already been taken to place her in a convent, where she would have been unrelentingly confined for life. The oppression of the marriage contract as existing in the laws and opinions of Italy, though less frequently exercised, is far severer than that of England. "Lord Byron had almost destroyed himself at Venice. His state of debility was such that he was unable to digest any food: he was consumed by hectic fever, and would speedily have perished but for this attachment, which reclaimed him from the excesses into which he threw himself, from carelessness and pride, rather than taste. Poor fellow he is now quite well, and immersed in politics and literature. He has given me a number of the most interesting details on the former subject; but we will not speak of them in a letter. Fletcher is here, and as if, like a shadow, he waxed and waned with the substance of his master-has also revived his good looks, and from amidst the unseasonable grey hairs, a fresh harvest of flaxen locks has put forth. "We talked a great deal of poetry and such matters last night; and, as usual, differed - and I think more than ever. He affects to patronise a system of criticism fit only for the production of mediocrity; and although all his finer poems and passages have been produced in defiance of this system, yet I recognise the pernicious effects of it in the Doge of Venice; and it will cramp and limit his future efforts, however great they may be, unless he gets rid of it. I have read only parts of it, or rather he himself read them to me, and gave me the plan of the whole. sea. "Ravenna, August 15. 1821. We ride out in the evening through the pine forests which divide the city from the Our way of life is this, and I have accommodated myself to it without much difficulty: Lord Byron gets up at two breakfasts we talk, read, &c. until sixthen we ride at eight, and after dinner sit talking until four or five in the morning. I get up at twelve, and am now devoting the interval between my rising and his to you. "Lord Byron is greatly improved in every respect-in genius, in temper, in moral views, in health and happiness. His connection with La Guiccioli has been an inestimable benefit to him. He lives in considerable splendour, but within his income, which is now about four thousand a year, one thousand of which he devotes to purposes of charity. He has had mischievous passions, but these he seems to have subdued; and he is becoming, what he should be, a virtuous man. The interest which he took in the politics of Italy, and the actions he performed in consequence of it, are subjects not fit to be written, but are such as will delight and surprise you. "He is not yet decided to go to Switzerland, a place, indeed, little fitted for him: the gossip and the cabals of those Anglicised coteries would torment him as they did before, and might exasperate him into a relapse of libertinism, which, he says, he plunged into not from taste, but from despair. La Guiccioli and her brother (who is Lord Byron's friend and confidant, and acquiesces perfectly in her connection with him) wish to go to Switzerland, as Lord Byron says, merely from the novelty and pleasure of travelling. Lord Byron prefers Tuscany or Lucca, and is trying to persuade them to adopt his views. He has made me write a long letter to her to engage her to remain. An odd thing enough for an utter stranger to write on subjects of the utmost delicacy to his friend's mistress- but it seems destined that I am always to have some active part in every body's affairs whom I approach. I have set down, in tame Italian, the strongest reasons I can think of against the Swiss emigration. To tell you the truth, I should be very glad to accept as my fee his establishment in Tuscany. Ravenna is a miserable place the people are barbarous and wild, and their language the most infernal patois that you can imagine. He would be in every respect better among the Tuscans. This "He has read to me one of the unpublished cantos of Don Juan, which is astonishingly fine. It sets him not only above, but far above all the poets of the day. Every word has the stamp of immortality. canto is in a style (but totally free from indelicacy, and sustained with incredible ease and power) like the end of the second canto: there is not a word which the most rigid assertor of the dignity of human nature could desire to be cancelled: it fulfils, in a certain degree, what I have long preached,—of producing something wholly new, and relative to the age, and yet surpassingly beautiful. It may be vanity, but I think I see the trace of my earnest exhortations to him, to create something wholly new. * "I am sure, if I asked, it would not be refused; yet there is something in me that makes it impossible. Lord Byron and I are excellent friends; and were I reduced to poverty, or were I a writer who had no claim to a higher station than I possess, or did I [The Canto thus warmly eulogised was the fifth; which was concluded at Ravenna in October 1820, but was not published till the close of the year 1821.] possess a higher than I deserve, we should appear in all things as such, and I would freely ask him any favour. Such is not now the case: the demon of mistrust and of pride lurks between two persons in our situation, poisoning the freedom of our intercourse. This is a tax, and a heavy one, which we must pay for being human. I think the fault is not on my side; nor is it likely, I being the weaker. I hope that in the next world these things will be better managed. What is passing in the heart of another rarely escapes the observation of one who is a strict anatomist of his own. * * * "Lord Byron here has splendid apartments in the palace of Count Guiccioli, who is one of the richest men in Italy. She is divorced, with an allowance of twelve thousand crowns a year;-a miserable pittance from a man who has a hundred and twenty thousand a year. There are two monkeys, five cats, eight dogs, and ten horses, all of whom (except the horses) walk about the house like the masters of it. Tita, the Venetian, is here, and operates as my valet -a fine fellow, with a prodigious black beard, who has stabbed two or three people, and is the most good-natured-looking fellow I ever saw. "Wednesday, Ravenna. "I told you I had written, by Lord Byron's desire, to La Guiccioli, to dissuade her and her family from Switzerland. Her answer is this moment arrived, and my repre sentation seems to have reconciled them to the unfitness of the step. At the conclusion of a letter, full of all the fine things she says she has heard of me, is this request, which I transcribe :-'Signore, la vostra bontà mi fa ardita di chiedervi un favore; me lo accorderete voi? Non partite da Ravenna senza Milord.' Of course, being now, by all the laws of knighthood, captive to a lady's request, I shall only be at liberty on my parole until Lord Byron is settled at Pisa. I shall reply, of course, that the boon is granted; and that if Lord Byron is reluctant to quit Ravenna after I have made arrangements for receiving him at Pisa, I am bound to place myself in the same situation as now, to assail him with importunities to rejoin her. Of this there is fortunately no need; and I need not tell you that there is no fear that this chivalric submission of mine to the great general laws of antique courtesy, against which I never rebel, and which is my religion, should interfere with my soon returning, and long remaining with you, dear girl. * "We ride out every evening as usual, and practise pistol-shooting at a pumpkin, and I am not sorry to observe that I approach towards my noble friend's exactness of aim. I have the greatest trouble to get away; and Lord Byron, as a reason for my stay, has urged, that without either me or the Guiccioli, he will certainly fall into his old habits. I then talk, and he listens to reason; and I earnestly hope that he is too well aware of the terrible and degrading consequences of his former mode of life, to be in danger from the short interval of temptation that will be left him." LETTER 443. TO MR. MURRAY. "Ravenna, August 10. 1821. “Your conduct to Mr. Moore is certainly very handsome; and I would not say so if I could help it, for you are not at present by any means in my good graces. "With regard to additions, &c. there is a Journal which I kept in 1814 which you may ask him for; also a Journal which you must get from Mrs. Leigh, of my journey in the Alps, which contains all the germs of Manfred. I have also kept a small Diary here for a few months last winter, which I would send you, and any continuation. You letters, and do not neglect this (in case of acciwould easy find access to all my papers and dents) on account of the mass of confusion in which they are; for out of that chaos of papers you will find some curious ones of mine and others, if not lost or destroyed. If circumstances, however (which is almost impossible), made me ever consent to a publication in my lifetime, you would in that case, I make Moore some advance, in proportion to the likelihood or non-likelihood of success. You are both sure to survive me, however. suppose, You must also have from Mr. Moore the correspondence between me and Lady B., to whom I offered the sight of all which regards herself in these papers. This is important. He has her letter, and a copy of my answer. I would rather Moore edited me than another. yourself, and Stockdale's to amuse you. I "I sent you Valpy's letter to decide for nani's affair, and you with me-now and am always loyal with you, as I was in Galigthen. "I return you Moore's letter, which is very creditable to him, and you, and me. 66 "Yours ever." LETTER 444. TO MR. MURRAY. : "Ravenna, August 16. 1821. "I regret that Holmes can't or won't come it is rather shabby, as I was always very civil and punctual with him. But he is but one ** more. One meets with none else among the English. "I wait the proofs of the MSS. with proper impatience. "So you have published, or mean to publish, the new Juans? Ar'n't you afraid of the Constitutional Assassination of Bridge Street? When first I saw the name of Murray, I thought it had been yours; but was solaced by seeing that your synonyme is an attorneo, and that you are not one of that atrocious crew. "I am in a great discomfort about the probable war, and with my trustees not getting me out of the funds. If the funds break, it is my intention to go upon the highway. All the other English professions are at present so ungentlemanly by the conduct of those who follow them, that open robbing is the only fair resource left to a man of any principles; it is even honest, in comparison, by being undisguised. "I wrote to you by last post, to say that you had done the handsome thing by Moore and the Memoranda. You are very good as times go, and would probably be still better but for the march of events' (as Napoleon called it), which won't permit any body to be better than they should be. "Love to Gifford. Believe me, &c. "P. S.-I restore Smith's letter, whom thank for his good opinion. Is the bust by Thorwaldsen arrived?" One of the charges of plagiarism brought against him by some scribblers of the day was founded (as I have already observed in the early part of this work) on his having sought in the authentic records of real shipwrecks those materials out of which he has worked his own powerful description in the second canto of Don Juan. With as much justice might the Italian author, (Galeani, if I recollect right,) who wrote a Discourse on the Military Science displayed by Tasso in his Battles, have reproached that poet with the sources from which he drew his knowledge: - with as much justice might Puysegur and Segrais, who have pointed out the same merit in Homer and Virgil, have withheld their praise because the science on which this merit was founded must have been derived by the skill and industry of these poets from others. So little was Tasso ashamed of those casual imitations of other poets which are so often branded as plagiarism, that, in his Commentary on his right he takes pains to point out and avow whatever coincidences of this kind occur in his own verses. While on this subject, I may be allowed to mention one Ravenna, August 23. 1821. "ENCLOSED are the two acts corrected. With regard to the charges about the shipwreck, I think that I told both you and Mr. Hobhouse, years ago, that there was not a single circumstance of it not taken from fact; not, indeed, from any single shipwreck, but all from actual facts of different wrecks. 1 Almost all Don Juan is real life, either my own, or from people I knew. By the way, much of the description of the furniture, in Canto third, is taken from Tully's Tripol (pray note this), and the rest from my own conceal this at all, and have only not stated observation. Remember, I never meant to it, because Don Juan had no preface nor name to it. If you think it worth while to make this statement, do so in your own way. I laugh at such charges, convinced that no writer ever borrowed less, or made his materials more his own. Much is coincidence: for instance, Lady Morgan (in a really ex single instance, where a thought that had lain perhaps indistinctly in Byron's memory since his youth, comes out so improved and brightened as to be, by every right of genius, his own. In the Two Noble Kinsmen of Beaumont and Fletcher (a play to which the picture of passionate friendship, delineated in the characters of Palamon and Arcite, would be sure to draw the attention of Byron in his boyhood,) we find the following passage: "Oh never Shall we two exercise, like twins of Honour, Out of this somewhat forced simile, by a judicious transposition of the comparison, and by the substitution of the more definite word "waves" for "seas," the clear noble thought in one of the cantos of Childe Harold has been produced "Once more upon the waters! yet once more! cellent book, I assure you, on Italy) calls Venice an ocean Rome: I have the very same expression in Foscari, and yet you know that the play was written months ago, and sent to England: the 'Italy' I received only on the 16th instant. Your friend, like the public, is not aware, that my dramatic simplicity is studiously Greek, and must continue so: no reform ever succeeded at first. 1 I admire the old English dramatists; but this is quite another field, and has nothing to do with theirs. I want to make a regular English drama, no matter whether for the stage or not, which is not my object, but a mental theatre. "Yours. LETTER 446. TO MR. MOORE. "Ravenna, August 24. 1821. "Yours of the 5th only yesterday, while I had letters of the 8th from London. Doth the post dabble into our letters? Whatever agreement you make with Murray, if satisfactory to you, must be so to me. There need be no scruple, because, though I used sometimes to buffoon to myself, loving a quibble as well as the barbarian himself (Shakspeare, to wit)—that, like a Spartan, I would sell my life as dearly as possible' it never was my intention to turn it to personal pecuniary account, but to bequeath it to a friend-yourself-in the event of survivorship. I anticipated that period, because Can't accept your courteous we happened to meet, and I urged you to make "These matters must be arranged with Mr. Douglas Kinnaird. He is my trustee, and a man of honour. To him you can state all your mercantile reasons, which you might not like to state to me personally, such as 'heavy season'-'flat public''don't go off' Lordship writes too much'-'won't take advice'-'declining popularity'-'deduction for the trade''make very little' -'generally lose by him'-'pirated edition' foreign edition' severe criticisms,' &c. with other hints and howls for an oration, which I leave Douglas, who is an orator, to answer. 66 You can also state them more freely to a third person, as between you and me they could only produce some smart postscripts, which would not adorn our mutual archives. "I am sorry for the Queen, and that's more than you are. "Yours ever, &c. "BYRON." 1" No man ever rose," says Pope, "to any degree of perfection in writing, but through obstinacy and an inveterate resolution against the stream of mankind." what was possible now by it, for reasons which are obvious. It has been no possible privation to me, and therefore does not require the acknowledgments you mention. So, for God's sake, don't consider it like *** "By the way, when you write to Lady Morgan, will you thank her for her handsome speeches in her book about my books? I do not know her address. Her work is fearless and excellent on the subject of Italy - pray tell her so and I know the country. I wish she had fallen in with me, I could have told her a thing or two that would have confirmed her positions. "I am glad you are satisfied with Murray, who seems to value dead lords more than live ones. I have just sent him the following answer to a proposition of his, "For Orford and for Waldegrave, &c. "The argument of the above is, that he wanted to stint me of my sizings,' as Lear says, that is to say, not to propose an extravagant price for an extravagant poem, as is becoming. Pray take his guineas, by all means I taught him that. He made me that, like physicians, poets must be dealt a filthy offer of pounds once; but I told him with in guineas, as being the only advantage poets could have in the association with them, as votaries of Apollo. I write to you in hurry and bustle, which I will expound in my next. 66 Yours ever, &c. the best, if Herodotus's anecdote is to be believed. fernal torture of words from the original. For instance the line " And pair their rhymes as Venus yokes her doves— "Remember me to any friendly Angles of our mutual acquaintance. What are you doing? Here I have had my hands full with is printed tyrants and their victims. There never was such oppression, even in Ireland, scarcely!" LETTER 447. TO MR. MURRAY. "Ravenna, August 31. 1821. "I have received the Juans, which are printed so carelessly, especially the fifth canto, as to be disgraceful to me, and not creditable to you. It really must be gone over again with the manuscript, the errors are so gross; - words added-changed- so as to make cacophony and nonsense. You have been careless of this poem because some of your squad don't approve of it; but I tell that it will be long before you see any thing half so good as poetry or writing. Upon what principle have you omitted the note on Bacon and Voltaire? and one of the concluding stanzas sent as an addition? because it ended, I suppose, with — you "And do not link two virtuous souls for life Into that moral centaur, man and wife? "Now, I must say, once for all, that I will not permit any human being to take such liberties with my writings because I am ab sent. I desire the omissions to be replaced (except the stanza on Semiramis)-particularly the stanza upon the Turkish marriages; and I request that the whole be carefully gone over with the MS. "I never saw such stuff as is printed :— Gulleyaz instead of Gulbeyaz, &c. Are you aware that Gulbeyaz is a real name, and the other nonsense? I copied the Cantos out carefully, so that there is no excuse, as the printer read, or at least prints, the MS. of the plays without error. "If you have no feeling for your own reputation, pray have some little for mine. I have read over the poem carefully, and I tell you, it is poetry. Your little envious knot of parson-poets may say what they please time will show that I am not in this instance mistaken. : "Desire my friend Hobhouse to correct the press, especially of the last canto, from the manuscript as it is. It is enough to drive one out of one's senses to see the in ད ང་་ ་ 'Godiva,' say the reviewers, "is a successful imitation of the new Whistlecraft style; we think, however, that with much of the instinctive delicacy and native gentility of the poet of Gyges,' the author has not succeeded in handling his subject with the same dexterity and decorum; and if our literature is to be dis "And praise their rhymes, &c. Also 'precarious' for precocious;' and this line, stanza 133. "And this strong extreme effect to tire no longer. Now do turn to the manuscript and see if I ever wrote such a line: it is not verse. "No wonder the poem should fail (which, however, it won't, you will see) with such things allowed to creep about it. Replace what is omitted, and correct what is so shamefully misprinted, and let the poem have fair play; and I fear nothing. "I see in the last two numbers of the Quarterly a strong itching to assail me (see the review of The Etonian'! ); let it, and see if they sha'n't have enough of it. I do not allude to Gifford, who has always been my friend, and whom I do not consider as responsible for the articles written by others. "You will publish the plays when ready. I am in such a humour about this printing of Don Juan so inaccurately, that I must close this. "Yours. LETTER 448. 2 TO MR. MURRAY. "The enclosed letter is written in bad humour, but not without provocation. However, let it (that is, the bad humour) go for little; but I must request your serious attention to the abuses of the printer, which ought never to have been permitted. You forget that all the fools in London (the chief purchasers of your publications) will condemn in me the stupidity of your printer. For instance, in the notes to Canto fifth, the Adriatic shore of the Bosphorus,' instead of the Asiatic!! All this may seem little to you - so fine a gentleman with your ministerial connections, but it is serious to me, who am thousands of miles off, and have no opportunity of not proving myself the fool your graced (as is threatened) by the publication of an English Pucelle, we do not wish to see, in a work like The Etonian, any thing which may, in the most distant degree, remind us of such compositions."- Vol. xxv. p. 106.] 2 Written in the envelope of the preceding Letter. |