do not seem to be any
+     difficulties. The licence for the new name and armorial bearings
+     will be taken out by the regular application, in such cases, to the
+     Crown, and sent to me.
+
+     "Is there a hope of seeing you in Italy again ever? What are you
+     doing?--_bored_ by me, I know; but I have explained _why_ before. I
+     have no correspondence now with London, except through relations
+     and lawyers and one or two friends. My greatest friend, Lord Clare,
+     is at Rome: we met on the road, and our meeting was quite
+     sentimental--_really_ pathetic on both sides. I have always loved
+     him better than any _male_ thing in the world."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The preceding was enclosed in that which follows.
+
+LETTER 482. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Pisa, March 4. 1822.
+
+     "Since I wrote the enclosed, I have waited another post, and now
+     have your answer acknowledging the arrival of the packet--a
+     troublesome one, I fear, to you in more ways than one, both from
+     weight external and internal.
+
+     "The unpublished things in your hands, in Douglas K.'s, and Mr.
+     John Murray's, are, 'Heaven and Earth, a lyrical kind of Drama upon
+     the Deluge, &c.;'--'Werner,' _now with you_;--a translation of the
+     First Canto of the Morgante Maggiore;--_ditto_ of an Episode in
+     Dante;--some stanzas to the Po, June 1st, 1819;--Hints from Horace,
+     written in 1811, but a good deal, _since_, to be omitted;--several
+     prose things, which may, perhaps, as well remain unpublished;--'The
+     Vision, &c. of Quevedo Redivivus' in verse.
+
+     "Here you see is 'more matter for a May morning;' but how much of
+     this can be published is for consideration. The Quevedo (one of my
+     best in that line) has appalled the Row already, and must take its
+     chance at Paris, if at all. The new Mystery is less speculative
+     than 'Cain,' and very pious; besides, it is chiefly lyrical. The
+     Morgante is the _best_ translation that ever was or will be made;
+     and the rest are--whatever you please to think them.
+
+     "I am sorry you think Werner even _approaching_ to any fitness for
+     the stage, which, with my notions upon it, is very far from my
+     present object. With regard to the publication, I have already
+     explained that I have no exorbitant expectations of either fame or
+     profit in the present instances; but wish them published because
+     they are written, which is the common feeling of all scribblers.
+
+     "With respect to 'Religion,' can I never convince you that I have
+     no such opinions as the characters in that drama, which seems to
+     have frightened every body? Yet _they_ are nothing to the
+     expressions in Goethe's Faust (which are ten times hardier), and
+     not a whit more bold than those of Milton's Satan. My ideas of a
+     character may run away with me: like all imaginative men, I, of
+     course, embody myself with the character while I draw it, but not a
+     moment after the pen is from off the paper.
+
+     "I am no enemy to religion, but the contrary. As a proof, I am
+     educating my natural daughter a strict Catholic in a convent of
+     Romagna; for I think people can never have _enough_ of religion, if
+     they are to have any. I incline, myself, very much to the Catholic
+     doctrines; but if I am to write a drama, I must make my characters
+     speak as I conceive them likely to argue.
+
+     "As to poor Shelley, who is another bugbear to you and the world,
+     he is, to my knowledge, the _least_ selfish and the mildest of
+     men--a man who has made more sacrifices of his fortune and feelings
+     for others than any I ever heard of. With his speculative opinions
+     I have nothing in common, nor desire to have.
+
+     "The truth is, my dear Moore, you live near the _stove_ of society,
+     where you are unavoidably influenced by its heat and its vapours. I
+     did so once--and too much--and enough to give a colour to my whole
+     future existence. As my success in society was _not_
+     inconsiderable, I am surely not a prejudiced judge upon the
+     subject, unless in its favour; but I think it, as now constituted,
+     _fatal_ to all great original undertakings of every kind. I never
+     courted it _then_, when I was young and high in blood, and one of
+     its 'curled darlings;' and do you think I would do so _now_, when I
+     am living in a clearer atmosphere? One thing _only_ might lead me
+     back to it, and that is, to try once more if I could do any good in
+     _politics_; but _not_ in the petty politics I see now preying upon
+     our miserable country.
+
+     "Do not let me be misunderstood, however. If you speak your _own_
+     opinions, they ever had, and will have, the greatest weight with
+     _me_. But if you merely _echo_ the 'monde,' (and it is difficult
+     not to do so, being in its favour and its ferment,) I can only
+     regret that you should ever repeat any thing to which I cannot pay
+     attention.
+
+     "But I am prosing. The gods go with you, and as much immortality of
+     all kinds as may suit your present and all other existence.
+
+     "Yours," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 483. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Pisa, March 6. 1822.
+
+     "The enclosed letter from Murray hath melted me; though I think it
+     is against his own interest to wish that I should continue his
+     connection. You may, therefore, send him the packet of _Werner,_
+     which will save you all further trouble. And pray, _can you_
+     forgive me for the bore and expense I have already put upon you? At
+     least, _say_ so--for I feel ashamed of having given you so much for
+     such nonsense.
+
+     "The fact is, I cannot _keep_ my _resentments,_ though violent
+     enough in their onset. Besides, now that all the world are at
+     Murray on my account, I neither can nor ought to leave him; unless,
+     as I really thought, it were better for _him_ that I should.
+
+     "I have had no other news from England, except a letter from Barry
+     Cornwall, the bard, and my old school-fellow. Though I have
+     sickened you with letters lately, believe me
+
+     "Yours, &c.
+
+     "P.S. In your last letter you say, speaking of Shelley, that you
+     would almost prefer the 'damning bigot' to the 'annihilating
+     infidel.'[75] Shelley believes in immortality, however--but this by
+     the way. Do you remember Frederick the Great's answer to the
+     remonstrance of the villagers whose curate preached against the
+     eternity of hell's torments? It was thus:--'If my faithful subjects
+     of Schrausenhaussen prefer being eternally damned, let them.'
+
+     "Of the two, I should think the long sleep better than the agonised
+     vigil. But men, miserable as they are, cling so to any thing like
+     life, that they probably would prefer damnation to quiet. Besides,
+     they think themselves so _important_ in the creation, that nothing
+     less can satisfy their pride--the insects!"
+
+[Footnote 75: It will be seen from the extract I shall give presently of
+the passage to which he refers, that he wholly mistook my meaning.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is Dr. Clarke, I think, who gives, in his Travels, rather a striking
+account of a Tartar whom he once saw exercising a young, fiery horse,
+upon a spot of ground almost surrounded by a steep precipice, and
+describes the wantonness of courage with which the rider, as if
+delighting in his own peril, would, at times, dash, with loose rein,
+towards the giddy verge. Something of the same breathless apprehension
+with which the traveller viewed that scene, did the unchecked daring of
+Byron's genius inspire in all who watched its course,--causing them, at
+the same moment, to admire and tremble, and, in those more especially
+who loved him, awakening a sort of instinctive impulse to rush forward
+and save him from his own headlong strength. But, however natural it was
+in friends to give way to this feeling, a little reflection upon his now
+altered character might have forewarned them that such interference
+would prove as little useful to him as safe for themselves; and it is
+not without some surprise I look back upon my own temerity and
+presumption in supposing that, let loose as he was now, in the full
+pride and consciousness of strength, with the wide regions of thought
+outstretching before him, any representations that even friendship could
+make would have the power--or _ought_ to have--of checking him. As the
+motives, however, by which I was actuated in my remonstrances to him may
+be left to speak for themselves, I shall, without dwelling any further
+upon the subject, content myself with laying before the reader a few
+such extracts from my own letters at this period[76] as may serve to
+explain some allusions in those just given.
+
+In writing to me under the date January 24th, it will be recollected
+that he says--"be assured that there is no such coalition as you
+apprehend." The following extracts from my previous communication to him
+will explain what this means:--"I heard some days ago that Leigh Hunt
+was on his way to you with all his family; and the idea seems to be,
+that you and Shelley and he are to conspire together in the Examiner. I
+cannot believe this,--and deprecate such a plan with all my might. Alone
+you may do any thing; but partnerships in fame, like those in trade,
+make the strongest party answerable for the deficiencies or
+delinquencies of the rest, and I tremble even for you with such a
+bankrupt >i>Co._--* * *. They are both clever fellows, and Shelley I
+look upon as a man of real genius; but I must again say, that you could
+not give your enemies (the * * *'s, 'et hoc genus omne') a greater
+triumph than by forming such an unequal and unholy alliance. You are,
+single-handed, a match for the world,--which is saying a good deal, the
+world being, like Briareus, a very many-handed gentleman,--but, to be
+so, you must stand alone. Recollect that the scurvy buildings about St.
+Peter's almost seem to overtop itself."
+
+[Footnote 76: It should have been mentioned before, that to the courtesy
+of Lord Byron's executor, Mr. Hobhouse, who had the kindness to restore
+to me such letters of mine as came into his hands, I am indebted for the
+power of producing these and other extracts.]
+
+The notices of Cain, in my letters to him, were, according to their
+respective dates, as follow:--
+
+
+"September 30. 1821.
+
+"Since writing the above, I have read Foscari and Cain. The former does
+not please me so highly as Sardanapalus. It has the fault of all those
+violent Venetian stories, being unnatural and improbable, and therefore,
+in spite of all your fine management of them, appealing but remotely to
+one's sympathies. But Cain 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 AEschylus and his
+Prometheus!--here is the true spirit both of the Poet--and the Devil."
+
+
+"February 9. 1822.
+
+"Do not take it into your head, my dear B. that the tide is at all
+turning against you in England. Till I see some symptoms of people
+_forgetting_ you a little, I will not believe that you lose ground. As
+it is, 'te veniente die, te, decedente,'--nothing is hardly talked of
+but you; and though good people sometimes bless themselves when they
+mention you, it is plain that even _they_ think much more about you
+than, for the good of their souls, they ought. Cain, to be sure, _has_
+made a sensation; and, grand as it is, I regret, for many reasons, you
+ever wrote it. * * For myself, I would not give up the _poetry_ of
+religion for all the wisest results that _philosophy_ will ever arrive
+at. Particular sects and creeds are fair game enough for those who are
+anxious enough about their neighbours to meddle with them; but our faith
+in the Future is a treasure not so lightly to be parted with; and the
+dream of immortality (if philosophers will have it a dream) is one that,
+let us hope, we shall carry into our last sleep with us."[77]
+
+[Footnote 77: It is to this sentence Lord Byron refers at the conclusion
+of his letter, March 4.]
+
+
+"February 19. 1822.
+
+"I have written to the Longmans to try the ground, for I do _not_ think
+Galignani the man for you. The only thing he can do is what we can do,
+ourselves, without him,--and that is, employ an English bookseller.
+Paris, indeed, might be convenient for such refugee works as are set
+down in the _Index Expurgatorius_ of London; and if you have any
+political catamarans to explode, this is your place. But, _pray_, let
+them be only political ones. Boldness, and even licence, in politics,
+does good,--actual, present good; but, in religion, it profits neither
+here nor hereafter; and, for myself, such a horror have I of both
+extremes on this subject, that I know not _which_ I hate most, the bold,
+damning bigot, or the bold, annihilating infidel. 'Furiosa res est in
+tenebris impetus;'--and much as we are in the dark, even the wisest of
+us, upon these matters, a little modesty, in unbelief as well as belief,
+best becomes us. You will easily guess that, in all this, I am thinking
+not so much of you, as of a friend and, at present, companion of yours,
+whose influence over your mind (knowing you as I do, and knowing what
+Lady B. _ought_ to have found out, that you are a person the most
+tractable to those who live with you that, perhaps, ever existed) I own
+I dread and deprecate most earnestly."[78]
+
+[Footnote 78: This passage having been shown by Lord Byron to Mr.
+Shelley, the latter wrote, in consequence, a letter to a gentleman with
+whom I was then in habits of intimacy, of which the following is an
+extract. The zeal and openness with which Shelley always professed his
+unbelief render any scruple that might otherwise be felt in giving
+publicity to such avowals unnecessary; besides which, the testimony of
+so near and clear an observer to the state of Lord Byron's mind upon
+religious subjects is of far too much importance to my object to be,
+from any over-fastidiousness, suppressed. We have here, too strikingly
+exemplified,--and in strong contrast, I must say, to the line taken by
+Mr. Hunt in similar circumstances,--the good breeding, gentle temper,
+and modesty for which Shelley was so remarkable, and of the latter of
+which Dualities in particular the undeserved compliment to myself
+affords a strong illustration, as showing how little this true poet had
+yet learned to know his own place.
+
+"Lord Byron has read me one or two letters of Moore to him, in which
+Moore speaks with great kindness of me; and of course I cannot but feel
+flattered by the approbation of a man, my inferiority to whom I am proud
+to acknowledge. Amongst other things, however, Moore, after giving Lord
+B, much good advice about public opinion, &c. seems to deprecate my
+influence on his mind on the subject of religion, and to attribute the
+tone assumed in Cain to my suggestions. Moore cautions him against any
+influence on this particular with the most friendly zeal, and it is
+plain that his motive springs from a desire of benefiting Lord B.
+without degrading me. I think you know Moore. Pray assure him that I
+have not the smallest influence over Lord Byron in this particular; if I
+had, I certainly should employ it to eradicate from his great mind the
+delusions of Christianity, which, in spite of his reason, seem
+perpetually to recur, and to lay in ambush for the hours of sickness and
+distress. Cain was _conceived_ many years ago, and begun before I saw
+him last year at Ravenna. How happy should I not be to attribute to
+myself, however indirectly, any participation in that immortal work!"]
+
+
+"March 16. 1822.
+
+"With respect to our Religious Polemics, I must try to set you right
+upon one or two points. In the first place, I do _not_ identify you with
+the blasphemies of Cain no more than I do myself with the impieties of
+my Mokanna,--all I wish and implore is that you, who are such a powerful
+manufacturer of these thunderbolts, would not _choose_ subjects that
+make it necessary to launch them. In the next place, were you even a
+decided atheist, I could not (except, perhaps, for the _decision_ which
+is always unwise) blame you. I could only pity,--knowing from experience
+how dreary are the doubts with which even the bright, poetic view I am
+myself inclined to take of mankind and their destiny is now and then
+clouded. I look upon Cuvier's book to be a most desolating one in the
+conclusions to which it may lead some minds. But the young, the
+simple,--all those whose hearts one would like to keep unwithered,
+trouble their heads but little about Cuvier. _You_, however, have
+embodied him in poetry which every one reads; and, like the wind,
+blowing 'where you list,' carry this deadly chill, mixed up with your
+own fragrance, into hearts that should be visited only by the latter.
+This is what I regret, and what with all my influence I would deprecate
+a repetition of. _Now_, do you understand me?
+
+"As to your solemn peroration, 'the truth is, my dear Moore, &c. &c.'
+meaning neither more nor less than that I give into the cant of the
+world, it only proves, alas! the melancholy fact, that you and I are
+hundreds of miles asunder. Could you hear me speak my opinions instead
+of coldly reading them, I flatter myself there is still enough of
+honesty and fun in this face to remind you that your friend Tom
+Moore--whatever else he may be,--is no Canter."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 484. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Pisa, March 6. 1822.
+
+     "You will long ago have received a letter from me (or should),
+     declaring my opinion of the treatment you have met with about the
+     recent publication. I think it disgraceful to those who have
+     persecuted _you_. I make peace with you, though our war was for
+     other reasons than this same controversy. I have written to Moore
+     by this post to forward to you the tragedy of' Werner.' I shall not
+     make or propose any present bargain about it or the new Mystery
+     till we see if they succeed. If they don't sell (which is not
+     unlikely), you sha'n't pay; and I suppose this is fair play, if you
+     choose to risk it.
+
+     "Bartolini, the celebrated sculptor, wrote to me to desire to take
+     my bust: I consented, on condition that he also took that of the
+     Countess Guiccioli. He has taken both, and I think it will be
+     allowed that _hers_ is beautiful. I shall make you a present of
+     them both, to show that I don't bear malice, and as a compensation
+     for the trouble and squabble you had about Thorwaldsen's. Of my own
+     I can hardly speak, except that it is thought very like what I _now
+     am_, which is different from what I was, of course, since you saw
+     me. The sculptor is a famous one; and as it was done by _his own_
+     particular request, will be done well, probably.
+
+     "What is to be done about * * and his Commentary? He will die if he
+     is _not_ published; he will be damned, if he _is_; but that _he_
+     don't mind. We must publish him.
+
+     "All the _row_ about _me_ has no otherwise affected me than by the
+     attack upon yourself, which is ungenerous in Church and State: but
+     as all violence must in time have its proportionate re-action, you
+     will do better by and by. Yours very truly,
+
+     "NOEL BYRON."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 485. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Pisa, March 8. 1822.
+
+     "You will have had enough of my letters by this time--yet one word
+     in answer to your present missive. You are quite wrong in thinking
+     that your '_advice_' had offended me; but I have already replied
+     (if not answered) on that point.
+
+     "With regard to Murray, as I really am the meekest and mildest of
+     men since Moses (though the public and mine 'excellent wife' cannot
+     find it out), I had already pacified myself and subsided back to
+     Albemarle Street, as my yesterday's _ye_pistle will have informed
+     you. But I thought that I had explained my causes of bile--at least
+     to you. Some instances of vacillation, occasional neglect, and
+     troublesome sincerity, real or imagined, are sufficient to put your
+     truly great author and man into a passion. But reflection, with
+     some aid from hellebore, hath already cured me 'pro tempore;' and,
+     if it had not, a request from you and Hobhouse would have come upon
+     me like two out of the 'tribus Anticyris,'--with which, however,
+     Horace despairs of purging a poet. I really feel ashamed of having
+     bored you so frequently and fully of late. But what could I do? You
+     are a friend--an absent one, alas!--and as I trust no one more, I
+     trouble you in proportion.
+
+     "This war of 'Church and State' has astonished me more than it
+     disturbs; for I really thought 'Cain' a speculative and hardy, but
+     still a harmless, production. As I said before, I am really a great
+     admirer of tangible religion; and am breeding one of my daughters a
+     Catholic, that she may have her hands full. It is by far the most
+     elegant worship, hardly excepting the Greek mythology. What with
+     incense, pictures, statues, altars, shrines, relics, and the real
+     presence, confession, absolution,--there is something sensible to
+     grasp at. Besides, it leaves no possibility of doubt; for those who
+     swallow their Deity, really and truly, in transubstantiation, can
+     hardly find any thing else otherwise than easy of digestion.
+
+     "I am afraid that this sounds flippant, but I don't mean it to be
+     so; only my turn of mind is so given to taking things in the absurd
+     point of view, that it breaks out in spite of me every now and
+     then. Still, I do assure you that I am a very good Christian.
+     Whether you will believe me in this, I do not know; but I trust you
+     will take my word for being
+
+     "Very truly and affectionately yours, &c.
+
+     "P.S. Do tell Murray that one of the conditions of peace is, that
+     he publisheth (or obtaineth a publisher for) * * *'s Commentary on
+     Dante, against which there appears in the trade an unaccountable
+     repugnance. It will make the man so exuberantly happy. He dines
+     with me and half-a-dozen English to-day; and I have not the heart
+     to tell him how the bibliopolar world shrink from his
+     Commentary;--and yet it is full of the most orthodox religion and
+     morality. In short, I make it a point that he shall be in print. He
+     is such a good-natured, heavy-* * Christian, that we must give him
+     a shove through the press. He naturally thirsts to be an author,
+     and has been the happiest of men for these two months, printing,
+     correcting, collating, dating, anticipating, and adding to his
+     treasures of learning. Besides, he has had another fall from his
+     horse into a ditch the other day, while riding out with me into the
+     country."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 486. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Pisa, March 15. 1822.
+
+     "I am glad that you and your friends approve of my letter of the
+     8th ultimo. You may give it what publicity you think proper in the
+     circumstances. I have since written to you twice or thrice.
+
+     "As to 'a Poem in the old way,' I shall attempt of that kind
+     nothing further. I follow the bias of my own mind, without
+     considering whether women or men are or are not to be pleased; but
+     this is nothing to my publisher, who must judge and act according
+     to popularity.
+
+     "Therefore let the things take their chance: if _they pay,_ you
+     will pay me in proportion; and if they don't, I must.
+
+     "The Noel affairs, I hope, will not take me to England. I have no
+     desire to revisit that country, unless it be to keep you out of a
+     prison (if this can be effected by my taking your place), or
+     perhaps to get myself into one, by exacting satisfaction from one
+     or two persons who take advantage of my absence to abuse me.
+     Further than this, I have no business nor connection with England,
+     nor desire to have, _out_ of my own family and friends, to whom I
+     wish all prosperity. Indeed, I have lived upon the whole so little
+     in England (about five years since I was one-and-twenty), that my
+     habits are too continental, and your climate would please me as
+     little as the society.
+
+     "I saw the Chancellor's Report in a French paper. Pray, why don't
+     they prosecute the translation of _Lucretius_? or the original with
+     its
+
+        "'Primus in orbe Deos fecit Timor,'
+
+     or
+
+        "'Tantum Religio potuit suadere malorum?'
+
+     "You must really get something done for Mr. * *'s Commentary: what
+     can I say to him?
+
+     "Yours," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 487. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Pisa, April 13. 1822.
+
+     "Mr. Kinnaird writes that there has been an 'excellent Defence' of
+     'Cain,' against 'Oxoniensis;' you have sent me nothing but a not
+     very excellent _of_-fence of the same poem. If there be such a
+     'Defender of the Faith,' you may send me his thirty-nine articles,
+     as a counterbalance to some of your late communications.
+
+     "Are you to publish, or not, what Moore and Mr. Kinnaird have in
+     hand, and the 'Vision of Judgment?' If you publish the latter in a
+     very cheap edition, so as to baffle the pirates by a low price, you
+     will find that it will do. The 'Mystery' I look upon as good, and
+     'Werner' too, and I expect that you will publish them speedily. You
+     need not put your name to _Quevedo,_ but publish it as a foreign
+     edition, and let it make its way. Douglas Kinnaird has it still,
+     with the preface, I believe.
+
+     "I refer you to him for documents on the late row here. I sent them
+     a week ago.
+
+     "Yours," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 488. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Pisa, April 18. 1822.
+
+     "I have received the Defence of 'Cain.' Who is my Warburton?--for
+     he has done for me what the bishop did for the poet against
+     Crousaz. His reply seems to me conclusive; and if you understood
+     your own interest, you would print it together with the poem.
+
+     "It is very odd that I do not hear from you. I have forwarded to
+     Mr. Douglas Kinnaird the documents on a squabble here, which
+     occurred about a month ago. The affair is still going on; but they
+     make nothing of it hitherto. I think, what with home and abroad,
+     there has been hot water enough for one while. Mr. Dawkins, the
+     English minister, has behaved in the handsomest and most
+     gentlemanly manner throughout the whole business.
+
+     "Yours ever, &c.
+
+     "P.S. I have got Lord Glenbervie's book, which is very amusing and
+     able upon the topics which he touches upon, and part of the preface
+     pathetic. Write soon."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 489. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Pisa, April 22. 1822.
+
+     "You will regret to hear that I have received intelligence of the
+     death of my daughter Allegra of a fever in the convent of Bagna
+     Cavallo, where she was placed for the last year, to commence her
+     education. It is a heavy blow for many reasons, but must be borne,
+     with time.
+
+     "It is my present intention to send her remains to England for
+     sepulture in Harrow church (where I once hoped to have laid my
+     own), and this is my reason for troubling you with this notice. I
+     wish the funeral to be very private. The body is embalmed, and in
+     lead. It will be embarked from Leghorn. Would you have any
+     objection to give the proper directions on its arrival?
+
+     "I am yours, &c. N.B.
+
+     "P.S. You are aware that Protestants are not allowed holy ground in
+     Catholic countries."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 490. TO MR. SHELLEY.
+
+     "April 23. 1822.
+
+     "The blow was stunning and unexpected; for I thought the danger
+     over, by the long interval between her stated amelioration and the
+     arrival of the express. But I have borne up against it as I best
+     can, and so far successfully, that I can go about the usual
+     business of life with the same appearance of composure, and even
+     greater. There is nothing to prevent your coming to-morrow; but,
+     perhaps, to-day, and yester-evening, it was better not to have met.
+     I do not know that I have any thing to reproach in my conduct, and
+     certainly nothing in my feelings and intentions towards the dead.
+     But it is a moment when we are apt to think that, if this or that
+     had been done, such event might have been prevented,--though every
+     day and hour shows us that they are the most natural and
+     inevitable. I suppose that Time will do his usual work--Death has
+     done his.
+
+     "Yours ever, N.B."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 491. TO SIR WALTER SCOTT.
+
+     "Pisa, May 4. 1822.
+
+     "My dear Sir Walter,
+
+     "Your account of your family is very pleasing: would that I 'could
+     answer this comfort with the like!' but I have just lost my natural
+     daughter, Allegra, by a fever. The only consolation, save time, is
+     the reflection, that she is either at rest or happy; for her few
+     years (only five) prevented her from having incurred any sin,
+     except what we inherit from Adam.
+
+     "'Whom the gods love, die young.'"
+
+     "I need not say that your letters are particularly welcome, when
+     they do not tax your time and patience; and now that our
+     correspondence is resumed, I trust it will continue.
+
+     "I have lately had some anxiety, rather than trouble, about an
+     awkward affair here, which you may perhaps have heard of; but our
+     minister has behaved very handsomely, and the Tuscan Government as
+     well as it is possible for such a government to behave, which is
+     not saying much for the latter. Some other English, and Scots, and
+     myself, had a brawl with a dragoon, who insulted one of the party,
+     and whom we mistook for an officer, as he was medalled and well
+     mounted, &c. but he turned out to be a sergeant-major. He called
+     out the guard at the gates to arrest us (we being unarmed); upon
+     which I and another (an Italian) rode through the said guard; but
+     they succeeded in detaining others of the party. I rode to my
+     house and sent my secretary to give an account of the attempted and
+     illegal arrest to the authorities, and then, without dismounting,
+     rode back towards the gates, which are near my present mansion.
+     Half-way I met my man vapouring away and threatening to draw upon
+     me (who had a cane in my hand, and no other arms). I, still
+     believing him an officer, demanded his name and address, and gave
+     him my hand and glove thereupon. A servant of mine thrust in
+     between us (totally without orders), but let him go on my command.
+     He then rode off at full speed; but about forty paces further was
+     stabbed, and very dangerously (so as to be in peril), by some
+     _Callum Beg_ or other of my people (for I have some rough-handed
+     folks about me), I need hardly say without my direction or
+     approval. The said dragoon had been sabring our unarmed countrymen,
+     however, at the _gate, after they were in arrest,_ and held by the
+     guards, and wounded one, Captain Hay, very severely. However, he
+     got his paiks--having acted like an assassin, and being treated
+     like one. _Who_ wounded him, though it was done before thousands of
+     people, they have never been able to ascertain, or prove, nor even
+     the _weapon_; some said a _pistol_, an _air-gun_, a stiletto, a
+     sword, a lance, a pitchfork, and what not. They have arrested and
+     examined servants and people of all descriptions, but can make out
+     nothing. Mr. Dawkins, our minister, assures me, that no suspicion
+     is entertained of the man who wounded him having been instigated by
+     me, or any of the party. I enclose you copies of the depositions of
+     those with us, and Dr. Craufurd, a canny Scot (_not_ an
+     acquaintance), who saw the latter part of the affair. They are in
+     Italian.
+
+     "These are the only literary matters in which I have been engaged
+     since the publication and row about 'Cain;'--but Mr. Murray has
+     several things of mine in his obstetrical hands. Another Mystery--a
+     Vision--a Drama--and the like. But _you won't_ tell me what _you_
+     are doing--however, I shall find you out, write what you will. You
+     say that I should like your son-in-law--it would be very difficult
+     for me to dislike any one connected with you; but I have no doubt
+     that his own qualities are all that you describe.
+
+     "I am sorry you don't like Lord Orford's new work. My aristocracy,
+     which is very fierce, makes him a favourite of mine. Recollect that
+     those 'little factions' comprised Lord Chatham and Fox, the father,
+     and that _we_ live in gigantic and exaggerated times, which make
+     all under Gog and Magog appear pigmean. After having seen Napoleon
+     begin like Tamerlane and end like Bajazet in our own time, we have
+     not the same interest in what would otherwise have appeared
+     important history. But I must conclude.
+
+     "Believe me ever and most truly yours,
+
+     "NOEL BYRON."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 492. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Pisa, May 17. 1822.
+
+     "I hear that the Edinburgh has attacked the three dramas, which is
+     a bad business for _you_; and I don't wonder that it discourages
+     you. However, _that_ volume may be trusted to _time_,--depend upon
+     it. I read it over with some attention since it was published, and
+     I think the time will come when it will be preferred to my other
+     writings, though not immediately. I say this without irritation
+     against the critics or criticism, whatever they may be (for I have
+     not seen them); and nothing that has or may appear in Jeffrey's
+     Review can make me forget that he stood by me for ten good years
+     without any motive to do so but his own good-will.
+
+     "I hear Moore is in town; remember me to him, and believe me
+
+     "Yours truly, N.B.
+
+     "P.S. If you think it necessary, you may send me the Edinburgh.
+     Should there be any thing that requires an answer, I will reply,
+     but _temperately_ and _technically_; that is to say, merely with
+     respect to the _principles_ of the criticism, and not personally or
+     offensively as to its literary merits."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 493. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Pisa, May 17. 1822.
+
+     "I hear you are in London. You will have heard from Douglas
+     Kinnaird (who tells me you have dined with him) as much as you
+     desire to know of my affairs at home and abroad. I have lately lost
+     my little girl Allegra by a fever, which has been a serious blow to
+     me.
+
+     "I did not write to you lately (except one letter to Murray's), not
+     knowing exactly your 'where-abouts.' Douglas K. refused to forward
+     my message to Mr. Southey--_why_, he himself can explain.
+
+     "You will have seen the statement of a squabble, &c.&c.[79] What
+     are you about? Let me hear from you at your leisure, and believe me
+     ever yours,
+
+     "N.B."
+
+[Footnote 79: Here follows a repetition of the details given on this
+subject to Sir Walter Scott and others.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 494. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Montenero[80], May 26. 1822.
+
+     "Near Leghorn.
+
+     "The body is embarked, in what ship I know not, neither could I
+     enter into the details; but the Countess G.G. has had the goodness
+     to give the necessary orders to Mr. Dunn, who superintends the
+     embarkation, and will write to you. I wish it to be buried in
+     Harrow church.
+
+     "There is a spot in the church_yard_, near the footpath, on the
+     brow of the hill looking towards Windsor, and a tomb under a large
+     tree, (bearing the name of Peachie, or Peachey,) where I used to
+     sit for hours and hours when a boy. This was my favourite spot;
+     but, as I wish to erect a tablet to her memory, the body had better
+     be deposited in the church. Near the door, on the left hand as you
+     enter, there is a monument with a tablet containing these words:--
+
+        "'When Sorrow weeps o'er Virtue's sacred dust,
+        Our tears become us, and our grief is just:
+        Such were the tears she shed, who grateful pays
+        This last sad tribute of her love and praise.'
+
+     I recollect them (after seventeen years), not from any thing
+     remarkable in them, but because from my seat in the gallery I had
+     generally my eyes turned towards that monument. As near it as
+     convenient I could wish Allegra to be buried, and on the wall a
+     marble tablet placed, with these words:--
+
+              In Memory of
+                Allegra,
+       Daughter of G.G. Lord Byron,
+        who died at Bagna Cavallo,
+        in Italy, April 20th, 1822,
+     aged five years and three months.
+
+     'I shall go to her, but she shall not return to me.'
+                                            2d Samuel, xii. 23.
+
+     "The funeral I wish to be as private as is consistent with decency;
+     and I could hope that Henry Drury will, perhaps, read the service
+     over her. If he should decline it, it can be done by the usual
+     minister for the time being. I do not know that I need add more
+     just now.
+
+     "Since I came here, I have been invited by the Americans on board
+     their squadron, where I was received with all the kindness which I
+     could wish, and with _more ceremony_ than I am fond of. I found
+     them finer ships than your own of the same class, well manned and
+     officered. A number of American gentlemen also were on board at the
+     time, and some ladies. As I was taking leave, an American lady
+     asked me for a _rose_ which I wore, for the purpose, she said, of
+     sending to America something which I had about me, as a memorial. I
+     need not add that I felt the compliment properly. Captain Chauncey
+     showed me an American and very pretty edition of my poems, and
+     offered me a passage to the United States, if I would go there.
+     Commodore Jones was also not less kind and attentive. I have since
+     received the enclosed letter, desiring me to sit for my picture for
+     some Americans. It is singular that, in the same year that Lady
+     Noel leaves by will an interdiction for my daughter to see her
+     father's portrait for many years, the individuals of a nation, not
+     remarkable for their liking to the English in particular, nor for
+     flattering men in general, request me to sit for my
+     'pourtraicture,' as Baron Bradwardine calls it. I am also told of
+     considerable literary honours in Germany. Goethe, I am told, is my
+     professed patron and protector. At Leipsic, this year, the highest
+     prize was proposed for a translation of two cantos of Childe
+     Harold. I am not sure that this was at _Leipsic_, but Mr. Rowcroft
+     was my authority--a good German scholar (a young American), and an
+     acquaintance of Goethe's.
+
+     "Goethe and the Germans are particularly fond of Don Juan, which
+     they judge of as a work of art. I had heard something of this
+     before through Baron Lutzerode. The translations have been very
+     frequent of several of the works, and Goethe made a comparison
+     between Faust and Manfred.
+
+     "All this is some compensation for your English native brutality,
+     so fully displayed this year to its highest extent.
+
+     "I forgot to mention a little anecdote of a different kind. I went
+     over the Constitution (the Commodore's flag-ship), and saw, among
+     other things worthy of remark, a little boy _born_ on board of her
+     by a sailor's wife. They had christened him 'Constitution Jones.'
+     I, of course, approved the name; and the woman added, 'Ah, sir, if
+     he turns out but half as good as his name!'
+
+     "Yours ever," &c.
+
+[Footnote 80: A hill, three or four miles from Leghorn, much resorted
+to, as a place of residence during the summer months.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER. 495. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Montenero, near Leghorn, May 29. 1822.
+
+     "I return you the proofs revised. Your printer has made one odd
+     mistake:--'poor as a _mouse_,' instead of 'poor as a _miser_.' The
+     expression may seem strange, but it is only a translation of
+     'semper avarus eget.' You will add the Mystery, and publish as soon
+     as you can. I care nothing for your 'season,' nor the _blue_
+     approbations or disapprobations. All that is to be considered by
+     you on the subject is as a matter of _business_; and if I square
+     that to your notions (even to the running the risk entirely
+     myself), you may permit me to choose my own time and mode of
+     publication. With regard to the late volume, the present run
+     against _it_ or _me_ may impede it for a time, but it has the vital
+     principle of permanency within it, as you may perhaps one day
+     discover. I wrote to you on another subject a few days ago.
+
+     Yours, N.B.
+
+     "P.S. Please to send me the Dedication of Sardanapalus to Goethe. I
+     shall prefix it to Werner, unless you prefer my putting another,
+     stating that the former had been omitted by the publisher.
+
+     "On the title-page of the present volume, put 'Published for the
+     Author by J.M.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 496. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Montenero, Leghorn, June 6. 1822.
+
+     "I return you the revise of Werner, and expect the rest. With
+     regard to the Lines to the Po, perhaps you had better put them
+     quietly in a second edition (if you reach one, that is to say) than
+     in the first; because, though they have been reckoned fine, and I
+     wish them to be preserved, I do not wish them to attract IMMEDIATE
+     observation, on account of the relationship of the lady to whom
+     they are addressed with the first families in Romagna and the
+     Marches.
+
+     "The defender of 'Cain' may or may not be, as you term him, 'a tyro
+     in literature:' however I think both you and I are under great
+     obligation to him. I have read the Edinburgh review in Galignani's
+     Magazine, and have not yet decided whether to answer them or not;
+     for, if I do, it will be difficult for me not 'to make sport for
+     the Philistines' by pulling down a house or two; since, when I once
+     take pen in hand, I _must_ say what comes uppermost, or fling it
+     away. I have not the hypocrisy to pretend impartiality, nor the
+     temper (as it is called) to keep always from saying what may not be
+     pleasing to the hearer or reader. What do they mean by
+     '_elaborate_?' Why, _you_ know that they were written as fast as I
+     could put pen to paper, and printed from the _original_ MSS., and
+     never revised but in the proofs: _look_ at the _dates_ and the MSS.
+     themselves. Whatever faults they have must spring from
+     carelessness, and not from labour. They said the same of 'Lara,'
+     which I wrote while undressing after coming home from balls and
+     masquerades, in the year of revelry 1814. Yours."
+
+     "June 8. 1822.
+
+     "You give me no explanation of your intention as to the 'Vision of
+     Quevedo Redivivus,' one of my best things: indeed, you are
+     altogether so abstruse and undecided lately, that I suppose you
+     mean me to write 'John Murray, Esq., a Mystery,'--a composition
+     which would not displease the clergy nor the trade. I by no means
+     wish you to do what you don't like, but merely to say what you will
+     do. The Vision _must_ be published by some one. As to 'clamours,'
+     the die is cast: and 'come one, come all,' we will fight it out--at
+     least one of us."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 497. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Montenero, Villa Dupoy, near Leghorn, June 8. 1822.
+
+     "I have written to you twice through the medium of Murray, and on
+     one subject, _trite_ enough,--the loss of poor little Allegra by a
+     fever; on which topic I shall say no more--there is nothing but
+     time.
+
+     "A few days ago, my earliest and dearest friend, Lord Clare, came
+     over from Geneva on purpose to see me before he returned to
+     England. As I have always loved him (since I was thirteen, at
+     Harrow,) better than any (_male_) thing in the world, I need hardly
+     say what a melancholy pleasure it was to see him for a _day_ only;
+     for he was obliged to resume his journey immediately. * * * Do you
+     recollect, in the year of revelry 1814, the pleasantest parties and
+     balls all over London? and not the least so at * *'s. Do you
+     recollect your singing duets with Lady * *, and my flirtation with
+     Lady * *, and all the other fooleries of the time? while * * was
+     sighing, and Lady * * ogling him with her clear hazel eyes. _But_
+     eight years have passed, and, since that time, * * has * * * * *
+     *;--has run away with * * * * *; and _mysen_ (as my Nottinghamshire
+     friends call themselves) might as well have thrown myself out of
+     the window while you were singing, as intermarried where I did. You
+     and * * * * have come off the best of us. I speak merely of my
+     marriage, and its consequences, distresses, and calumnies; for I
+     have been much more happy, on the whole, _since_, than I ever could
+     have been with * *.
+
+     "I have read the recent article of Jeffrey in a faithful
+     transcription of the impartial Galignani. I suppose the long and
+     short of it is, that he wishes to provoke me to reply. But I won't,
+     for I owe him a good turn still for his kindness by-gone. Indeed, I
+     presume that the present opportunity of attacking me again was
+     irresistible; and I can't blame him, knowing what human nature is.
+     I shall make but one remark:--what does he mean by elaborate? The
+     whole volume was written with the greatest rapidity, in the midst
+     of evolutions, and revolutions, and persecutions, and proscriptions
+     of all who interested me in Italy. They said the same of 'Lara,'
+     which, _you_ know, was written amidst balls and fooleries, and
+     after coming home from masquerades and routs, in the summer of the
+     sovereigns. Of all I have ever written, they are perhaps the most
+     carelessly composed; and their faults, whatever they may be, are
+     those of negligence, and not of labour. I do not think this a
+     merit, but it is a fact.
+
+     "Yours ever and truly, N.B.
+
+     "P.S. You see the great advantage of my new signature;--it may
+     either stand for 'Nota Bene' or 'Noel Byron,' and, as such, will
+     save much repetition, in writing either books or letters. Since I
+     came here, I have been invited on board of the American squadron,
+     and treated with all possible honour and ceremony. They have asked
+     me to sit for my picture; and, as I was going away, an American
+     lady took a rose from me (which had been given to me by a very
+     pretty Italian lady that very morning), because, she said, 'She was
+     determined to send or take something which I had about me to
+     America.' _There_ is a kind of Lalla Rookh incident for you!
+     However, all these American honours arise, perhaps, not so much
+     from their enthusiasm for my 'Poeshie,' as their belief in my
+     dislike to the English,--in which I have the satisfaction to
+     coincide with them. I would rather, however, have a nod from an
+     American, than a snuff-box from an emperor."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 498. TO MR. ELLICE.
+
+     "Montenero, Leghorn, June 12. 1822.
+
+     "My dear Ellice,
+
+     "It is a long time since I have written to you, but I have not
+     forgotten your kindness, and I am now going to tax it--I hope not
+     too highly--but _don't_ be alarmed, it is _not_ a loan, but
+     _information_ which I am about to solicit. By your extensive
+     connections, no one can have better opportunities of hearing the
+     real state of _South_ America--I mean Bolivar's country. I have
+     many years had transatlantic projects of settlement, and what I
+     could wish from you would be some information of the best course to
+     pursue, and some letters of recommendation in case I should sail
+     for Angostura. I am told that land is very cheap there; but though
+     I have no great disposable funds to vest in such purchases, yet my
+     income, such as it is, would be sufficient in any country (except
+     England) for all the comforts of life, and for most of its
+     luxuries. The war there is now over, and as I do not go there to
+     _speculate_, but to settle, without any views but those of
+     independence and the enjoyment of the common civil rights, I should
+     presume such an arrival would not be unwelcome.
+
+     "All I request of you is, not to _dis_courage nor _en_courage, but
+     to give me such a statement as you think prudent and proper. I do
+     not address my other friends upon this subject, who would only
+     throw obstacles in my way, and bore me to return to England; which
+     I never will do, unless compelled by some insuperable cause. I have
+     a quantity of furniture, books, &c. &c. &c. which I could easily
+     ship from Leghorn; but I wish to 'look before I leap' over the
+     Atlantic. Is it true that for a few thousand dollars a large tract
+     of land may be obtained? I speak of _South_ America, recollect. I
+     have read some publications on the subject, but they seemed violent
+     and vulgar party productions. Please to address your answer[81] to
+     me at this place, and believe me ever and truly yours," &c.
+
+[Footnote 81: The answer which Mr. Ellice returned was, as might be
+expected, strongly dissuasive of this design. The wholly disorganised
+state of the country and its institutions, which it would take ages,
+perhaps, to restore even to the degree of industry and prosperity which
+it had enjoyed under the Spaniards, rendered Columbia, in his opinion,
+one of the last places in the world to which a man desirous of peace and
+quiet, or of security for his person and property, should resort to as
+an asylum. As long as Bolivar lived and maintained his authority, every
+reliance, Mr. Ellice added, might be placed on his integrity and
+firmness; but with his death a new aera of struggle and confusion would
+be sure to arise.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+About this time he sat for his picture to Mr. West, an American artist,
+who has himself given, in one of our periodical publications, the
+following account of his noble sitter:--
+
+"On the day appointed, I arrived at two o'clock, and began the picture.
+I found him a bad sitter. He talked all the time, and asked a multitude
+of questions about America--how I liked Italy, what I thought of the
+Italians, &c. When he was silent, he was a better sitter than before;
+for he assumed a countenance that did not belong to him, as though he
+were thinking of a frontispiece for Childe Harold. In about an hour our
+first sitting terminated, and I returned to Leghorn, scarcely able to
+persuade myself that this was the haughty misanthrope whose character
+had always appeared so enveloped in gloom and mystery; for I do not
+remember ever to have met with manners more gentle and attractive.
+
+"The next day I returned and had another sitting of an hour, during
+which he seemed anxious to know what I should make of my undertaking.
+Whilst I was painting, the window from which I received my light became
+suddenly darkened, and I heard a voice exclaim 'e troppo bello!' I
+turned, and discovered a beautiful female stooping down to look in, the
+ground on the outside being on a level with the bottom of the window.
+Her long golden hair hung down about her face and shoulders, her
+complexion was exquisite, and her smile completed one of the most
+romantic-looking heads, set off as it was by the bright sun behind it,
+which I had ever beheld. Lord Byron invited her to come in, and
+introduced her to me as the Countess Guiccioli. He seemed very fond of
+her, and I was glad of her presence, for the playful manner which he
+assumed towards her made him a much better sitter.
+
+"The next day, I was pleased to find that the progress which I had made
+in his likeness had given satisfaction, for, when we were alone, he
+said that he had a particular favour to request of me--would I grant it?
+I said I should be happy to oblige him; and he enjoined me to the
+flattering task of painting the Countess Guiccioli's portrait for him.
+On the following morning I began it, and, after, they sat alternately.
+He gave me the whole history of his connection with her, and said that
+he hoped it would last for ever; at any rate, it should not be his fault
+if it did not. His other attachments had been broken off by no fault of
+his.
+
+"I was by this time sufficiently intimate with him to answer his
+question as to what I thought of him before I had seen him. He laughed
+much at the idea which I had formed of him, and said, 'Well, you find me
+like other people, do you not?' He often afterwards repeated, 'And so
+you thought me a finer fellow, did you?' I remember once telling him,
+that notwithstanding his vivacity, I thought myself correct in at least
+one estimate which I had made of him, for I still conceived that he was
+not a happy man. He enquired earnestly what reason I had for thinking
+so, and I asked him if he had never observed in little children, after a
+paroxysm of grief, that they had at intervals a convulsive or tremulous
+manner of drawing in a long breath. Wherever I had observed this, in
+persons of whatever age, I had always found that it came from sorrow. He
+said the thought was new to him, and that he would make use of it.
+
+"Lord Byron, and all the party, left Villa Rossa (the name of their
+house) in a few days, to pack up their things in their house at Pisa.
+He told me that he should remain a few days there, and desired me, if I
+could do any thing more to the pictures, to come and stay with him. He
+seemed at a loss where to go, and was, I thought, on the point of
+embarking for America. I was with him at Pisa for a few days; but he was
+so annoyed by the police, and the weather was so hot, that I thought it
+doubtful whether I could improve the pictures, and, taking my departure
+one morning before he was up, I wrote him an excuse from Leghorn. Upon
+the whole, I left him with an impression that he possessed an excellent
+heart, which had been misconstrued on all hands from little else than a
+reckless levity of manners, which he took a whimsical pride in opposing
+to those of other people."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 499. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Pisa, July 6. 1822.
+
+     "I return you the revise. I have softened the part to which Gifford
+     objected, and changed the name of Michael to Raphael, who was an
+     angel of gentler sympathies. By the way, recollect to alter Michael
+     to _Raphael_ in the _scene_ itself throughout, for I have only had
+     time to do so in the list of the dramatis personae, and _scratch out
+     all the pencil-marks_, to avoid puzzling the printers. I have given
+     the '_Vision of Quevedo Redivivus_' to John Hunt, which will
+     relieve you from a dilemma. He must publish it at his _own_ risk,
+     as it is at his own desire. Give him the _corrected_ copy which
+     Mr. Kinnaird had, as it is mitigated partly, and also the preface.
+
+     "Yours," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 500. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Pisa, July 8. 1822.
+
+     "Last week I returned you the packet of proofs. You had, perhaps,
+     better not publish in the same volume the _Po_ and _Rimini_
+     translation.
+
+     "I have consigned a letter to Mr. John Hunt for the 'Vision of
+     Judgment,' which you will hand over to him. Also the 'Pulci,'
+     original and Italian, and any _prose_ tracts of mine; for Mr. Leigh
+     Hunt is arrived here, and thinks of commencing a periodical work,
+     to which I shall contribute. I do not propose to you to be the
+     publisher, because I know that you are unfriends; but all things in
+     your care, except the volume now in the press, and the manuscript
+     purchased of Mr. Moore, can be given for this purpose, according as
+     they are wanted.
+
+     "With regard to what you say about your 'want of memory,' I can
+     only remark, that you inserted the note to Marino Faliero against
+     my positive revocation, and that you omitted the Dedication of
+     Sardanapalus to Goethe (place it before the volume now in the
+     press), both of which were things not very agreeable to me, and
+     which I could wish to be avoided in future, as they might be with a
+     very little care, or a simple memorandum in your pocket-book.
+
+     "It is not impossible that I may have three or four cantos of Don
+     Juan ready by autumn, or a little later, as I obtained a permission
+     from my dictatress to continue it,--_provided always_ it was to be
+     more guarded and decorous and sentimental in the continuation than
+     in the commencement. How far these conditions have been fulfilled
+     may be seen, perhaps, by-and-by; but the embargo was only taken off
+     upon these stipulations. You can answer at your leisure. Yours,"
+     &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 501. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Pisa, July 12. 1822.
+
+     "I have written to you lately, but not in answer to your last
+     letter of about a fortnight ago. I wish to know (and request an
+     answer to _that_ point) what became of the stanzas to Wellington
+     (intended to open a canto of Don Juan with), which I sent you
+     several months ago. If they have fallen into Murray's hands, he and
+     the Tories will suppress them, as those lines rate that hero at his
+     real value. Pray be explicit on this, as I have no other copy,
+     having sent you the original; and if you have them, let me have
+     _that_ again, or a _copy_ correct.
+
+     "I subscribed at Leghorn two hundred Tuscan crowns to your Irishism
+     committee; it is about a thousand francs, more or less. As Sir
+     C.S., who receives thirteen thousand a year of the public money,
+     could not afford more than a thousand livres out of his enormous
+     salary, it would have appeared ostentatious in a private individual
+     to pretend to surpass him; and therefore I have sent but the above
+     sum, as you will see by the enclosed receipt.[82]
+
+     "Leigh Hunt is here, after a voyage of eight months, during which
+     he has, I presume, made the Periplus of Hanno the Carthaginian, and
+     with much the same speed. He is setting up a Journal, to which I
+     have promised to contribute; and in the first number the 'Vision of
+     Judgment, by Quevedo Redivivus,' will probably appear, with other
+     articles.
+
+     "Can you give us any thing? He seems sanguine about the matter, but
+     (entre nous) I am not. I do not, however, like to put him out of
+     spirits by saying so; for he is bilious and unwell. Do, pray,
+     answer _this_ letter immediately.
+
+     "Do send Hunt any thing in prose or verse, of yours, to start him
+     handsomely--any lyrical, _irical_, or what you please.
+
+     "Has not your Potatoe Committee been blundering? Your advertisement
+     says, that Mr. L. Callaghan (a queer name for a banker) hath been
+     disposing of money in Ireland 'sans authority of the Committee.' I
+     suppose it will end in Callaghan's calling out the Committee, the
+     chairman of which carries pistols in his pocket, of course.
+
+     "When you can spare time from _duetting, coquetting_, and
+     claretting with your Hibernians of both sexes, let me have a line
+     from you. I doubt whether Paris is a good place for the composition
+     of your new poesy."
+
+[Footnote 82: "Received from Mr. Henry Dunn the sum of two hundred
+Tuscan crowns (for account of the Right Honourable Lord Noel Byron), for
+the purpose of assisting the Irish poor.
+
+"Thomas Hall.
+
+"Leghorn, 9th July, 1822. Tuscan crowns, 200."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 502. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Pisa, August 8. 1822.
+
+     "You will have heard by this time that Shelley and another
+     gentleman (Captain Williams) were drowned about a month ago (a
+     _month_ yesterday), in a squall off the Gulf of Spezia. There is
+     thus another man gone, about whom the world was ill-naturedly, and
+     ignorantly, and brutally mistaken. It will, perhaps, do him justice
+     _now_, when he can be no better for it.[83]
+
+     "I have not seen the thing you mention[84], and only heard of it
+     casually, nor have I any desire. The price is, as I saw in some
+     advertisements, fourteen shillings, which is too much to pay for a
+     libel on oneself. Some one said in a letter, that it was a Doctor
+     Watkins, who deals in the life and libel line. It must have
+     diminished your natural pleasure, as a friend (vide
+     Rochefoucault), to see yourself in it.
+
+     "With regard to the Blackwood fellows, I never published any thing
+     against them; nor, indeed, have seen their magazine (except in
+     Galignani's extracts) for these three years past. I once wrote, a
+     good while ago, some remarks [85] on their review of Don Juan, but
+     saying very little about themselves, and these were _not_
+     published. If you think that I ought to follow your example[86](and
+     I like to be in your company when I can) in contradicting their
+     impudence, you may shape this declaration of mine into a similar
+     paragraph for me. It is possible that you may have seen the little
+     I _did_ write (and never published) at Murray's;--it contained much
+     more about Southey than about the Blacks.
+
+     "If you think that I ought to do any thing about Watkins's book, I
+     should not care much about publishing _my Memoir now_, should it be
+     necessary to counteract the fellow. But, in _that_ case, I should
+     like to look over the _press_ myself. Let me know what you think,
+     or whether I had better _not_;--at least, not the second part,
+     which touches on the actual confines of still existing matters.
+
+     "I have written three more Cantos of Don Juan, and am hovering on
+     the brink of another (the ninth). The reason I want the stanzas
+     again which I sent you is, that as these cantos contain a full
+     detail (like the storm in Canto Second) of the siege and assault of
+     Ismael, with much of sarcasm on those butchers in large business,
+     your mercenary soldiery, it is a good opportunity of gracing the
+     poem with * * *. With these things and these fellows, it is
+     necessary, in the present clash of philosophy and tyranny, to throw
+     away the scabbard. I know it is against fearful odds; but the
+     battle must be fought; and it will be eventually for the good of
+     mankind, whatever it may be for the individual who risks himself.
+
+     "What do you think of your Irish bishop? Do you remember Swift's
+     line, 'Let me have a _barrack_--a fig for the _clergy_?' This seems
+     to have been his reverence's motto. * * *
+
+     "Yours," &c.
+
+[Footnote 83: In a letter to Mr. Murray, of an earlier date, which has
+been omitted to avoid repetitions, he says on the same subject, "You
+were all mistaken about Shelley, who was, without exception, the _best_
+and least selfish man I ever knew." There is also another passage in the
+same letter which, for its perfect truth, I must quote:--"I have
+received your scrap, with Henry Drury's letter enclosed. It is just like
+him--always kind and ready to oblige his old friends."]
+
+[Footnote 84: A book which had just appeared, entitled "Memoirs of the
+Right Hon. Lord Byron."]
+
+[Footnote 85: The remarkable pamphlet from which extracts have been
+already given in this work.]
+
+[Footnote 86: It had been asserted in a late Number of Blackwood, that
+both Lord Byron and myself were employed in writing satires against that
+Magazine.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 503. TO MR. MOORE.
+
+     "Pisa, August 27. 1822.
+
+     "It is boring to trouble you with 'such small gear;' but it must be
+     owned that I should be glad if you would enquire whether my Irish
+     subscription ever reached the committee in Paris from Leghorn. My
+     reasons, like Vellum's, 'are threefold:'--First, I doubt the
+     accuracy of all almoners, or remitters of benevolent cash; second,
+     I do suspect that the said Committee, having in part served its
+     time to time-serving, may have kept back the acknowledgment of an
+     obnoxious politician's name in their lists; and third, I feel
+     pretty sure that I shall one day be twitted by the government
+     scribes for having been a professor of love for Ireland, and not
+     coming forward with the others in her distresses.
+
+     "It is not, as you may opine, that I am ambitious of having my name
+     in the papers, as I can have that any day in the week gratis. All I
+     want is to know if the Reverend Thomas Hall did or did not remit
+     my subscription (200 scudi of Tuscany, or about a thousand francs,
+     more or less,) to the Committee at Paris.
+
+     "The other day at Viareggio, I thought proper to swim off to my
+     schooner (the Bolivar) in the offing, and thence to shore
+     again--about three miles, or better, in all. As it was at mid-day,
+     under a broiling sun, the consequence has been a feverish attack,
+     and my whole skin's coming off, after going through the process of
+     one large continuous blister, raised by the sun and sea together. I
+     have suffered much pain; not being able to lie on my back, or even
+     side; for my shoulders and arms were equally St. Bartholomewed. But
+     it is over,--and I have got a new skin, and am as glossy as a snake
+     in its new suit.
+
+     "We have been burning the bodies of Shelley and Williams on the
+     sea-shore, to render them fit for removal and regular interment.
+     You can have no idea what an extraordinary effect such a funeral
+     pile has, on a desolate shore, with mountains in the background and
+     the sea before, and the singular appearance the salt and
+     frankincense gave to the flame. All of Shelley was consumed, except
+     his _heart_, which would not take the flame, and is now preserved
+     in spirits of wine.
+
+     "Your old acquaintance Londonderry has quietly died at North Cray!
+     and the virtuous De Witt was torn in pieces by the populace! What a
+     lucky * * the Irishman has been in his life and end.[87] In him
+     your Irish Franklin est mort!
+
+     "Leigh Hunt is sweating articles for his new Journal; and both he
+     and I think it somewhat shabby in _you_ not to contribute. Will you
+     become one of the _properrioters_? 'Do, and we go snacks.' I
+     recommend you to think twice before you respond in the negative.
+
+     "I have nearly (_quite three_) four new cantos of Don Juan ready. I
+     obtained permission from the female Censor Morum of _my_ morals to
+     continue it, provided it were immaculate; so I have been as decent
+     as need be. There is a deal of war--a siege, and all that, in the
+     style, graphical and technical, of the shipwreck in Canto Second,
+     which 'took,' as they say, in the Row.
+
+     Yours, &c.
+
+     "P.S. That * * * Galignani has about ten lies in one paragraph. It
+     was not a Bible that was found in Shelley's pocket, but John
+     Keats's poems. However, it would not have been strange, for he was
+     a great admirer of Scripture as a composition. _I_ did not send my
+     bust to the academy of New York; but I sat for my picture to young
+     West, an American artist, at the request of some members of that
+     Academy to _him_ that he would take my portrait,--for the Academy,
+     I believe.[88]
+
+     "I had, and still have, thoughts of South America, but am
+     fluctuating between it and Greece. I should have gone, long ago, to
+     one of them, but for my liaison with the Countess Gi.; for love, in
+     these days, is little compatible with glory. _She_ would be
+     delighted to go too; but I do not choose to expose her to a long
+     voyage, and a residence in an unsettled country, where I shall
+     probably take a part of some sort."
+
+[Footnote 87: The particulars of this event had, it is evident, not yet
+readied him.]
+
+[Footnote 88: This portrait, though destined for America, was, it
+appears, never sent thither. A few copies of it have since been painted
+by Mr. West, but the original picture was purchased by Mr. Joy, of
+Hartham Park, Wilts; who is also the possessor of the original portrait
+of Madame Guiccioli, by the same artist.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Soon after the above letters were written, Lord Byron removed to Genoa,
+having taken a house, called the Villa Saluzzo, at Albaro, one of the
+suburbs of that city. From the time of the unlucky squabble with the
+serjeant-major at Pisa, his tranquillity had been considerably broken in
+upon, as well by the judicial enquiries consequent upon that event, as
+by the many sinister rumours and suspicions to which it gave rise.
+Though the wounded man had recovered, his friends all vowed vengeance
+with the dagger: and the sensation which the affair and its various
+consequences had produced was,--to Madame Guiccioli more particularly,
+from the situation in which her family stood, in regard to
+politics,--distressing and alarming. While the impression, too, of this
+event was still recent, another circumstance occurred which, though
+comparatively unimportant, had the unlucky effect of again drawing the
+attention of the Tuscans to their new visitors. During Lord Byron's
+short visit to Leghorn, a Swiss servant in his employ having quarrelled,
+on some occasion, with the brother of Madame Guiccioli, drew his knife
+upon the young Count, and wounded him slightly on the cheek. This
+affray, happening so soon after the other, was productive also of so
+much notice and conversation, that the Tuscan government, in its horror
+of every thing like disturbance, thought itself called upon to
+interfere; and orders were accordingly issued, that, within four days,
+the two Counts Gamba, father and son, should depart from Tuscany. To
+Lord Byron this decision was, in the highest degree, provoking and
+disconcerting; it being one of the conditions of the Guiccioli's
+separation from her husband, that she should thenceforward reside under
+the same roof with her father. After balancing in his mind between
+various projects,--sometimes thinking of Geneva, and sometimes, as we
+have seen, of South America,--he at length decided, for the present, to
+transfer his residence to Genoa.
+
+His habits of life, while at Pisa, had but very little differed, except
+in the new line of society into which his introduction to Shelley's
+friends led him,--from the usual monotonous routine in which, so
+singularly for one of his desultory disposition, the daily course of
+his existence had now, for some years, flowed. At two he usually
+breakfasted, and at three, or, as the year advanced, four o'clock, those
+persons who were in the habit of accompanying him in his rides, called
+upon him. After, occasionally, a game of billiards, he proceeded,--and,
+in order to avoid starers, in his carriage,--as far as the gates of the
+town, where his horses met him. At first the route he chose for these
+rides was in the direction of the Cascine and of the pine-forest that
+reaches towards the sea; but having found a spot more convenient for his
+pistol exercise on the road leading from the Porta alla Spiaggia to the
+east of the city, he took daily this course during the remainder of his
+stay. When arrived at the Podere or farm, in the garden of which they
+were allowed to erect their target, his friends and he dismounted, and,
+after devoting about half an hour to a trial of skill at the pistol,
+returned, a little before sunset, into the city.
+
+"Lord Byron," says a friend who was sometimes present at their
+practising, "was the best marksman. Shelley, and Williams, and
+Trelawney, often made as good shots as he--but they were not so certain;
+and he, though his hand trembled violently, never missed, for he
+calculated on this vibration, and depended entirely on his eye. Once
+after demolishing his mark, he set up a slender cane, whose colour,
+nearly the same as the gravel in which it was fixed, might well have
+deceived him, and at twenty paces he divided it with his bullet. His joy
+at a good shot, and his vexation at a failure, was great--and when we
+met him on his return, his cold salutation, or joyous laugh, told the
+tale of the day's success."
+
+For the first time since his arrival in Italy, he now found himself
+tempted to give dinner parties; his guests being, besides Count Gamba
+and Shelley, Mr. Williams, Captain Medwin, Mr. Taafe, and Mr.
+Trelawney;--and "never," as his friend Shelley used to say, "did he
+display himself to more advantage than on these occasions; being at once
+polite and cordial, full of social hilarity and the most perfect good
+humour; never diverging into ungraceful merriment, and yet keeping up
+the spirit of liveliness throughout the evening." About midnight his
+guests generally left him, with the exception of Captain Medwin, who
+used to remain, as I understand, talking and drinking with his noble
+host till far into the morning; and to the careless, half mystifying
+confidences of these nocturnal sittings, implicitly listened to and
+confusedly recollected, we owe the volume with which Captain Medwin,
+soon after the death of the noble poet, favoured the world.
+
+On the subject of this and other such intimacies formed by Lord Byron,
+not only at the period of which we are speaking, but throughout his
+whole life, it would be difficult to advance any thing more judicious,
+or more demonstrative of a true knowledge of his character, than is to
+be found in the following remarks of one who had studied him with her
+whole heart,--who had learned to regard him with the eyes of good sense,
+as well as of affection, and whose strong love, in short, was founded
+upon a basis the most creditable both to him and herself,--the being
+able to understand him.[89]
+
+"We continued in Pisa even more rigorously to absent ourselves from
+society. However, as there were a good many English in Pisa, he could
+not avoid becoming acquainted with various friends of Shelley, among
+which number was Mr. Medwin. They followed him in his rides, dined with
+him, and felt themselves happy, of course, in the apparent intimacy in
+which they lived with so renowned a man; but not one of them was
+admitted to any part of his friendship, which, indeed, he did not easily
+accord. He had a great affection for Shelley, and a great esteem for his
+character and talents; but he was not his friend in the most extensive
+sense of that word. Sometimes, when speaking of his friends and of
+friendship, as also of love, and of every other noble emotion of the
+soul, his expressions might inspire doubts concerning his sentiments and
+the goodness of his heart. The feeling of the moment regulated his
+speech, and, besides, he liked to play the part of singularity,--and
+sometimes worse,--more especially with those whom he suspected of
+endeavouring to make discoveries as to his real character; but it was
+only mean minds and superficial observers that could be deceived in him.
+It was necessary to consider his actions to perceive the contradiction
+they bore to his words: it was necessary to be witness of certain
+moments, during which unforeseen and involuntary emotion forced him to
+give himself entirely up to his feelings; and whoever beheld him then,
+became aware of the stores of sensibility and goodness of which his
+noble heart was full.
+
+"Among the many occasions _I_ had of seeing him thus overpowered, I
+shall mention one relative to his feelings of friendship. A few days
+before leaving Pisa, we were one evening seated in the garden of the
+Palazzo Lanfranchi. A soft melancholy was spread over his countenance;
+he recalled to mind the events of his life; compared them with his
+present situation, and with that which it might have been if his
+affection for me had not caused him to remain in Italy, saying things
+which would have made earth a paradise for me, but that even then a
+presentiment that I should lose all this happiness tormented me. At this
+moment a servant announced Mr. Hobhouse. The slight shade of melancholy
+diffused over Lord Byron's face gave instant place to the liveliest joy;
+but it was so great, that it almost deprived him of strength. A fearful
+paleness came over his cheeks, and his eyes were filled with tears as he
+embraced his friend. His emotion was so great that he was forced to sit
+down.
+
+"Lord Clare's visit also occasioned him extreme delight. He had a great
+affection for Lord Clare, and was very happy during the short visit that
+he paid him at Leghorn. The day on which they separated was a melancholy
+one for Lord Byron. 'I have a presentiment that I shall never see him
+more,' he said, and his eyes filled with tears. The same melancholy came
+over him during the first weeks that succeeded to Lord Clare's
+departure, whenever his conversation happened to fall upon this
+friend."[90]
+
+Of his feelings on the death of his daughter Allegra, this lady gives
+the following account:--"On the occasion also of the death of his
+natural daughter, I saw in his grief the excess of paternal kindness.
+His conduct towards this child was always that of a fond father; but no
+one would have guessed from his expressions that he felt this affection
+for her. He was dreadfully agitated by the first intelligence of her
+illness; and when afterwards that of her death arrived, I was obliged to
+fulfil the melancholy task of communicating it to him. The memory of
+that frightful moment is stamped indelibly on my mind. For several
+evenings he had not left his house, I therefore went to him. His first
+question was relative to the courier he had despatched for tidings of
+his daughter, and whose delay disquieted him. After a short interval of
+suspense, with every caution which my own sorrow suggested, I deprived
+him of all hope of the child's recovery. 'I understand,' said he,--'it
+is enough, say no more.' A mortal paleness spread itself over his face,
+his strength failed him, and he sunk into a seat. His look was fixed,
+and the expression such that I began to fear for his reason; he did not
+shed a tear, and his countenance manifested so hopeless, so profound, so
+sublime a sorrow, that at the moment he appeared a being of a nature
+superior to humanity. He remained immovable in the same attitude for an
+hour, and no consolation which I endeavoured to afford him seemed to
+reach his ears, far less his heart. But enough of this sad episode, on
+which I cannot linger, even after the lapse of so many years, without
+renewing in my own heart the awful wretchedness of that day. He desired
+to be left alone, and I was obliged to leave him. I found him on the
+following morning tranquillised, and with an expression of religious
+resignation on his features. 'She is more fortunate than we are,' he
+said; 'besides, her position in the world would scarcely have allowed
+her to be happy. It is God's will--let us mention it no more.' And from
+that day he would never pronounce her name; but became more anxious
+when he spoke of Ada,--so much so as to disquiet himself when the usual
+accounts sent him were for a post or two delayed."[91]
+
+The melancholy death of poor Shelley, which happened, as we have seen,
+also during this period, seems to have affected Lord Byron's mind, less
+with grief for the actual loss of his friend, than with bitter
+indignation against those who had, through life, so grossly
+misrepresented him; and never certainly was there an instance where the
+supposed absence of all religion in an individual was assumed so eagerly
+as an excuse for the absence of all charity in judging him. Though never
+personally acquainted with Mr. Shelley, I can join freely with those who
+most loved him in admiring the various excellences of his heart and
+genius, and lamenting the too early doom that robbed us of the mature
+fruits of both. His short life had been, like his poetry, a sort of
+bright erroneous dream,--false in the general principles on which it
+proceeded, though beautiful and attaching in most of the details. Had
+full time been allowed for the "over-light" of his imagination to have
+been tempered down by the judgment which, in him, was still in reserve,
+the world at large would have been taught to pay that high homage to his
+genius which those only who saw what he was capable of can now be
+expected to accord to it.
+
+It was about this time that Mr. Cowell, paying a visit to Lord Byron at
+Genoa, was told by him that some friends of Mr. Shelley, sitting
+together one evening, had seen that gentleman, distinctly, as they
+thought, walk into a little wood at Lerici, when at the same moment, as
+they afterwards discovered, he was far away in quite a different
+direction. "This," added Lord Byron, in a low, awe-struck tone of
+voice, "was but ten days before poor Shelley died."
+
+[Footnote 89: My poor Zimmerman, who now will understand thee?"--such
+was the touching speech addressed to Zimmerman by his wife, on her
+death-bed; and there is implied in these few words all that a man of
+morbid sensibility must be dependant for upon the tender and
+self-forgetting tolerance of the woman with whom he is united.]
+
+[Footnote 90: "In Pisa abbiamo continuato anche piu rigorosaraente a
+vivere lontano dalla societa. Essendosi pero in Pisa molti Inglesi egli
+non pote escusarsi dal fare la conoscenza di varii amici di Shelley, fra
+i quali uno fu Mr. Medwin. Essi lo seguitavano al passeggio, pranzavono
+con lui e certamente si tenevano felici della apparente intimita che
+loro accordava un uomo cosi superiore. Ma nessuno di loro fu ammesso mai
+a porta della sua amicizia, che egli non era facile a accordare. Per
+Shelley egli aveva dell' affezione, e molta stima pel suo carattere e
+pel suo talento, ma non era suo amico nel estensione del senso che si
+deva dare alla parola amicizia. Talvolta parlando egli de' suoi amici, e
+dell' amicizia, come pure dell' amore, e di ogni altro nobile sentimento
+dell' anima, potevano i suoi discorsi far nascere dei dubbii sui veri
+suoi sentimenti, e sulla bonta del suo core. Una impressione momentanea
+regolava i suoi discorsi; e di piu egli amava anche a rappresentare un
+personaggio bizzarro, e qualche volta anche peggio,--specialmente con
+quelli che egli pensava volessero studiare e fare delle scoperte sul suo
+carattere. Ma nell' inganno non poteva cadere che una piccola mente, e
+un osservatore superficiale. Bisognava esaminare le sue azioni per
+sentire tutta le contraddizione che era fra di esse e i suoi discorsi;
+bisognava vederlo in certi momenti in cui per una emozione improvisa e
+piu forte della sua volonta la sua anima si abbandonava interamente a se
+stessa;--bisognava vederlo allora per scoprire i tesori di sensibilita e
+di bonta che erano in quella nobile anima.
+
+"Fra le tante volte che io l'ho veduto in simili circostanze ne
+ricordero una che risguarda i suoi sentimenti di amicizia. Pochi giorni
+prima di lasciare Pisa eravamo verso sera insieme seduti nel giardino
+del Palazzo Lanfranchi. Una dolce malinconia era sparsa sul suo viso.
+Egli riandava col pensiero gli avvenimenti della sua vita e faceva il
+confronto colle attuale sue situazione e quella che avrebbe potuta
+essere se la sua affezione per me non lo avesse fatto restare in Italia;
+e diceva cose che avrebbero resa per me la terra un paradiso, se giA
+sino d'allora il pressentimento di perdere tanta felicita non mi avesse
+tormentata. In questo mentre un domestico annuncio Mr. Hobhouse. La
+leggiera tinta di malinconia sparsa sul viso di Byron fece, luogo
+subitamente alia piu viva gioia; ma essa fu cosi forte che gli tolse
+quasi le forze. Un pallore commovente ricoperse il suo volto, e nell'
+abbracciare il suo amico i suoi occhi erano pieni di lacrime di
+contento. E l'emozione fu cosi forte che egli fu obbligato di sedersi,
+sentendosi mancare le forze.
+
+"La venuta pure di Lord Clare fu per lui un epoca di grande felicita.
+Egli amava sommamente Lord Clare--egli era cosi felice in quel breve
+tempo che passo presso di lui a Livorno, e il giorno in cui si
+separarono fu un giorno di grande tristezza per Lord Byron. 'Io ho il
+pressentimento che non lo vedro piu,' diceva egli; e i suoi occhi si
+riempirano di lacrime; e in questo stato l'ho veduto per varii
+settimanie dopo la partenza di Lord Clare, ogni qual volta il discorso
+cadeva sopra di codesto il suo amico."]
+
+[Footnote 91: "Nell' occasione pure della morire della sua figlia
+naturale io ho veduto nel suo dolore tuttocio che vi e di piu profondo
+nella tenerezza paterna. La sua condotta verso di codesta fanciulla era
+stata sempre quella del padre il piu amoroso; ma dalle di lui parole non
+si sarebbe giudicato che avesse tanta affezione per lei. Alia prima
+notizia della di lei malattia egli fu sommamente agitato; giunse poi la
+notizia della morte, ed io dovessi esercitare il tristo uficio di
+participarla a Lord Byron. Quel sensibile momenta sara indelebile nella
+mia memoria. Egli non usciva da varii giorni la sera: io andai dunque da
+lui. La prima domauda che egli mi fece fu relativa al Corriere che egli
+aveva spedito per avere notizie della sua figlia, e di cui il retardo lo
+inquietava. Dopo qualche momento di sospensione con tutta l'arte che
+sapeva suggerirmi il mio proprio dotore gli tolsi ogni speranza della
+guarizione della fanciulla. 'Ho inteso,' disse egli--'basta cosi--non
+dite di piu'--e un pallore mortale si sparse sul suo volto; le forze gli
+mancarono, e cadde sopra una sedia d'appoggio. Il suo sguardo era fisso
+e tale che mi fece temere per la sua ragione. Egli rimase in quello
+stato d'immobilita un' ora; e nessuna parola di consolazione che io
+potessi indirezzargli pareva penetrare le sue orecchie non che il suo
+core. Ma basta cosi di questa trista detenzione nella quale non posso
+fermarmi dopo tanti anni senza risvegliare di nuovo nel mio animo le
+terribile sofferenze di quel giorno. La mattina lo trovai tranquillo, e
+con una espressione di religiosa rassegnazione nel suo volto. 'Ella e
+piu felice di noi,' diss' egli--'d'altronde la sua situazione nel mondo
+non le avrebbe data forse felicita. Dio ha voluto cosi--non ne parliamo
+piu.' E da quel giorno in poi non ha piu voluto proferire il nome di
+quella fanciulla. Ma e divenuto piu pensieroso parlando di Adda, al
+punto di tormentarsi quando gli ritardavano di qualche ordinario le di
+lei notizie."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 504. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Genoa, October 9. 1822.
+
+     "I have received your letter, and as you explain it, I have no
+     objection, on _your_ account, to omit those passages in the new
+     Mystery (which were marked in the half-sheet sent the other day to
+     Pisa), or the passage in _Cain_;--but why not be open and say so at
+     _first_? You should be more straight-forward on every account.
+
+     "I have been very unwell--four days confined to my bed in 'the
+     worst inn's worst room,' at Lerici, with a violent rheumatic and
+     bilious attack, constipation, and the devil knows what: no
+     physician, except a young fellow, who, however, was kind and
+     cautious, and that's enough.
+
+     "At last I seized Thompson's book of prescriptions (a donation of
+     yours), and physicked myself with the first dose I found in it; and
+     after undergoing the ravages of all kinds of decoctions, sallied
+     from bed on the fifth day to cross the Gulf to Sestri. The sea
+     revived me instantly; and I ate the sailor's cold fish, and drank a
+     gallon of country wine, and got to Genoa the same night after
+     landing at Sestri, and have ever since been keeping well, but
+     thinner, and with an occasional cough towards evening.
+
+     "I am afraid the Journal _is a bad_ business, and won't do; but in
+     it I am sacrificing _myself_ for others--_I_ can have no advantage
+     in it. I believe the _brothers Hunts_ to be honest men; I am sure
+     that they are poor ones; they have not a nap. They pressed me to
+     engage in this work, and in an evil hour I consented. Still I shall
+     not repent, if I can do them the least service. I have done all I
+     can for Leigh Hunt since he came here; but it is almost
+     useless:--his wife is ill, his six children not very tractable, and
+     in the affairs of this world he himself is a child. The death of
+     Shelley left them totally aground; and I could not see them in such
+     a state without using the common feelings of humanity, and what
+     means were in my power, to set them afloat again.
+
+     "So Douglas Kinnaird is out of the way? He was so the last time I
+     sent him a parcel, and he gives no previous notice. When is he
+     expected again?
+
+     "Yours, &c.
+
+     "P.S. Will you say at once--do you publish Werner and the Mystery
+     or not? You never once allude to them.
+
+     "That curst advertisement of Mr. J. Hunt is out of the limits. I
+     did not lend him my name to be hawked about in this way.
+
+     "However, I believe--at least, hope--that after all you may be a
+     good fellow at bottom, and it is on this presumption that I now
+     write to you on the subject of a poor woman of the name of _Yossy_,
+     who is, or was, an author of yours, as she says, and published a
+     book on Switzerland in 1816, patronised by the 'Court and Colonel
+     M'Mahon.' But it seems that neither the Court nor the Colonel could
+     get over the portentous price of three pounds, thirteen, and
+     sixpence,' which alarmed the too susceptible public; and, in short,
+     'the book died away,' and, what is worse, the poor soul's husband
+     died too, and she writes with the man a corpse before her; but
+     instead of addressing the bishop or Mr. Wilberforce, she hath
+     recourse to that proscribed, atheistical, syllogistical,
+     phlogistical person, _mysen_, as they say in Notts. It is strange
+     enough, but the rascaille English who calumniate me in every
+     direction and on every score, whenever they are in great distress
+     recur to me for assistance. If I have had one example of this, I
+     have had letters from a thousand, and as far as is in my power have
+     tried to repay good for evil, and purchase a shilling's worth of
+     salvation as long as my pocket can hold out.
+
+     "Now, I am willing to do what I can for this unfortunate person;
+     but her situation and her wishes (not unreasonable, however,)
+     require more than can be advanced by one individual like myself;
+     for I have many claims of the same kind just at present, and also
+     some remnants of _debt_ to pay in England--God, he knows, the
+     _latter_ how reluctantly! Can the Literary Fund do nothing for her?
+     By your interest, which is great among the pious, I dare say that
+     something might be collected. Can you get any of her books
+     published? Suppose you took her as author in my place, now vacant
+     among your ragamuffins; she is a moral and pious person, and will
+     shine upon your shelves. But seriously, do what you can for her."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 505. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Genoa, 9bre 23. 1822.
+
+     "I have to thank you for a parcel of books, which are very welcome,
+     especially Sir Walter's gift of 'Halidon Hill.' You have sent me a
+     copy of 'Werner,' but _without_ the preface. If you have published
+     it _without_, you will have plunged me into a very disagreeable
+     dilemma, because I shall be accused of plagiarism from Miss Lee's
+     German's Tale, whereas I have fully and freely acknowledged that
+     the drama is entirely taken from the story.
+
+     "I return you the Quarterly Review, uncut and unopened, not from
+     disrespect or disregard or pique, but it is a kind of reading which
+     I have some time disused, as I think the periodical style of
+     writing hurtful to the habits of the mind, by presenting the
+     superfices of too many things at once. I do not know that it
+     contains any thing disagreeable to me--it may or it may not; nor do
+     I return it on account that there _may_ be an article which you
+     hinted at in one of your late letters, but because I have left off
+     reading these kind of works, and should equally have returned you
+     any other number.
+
+     "I am obliged to take in one or two abroad, because solicited to do
+     so. The Edinburgh came before me by mere chance in Galignani's
+     picnic sort of gazette, where he had inserted a part of it.
+
+     "You will have received various letters from me lately, in a style
+     which I used with reluctance; but you left me no other choice by
+     your absolute refusal to communicate with a man you did not like
+     upon the mere simple matter of transfer of a few papers of little
+     consequence (except to their author), and which could be of no
+     moment to yourself.
+
+     "I hope that Mr. Kinnaird is better. It is strange that you never
+     alluded to his accident, if it be true, as stated in the papers. I
+     am yours, &c. &c.
+
+     "I hope that you have a milder winter than we have had here. We
+     have had inundations worthy of the Trent or Po, and the conductor
+     (Franklin's) of my house was struck (or supposed to be stricken) by
+     a thunderbolt. I was so near the window that I was dazzled and my
+     eyes hurt for several minutes, and everybody in the house felt an
+     electric shock at the moment. Madame Guiccioli was frightened, as
+     you may suppose.
+
+     "I have thought since that your bigots would have 'saddled me with
+     a judgment' (as Thwackum did Square when he bit his tongue in
+     talking metaphysics), if any thing had happened of consequence.
+     These fellows always forget Christ in their Christianity, and what
+     he said when 'the tower of Siloam fell.'
+
+     "To-day is the 9th, and the 10th is my surviving daughter's
+     birth-day. I have ordered, as a regale, a mutton chop and a bottle
+     of ale. She is seven years old, I believe. Did I ever tell you that
+     the day I came of age I dined on eggs and bacon and a bottle of
+     ale? For once in a way they are my favourite dish and drinkable,
+     but as neither of them agree with me, I never use them but on great
+     jubilees--once in four or five years or so.
+
+     "I see somebody represents the Hunts and Mrs. Shelley as living in
+     my house: it is a falsehood. They reside at some distance, and I do
+     not see them twice in a month. I have not met Mr. Hunt a dozen
+     times since I came to Genoa, or near it.
+
+     "Yours ever," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 506. TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+     "Genoa, 10bre 25 deg.. 1822.
+
+     "I had sent you back the Quarterly, without perusal, having
+     resolved to read no more reviews, good, bad, or indifferent; but
+     'who can control his fate?' Galignani, to whom my English studies
+     are confined, has forwarded a copy of at least one half of it in
+     his indefatigable catch-penny weekly compilation; and as, 'like
+     honour, it came unlooked for,' I have looked through it. I must say
+     that, upon the _whole_, that is, the whole of the _half_ which I
+     have read (for the other half is to be the segment of Galignani's
+     next week's circular), it is extremely handsome, and any thing but
+     unkind or unfair. As I take the good in good part, I must not, nor
+     will not, quarrel with the bad. What the writer says of Don Juan is
+     harsh, but it is inevitable. He must follow, or at least not
+     directly oppose, the opinion of a prevailing, and yet not very
+     firmly seated, party. A Review may and will direct and 'turn awry'
+     the currents of opinion, but it must not directly oppose them. Don
+     Juan will be known by and by, for what it is intended,--a _Satire_
+     on _abuses_ of the present states of society, and not an eulogy of
+     vice. It may be now and then voluptuous: I can't help that.
+     Ariosto is worse; Smollett (see Lord Strutwell in vol. 2d of
+     Roderick Random) ten times worse; and Fielding no better. No girl
+     will ever be seduced by reading Don Juan:--no, no; she will go to
+     Little's poems and Rousseau's _romans_ for that, or even to the
+     immaculate De Stael. They will encourage her, and not the Don, who
+     laughs at that, and--and--most other things. But never mind--_ca
+     ira!_
+
+     "Now, do you see what you and your friends do by your injudicious
+     rudeness?--actually cement a sort of connection which you strove to
+     prevent, and which, had the Hunts _prospered_, would not in all
+     probability have continued. As it is, I will not quit them in their
+     adversity, though it should cost me character, fame, money, and the
+     usual _et cetera_.
+
+     "My original motives I already explained (in the letter which you
+     thought proper to show): they are the _true_ ones, and I abide by
+     them, as I tell you, and I told Leigh Hunt when he questioned me on
+     the subject of that letter. He was violently hurt, and never will
+     forgive me at bottom; but I can't help that. I never meant to make
+     a parade of it; but if he chose to question me, I could only answer
+     the plain truth: and I confess I did not see any thing in the
+     letter to hurt him, unless I said he was 'a bore,' which I don't
+     remember. Had their Journal gone on well, and I could have aided to
+     make it better for them, I should then have left them, after my
+     safe pilotage off a lee shore, to make a prosperous voyage by
+     themselves. As it is, I can't, and would not, if I could, leave
+     them among the breakers.
+
+     "As to any community of feeling, thought, or opinion, between
+     Leigh Hunt and me, there is little or none. We meet rarely, hardly
+     ever; but I think him a good-principled and able man, and must do
+     as I would be done by. I do not know what world he has lived in,
+     but I have lived in three or four; but none of them like his Keats
+     and kangaroo terra incognita. Alas! poor Shelley! how we would have
+     laughed had he lived, and how we used to laugh now and then, at
+     various things which are grave in the suburbs!
+
+     "You are all mistaken about Shelley. You do not know how mild, how
+     tolerant, how good he was in society; and as perfect a gentleman as
+     ever crossed a drawing-room, when he liked, and where liked.
+
+     "I have some thoughts of taking a run down to Naples (_solus_, or,
+     at most, _cum sola_) this spring, and writing, when I have studied
+     the country, a Fifth and Sixth Canto of Childe Harold: but this is
+     merely an idea for the present, and I have other excursions and
+     voyages in my mind. The busts[92] are finished: are you worthy of
+     them?
+
+     "Yours, &c. N.B.
+
+     "P.S. Mrs. Shelley is residing with the Hunts at some distance from
+     me. I see them very seldom, and generally on account of their
+     business. Mrs. Shelley, I believe, will go to England in the
+     spring.
+
+     "Count Gamba's family, the father and mother and daughter, are
+     residing with me by Mr. Hill (the minister's) recommendation, as a
+     safer asylum from the political persecutions than they could have
+     in another residence; but they occupy one part of a large house,
+     and I the other, and our establishments are quite separate.
+
+     "Since I have read the Quarterly, I shall erase two or three
+     passages in the latter six or seven cantos, in which I had lightly
+     stroked over two or three of your authors; but I will not return
+     evil for good. I liked what I read of the article much.
+
+     "Mr. J. Hunt is most likely the publisher of the new Cantos; with
+     what prospects of success I know not, nor does it very much matter,
+     as far as I am concerned; but I hope that it may be of use to him;
+     he is a stiff, sturdy, conscientious man, and I like him; he is
+     such a one as Prynne or Pym might be. I bear you no ill-will for
+     declining the Don Juans.
+
+     "Have you aided Madame de Yossy, as I requested? I sent her three
+     hundred francs. Recommend her, will you, to the Literary Fund, or
+     to some benevolence within your circles."
+
+[Footnote 92: Of the bust of himself by Bartollini he says, in one of
+the omitted letters to Mr. Murray:--"The bust does not turn out a good
+one,--though it may be like for aught I know, as it exactly resembles a
+superannuated Jesuit." Again: "I assure you Bartollini's is dreadful,
+though my mind misgives me that it is hideously like. If it is, I cannot
+be long for this world, for it overlooks seventy."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER 507. TO LADY ----.
+
+     "Albaro, November 10. 1822.
+
+     "The Chevalier persisted in declaring himself an ill-used
+     gentleman, and describing you as a kind of cold Calypso, who lead
+     astray people of an amatory disposition without giving them any
+     sort of compensation, contenting yourself, it seems, with only
+     making _one_ fool instead of two, which is the more approved method
+     of proceeding on such occasions. For my part, I think you are quite
+     right; and be assured from me that a woman (as society is
+     constituted in England) who gives any advantage to a man may expect
+     a lover, but will sooner or later find a tyrant; and this is not
+     the man's fault either, perhaps, but is the necessary and natural
+     result of the circumstances of society, which, in fact, tyrannise
+     over the man equally with the woman; that is to say, if either of
+     them have any feeling or honour.
+
+     "You can write to me at your leisure and inclination. I have always
+     laid it down as a maxim, and found it justified by experience, that
+     a man and a woman make far better friendships than can exist
+     between two of the same sex; but _these_ with this condition, that
+     they never have made, or are to make, love with each other. Lovers
+     may, and, indeed, generally _are_ enemies, but they never can be
+     friends; because there must always be a spice of jealousy and a
+     something of self in all their speculations.
+
+     "Indeed, I rather look upon love altogether as a sort of hostile
+     transaction, very necessary to make or to break matches, and keep
+     the world going, but by no means a sinecure to the parties
+     concerned.
+
+     "Now, as my love perils are, I believe, pretty well over, and
+     yours, by all accounts, are never to begin, we shall be the best
+     friends imaginable, as far as both are concerned, and with this
+     advantage, that we may both fall to loving right and left through
+     all our acquaintance, without either sullenness or sorrow from that
+     amiable passion which are its inseparable attendants.
+
+     "Believe me," &c.
+
+
+END OF THE FIFTH VOLUME.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters
+And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6), by (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
+
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