"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. 2 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

"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

["During our drive this evening, Lord Byron hardly spoke a word. There was a sacredness in his melancholy that I dared not interrupt. At length he said, 'This is Ada's birth-day; and might have been the happiest day of my life as it is!' He stopped, seemingly ashamed of having betrayed his feelings. All at once our silence was interrupted by shrieks that seemed to proceed from a cottage. We pulled up to enquire of a contadino. He told us, that a widow had just lost her only child, and that the sounds proceeded from the wailings of some women over the corpse. Lord Byron was much affected. 'I shall not be happy,' said he, till I hear that my daughter is well. I have a great horror of anniversaries."— MEDWIN.]

2 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

was

"The consummation you mentioned for Riding pretty sharply after Mr. Medwin and Taaffe was near taking place yesterday. poor myself, in turning the corner of a lane bebesides losing some claret on the spot, bruised tween Pisa and the hills, he was spilt,—and, himself a good deal, but is in no danger. He was bled, and keeps his room. As I ahead of him some hundred yards, I did not see the accident; but my servant, who was the usual excuse of floored equestrians. As behind, did, and says the horse did not fall Taaffe piques himself upon his horsemanship, and his horse is really a pretty horse enough, I long for his personal narrative, - as I never yet met the man who would fairly claim a tumble as his own property.

"Could not you send me a printed copy of the Irish Avatar ?'-I do not know what has become of Rogers since we parted at Florence.

"Don't let the Angles keep you from writing. Sam told me that you were somewhat dissipated in Paris, which I can easily believe. Let me hear from you at your best leisure. "Ever and truly, &c.

jestingly in a preceding letter to his Lordship, that it would be 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 yet been related or believed of him, and leaving even Goethe's story of the double murder at Florence far behind.

3 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," &c. [See Works, p. 576.]

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. Taaffe is gone to see what can be done.

LETTER 473. TO MR. SHELLEY.

"My dear Shelley,

"B."

"December 12. 1821.

"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."

PISA.

"P. B. SHELLEY.”

CHAPTER XLVIII.

1822.

LETTERS TO SIR WALTER SCOTT ON HIS REVIEW OF CHILDE HAROLD, AND ACCEPTANCE OF THE DEDICATION OF CAIN -TO KINNAIRD, MURRAY, AND MOORE, ON THE OUTCRY AGAINST THE MYSTERY.DEATH OF LADY NOEL. THE TRAGEDY OF WERNER CONCLUDED. PIRACIES OF CAIN. DECISION OF THE LORD CHANCELLOR. -PROPOSED MEETING WITH SOUTHEY. DEATH OF HIS DAUGHTER ALLEGRA.-AFFRAY AT PISA.-LETTER TO MURRAY CONCERNING ALLEGRA'S FUNERAL. INVITED ON BOARD THE AMERICAN SQUADRON. TRANSLATIONS OF CHILDE HAROLD. PARTIALITY OF GOETHE AND THE GERMANS TO DON JUAN.

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.

dedicated 'Cain.' The sight of one of his letters always does me good."- - MEDWIN.]

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 ad- | dressing 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

[Sir Walter Scott announced his acceptance of the Dedication in the following letter to Mr. Murray: "Edinburgh, 4th December, 1821. "MY DEAR SIR, - I accept, with feelings of great obligation, the flattering proposal of Lord Byron to prefix my name to the very grand and tremendous drama of Cain.' I may be partial to it, and you will allow I have cause; but I do not know that his Muse has ever taken so lofty a flight amid her former soarings. He has certainly matched Milton on his own ground. Some part of the language is bold, and may shock one class of readers, whose line will be adopted by others out of affectation or envy. But then they must condemn the Paradise Lost,' if they have a mind to be consistent. The fiend-like reasoning and bold blasphemy of the fiend and of his pupil lead exactly to the point which was to be expected, -the commission of the first murder, and the ruin and despair of the perpetrator.

:

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 Southey 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

"I do not see how any one can accuse the author himself of Manicheism. The Devil talks the language of that sect, doubtless; because, not being able to deny the existence of the Good Principle, he endeavours to exalt himself— the Evil Principle-to a seeming equality with the Good; but such arguments, in the mouth of such a being, can only be used to deceive and to betray. Lord Byron might have made this more evident, by placing in the mouth of Adam, or some good and protecting spirit, the reasons which render the existence of moral evil consistent with the general benevolence of the Deity. The great key to the mystery is, perhaps, the imperfection of our own faculties which see and feel strongly the partial evils which press upon us, but know too little of the general system of the universe to be aware how the existence of these is to be reconciled with the benevolence of the great Creator. "Yours, my dear Sir, very truly, WALTER SCOTT."

"To John Murray, Esq.

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.

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 sumI know you like the sea too."

cere 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,

66

LETTER 476. TO MR. DOUGLAS KINNAIRD.2 "Pisa, February 6. 1822.

66 6

'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.

66

·

I have got Southey's pretended reply 5, 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)

to palm upon you obsolete trash: but I tell you that this poem, this Mystery,' with which you have insulted us, is nothing more than a canto from Voltaire's novels, and the most objectionable articles in Bayle's Dictionary, served up in clumsy cuttings of ten syllables for the purpose of giving it the guise of poetry," &c. &c.]

^ [Lord Byron alludes to a publication entitled, "Lord Byron's Works, viewed in connection with Christianity and the Obligations of Social Life; a Sermon, preached in Holland Chapel, Kennington, by the Rev. John Styles, D.D.," and in which the poet is described as “a denaturalised being, who, having exhausted every species of sensual gratification, and drained the cup of sin to its bitterest dregs, is resolved to show that he is no longer human, even in his frailties, but a cool, unconcerned fiend."]

5 [A Letter which appeared in the London Courier of the 5th of January, 1822, in answer to some strictures made by Lord Byron on the Laureat's Preface to his Vision of Judgment. See Works, p. 513.]