66 MY DEAR HODGSON, "Before this reaches you, Hobhouse, two officers' wives, three children, two waiting-maids, ditto subalterns for the troops, three Portuguese esquires and domestics, in all nineteen souls, will have sailed in the Lisbon packet, with the noble Captain Kidd, a gallant commander as ever smuggled an anker of right Nantz.

"We are going to Lisbon first, because the Malta packet has sailed, d'ye see?-from Lisbon to Gibraltar, Malta, Constantinople, and all that,' as Orator Henley said, when he put the church, and all that,' in danger.

"This town of Falmouth, as you will partly conjecture, is no great ways from the sea. It is defended on the sea-side by tway castles, St Maws and Pendennis, extremely well calculated for annoying every body except an enemy. St Maws is garrisoned by an able-bodied person of fourscore, a widower. He has the whole command and sole management of six most unmanageable pieces of ordnance, admirably adapted for the destruction of Pendennis, a like tower of strength on the opposite side of the Channel. We have seen St Maws, but Pendennis they will not let us behold, save at a distance, because Hobhouse and I are suspected of having already taken St Maws by a coup-de-main.

"The town contains many quakers and salt-fishthe oysters have a taste of copper, owing to the soil of a mining country-the women (blessed be the corporation therefore!) are flogged at the cart's tail when they pick and steal, as happened to one of the fair sex yesterday noon. She was pertinacious in her behaviour, and damned the mayor.

"I don't know when I can write again, because it depends on that experienced navigator, Captain Kidd, and the stormy winds that (don't) blow' at this season. I leave England without regret-I shall return to it without pleasure. I am like Adam, the first convict sentenced to transportation, but I have no Eve, and have eaten no apple but what was sour as a crab;-and thus ends my first chapter. Adieu. Yours, etc."

In this letter the following lively verses were enclosed!

"Falmouth Roads, June 30th, 1809. 1.

Huzza! Hodgson, we are going,

Our embargo's off at last;

Favourable breezes blowing
Bend the canvas o'er the mast.

Now our boatmen quit their mooring, And all hands must ply the oar; Baggage from the quay is lowering,

We're impatient-push from shore. "Have a care! that case holds liquorStop the boat-I 'm sick-oh Lord!" "Sick, ma'am' damme, you'll be sicker Ere you 've been an hour on board." Thus are screaming Men and women,

Gemmen, ladies, servants, Jacks:
Here entangling,

All are wrangling,

Stuck together close as wax. Such the general noise and racket, Ere we reach the Lisbon Packet.

3.

Now we've reach'd her, lo! the captain,
Gallant Kidd, commands the crew:
Passengers their births are clapt in,
Some to grumble, some to spew.
"Hey-dey! call you that a cabin?

Why 't is hardly three feet squareNot enough to stow Queen Mab inWho the deuce can harbour there?"

"Who, sir, plenty !
Nobles twenty

Did at once my vessel fill-"
"Did they? Jesus,

How you squeeze us!
Would to God they did so still-
Then I'd scape the heat and racket
Of the good ship, Lisbon Packet!"

4

"Fletcher! Murray! Bob! where are you?
Stretch'd along the deck like logs-
Bear a hand, you jolly tar, you!
Here's a rope's-end for the dogs.
Hmuttering fearful curses,
As the hatchway down he rolls:
Now his breakfast, now his verses,
Vomit's forth-and damns our souls.
"Here's a stanza
On Braganza-

Help!"-"A couplet ?"-"No, a cup
Of warm water-"

"What's the matter?"
"Zounds! my liver's coming up!

I shall not survive the racket
Of this brutal Lisbon Packet,"

5.

Now at length we 're off for Turkey,
Lord knows when we shall come back!
Breezes foul and tempests murky
May unship us in a crack.
But, since life at most a jest is:
As philosophers allow,
Still to laugh by far the best is :
Then laugh on-as I do now.
Laugh at all things,
Great and small things,
Sick or well, at sea or shore:
While we 're quaffing,

Let's have laughing

Who the devil cares for more?

Some good wine! and who would lack it, Ev'n on board the Lisbon Packet?

BYRON.

On the 2d of July the packet sailed from Falmouth, and, after a favourable passage of four days and a half, the voyagers reached Lisbon, and took up their abode in that city.*

The following letters, from Lord Byron to his friend Mr Hodgson, though written in his most light and schoolboy strain, will give some idea of the first impressions that his residence in Lisbon made upon him. Such letters, too, contrasted with the noble stanzas on Portugal in "Childe Harold," will show how various were the moods of his versatile mind, and what different aspects it could take when in repose or on the wing.

suring.

* * *

6

"When the Portuguese are pertinacious, I say, 'Carracho!'-the great oath of the grandees, that very well supplies the place of Damme,'-and when dissatisfied with my neighbour, I pronounce him' Ambra di merdo.' With these two phrases, and a third, 'Avra Bouro,' which signifieth Get an ass,' I am universally understood to be a person of degree and a master of languages. How merrily we lives that travellers be!-if we had food and raiment. But, in sober sadness, any thing is better than England, and I am infinitely amused with my pilgrimage as far as

it has gone.

* Lord Byron used sometimes to mention a strange story, which the commander of the packet, Captain Kidd, related to him on the passage. This officer stated that, being asleep one night, in his birth, he was awakened by the pressure of something heavy on his limbs, and, there being a faint light in the room, couid see, as he thought, distinctly, the figure of his brother, who was, at that time, in the naval service in the East Indies, dressed in his uniform, and stretched across the bed. Concluding it to be an illusion of the senses, he shut his eyes and made an effort to sleep. But still the same pressure continued, and still, as often as he ventured to take another look, he saw the figure lying across him in the same position. To add to the wonder, on putting his hand forth to touch this form, he found the uniform, in which it appeared to be dressed, dripping wet. On the entrance of one of his brother officers, to whom he called out in alarm, the apparition vanished; but in a few months after, he received the startling intelligence that on that night his brother had been drowned in the Indian seas. Of the supernatural character of this appearance, Captain Kidd himself did not appear to have the slightest doubt.

66 * * *

Cadiz is a complete Cythera. Many of the grandees who have left Madrid during the troubles reside there, and I do believe it is the prettiest and cleanest town in Europe. London is filthy in the comparison. The Spanish women are all alike, their education the same. The wife of a duke is, in information, as the wife of a peasant, the wife of a peasant, in manner, equal to a duchess. Certainly, they are fascinating; but their minds have only one idea, and the business of their lives is intrigue.

"I have seen Sir John Carr at Seville and Cadiz, and, like Swift's barber, have been down on my knees to beg he would not put me into black and white. Pray remember me to the Drurys and the

*The baggage and part of the servants were sent by sca to Gibraltar.

Davies, and all of that stamp who are yet extant. * Send me a letter and news to Malta. My next epistle shall be from Mount Caucasus or Mount Sion. I shall return to Spain before I see England, for I am enamoured of the country. Adieu, and believe me, &c."

In a letter to Mrs Byron, dated a few days later, from Gibraltar, he recapitulates the same account. of his progress, only dwelling rather more diffusely on some of the details. Thus, of Cintra and Mafra,"To make amends for this, † the village of Cintra, about fifteen miles from the capital, is, perhaps in every respect, the most delightful in Europe; it contains beauties of every description, natural and artificial. Palaces and gardens rising in the midst of rocks, cataracts, and precipices; convents on stupendous heights-a distant view of the sea and the Tagus; and, besides (though that is a secondary consideration), is remarkable as the scene of Sir

H. D.'s Convention. It unites in itself all the wild

ness of the western highlands, with the verdure of the south of France. Near this place, about ten miles to the right, is the palace of Mafra, the boast of Portugal, as it might be of any country, in point of magnificence without elegance. There is a convent annexed; the monks, who possess large revenues, are courteous enough, and understand Latin, so that we had a long conversation: they have a large library, and asked me if the English had any books in their country."

An adventure which he met with at Seville, characteristic both of the country and of himself, is thus described in the same letter to Mrs Byron :

"We lodged in the house of two Spanish unmarried ladies, who possess six houses in Seville, and gave me a curious specimen of Spanish manners. They are women of character, and the eldest a fine woman, the youngest pretty, but not so good a figure as Donna Josepha. The freedom of manner, which is general here, astonished me not a little; and in the course of further observation I find that reserve is not the characteristic of the Spanish belles, who are, in general, very handsome, with large black eyes, and very fine forms. The eldest honoured your unworthy son with very particular attention, embracing him with great tenderness at parting (I was there but three days), after cutting off a lock of his hair, and presenting him with one of her own, about three feet in length, which I send, and beg you will retain till my return. Her last words were, ' Adios, tu hermoso! me gusto mucho.'-'Adieu, you pretty fellow you please me

"This sort of passage," says Mr Hodgson, in a note on his copy of this letter, "constantly occurs in his correspondence. Nor was his interest confined to mere remembrances and inquiries after health. Were it possible to state all he has done for numerous friends, he would appear amiable indeed. For myself, I am bound to acknowledge, in the fullest and warmest manner, his most generous and well-timed aid; and, were my poor friend Bland alive, he would as gladly bear the like testimony;though I have most reason of all men, to do so."

The filthiness of Lisbon and its inhabitants. Colonel Napier, in a note in his able History of the Peninsular War, notices the mistake into which Lord Byron and others were led on this subject; the signature of the Convention, as well as all the other proceedings connected with it, having taken place at a distance of thirty miles from Cintra.

much.' She offered a share of her apartment, which my virtue induced me to decline; she laughed, and said I had some English 'amante' (lover), and added that she was going to be married to an officer in the Spanish army."

Among the beauties of Cadiz, his imagination, dazzled by the attractions of the many, was on the point, it would appear from the following, of being fixed by one:

"Cadiz, sweet Cadiz, is the most delightful town I ever beheld, very different from our English cities in every respect, except cleanliness (and it is as clean as London), but still beautiful and, full of the finest women in Spain, the Cadiz belles being the Lancashire witches of their land. Just as I was introduced and began to like the grandees, I was forced to leave it for this cursed place; but before I return to England I will visit it again.

"The night before I left it, I sat in the box at the Opera with Admiral **'s family, an aged wife and a fine daughter, Sennorita * The girl is very pretty, in the Spanish style; in my opinion, by no means inferior to the English in charms, and certainly superior in fascination. Long black hair, dark languishing eyes, clear, olive complexions, and forms more graceful in motion than can be conceived by an Englishman used to the drowsy, listless air of his country women, added to the most becoming dress, and, at the same time, the most decent in the world, render a Spanish beauty irresistible.

"Miss and her little brother understood a little French, and, after regretting my ignorance of the Spanish, she proposed to become my preceptress in that language. I could only reply by a low bow, and express my regret that I quitted Cadiz too soon to permit me to make the progress which would doubtless attend my studies under so charming a directress. I was standing at the back of the box, which resembles our Opera boxes (the theatre is large, and finely decorated, the music admirable), in the manner in which Englishmen generally adopt, for fear of incommoding the ladies in front, when this fair Spaniard dispossessed an old woman (an aunt or a duenna) of her chair, and commanded me to be seated next herself, at a tolerable distance from her mamma. At the close of the performance I withdrew, and was lounging with a party of men in the passage, when, en passant, the lady turned round and called me, and I had the honour of attending her to the admiral's mansion. I have an invitation on my return to Cadiz, which I shall accept, if I repass through the country on my return from Asia.”

To these adventures, or rather glimpses of adventures, which he met with in his hasty passage through Spain, he adverted, I recollect, briefly, in the early part of his "Memoranda ;" and, it was the younger, I think, of his fair hostesses at Seville, whom he there described himself as having made earnest love to, with the help of a dictionary. "For some time," he said, "I went on prosperously both as a linguist and a lover, till, at length, the lady took a fancy to a

* We find an allusion to this incident in Don Juan :'Tis pleasing to be school'd in a strange tongue By female lips and eyes-that is, I mean, When both the teacher and the taught are young,

As was the case, at least, where I have been, &c. &c.

ring which I wore, and set her heart on my giving it to her, as a pledge of my sincerity. This, however, could not be;-any thing but the ring, I declared, was at her service, and much more than its value,but the ring itself I had made a vow never to give away." The young Spaniard grew angry as the contention went on, and it was not long before the lover became angry also; till, at length, the affair ended by their separating unsuccessful on both sides. "Soon after this," said he, " I sailed for Malta, and there parted with both my heart and ring.”

In the letter from Gibraltar, just cited, he adds"I am going over to Africa to-morrow; it is only six miles from this fortress. My next stage is Cagliari in Sardinia, where I shall be presented to his majesty. I have a most superb uniform as a court-dress, indispensable in travelling." His plan, of visiting Africa was, however, relinquished. After a short stay at Gibraltar, during which he dined one day with Lady Westmoreland, and another with General Castanos, he, on the 19th of August, took his departure for Malta in the packet, having first sent Joe Murray and young Rushton back to England,-the latter being unable, from ill health, to accompany him any further. "Pray," he says to his mother, "show the lad every kindness, as he is my great favourite.”*

He also wrote a letter to the father of the boy, which gives so favourable an impression of his thoughtfulness and kindliness that I have much pleasure in being enabled to introduce it here.

"I have sent Robert home with Mr Murray, because the country which I am about to travel through is in a state which renders it unsafe, particularly for one so young. I allow you to deduct five-and-twenty pounds a year for his education for three years, provided I do not return before that time, and I desire he may be considered as in my service. Let every care be taken of him, and let him be sent to school. In case of my death, I have provided enough in my will to render him independent. He has behaved extremely well, and has travelled a great deal for the time of his absence. Deduct the expense of his education from your rent.

"BYRON."

It was the fate of Lord Byron, throughout life, to meet, wherever he went, with persons who, by some tinge of the extraordinary in their own fates or characters, were prepared to enter, at once, into full sympathy with his; and to this attraction, by which he drew towards him all strange and eccentric spirits, he owed some of the most agreeable connexions of his life, as well as some of the most troublesome. Of the former description was an intimacy which he now cultivated during his short sojourn at Malta. The

* The postscript to this letter is as follows:

"P. S.-So Lord G. is married to a rustic! Well done! If I wed, I will bring you home a Sultana, with half a dozen cities for a dowry, and reconcile you to an Ottoman daughter-in-law with a bushel of pearls, not larger than ostrich eggs, or smaller than walnuts."

lady with whom he formed this acquaintance was the same addressed by him under the name of "Florence" in Childe Harold, and in a letter to his mother from Malta, he thus describes her in prose:-" This letter is committed to the charge of a very extraordinary woman, whom you have doubtless heard of, Mrs S* S*, of whose escape the Marquis de Salvo published a narrative a few years ago. She has since been shipwrecked, and her life has been from its commencement so fertile in remarkable incidents, that in a romance they would appear improbable. She was born at Constantinople, where her father, Baron H*, was Austrian Ambassador; married unhappily, yet has never been impeached in point of character; excited the vengeance of Buonaparte by a part in some conspiracy;. several times risked her life; and is not yet twenty-five. She is here on her way to England, to join her husband, being obliged to leave Trieste, where she was paying a visit to her mother, by the approach of the French, and embarks soon in a ship of war. Since my arrival here, I have had scarcely any other companion. I have found her very pretty, very accomplished, and extremely eccentric. Buonaparte is even now so incensed against her, that her life would be in some danger if she were taken prisoner a second time."

The tone in which he addresses this fair heroine in Childe Harold is (consistently with the above dispassionate account of her) that of the purest admiration and interest, unwarmed by any more ardent senti

ment:

Sweet Florence! could another ever share
This wayward, loveless heart, it would be thine;
But, check'd by every tie, I may not dare
To cast a worthless offering at thy shrine,
Nor ask so dear a breast to feel one pang for mine.
Thus Harold deem'd, as on that lady's eye
He look'd, and met its beam without a thought,
Save admiration, glancing harmless by, &c. &c.

In one so imaginative as Lord Byron, who, while he infused so much of his life into his poetry, mingled also not a little of poetry with his life, it is difficult, in unravelling the texture of his feelings, to distinguish at all times between the fanciful and the real. His description here, for instance, of the unmoved and "loveless heart," with which he contemplated even the charms of this attractive person, is wholly at variance, not only with the anecdote from his"Memoranda" which I have recalled, but with the statements in many of his subsequent letters, and, above all, with one of the most graceful of his lesser poems, purporting to be addressed to this same lady during a thunder-storm on his road to Zitza.*

The following stanzas from this little poem have a music in them which, independently of all meaning, is enchanting :

And since I now remember thee

In darkness and in dread, As in those hours of revelry,

Which mirth and music sped;
Do thou, amidst the fair white walls,
If Cadiz yet be free,

At times, from out her latticed halls,
Look o'er the dark blue sea:
Then think upon Calypso's isles,
Endear'd by days gone by;
To others give a thousand smiles,
To me a single sigh, &c. &c.

Notwithstanding, however, these counter evidences, I am much disposed to believe that the representation of the state of his heart in the foregoing extract from Childe Harold may be regarded as the true one; and that the notion of his being in love was but a dream that sprung up afterwards, when the image of the fair Florence had become idealised in his fancy, and every remembrance of their pleasant hours among" Calypso's isles" came invested by his imagination with the warm aspect of love. It will be recollected that to the chilled and sated feelings which early indulgence, and almost as early disenchantment, had left behind, he attributes in these verses the calm and passionless regard with which even attractions like those of Florence were viewed by him. That such was actually his distaste, at this period, to all real objects of love or passion (however his fancy could call up creatures of its own to worship) there is every reason to believe; and the same morbid indifference to those pleasures he had once so ardently pursued still continued to be professed by him on his return to England. No anchoret, indeed, could claim for himself much more apathy towards all such allurements than he did at that period. But to be thus saved from temptation was a dear-bought safety, and, at the age of three-and-twenty, satiety and disgust are but melancholy substitutes for virtue.

While at Malta, in consequence of some trifling misunderstanding, he was on the point of fighting a duel with an officer of the Staff of General Oakes. To this circumstance we shall find him, in some of his subsequent letters, alluding; and I have more than once heard the gentleman who acted as his adviser on the occasion, speak of the cool and manly courage with which he conducted himself through the whole affair. The meeting being appointed for a very early hour in the morning, his companion had to awake him from a sound sleep; but, on their arrival at the place of rendezvous on the sea-shore, the adverse party, from some mistake in the arrangements, was not forthcoming. Though their baggage was already on board the brig that was to convey them to Albania, Lord Byron determined to give his antago nist the chances of, at least, another hour, and for nearly that space of time his friend and he sauntered about the shore. At length an officer, deputed by his expected adversary, arrived, and not only accounted satisfactorily for the delay that had taken place, but made every other explanation, with respect to the supposed offence, that the two friends could require.

The brig of war, in which they sailed, having been ordered to convoy a fleet of small merchant-men to Patras and Prevesa, they remained, for two or three days, at anchor off the former place. From thence, proceeding to their ultimate destination, and catching a sunset view of Missolonghi in their way, they landed on the 29th of September, at Prevesa.

The route which Lord Byron now took through Albania, as well as those subsequent journeys through other parts of Turkey, which he performed in company with his friend Mr Hobhouse, may be traced, by such as are desirous of details on the subject, in the account which the latter gentleman has given of his travels;-an account which, interesting from its own excellence in every merit that should adorn such

a work, becomes still more so from the feeling that Lord Byron is, as it were, present through its pages, and that we there follow his first youthful footsteps into the land, with whose name he has intertwined his own for ever. As I am enabled, however, by the letters of the noble poet to his mother, as well as by others, still more curious, which are now for the first time published, to give his own rapid and lively sketches of his wanderings, I shall content myself, after this general reference to the volume of Mr Hobhouse, with such occasional extracts from its pages as may throw light upon the letters of his friend.

"I have now been some time in Turkey: this place is on the coast, but I have traversed the interior of the province of Albania, on a visit to the Pacha. I lef Malta in the Spider, a brig of war, on the 21st of September, and arrived in eight days at Prevesa. I thence have been about 150 miles, as far as Tepaleen, his highness's country palace, where I stayed three days. The name of the Pacha is Ali, and he is considered a man of the first abilities: he governs the whole of Albania (the ancient Illyricum), Epirus, and part of Macedonia. His son, Vely Pacha, to whom he has given me letters, governs the Morea, and has great infiuence in Egypt; in short, he is one of the most powerful men in the Ottoman empire. When I reached Yanina, the capital, after a journey of three days over the mountains, through a country of the most picturesque beauty, I found that Ali Pacha was with his army in Illyricum, besieging Ibraham Pacha in the castle of Berat. He had heard that an Englishman of rank was in his dominions, and had left orders in Yanina with the commandant to provide a house, and supply me with every kind of necessary gratis; and, though I have been allowed to make presents to the slaves, &c., I have not been permitted to pay for a single article of household consumption.

"I rode out on the vizier's horses, and saw the palaces of himself and grandsons: they are splendid, but too much ornamented with silk and gold. I then went over the mountains through Zitza, a village with a Greek monastery (where I slept on my return), in the most beautiful situation (always excepting Cintra, in Portugal) I ever beheld. In nine days I reached Tepaleen. Our journey was much prolonged by the torrents that had fallen from the mountains, and intersected the roads. I shall never forget the singular scene on entering Tepaleen at five in the

The following is Mr Hobhouse's less embellished description of this scene:- The court at Tepellene, which was enclosed on two sides by the palace, and on the other two sides by a high wall, presented us, at our first entrance, with a sight something like what we might have, perhaps, beheld some hundred years ago in the castle-yard of a great feudal lord. Soldiers, with their arms piled against the wall near them, were assembled in different parts of the square: some of them pacing slowly backwards and forwards, and others sitting on the ground in groups. Several horses, completely caparisoned, were leading about, whilst others were neighing under the hands of the grooms. In