Page images
PDF
EPUB

mistress dear, who hath fed my heart upon smiles and wine' for the last two months, set off with her husband for Bologna this morning, and it seems that I follow him at three to-inorrow morning. I cannot tell how our romance will end, but it hath gone on hitherto most erotically. Such perils and escapes! Juan's are as child's play in comparison. The fools think that all my poeshie is always allusive to my own adventures: I have had at one time or another better and more extraordinary and perilous and pleasant than these, every day of the week, if I might tell them; but that must never be. "I hope Mrs M. has accouched.

"Yours ever."

LETTER CCCXXXVII.

TO MR MURRAY.

"Bologna, August 12th, 1819.

"I do not know how far I may be able to reply to your letter, for I am not very well to-day. Last night I went to the representation of Alfieri's Mirra, the two last acts of which threw me into convulsions. I do not mean by that word a lady's hysterics, but the agony of reluctant tears, and the choking shudder, which I do not often undergo for fiction. This is but the second time for any thing under reality: the first was on seeing Kean's Sir Giles Overreach. The worst was, that the 'Dama'. in whose box I was went off in the same way, I really believe more from fright than any other sympathy-at least with the players: but she has been ill, and I have been ill, and we are all languid and pathetic this morning, with great expenditure of sal volatile. But, to return to your letter of the 23d of July.

"You are right, Gifford is right, Crabbe is right, Hobhouse is right—you are all right, and I am allwrong; but do, pray, let me have that pleasure. Cut me up root and branch; quarter me in the Quarterly; send round my disjecti membra poetæ,' like those of the Levite's concubine; make me, if you will, a spectacle to men and angels; but don't ask me to alter, for I won't:-I am obstinate and lazy-and there's the truth.

66

But, nevertheless, I will answer your friend P**, who objects to the quick succession of fun and gra

*The " Dama," in whose company he witnessed this representation, thus describes its effect upon him :-"The play was that of Mirra; the actors, and particularly the actress who performed the part of Mirra, seconded with much success the intentions of our great dramatist. Lord Byron took a strong interest in the representation, and it was evident that he was deeply affected. At length there came a point of the performance at which he could no longer restrain his emotions;-he burst into a flood of

tears, and, his sobs preventing him from remaining any longer in the box, he rose and left the theatre.-I saw him similarly affected another time during a representation of Alfieri's Philip,' at Ravenna"-" Gli attori, e special

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

vity, as if in that case the gravity did not (in intention, at least,) heighten the fun. His metaphor is, that we are never scorched and drenched at the same time.' Blessings on his experience! Ask him these questions about scorching and drenching.' Did he never play at cricket, or walk a mile in hot weather? Did he never spill a dish of tea over himself in handing the cup to his charmer, to the great shame of his nankeen breeches? Did he never swim in the sea at noonday with the sun in his eyes and on his head, which all the foam of ocean could not cool? Did he never draw his foot out of too hot water, d―ning his eyes and his valet's? Did he never tumble into a river or lake, fishing, and sit in his wet clothes in the boat, or on the bank, afterwards, 'scorched and drenched,' like a true sportsman? 'Oh for breath to utter!'-but make him my compliments; he is a clever fellow for all that-a very clever fellow.

"You ask me for the plan of Donny Johnny: I have no plan; I had no plan; but I had or have materials; though if, like Tony Lumpkin, 'I am to be snubbed so when I am in spirits,' the poem will be naught, and the poet turn serious again. If it don't take, will leave it off where it is, with all due respect to the public; but if continued, it must be in my own way. You might as well make Hamlet (or Diggory) 'act mad' in a strait waistcoat as trammel my buffoonery, if I am to be a buffoon; their gestures and my thoughts would only be pitiably absurd and ludicrously constrained. Why, man, the soul of such writing is its licence; at least the liberty of that licence, if one likes-not that one should abuse it. It is like Trial by Jury and Peerage and the Habeas Corpus—a very fine thing, but chiefly in the reversion; because no one wishes to be tried for the mere pleasure of proving his possession of the privilege..

"But a truce with these reflections. You are too serious. Do you suppose that I could have any earnest and eager about a work never intended to be intention but to giggle and make giggle?-a playful satire, with as little poetry as could be helped, was what I meant. And as to the indecency, do, pray, read in Boswell what Johnson, the sullen moralist, says of Prior and Paulo Purgante.

your government friends, Croker, Canning, or my old "Will you get a favour done for me? You can, by schoolfellow Peel, and I can't. Here it is. "Will you ask them to appoint (without salary or emolument)] a noble Italian (whom I will name afterwards) consul or vice-consul for Ravenna? He is a man of very large property-noble, too; but he wishes to have a British protection, in case of changes. Ravenna is near the sea. He wants no emolument whatever. That his office might be useful, I know; as I lately sent off from Ravenna to Trieste a poor devil of an English sailor, who had remained there sick, sorry, and penny less (having been set ashore in 1814), from the want of any accredited agent able or willing to

mente l'attrice che rappresentava Mirra secondava assai help him homewards. Will you get this done? If

bene la mente del nostro grande Tragico. L. B. prese molto interesse alla rappresentazione, e si conosceva che era molto commosso. Venne un punto poi della Tragedia in cui non potè più frenare la sua emozione,-diede in un dirotto pianto e i singhiozzi gl' impedirono di più restare nel palco; onde si levò, e parti dal teatro. In uno stato simile lo vidi un altra volta a Ravenna ad una rappresentazione del Filippo d'Alfieri."

you do, I will then send his name and condition, subject, of course, to rejection, if not approved when known.

"I know that in the Levant you make consuls and vice-consuls, perpetually, of foreigners. This man is a patrician, and has twelve thousand a year. His

motive is a British protection in case of new invasions. Don't you think Croker would do it for us? To be' sure, my interest is rare!! but perhaps a brother wit in the Tory line might do a good turn at the request of so harmless and long absent a Whig, particularly as there is no salary or burthen of any sort to be annexed to the office.

"I can assure you, I should look upon it as a great obligation; but, alas! that very circumstance may, very probably, operate to the contrary-indeed, it ought; but I have, at least, been an honest and an open enemy. Amongst your many splendid government connexions, could not you, think you, get our Bibulus made a Consul? or make me one, that I may make him my Vice. You may be assured that, in case of accidents in Italy, he would be no feeble adjunct -as you would think, if you knew his patrimony.

"What is all this about Tom Moore? but why do I ask? since the state of my own affairs would not permit me to be of use to him, though they are greatly improved since 1816, and may, with some more luck and a little prudence, become quite clear. It seems his claimants are American merchants? There goes Nemesis! Moore abused America. It is always thus in the long run :-Time, the Avenger. You have seen every trampler down, in turn, from Buonaparte to the simplest individuals. You saw how some were avenged even upon my insignificance, and how in turn *** paid for his atrocity. It is an odd world; but the watch has its mainspring, after all.

"So the Prince has been repealing Lord Edward Fitzgerald's forfeiture? Ecco un' sonetto!

"To be the father of the fatherless,

To stretch the hand from the throne's height, and raise
His offspring, who expired in other days

To make thy sire's sway by a kingdom less,-
This is to be a monarch, and repress
Envy into unutterable praise.

Dismiss thy guard, and trust thee to such traits,
For who would lift a hand, except to bless?
Were it not easy, Sir, and is 't not sweet
To make thyself beloved? and to be
Omnipotent by Mercy's means? for thus

Thy sovereignty would grow but more complete,
A despot thou, and yet thy people free,

And by the heart, not hand, enslaving us.

"There, you dogs! there's a sonnet for you: you won't have such as that in a hurry from Mr Fitzgerald. You may publish it with my name, an' ye wool. He deserves all praise, bad and good; it was a very noble piece of principality. Would you like an epigram-a translation?

"If for silver, or for gold,

You could melt ten thousand pimples
Into half a dozen dimples,

Then your face we might behold,

Looking, doubtless, much more snugly,
Yet ev'n then 'twould be d-d ugly.

LETTER CCCXXXVIII.

TO MR MURRAY.

"Bologna, August 23d, 1819. "I send you a letter to R **ts, signed Wortley Clutterbuck,' which you may publish in what form you please, in answer to his article. I have had many proofs of men's absurdity, but he beats all in folly. Why, the wolf in sheep's clothing has tumbled into the very trap! We'll strip him. The letter is written in great haste, and amidst a thousand vexations. Your letter only came yesterday, so that there is no time to polish: the post goes out to-morrow. The date is 'Little Pidlington.' Let **** correct the press: he knows and can read the handwriting. Continue to keep the anonymous about Juan;' it helps us to fight against overwhelming numbers. I have a thousand distractions at present; so excuse haste, and wonder I can act or write at all. Answer by post, as usual. "Yours. "P.S. If I had had time, and been quieter and nearer, I would have cut him to hash; but as it is, you can judge for yourselves."

The letter to the Reviewer, here mentioned, had its origin in rather an amusing circumstance. In the First Canto of Don Juan appeared the following passage:

For fear some prudish readers should grow skittish,
I've bribed My Grandmother's Review,-the British!

"I sent it in a letter to the editor,

Who thank'd me duly by return of postI'm for a handsome article his creditor; Yet if my gentle Muse he please to roast, And break a promise after having made it her, Denying the receipt of what it cost, And smear his page with gall instead of honey, All I can say is that he had the money."

On the appearance of the Poem, the learned editor of the Review in question allowed himself to be decoyed into the ineffable absurdity of taking the charge as serious, and, in his succeeding number, came forth with an indignant contradiction of it. To this tempting subject the letter, written so hastily off at Bologna, related; but, though printed for Mr Murin a pamphlet consisting of twenty-three pages, it was never published.* Being valuable, however, as one of the best specimens we have of Lord Byron's simple and thoroughly English prose, I shall here preserve some extracts from it.

ray,

[blocks in formation]

"As a believer in the Church of England-to say

"This was written on some Frenchwoman, by nothing of the State-I have been an occasional Rulhières, I believe.

"Yours,"

reader, and great admirer, though not a subscriber to your Review. But I do not know that any arti

* It has appeared, however, I understand, in some of the foreign editions of his lordship's works.

cle of its contents ever gave me much surprise till
the eleventh of your late twenty-seventh number made
its appearance. You have there most manfully re-
futed a calumnious accusation of bribery and corrup-
tion, the credence of which in the public mind might
not only have damaged your reputation as a clergy-
man and an editor, but, what would have been still
worse, have injured the circulation of your journal;
which, I regret to hear, is not so extensive as the
*purity (as you well observe) of its, &c. &c.' and the
present taste for propriety, would induce us to ex-
pect. The charge itself is of a solemn nature, and,
although in verse, is couched in terms of such cir-
cumstantial gravity as to induce a belief little short
of that generally accorded to the thirty-nine articles,
to which you so generously subscribed on taking your
degrees. It is a charge the most revolting to the
heart of man from its frequent occurrence; to the
mind of a statesman from its occasional truth; and
to the soul of an editor from its moral impossibility.
You are charged then in the last line of one octave
stanza, and the whole eight lines of the next, viz.
209th and 210th of the First Canto of that 'pestilent
poem,' Don Juan, with receiving, and still more
foolishly acknowledging, the receipt of certain monies
to eulogise the unknown author, who by this account
must be known to you, if to nobody else. An im-
peachment of this nature, so seriously made, there is
but one way of refuting; and it is my firm persuasion,journal, which were attributed to a veteran female,
that whether you did or did not (and I believe that
you did not) receive the said moneys, of which I
wish that he had specified the sum, you are quite
right in denying all knowledge of the transaction. If
charges of this nefarious description are to go forth,
sanctioned by all the solemnity of circumstance, and
guaranteed by the veracity of verse (as Counsellor
Phillips would say), what is to become of readers
hitherto implicitly confident in the not less veracious
prose of our critical journals? what is to become of
the reviews? and, if the reviews fail, what is to be-
come of the editors? It is common cause, and you
have done well to sound the alarm. I myself, in my
humble sphere, will be one of your echoes. In the
words of the tragedian Liston, 'I love a row,' and
you seem justly determined to make one.

this subject discussed at the tea-table of Mr ** the
poet,-and Mrs and the Misses* * * being in a
corner of the room perusing the proof sheets of
Mr ***'s poems, the male part of the conversazione
were at liberty to make some observations on the
poem and passage in question, and there was a dif-
ference of opinion. Some thought the allusion was to
the British Critic;' others, that by the expression,
'My Grandmother's Review,' it was intimated that
my grandmother' was not the reader of the review,
but actually the writer; thereby insinuating, my dear
Mr R―ts, that you were an old woman; because,
as people often say, 'Jeffrey's Review,' 'Gifford's
Review,' in lieu of Edinburgh and Quarterly, so 'My
Grandmother's Review' and R-ts's might be also
synonymous. Now, whatever colour this insinuation
might derive from the circumstance of your wearing
a gown, as well as from your time of life, your general
style, and various passages of your writings, I will
take upon myself to exculpate you from all suspicion
of the kind, and assert, without calling Mrs. R-ts
in testimony, that if ever you should be chosen Pope,
you will pass through all the previous ceremonies
with as much credit as any pontiff since the partu-
rition of Joan. It is very unfair to judge of sex from
writings, particularly from those of the British Re-
view. We are all liable to be deceived, and it is an
indisputable fact that many of the best articles in your

6

"It is barely possible, certainly improbable, that the writer might have been in jest; but this only aggravates his crime. A joke, the proverb says, breaks no bones; but it may break a bookseller, or it may be the cause of bones being broken. The jest is but a bad one at the best for the author, and might have been a still worse one for you, if your copious contradiction did not certify to all whom it may concern your own indignant innocence, and the immaculate purity of the British Review. I do not doubt your word, my dear R――ts; yet I cannot help wishing that, in a case of such vital importance, it had assumed the more substantial shape of an affidavit sworn before the Lord Mayor Atkins, who readily receives any deposition; and doubtless would have brought it in some way as evidence of the designs of the Reformers to set fire to London, at the same time that he himself meditates the same good office towards the river Thames.

*

*

*

*

were actually written by you yourself, and yet to this day there are people who could never find out the difference. But let us return to the more immediate question.

[ocr errors]

"I agree with you that it is is impossible Lord B. should be the author, not only because, as a British peer and a British poet, it would be impracticable for him to have recourse to such facetious fiction, but for some other reasons which you have omitted to state. In the first place, his lordship has no grandmother. Now the author-and we may believe him in this doth expressly state that the British' is his 'Grandmother's Review;' and if, as I think, I have distinctly proved, this was not a mere figurative allusion to your supposed intellectual age and sex, my dear friend, it follows, whether you be she or no, that there is such an elderly lady still extant.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

"Shall I give you what I think a prudent opinion? I don't mean to insinuate, God forbid ! but if, by any accident, there should have been such a correspondence between you and the unknown author, whoever he may be, send him back his money; I dare say he will be very glad to have it again; it can't be much, considering the value of the article and the circulation of the journal; and you are too modest to rate your praise beyond its real worth :-don't be angry, I know you won't, at this appraisement of your powers of eulogy; for, on the other hand, my dear fellow, depend upon it your abuse is worth, not its own weight, that's a feather, but your weight in gold. So don't spare it; if he has bargained for that, give it handsomely, and depend upon your doing him a friendly office.

[blocks in formation]

"What the motives of this writer may have been "I recollect hearing, soon after the publication, for (as you magnificently translate his quizzing you),

'stating, with the particularity which belongs to fact, the forgery of a groundless fiction,' (do, pray, my dear R., talk a litte less in King Cambyses' vein) I cannot pretend to say; perhaps to laugh at you, but that is no reason for your benevolently making all the world laugh also. I approve of your being angry; I tell you I am angry too, but you should not have shown it so outrageously. Your solemn if somebody personating the Editor of the, &c. &c. has received from Lord B. or from any other person,' reminds me of Charley Incledon's usual exordium when people came into the tavern to hear him sing without paying their share of the reckoning- if a maun, or ony maun, or ony other maun,' &c. &c. ; you have both the same redundant eloquence. But why should you think any body would personate you? Nobody would dream of such a prank who ever read your compositions, and perhaps not many who have heard your conversation. But I have been inoculated with a little of your prolixity. The fact is, my dear R―ts, that somebody has tried to make a fool of you, and what he did not succeed in doing, you have done for him and for yourself."

Towards the latter end of August, Count Guiccioli, accompanied by his lady, went for a short time to visit some of his Romagnese estates, while Lord Byron remained at Bologna alone. And here, with a heart softened and excited by the new feeling that had taken possession of him, he appears to have given himself up, during this interval of solitude, to a train of melancholy and impassioned thought such as, for a time, brought back all the romance of his youthful days. That spring of natural tenderness within his soul, which neither the world's efforts nor his own had been able to chill or choke up, was now, with something of its first freshness, set flowing once more. He again knew what it was to love and be loved,— too late, it is true, for happiness, and too wrongly for peace, but with devotion enough, on the part of the woman,, to satisfy even his thirst for affection, and with a sad earnestness, on his own, a foreboding fidelity, which made him cling but the more passionately to this attachment from feeling that it would be his last.

A circumstance which he himself used to mention as having occurred at this period will show how overpowering, at times, was the rush of melancholy over his heart. It was his fancy, during Madame Guiccioli's absence from Bologna, to go daily to her house at his usual hour of visiting her, and there, causing her apartments to be opened, to sit turning over her books, and writing in them. He would then descend into her garden, where he passed hours in musing; and it was on an occasion of this kind, as

* One of these notes, written at the end of the 5th chapter, 18th book of Corinne (« Fragmens des Pensées de Corinne") is as follows:

"I knew Madame de Staël well,-better than she knew Italy, but I little thought that, one day, I should think with her thoughts, in the country where she has laid the scene of her most attractive productions. She is sometimes right, and often wrong, about Italy and England; but almost always true in delineating the heart, which is of but one nation, and of no country,—or, rather, of all.

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

he stood looking, in a state of unconscious reverie, into one of those fountains so common in the gardens of Italy, that there came suddenly into his mind such desolate fancies, such bodings of the misery he might bring on her he loved, by that doom which (as he has himself written) "makes it fatal to be loved,”* that, overwhelmed with his own thoughts, he burst into an agony of tears.

During the same few days it was that he wrote in the last page of Madame Guiccioli's copy of " Corinne❞ the following remarkable note:

"My dearest Teresa,-I have read this book in your garden;-my love, you were absent, or else I could not have read it. It is a favourite book of yours, and the writer was a friend of mine. You will not understand these English words, and others will not understand them,-which is the reason I have not serawled them in Italian. But you will recognize the handwriting of him who passionately loved you, and you will divine that, over a book which was yours, he could only think of love. In that word, beautiful in all languages, but most so in yoursAmor mio-is comprised my existence here and hereafter. I feel I exist here, and I fear that I shall exist hereafter, to what purpose you will decide; my destiny rests with you, and you are a woman, eighteen years of age, and two out of a convent. I wish that you had staid there, with all my heart,—or, at least, that I had never met you in your married state.

"But all this is too late. I love you, and you love me, at least, you say so, and act as if you did so, which last is a great consolation in all events. But I more than love you, and cannot cease to love you. "Think of me, sometimes, when the Alps and the ocean divide us,-but they never will, unless you wish it.

[ocr errors]
[blocks in formation]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

you in the question of Guatimozin to his minister-I consented. He came. It was his own particular each being on his own coals. *

"I wish that I had been in better spirits; but I am out of sorts, out of nerves, and now and then (I begin to fear) out of my senses. All this Italy has done for me, and not England: I defy all you, and your climate to boot, to make me mad. But if ever 1 do really become a bedlamite, and wear a strait waistcoat, let me be brought back among you; your people will then be proper company.

66

"I assure you what I here say and feel has nothing to do with England, either in a literary or personal point of view. All my present pleasures or plagues are as Italian as the opera. And after all, they are but trifles; for all this arises from my 'Dama's' being in the country for three days (at Capo-fiume). But as I could never live but for one human being at a time (and I assure you, that one has never been myself, as you may know by the consequences, for the selfish are successful in life), I feel alone and unhappy.

"I have sent for my daughter from Venice, and I ride daily, and walk in a garden, under a purple canopy of grapes, and sit by a fountain, and talk with the gardener of his tools, which seem greater than Adam's, and with his wife, and with his son's wife, who is the youngest of the party, and, I think, talks best of the three. Then I revisit the Campo Santo, and my old friend, the sexton, has two-but one the prettiest daughter imaginable; and I amuse myself with contrasting her beautiful and innocent face of fifteen with the skulls with which he has peopled several cells, and particularly with that of one skull dated 1766, which was once covered (the tradition goes) by the most lovely features of Bologna-noble and rich. When I look at these, and at this girl when I think of what they were, and what she must be-why, then, my dear Murray, I won't shock you by saying what I think. It is little matter what becomes of us bearded men,' but I don't like the notion of a beautiful woman's lasting less than a beautiful tree-than her own picture-her own shadow, which won't change so to the sun as her face to the mirror.— I must leave off, for my head aches consumedly. I have never been quite well since the night of the representation of Alfieri's Mirra, a fortnight ago. "Yours ever."

LETTER CCCXL.

TO MR MURRAY.

"Bologna, August 29, 1819. "I have been in a rage these two days, and am still bilious therefrom. You shall hear. A captain of dragoons, **, Hanoverian by birth, in the Papal troops at present, whom I had obliged by a loan when nobody would lend him a paul, recommended a horse to me, on sale by a Lieutenant ✶ ✶, an officer who unites the sale of cattle to the purchase of men." I bought it. The next day, on shoeing the horse, we discovered the thrush,-the animal being warranted sound. I sent to reclaim the contract and the money. The lieutenant desired to speak with me in person.

"Am I now reposing on a bed of flowers ?"-See ROBERTSON.

request. He began a story. I asked him if he would return the money. He said no-but he would exchange. He asked an exorbitant price for his other horses. I told him that he was a thief. He said he was an officer and a man of honour, and pulled out a Parmesan passport signed by General Count Neifperg. I answered, that as he was an officer, I would treat him as such; and that as to his being a gentle. man, he might prove it by returning the money: as for his Parmesan passport, I should have valued it more if it had been a Parmesan cheese. He answered in high terms, and said that if it were in the morning (it was about eight o'clock in the evening) he would have satisfaction. I then lost my temper: As for THAT,' I replied, 'you shall have it directly, -it will be mutual satisfaction, I can assure you. You are a thief, and, as you say, an officer; my pistols are in the next room loaded; take one of the candles, examine, and make your choice of weapons.' He replied that pistols were English weapons; he always fought with the sword. I told him that I was able to accommodate him, having three regimental swords in a drawer near us; and he might take the longest and put himself on guard.

[ocr errors]

"All this passed in presence of a third person. He then said No, but to-morrow morning he would give me the meeting at any time or place. I answered that it was not usual to appoint meetings in the presence of witnesses, and that we had best speak man to man, and appoint time and instruments. But as the man present was leaving the room, the Lieutenant before he could shut the door after him, ran out roaring help and murder' most lustily, and fell into a sort of hysteric in the arms of about fifty people, who all saw that I had no weapon of any sort or kind about me, and followed him, asking him what the devil was the matter with him. Nothing would do: he ran away without his hat, and went to bed, ill of the fright. He then tried his complaint at the police, which dismissed it as frivolous. He is, I believe, gone away, or going.

"The horse was warranted, but, I believe, so worded that the villain will not be obliged to refund, according to law. He endeavoured to raise up an indictment of assault and battery, but as it was in a public inn, in a frequented street, there were too many witnesses to the contrary; and, as a military man, he has not cut a martial figure, even in the opinion of the priests. He ran off in such a hurry that he left his hat, and never missed it till he got to his hostel or inn. The facts are as I tell you, I can assure you. He began by 'coming Captain Grand over me,' or I should never have thought of trying his 'cunning in fence.' But what could I do? He talked of honour and satisfaction, and his commission;' he produced a military passport; there are severe punishments for regular duels on the continent, and trifling ones for rencontres, so that it is best to fight it out directly; he had robbed, and then wanted to insult me;—what could I do? My patience was gone, and the weapons at hand, fair and equal. Besides, it was just after dinner, when my digestion was bad, and I don't like to be disturbed. His friend is at Forli; we shall meet on my way back to Ravenna, The Hanoverian seems the greater rogue of the two; and if my valour

« PreviousContinue »