"I believe that I showed you his epistle in autumn last. He asks me if I have heard of my 'laureat' at Paris',- somebody who has written a most sanguinary Epître' against me; but whether in French, or Dutch, or on what score, I know not, and he don't say, except that (for my satisfaction) he says it is the best thing in the fellow's volume. If there is any thing of the kind that I ought to know, you will doubtless tell me. I suppose it to be something of the usual sort; he says, he don't remember the author's name.

"I wrote to you some ten days ago, and expect an answer at your leisure.

"The separation business still continues, and all the world are implicated, including priests and cardinals. The public opinion is furious against him, because he ought to have cut the matter short at first, and not waited twelve months to begin. He has been trying at evidence, but can get none sufficient; for what would make fifty divorces in England won't do here there must be the most decided proofs.

66

It is the first cause of the kind attempted in Ravenna for these two hundred years; for, though they often separate, they assign a different motive. You know that the continental incontinent are more delicate than the English, and don't like proclaiming their coronation in a court, even when nobody

doubts it.

“All her relations are furious against him. The father has challenged him -a superfluous valour, for he don't fight, though suspected of two assassinations one of the famous Monzoni of Forli. Warning was given me not to take such long rides in the Pine Forest without being on my guard; so I take my stiletto and a pair of pistols in my pocket during my daily rides.

"I won't stir from this place till the matter is settled one way or the other. She is as femininely firm as possible; and the opinion

1 M. Lamartine. [See antè, p. 413.]

2 ["Perhaps I should be much better pleased, if I were told you called me your little friend, than if you complimented me with the title of a great genius,' or an ' eminent hand,' as Jacob does all his authors."— - Pope to Steele.]

is so much against him, that the advocates decline to undertake his cause, because they say that he is either a fool or a rogue-fool, if he did not discover the liaison till now; and rogue, if he did know it, and waited for some bad end, to divulge it. In short, there has been nothing like it since the days of Guido di Polenta's family, in these parts.

"If the man has me taken off, like Polonius say, he made a good end,'- for a melodrame. The principal security is, that he has not the courage to spend twenty scudi -the average price of a clean-handed bravo

otherwise there is no want of opportunity, for I ride about the woods every evening, with one servant, and sometimes an acquaintance, who latterly looks a little queer in solitary bits of bushes.

"Good bye.—Write to yours ever, &c."

LETTER 377. TO MR. MURRAY.

-

"Ravenna, June 7. 1820. "Enclosed is something which will interest you, to wit, the opinion of the greatest man of Germany-perhaps of Europe upon one of the great men of your advertisements, (all 'famous hands,' as Jacob Tonson used to say of his ragamuffins,)-in short, a critique of Goethe's upon Manfred. There is the original, an English translation, and an Italian one; keep them all in your archives, - for the opinions of such a man as Goethe, whether favourable or not, are alfavourable. His Faust I never read, for I - and this is more so, as ways interesting don't know German; but Matthew Monk Lewis, in 1816, at Coligny, translated most of it to me vivá voce, and I was naturally much struck with it; but it was the Staubach and the Jungfrau, and something else, much more than Faustus, that made me write Manfred. The first scene, however, and that this letter. of Faustus are very similar. Acknowledge "Yours ever.

"P. S.-I have received Ivanhoe ; —good. Pray send me some tooth-powder and tincture of myrrh, by Waite, &c. Ricciardetto should have been translated literally, or not at all. As to puffing Whistlecraft, it won't do.3 I'll tell you why some day or other. Cornwall's a poet, but spoilt by the detestable schools of the day. Mrs. Hemans is a poet

also, but too stiltified and apostrophic, - and quite wrong. Men died calmly before the Christian era, and since, without Christianity; witness the Romans, and, lately, Thistlewood, Sandt, and Louvel 3 men who ought to have been weighed down with their crimes, even had they believed. A deathbed is a matter of nerves and constitution, and not of religion. Voltaire was frightened, Frederick of Prussia not: Christians the same, according to their strength rather than their creed. What does Helga Herbert mean by his stanza? which is octave got drunk or gone mad. He ought to have his ears boxed with Thor's hammer for rhyming so fantastically."5

The following is the article from Goethe's "Kunst und Alterthum," enclosed in this letter. The grave confidence with which the venerable critic traces the fancies of his brother poet to real persons and events, making no difficulty even of a double murder at Florence to furnish grounds for his theory, affords an amusing instance of the disposition so prevalent throughout Europe, to picture Byron as a man of marvels and mysteries, as well in his life as his poetry. To these exaggerated, or wholly false notions of him, the numerous fictions palmed upon the world of his romantic tours and wonderful adventures in places he never saw, and with persons that never existed, have, no doubt, considerably contributed; and the consequence is, so utterly out of truth and nature are the representations of his life and character long current upon the Continent, that it may be questioned whether the real "flesh and blood" hero of these pages, -the social, practical-minded, and, with all his faults and eccentricities, English Lord Byron, may not, to the over-exalted imaginations of most of his foreign admirers, appear but an ordinary, unromantic, and prosaic personage.

1 [Arthur Thistlewood, executed at the Old Bailey, May 1. 1820, for High Treason.]

[Charles Sandt, the assassin of Kotzebue, at Manheim, in March 1819. After the murder he exclaimed "God, I thank thee, for having permitted me to accomplish this act !" and plunged the bloody poniard in his own breast. He went to the place of execution as to a fête, and his last words were, that he " died for his country."]

[The murderer of the Duc de Berri, in February 1820.]

[The Hon. William Herbert, uncle to the Earl of Carnarvon, author of "Helga," "Icelandic Translations," &c. &c.]

"GOETHE ON MANFRED.

[1820.]

"Byron's tragedy, Manfred, was to me a wonderful phenomenon, and one that closely touched me. This singular intellectual poet has taken my Faustus to himself, and extracted from it the strongest nourishment for his hypochondriac humour. He has made use of the impelling principles in his own way, for his own purposes, so that no one of them remains the same; and it is particularly on this account that I cannot enough admire his genius. The whole is in this way so completely formed anew, that it would be an interesting task for the critic to point out not only the alterations he has made, but their degree of resemblance with, or dissimilarity to, the original; in the course of which I cannot deny that the gloomy heat of an unbounded and exuberant despair becomes at last oppressive to us. Yet is the dissatisfaction we feel always connected with esteem and admiration.

"We find thus in this tragedy the quintessence of the most astonishing talent born to be its own tormentor. The character of Lord Byron's life and poetry hardly permits a just and equitable appreciation. He has often enough confessed what it is that torments him. He has repeatedly pourtrayed it; and scarcely any one feels compassion for this intolerable suffering, over which he is ever laboriously ruminating. There are, properly speaking, two females whose phantoms for ever haunt him, and which, in this piece also, perform principal

parts

one under the name of Astarte, the other without form or actual presence, and merely a voice. Of the horrid occurrence which took place with the former the following is related:-When a bold and enterprising young man, he won the affections of a Florentine lady. Her husband discovered the amour, and murdered his wife; but the murderer was the same night found dead in the street, and there was no one on whom any suspicion could be attached. Lord

5 [“ Herbert shall wield Thor's hammer, and sometimes, In gratitude, thoul't praise his rugged rhymes." English Bards, &c.]

6 of this kind are the accounts, filled with all sorts of circumstantial wonders, of his residence in the island of Mytilene; his voyages to Sicily, - to Ithaca, with the Countess Guiccioli, &c. &c. But the most absurd, perhaps, of all these fabrications, are the stories told by Pouqueville, of the poet's religious conferences in the cell of Father Paul, at Athens; and the still more unconscionable fiction in which Rizo has indulged, in giving the details of a pretended theatrical scene, got up (according to this poetical historian) between Lord Byron and the Archbishop of Arta, at the tomb of Bofzaris, in Missolonghi.

thing does) of Romeo and Juliet now, Gregory, remember thy swashing blow.'

"All these feuds, however, with the Cavalier for his wife, and the troopers for my liveries, are very tiresome to a quiet man, who does his best to please all the world, and longs for fellowship and good will. Pray write. I am yours, &c."

LETTER 379. TO MR. MOOre.

"Ravenna, July 13. 1820. "To remove or increase your Irish anxiety about my being in a wisp,' I answer your letter forthwith; premising that, as I am a Will of the wisp,' I may chance to flit out of it. But, first, a word on the Memoir; -I have no objection, nay, I would rather that one correct copy was taken and deposited in honourable hands, in case of accidents happening to the original; for you know that I have none, and have never even re-read, nor, indeed, read at all what is there written; I only know that I wrote it with the fullest intention to be faithful and true' in my narrative, but not impartial-no, by the Lord! I can't pretend to be that, while I feel. But I wish to give every body concerned the opportunity to contradict or correct me.

"I have no objection to any proper person seeing what is there written, — seeing it was written, like every thing else, for the purpose of being read, however much many writings may fail in arriving at that object.

With regard to the wisp,' the Pope has pronounced their separation. The decree came yesterday from Babylon,-it was she and her friends who demanded it, on the grounds of her husband's (the noble Count Cavalier's) extraordinary usage. He opposed it with all his might because of the alimony, which has been assigned, with all her goods, chattels, carriage, &c. to be restored by him. In Italy they can't divorce. He insisted on her giving me up, and he would forgive every thing,

But, in this country, the very courts hold such proofs in abhorrence, the Italians being as much more delicate in public than the English, as they are more passionate in private.

"The friends and relatives, who are numerous and powerful, reply to him—' You, yourself, are either fool or knave,-fool, if you did not see the consequences of the approximation of these two young persons, knave, if you connive at it. Take your choice, but don't break out (after twelve

1 An Irish phrase for being in a scrape.

months of the closest intimacy, under your own eyes and positive sanction) with a scandal, which can only make you ridiculous and her unhappy.'

"He swore that he thought our intercourse was purely amicable, and that I was more partial to him than to her, till melancholy testimony proved the contrary. To this they answer, that Will of this wisp' was not an unknown person, and that 'clamosa Fama' had not proclaimed the purity of my morals; - that her brother, a year ago, wrote from Rome to warn him that his wife would infallibly be led astray by this ignis fatuus, unless he took proper measures, all of which he neglected to take, &c. &c.

"Now he says that he encouraged my return to Ravenna, to see in quanti piedi di acqua siamo,' and he has found enough to drown him in. In short,

"Ce ne fut pas le tout ; sa femme se plaignit ——
Procès-La parenté se joint en excuse et dit
Que du Docteur venoit tout le mauvais ménage ;
Que cet homme étoit fou, que sa femme étoit sage.
On fit casser le mariage.'

It is but to let the women alone, in the way of conflict, for they are sure to win against the field. She returns to her father's house, and I can only see her under great restrictions-such is the custom of the country. The relations behave very well :- I offered any settlement, but they refused to accept it, and swear she shan't live with G. (as he has tried to prove her faithless), but that he shall maintain her; and, in fact, a judgment to this effect came yesterday. I am, of course, in an awkward situation enough.

"I have heard no more of the carabiniers who protested against my liveries. They are not popular, those same soldiers, and, in a small row, the other night, one was slain, another wounded, and divers put to flight, by some of the Romagnuole youth, who are dexterous, and somewhat liberal of the knife. The perpetrators are not discovered, but I hope and believe that none of my ragamuffins were in it, though they are somewhat savage, and secretly armed, like most of the inhabitants. It is their way, and saves sometimes a good deal of litigation.

"There is a revolution at Naples. If so, it will probably leave a card at Ravenna in its way to Lombardy.

"Your publishers seem to have used you like mine. M. has shuffled, and almost insinuated that my last productions are dull. Dull, sir!-damme, dull! I believe he is right. He begs for the completion of my tragedy of Marino Faliero, none of which is yet gone to England. The fifth act is nearly completed, but it is dreadfully long -40