their being published separately. Print Don Juan entire, omitting, of course, the lines on Castlereagh, as I am not on the spot to meet him. I have a Second Canto ready, which will be sent by and by. By this post, I have written to Mr Hobhouse, addressed to

your care.

"Yours, &c.

"P.S. I have acquiesced in the request and representation; and having done so, it is idle to detail my arguments in favour of my own self-love and 'Poeshie;' but I protest. If the poem has poetry, it would stand; if not, fall; the rest is 'leather and prunello,' and has never yet affected any human production pro or con.' Dulness is the only annihilator in such cases. As to the cant of the day, I despise it, as I have ever done all its other finical fashions, which become you as paint became the ancient Britons. If you admit this prudery, you must omit half Ariosto, La Fontaine, Shakspeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, Massinger, Ford, all the Charles Second writers; in short, something of most who have written before Pope and are worth reading, and much of Pope himself. Read him-most of you don't-but do-and I will forgive you; though the inevitable consequence would be that you would burn all I have ever written, and all other wretched Claudians of the day (except Scott and Crabbe) into the bargain. I wrong Claudian, who was a poet, by naming him with such fellows; but he was the ultimus Romanorum,' the tail of the comet, and these persons are the tail of an old gown cut into a waistcoat for Jackey; but being both tails, I have compared the one with the other, though very unlike, like all similes. I write in a passion and a sirocco, and I was up till six this morning at the Carnival: but I protest, as I did in my former letter."

your

when the original is dust,

A book, a d-d bad picture, and worse bust,

insert the following stanza :

"What are the hopes of man, &c.

"I have written to you several letters, some with additions, and some upon the subject of the poem itself, which my cursed puritanical committee have protested against publishing. But we will circumvent them on that point. I have not yet begun to copy out the Second Canto, which is finished, from natural laziness, and the discouragement of the milk and water they have thrown upon the First. I say all this to them as to you, that is, for you to say to them, for I will have nothing underhand. If they had told me the poetry was bad, I would have acquiesced; but they say the contrary, and then talk to me about morality-the first time I ever heard the word from any body who was not a rascal that used it for a purpose. I maintain that it is the most moral

of poems; but if people won't discover the moral, that is their fault, not mine. I have already written to beg that in any case you will print fifty for private distribution. I will send you the list of persons to whom it is to be sent afterwards.

"Within this last fortnight I have been rather indisposed with a rebellion of stomach, which would retain nothing (liver, I suppose), and an inability, or phantasy, not to be able to eat of any thing with relish but a kind of Adriatic fish called 'scampi,' which happens to be the most indigestible of marine viands. However, within these last two days, I am better, and very truly yours."

LETTER CCCXXVII.

TO MR MURRAY.

* *

"Venice, April 6th, 1819. "The Second Canto of Don Juan was sent, on Saturday last, by post, in four packets, two of four, and two of three sheets each, containing in all two hundred and seventeen stanzas, octave measure. But I will permit no curtailments, except those mentioned about Castlereagh and You sha'n't make canticles of my cantos. The poem will please, if it is lively; if it is stupid, it will fail : but I will have none of your damned cutting and slashing. If you please, you may publish anonymously; it will perhaps be better; but I will battle my way against them all, like a porcupine.

I

"So you and Mr Foscolo, &c. want me to undertake what you call a 'great work?' an Epic Poem, suppose, or some such pyramid. I'll try no such thing; I hate tasks. And then 'seven or eight years!' God send us all well this day three months, let alone years. If one's years can't be better employed than in sweating poesy, a man had better be a ditcher. And works, too!-is Childe Harold nothing? You have so many divine' poems, is it nothing to have written a human one? without any of your worn-out machinery. Why, man, I could have spun the thoughts of the Four Cantos of that poem into twenty, had I wanted to book-make, and its passion into as many modern tragedies. Since you want length, you shall have enough of Juan, for I'll make Fifty Cantos.

"And Foscolo, too! Why does he not do something more than the Letters of Ortis, and a tragedy, and pamphlets? He has good fifteen years more at his command than I have: what has he done all that time?-proved his genius, doubtless, but not fixed its fame, nor done his utmost.

"Besides, I mean to write my best work in Italian, and it will take me nine years more thoroughly to master the language; and then if my fancy exists, and I exist too, I will try what I can do really. As to the estimation of the English which you talk of, let them calculate what it is worth, before they insult me with their insolent condescension.

"I have not written for their pleasure. If they are pleased, it is that they chose to be so; I have never flattered their opinions, nor their pride; nor will I. Neither will 1 make Ladies' books'' al dilettar le femmine e la plebe.' I have written from the fulness of iny mind, from passion, from impulse,

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array, and the first delight of exchanging a convent for the world. At this time, however, no acquaintance ensued between them;-it was not, till the spring of the present year that, at an evening party of Madame Benzoni's, they were introduced to each other. The love that sprung out of this meeting was instantaneous and mutual,-though with the usual disproportion of sacrifice between the parties; such an event being, to the man, but one of the many scenes of life, while, with woman, it generally consti

"You ask about my health: about the beginning of the year I was in a state of great exhaustion, attended by such debility of stomach that nothing remained upon it; and I was obliged to reform my way of life,' which was conducting me from the 'yellow leaf' to the ground, with all deliberate speed. I am better in health and morals, and very much yours, &c. *

"P.S. I have read Hodgson's Friends.' **** He is right in defending Pope against the bastard pelicans of the poetical winter day, who add insult to their parricide, by sucking the blood of the parent of English real poetry-poetry without fault-and then spurning the bosom which fed them."

It was about the time when the foregoing letter was written, and when, as we perceive, like the first return of reason after intoxication, a full consciousness of some of the evils of his late libertine course of life had broken upon him, that an attachment differing altogether, both in duration and devotion, from any of those that, since the dream of his boyhood, had inspired him, gained an influence over his mind which lasted through his few remaining years; and, undeniably wrong and immoral (even allowing for the Italian estimate of such frailties) as was the nature of the connexion to which this attachment led, we can hardly perhaps,-taking into account the far worse wrong from which it rescued and preserved him, consider it otherwise than an event fortunate both for his reputation and happiness.

The fair object of this last, and (with one signal exception) only real love of his whole life, was a young Romagnese lady, the daughter of Count Gamba, of Ravenna, and married, but a short time before Lord Byron first met with her, to an old and wealthy widower, of the same city, Count Guiccioli. Her husband had in early life been the friend of Alfieri, and had distinguished himself by his zeal in promoting the establishment of a National Theatre, in which the talents of Altieri and his own wealth were to be combined. Notwithstanding his age, and a character, as it appears, by no means reputable, his great opulence rendered him an object of ambition among the mothers of Ravenna, who, according to the too frequent maternal practice, were seen vying with each other in attracting so rich a purchaser for their daughters, and the young Teresa Gamba, then only eighteen, and just emancipated from a convent, was the selected victim.

The first time Lord Byron had ever seen this lady was in the autumn of 1818, when she made her appearance, soon after her marriage, at the house of

herself suddenly inspired with a passion, of which, till that moment, her mind could not have formed the least idea; she had thought of love but as an amusement, and now became its slave. If at the outset, too, less slow to be won than an Englishwoman, no sooner did she begin to understand the full despotism of the passion than her heart shrunk from it as something terrible, and she would have escaped, but that the chain was already around her.

No words, however, can describe so simply and feelingly as her own, the strong impression which their first meeting left upon her mind :

:

"I became acquainted (says Madame Guiccioli) with Lord Byron in the April of 1819:-he was introduced to me at Venice, by the Countess Benzoni, at one of that lady's parties. This introduction, which had so much influence over the lives of us both, took place contrary to our wishes, and had been permitted by us only from courtesy. For myself, more fatigued than usual that evening on account of the late hours they keep at Venice, I went with great repugnance to this party, and purely in obedience to Count Guiccioli. Lord Byron, too, who was averse to forming new acquaintances,-alleging that he had entirely renounced all attachments, and was unwilling any more to expose himself to their consequences, on being requested by the Countess Benzoni to allow himself to be presented to me, refused, and, at last, only assented from a desire to oblige her.

"His noble and exquisitely beautiful countenance, the tone of his voice, his manners, the thousand enchantments that surrounded him, rendered him so different and so superior a being to any whom I had hitherto seen, that it was impossible he should not have left the most profound impression upon me. From that evening, during the whole of my subsequent stay at Venice, we met every day.*”

* Nell' Aprile del 1819, io feci la conoscenza di Lord Byron; e mi fu presentato a Venezia dalla Contessa Benzoni nella di lei società. Questa presentazione che ebbe tante conseguenze per tutti e due fu fatta contro la volontà d'entrambi, e solo per condiscendenza l'abbiamo permessa. Io stanca più che mai quella sera per le ore tarde che si costuma fare in Venezia andai con molta ripugnanza e solo per ubbidire al Conte Guiccioli in quella società. Lord Byron che scansava di fare nuove conoscenze, dicendo sempre che aveva interamente rinunciato alle passioni e che non voleva esporsi più alle loro conseguenze, quando la Contessa Benzoni lo pregò di volersi far presentare a me egli ricusò, e solo per la compiacenza glielo permise. La nobile e bellissima sua fisonomia, il suono della sua voce, le sue maniere, i mille incanti che lo circondavano lo rendevano un essere così differente, eosì superiore a tutti quelli che io aveva sino allora veduti che non potei a meno di non provarne la più profonda impressione. Da quella sera in poi in tutti i giorni che mi fermai in Venezia ci siamo sempre veduti."-MS.

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"P.S. Make my respects to Mr Gifford. I am perfectly aware that 'Don Juan' must set us all by the ears, but that is my concern, and my beginning. There will be the 'Edinburgh,' and all, too, against it, so that, like 'Rob Roy,' I shall have my hands full."

LETTER CCCXXIX.

TO MR MURRAY.

"Venice, May 25th, 1819. "I have received no proofs by the last post, and shall probably have quitted Venice before the arrival

of the next. There wanted a few stanzas to the termination of Canto First in the last proof; the next will, I presume, contain them, and the whole or a portion of Canto Second; but it will be idle to wait for further answers from me, as I have directed that my letters wait for my return (perhaps in a month, and probably so); therefore do not wait for further advice from me. You may as well talk to the wind,

and better-for it will at least convey your accents a little farther than they would otherwise have gone; whereas I shall neither echo nor acquiesce in your 'exquisite reasons.' You may omit the note of reference to Hobhouse's travels, in Canto Second, and you will put as motto to the whole

'Difficile est proprie communia dicere.'-HORACE.

*

"I write to you in the agonies of a sirocco, which annihilates me; and I have been fool enough to do four things since dinner, which are as well omitted in very hot weather: 1stly,* **; 2dly, to play at billiards from 10 to 12, under the influence of lighted lamps, that doubled the heat; 3dly, to go afterwards into a red-hot conversazione of the Countess Benzoni's; and 4thly, to begin this letter at three in the morning but being begun, it must be finished.

"Ever very truly and affectionately yours,

young Countess now wrote to her lover, expressing, in the most passionate and pathetic terms, her despair at leaving him. So utterly, indeed, did this feeling overpower her, that three times, in the course of her first day's journey, she was seized with fainting-fits. In one of her letters, which I saw when at Venice, dated, if I recollect right, from "Cà Zen, Cavanelle di Po," she tells him that the solitude of this place, which she had before found irksome, was, now that one sole idea occupied her mind, become dear and welcome to her, and promises that, as soon as she arrives at Ravenna, "she will, according to his wish, avoid all general society, and devote herself to reading, music, domestic occupations, riding on horseback, -every thing, in short, that she knew he would most like." What a change for a young and simple girl, who, but a few weeks before, had thought only, of society and the world, but who now saw no other happiness but in the hope of becoming worthy, by seclusion and self-instruction, of the illustrious object of her love!

On leaving this place, she was attacked with a

dangerous illness on the road, and arrived half dead at Ravenna; nor was it found possible to revive or comfort her till an assurance was received from Lord Byron, expressed with all the fervour of real passion, that, in the course of the ensuing month, he would pay her a visit. Symptoms of consumption, brought on by her state of mind, had already shown themselves; and, in addition to the pain which this separation had caused her, she was also suffering much grief from the loss of her mother, who, at this time, died in giving birth to her twentieth child. Towards the latter end of May she wrote to acquaint Lord Byron that, having prepared all her relatives and friends to expect him, he might now, she thought, venture to make his appearance at Ravenna, Though, on the lady's account, hesitating as to the prudence of such a step, he, in obedience to her wishes, on the 2d of June, set out from La Mira (at which place he had again taken a villa for the summer), and proceeded towards Romagna.

From Padua he addressed a letter to Mr Hoppner, chiefly occupied with matters of household concern, which that gentleman had undertaken to manage for him at Venice, but, on the immediate object of his journey, expressing himself in a tone so light and jesting, as it would be difficult for those not versed in his character to conceive that he could ever bring himself, while under the influence of a passion so sincere, to assume. But such is ever the wantonness of the mocking spirit, from which nothing,-not even love,-remains sacred; and which at last, for want of other food, turns upon self. The same horror, too, of hypocrisy that led Lord Byron to exaggerate his own errors, led him also to disguise, under a seemingly heartless ridicule, all those natural and kindly qualities by which they were redeemed.

This letter from Padua concludes thus:

"A journey in an Italian June is a conscription; and if I was not the most constant of men, I should now be swimming from the Lido, instead of smoking in the dust of Padua. Should there be letters from England, let them wait my return. And do look at my house

and (not lands, but) waters, and scold;-and deal out the monies to Edgecombe* with an air of reluctance and a shake of the head-and put queer questions to him-and turn up your nose when he answers.

"Make my respects to the Consuless-and to the Chevalier-and to Scotin-and to all the counts and

countesses of our acquaintance.

"And believe me ever

"Your disconsolate and affectionate, &c."

As a contrast to the strange levity of this letter, as well as in justice to the real earnestness of the passion, however censurable in all other respects, that now engrossed him, I shall here transcribe some stanzas which he wrote in the course of this journey to Romagna, and which, though already published, are not comprised in the regular collection of his works.

· "River, that rollest by the ancient walls,

Where dwells the lady of my love, when she
Walks by thy brink, and there perchance recalls
A faint and fleeting memory of me;

"What if thy deep and ample stream should be
A mirror of my heart, where she may read
The thousand thoughts I now betray to thee,
Wild as thy wave, and headlong as thy speed!

"What do I say-a mirror of my heart?

Are not thy waters sweeping, dark, and strong? Such as my feelings were and are, thou art;

And such as thou art were my passions long.

"Time may have somewhat tamed them,-not for ever; Thou overflow'st thy banks, and not for aye Thy bosom overboils, congenial river!

Thy floods subside, and mine have sunk away,

* But left long wrecks behind, and now again,
Borne in our old unchanged career, we move;
Thou tendest wildly onward to the main,
And I to loving one I should not love.

The current I behold will sweep beneath

Her native walls and murmur at her feet; Her eyes will look on thee, when she shall breathe The twilight air, unharm'd by summer's heat.

<< She will look on thee,-I have look'd on thee,
Full of that thought: and, from that moment, ne'er
Thy waters could I dream of, name, or see,
Without the inseparable sigh for her!

"Her bright eyes will be imaged in thy stream,—
Yes! they will meet the wave I gaze on now:
Mine cannot witness, even in a dream,
That happy wave repass me in its flow!

"The wave that bears my tears returns no more:
Will she return by whom that wave shall sweep?—
Both tread thy banks, both wander on thy shore,
I by thy source, she by the dark-blue deep.

"But that which keepeth us apart is not

Distance, nor depth of wave, nor space of earth But the distraction of a various lot,

As various as the climates of our birth.

* A stranger loves the lady of the land, Born far beyond the mountains, but his blood Is all meridian, as if never fann'd

By the black wind that chills the polar flood.

"My blood is all meridian; were it not,

I had not left my clime, nor should I be,

In spite of tortures, ne'er to be forgot,

A slave again of love,-at least of thee.

A clerk of the English Consulate, whom he at this time employed to control his accounts.

†The Po.

'Tis vain to struggle-let me perish youngLive as I lived, and love as I have loved: To dust if I return, from dust I sprung,

And then, at least, my heart can ne'er be moved."

intelligence from the Contessa, he began to be of opiOn arriving at Bologna and receiving no farther nion, as we shall perceive in the annexed interesting letters, that he should act most prudently, for all parties, by returning to Venice.

LETTER CCCXXX.

TO MR HOPPNER.

"Bologna, June 6th, 1819. "I am at length joined to Bologna, where I am settled like a sausage, and shall be broiled like one, if this weather continues. Will you thank Mengaldo on my part for the Ferrara acquaintance, which was a very agreeable one. I staid two days at Ferrara, and was much pleased with the Count Mosti, and the little the shortness of the time permitted me to see of his family. I went to his conversazione, which is very far superior to any thing of the kind at Venice-the women almost all young-several pretty-and the men courteous and cleanly.-The lady of the mansion, who is young, lately married, and with child, appeared very pretty by candlelight (I did not see her by day), pleasing in her manners, and very lady-like, or thorough-bred, as we call it in England,—a kind of thing which reminds one of a racer, an antelope, or an Italian greyhound. She seems very fond of her husband, who is amiable and accomplished; he has been in England two or three times, and is young. The sister, a Countess somebody-I forget what-(they are both Maffei by birth, and Veronese of course)—is a lady of more display; she sings and plays divinely; but I thought she was a d-d long time about it. Her likeness to Madame Flahaut (Miss Mercer that was) is something quite extraordinary.

"I had but a bird's-eye view of these people, and shall not probably see them again; but I am very much obliged to Mengaldo for letting me see them at all. Whenever I meet with any thing agreeable in this world, it surprises me so much and pleases me so much (when my passions are not interested one way or the other), that I go on wondering for a week to come. I feel, too, in great admiration of the Cardinal Legate's red stockings.

"I found, too, such a pretty epitaph in the Certosa cemetery, or rather two : one was

That was all; but it appears to me that these two and three words comprise" and compress all that can be said on the subject,—and then, in Italian, they are absolute music. They contain doubt, hope, and humility; nothing can be more pathetic than the 'implora' and the modesty of the request;—they have had enough of life-they want nothing but rest-they implore it, and eterna quiete.' It is like a Greek inscription in some good old heathen' City of the Dead.

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