ET. 33. DEPARTURE FROM RAVENNA. or all men. If I come to a friend, and say, 'Friend, lend me five hundred pounds,' he either does it, or says that he can't or won't; but if I come to Ditto, and say, 'Ditto, I have an excellent house, or horse, or carriage, or MSS., or books, or pictures, or, &c. &c. &c. &c. &c. honestly worth a thousand pounds, you shall have them for five hundred,' what does Ditto say? why, he looks at them, he hums, he ha's, he humbugs, if he can, to get a bargain as cheaply as he can, because it is a bargain. This is in the blood and bone of mankind; and the same man who would lend another a thousand pounds without interest, would not buy a horse of him for half its value if he could help it. It is so there's no denying it; and therefore I will have as much as I can, and you will give as little; and there's an end. All men are intrinsical rascals, and I am only sorry that, not being a dog, I can't bite them. you with "I am filling another book for little anecdotes, to my own knowledge, or well authenticated, of Sheridan, Curran, &c. and such other public men as I recollect to have been acquainted with, for I knew most of them more or less. I will do what I can to prevent your losing by my obsequies. "Yours, &c. LETTER 464. TO MR. ROGERS. "BYRON." 46 Ravenna, October 21. 1821. "The cause of this removal is, shortly, If you will go on with me to Pisa, I can lodge you for as long as you like; (they write that the house, the Palazzo Lanfranchi, is spacious: it is on the Arno ;) and I have four carriages, and as many saddle-horses (such as they are in these parts), with all other conveniences, at your command, as If you could do this, we also their owner. if 66 "I presume you are alone in your voy- LETTER 465. "Yours ever, &c. TO MR. MOORE. "B." "Ravenna, Oct. 28. 1821. """Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,' and in three hours more I have to set out on my way to Pisa- sitting up all night to be sure of rising. I have just made them blankets inclusive in case of temptation from the apparel of take off my bed-clothes "Samuel Rogers is or is to be-at sheets to my eyelids. Bologna, as he writes from Venice. 66 I thought our Magnifico would 'pound you,' if possible. He is trying to 'pound' me, too; but I'll specie the rogue · least, I'll have the odd shillings out of him in keen iambics. -or at Hob"Your approbation of 'Sardanapalus' is agreeable, for more reasons than one. so do some others- but the Arimaspian,' house is pleased to think as you do of it, and whom, like ‘a Gryphon in the wilderness,' I will follow for his gold' (as I exhorted you 'stinting me in my sizings.' His notable to do before), did or doth disparage it opinions on the ' Foscari' and 'Cain' he hath not as yet forwarded; or, at least, I have not yet received them, nor the proofs thereof, though promised by last post. "I see the way that he and his Quarterly me, and they shall have it. I only regret people are tending they want a row with that I am not in England for the nonce; as, here, it is hardly fair ground for me, isolated and out of the way of prompt rejoinder and information as I am. But, though backed by all the corruption, and infamy, and patronage of their master rogues and slave renegadoes, if they do once rouse me up, "They had better gall the devil, Salisbury.' "I have that for two or three of them, which they had better not move me to put in motion; and yet, after all, what a fool I am to disquiet myself about such fellows! It was all very well ten or twelve years ago, when I was a 'curled darling,' and minded such things. At present, I rate them at their true value; but, from natural temper and bile, am not able to keep quiet. 'Let me hear from you on your return from Ireland, which ought to be ashamed to see you, after her Brunswick blarney. I am of Longman's opinion, that you should allow your friends to liquidate the Bermuda claim. Why should you throw away the two thousand pounds (of the non-guinea Murray) upon that cursed piece of treacherous inveiglement? I think you carry the matter a little too far and scrupulously. When we see patriots begging publicly, and know that Grattan received a fortune from his country, I really do not see why a man, in no whit inferior to any or all of them, should shrink from accepting that assistance from his private friends which every tradesman receives from his connections upon much less occasions. For, after all, it was not your debt · it was a piece of swindling against you. As to ****, and the 'what noble creatures!! &c. &c.' it is all very fine and very well, but, till you can persuade me that there is no credit, and no self-applause to be obtained by being of use to a celebrated man, I must retain the same opinion of the human species, which I do of our friend M. Specie. 66 "Yours ever, &c. "BYRON." 1 I had mentioned to him, with all the praise and gratitude such friendship deserved, some generous offers of aid which, from more than one quarter, I had received at this period, and which, though declined, have been not the less warmly treasured in my recollection. 2" Egli era partico con molto riverescimento da Ravenna, e col pressentimento che la sua partenza da Ravenna ci sarebbe cagione di molti mali. In ogni lettera che egli mi scriveva allora egli mi esprimeva il suo dispiacere di lasciare Ravenna. Se papà è richiamato (mi scriveva egli) io torno in quel istante a Ravenna, e se è richiamato DEPARTURE CHAPTER XLVII. 1821. OF FROM RAVENNA.— MODE LIFE THERE SKETCHED BY MADAME GUICCIOLI. ROGERS'S POETICAL RECORD OF HIS MEETING WITH LORD BYRON AT BOLOGNA. INTERVIEW WITH LORD CLARE. LORD BYRON CROSSES THE APENNINES WITH ROGERS. VISIT TO THE FLORENCE GALLERY.- TITIAN'S VENUS. -THE PITTI PALACE. — ARRIVAL AT PISA. LETTERS TO MURRAY AND MOORE. OUTCRY AGAINST CAIN.-FIRST PART OF HEAVEN AND EARTH, A MYSTERY, COMPLETED. — MR. TAAFFE AND HIS COMMENTARY ON DANTE.- COMMUNICATION FROM MR. SHEPHERD.- -LORD BYRON'S ANSWER. -THE LANFRANCHI PALACE. ORIGIN OF THE GIAOUR story. 66 "He left Raand with a presentiment that his departure venna," says this lady', "with great regret, would be the forerunner of a thousand evils to us. In every letter he then wrote to me, he expressed his displeasure at this step. If your father should be recalled,' he said, is recalled previous to my departure, I remain.' I immediately return to Ravenna; and if he In this hope he delayed his journey for several months; but, at last, no longer having any expectation of our immediate return, he wrote to me, saying I set out most unwillingly, foreseeing the most evil results for all of you, and principally for yourself. I say no more, but you will see.' And in another letter he says, 'I leave Ravenna so unwillingly, and with such a persuasion on my mind that my departure will lead from one misery to another, each greater than the for prima della mia partenza, io non parto.' In questa speranza egli differì varii mesi a partire. Ma, finalmente, non potendo più sperare il nostro ritorno prossimo, egli mi scriveva lo parto molto mal volontieri prevedendo dei mali assai grandi per voi altri e massime per voi ; altro non dico, lo vedrete.' E in un altra lettera, lo lascio Ravenna così mal volontieri, e così persuaso che la mia partenza non può che condurre da un male ad un altro più grande che non ho cuore di scrivere altro in questo punto. Egli mi scriveva allora sempre in Italiano e trascrivo le sue precise parole-ma come quei suoi pressentimenti si verificarono poi in appresso! mer, that I have not the heart to utter another word on the subject. He always wrote to me at that time in Italian, and I transcribe his exact words. How entirely were these presentiments verified by the event!" After describing his mode of life while at Ravenna, the lady thus proceeds: 66 : This sort of simple life he led until the fatal day of his departure for Greece, and the few variations he made from it may be said to have arisen solely from the greater or smaller number of occasions which were offered him of doing good, and from the generous actions he was continually performing. Many families (in Ravenna principally) owed to him the few prosperous days they ever enjoyed. His arrival in that town was spoken of as a piece of public good fortune, and his departure as a public calamity; and this is the life which many attempted to asperse as that of a libertine. But the world must at last learn how, with so good and generous a heart, Lord Byron, susceptible, it is true, of the most energetic passions, yet, at the same time, of the sublimest and most pure, and rendering homage in his acts to every virtue-how he, I say, could afford such scope to malice and to calumny. Circumstances, and also, probably, an eccentricity of disposition, (which, nevertheless, had its origin in a virtuous feeling, an excessive abhorrence for hypocrisy and affectation,) contributed, perhaps, to cloud the splendour of his exalted nature in the opinion of many. But you will well know how to analyse these contradictions in a manner worthy of your noble friend and of yourself, and you will prove that the goodness of his heart was not inferior to the grandeur of his genius." 1 At Bologna, according to the appointment made between them, Lord Byron and Mr. Rogers met; and the record which this latter gentleman has, in his Poem on Italy, preserved of their meeting, conveys so vivid a picture of the poet at this period, with, at the same time, so just and feeling a tribute to his memory, that, narrowed as my limits are now becoming, I cannot refrain from giving the sketch entire. "BOLOGNA. "'T was night; the noise and bustle of the day Were o'er. The mountebank no longer wrought Miraculous cures - he and his stage were gone ; And he who, when the crisis of his tale 1 The leaf that contains the original of this extract I have unluckily mislaid. 2" See the Cries of Bologna, as drawn by Annibal Caracci. He was of very humble origin; and, to correct his brother's vanity, once sent him a portrait of their father, the tailor, threading his needle." Came, and all stood breathless with hope and fear, "Much had pass'd Since last we parted; and those five short years -- "Well I remember how the golden sun of Venice had so ably, zealously Served, and at parting thrown his oar away "He had just left that Place 3" The principal gondolier, il fante di poppa, was almost always in the confidence of his master, and employed on occasions that required judgment and address." 4"Adrianum mare. CICERO." 5 "See the Prophecy of Dante." 6" See the tale as told by Boccaccio and Dryden." (What is not visible to a poet's eye?) The spectre-knight, the hell-hounds, and their prey, "He is now at rest; And praise and blame fall on his ear alike, "They in thy train-ah, little did they think, "Thou art gone; On the road to Bologna he had met with his early and dearest friend, Lord Clare, and the following description of their short interview is given in his " Detached Thoughts." "Pisa, November 5. 1821. "There is a strange coincidence some times in the little things of this world, Sancho,' says Sterne in a letter (if I mistake not), and so I have often found it. "Page 128. article 91. of this collection of scattered things, I had alluded to my friend Lord Clare in terms such as my feelings suggested. About a week or two afterwards I met him on the road between Imola and Bologna, after not having met for seven or eight years. He was abroad in 1814, and came home just as I set out in 1816. "This meeting annihilated for a moment all the years between the present time and the days of Harrow. It was a new and inexplicable feeling, like rising from the grave, to me. Clare, too, was much agitated - more in appearance than even myself; for I could feel his heart beat to his fingers' ends, unless, indeed, it was the pulse of my own which made me think so. He told me that I should find a note from him left at Bologna. I did. We were obliged to part for our different journeys, he for Rome, I for Pisa, but with the promise to meet again in spring. We were but five minutes together, and on the public road; but I hardly recollect an hour of my existence which could be weighed against them. He had heard that I was coming on, and had left his letter for me at Bologna, because the people with whom he was travelling could not wait longer. "Of all I have ever known, he has always been the least altered in every thing from the excellent qualities and kind affections which attached me to him so strongly at school. I should hardly have thought it possible for society (or the world, as it is called) to leave a being with so little of the leaven of bad passions. "I do not speak from personal experience only, but from all I have ever heard of him from others, during absence and distance." After remaining a day at Bologna, Lord Byron crossed the Apennines with Mr. Rogers; and I find the following note of their visit together to the Gallery at Florence : "I revisited the Florence Gallery, &c. My former impressions were confirmed; but there were too many visitors there to allow one to feel any thing properly. When we were (about thirty or forty) all stuffed into the cabinet of gems and knick-knackeries, in a corner of one of the galleries, I told Rogers that it felt like being in the watchhouse.' I left him to make his obeisances to some of his acquaintances, and strolled on alone the only four minutes I could snatch of any I do not feeling for the works around me. mean to apply this to a tête-à-tête scrutiny with Rogers, who has an excellent taste, and deep feeling for the arts, (indeed much more of both than I can possess, for of the FORMER I have not much,) but to the crowd of jostling starers and travelling talkers around me. "I heard one bold Briton declare to the woman on his arm, looking at the Venus of 1 "They wait for the traveller's carriage at the foot of Titian, Well, now, this is really very fine every hill." indeed,'-an observation which, like that of the landlord in Joseph Andrews on 'the certainty of death,' was (as the landlord's wife observed) 'extremely true.' "In the Pitti Palace, I did not omit Goldsmith's prescription for a connoisseur, viz. 'that the pictures would have been better if the painter had taken more pains, and to praise the works of Pietro Perugino.'” 1 LETTER 466. TO MR. MURRAY. "Pisa, November 3. 1821. "Your first note was queer enough; but your two other letters, with Moore's and Gifford's opinions, set all right again. I told you before that I can never recast any thing. I am like the tiger: if I miss the first spring, I go grumbling back to my jungle again; but if I do hit, it is crushing. *** You disparaged the last three cantos to me, and kept them back. above a year; but I have heard from England that (notwithstanding the errors of the press) they are well thought of; for instance, by American Irving, which last is a feather in my (fool's) cap. 66 "The two passages cannot be altered without making Lucifer talk like the Bishop of Lincoln, which would not be in the cha- "You have received my letter (open) racter of the former. The notion is from through Mr. Kinnaird, and, so, pray, send Cuvier (that of the old worlds), as I have me no more reviews of any kind. I will explained in an additional note to the pre-read no more of evil or good in that line. face. The other passage is also in character: Walter Scott has not read a review of himif nonsense, so much the better, because then self for thirteen years. it can do no harm, and the sillier Satan is made, the safer for every body. As to 'alarms,' &c. do you really think such things ever led any body astray? Are these people more impious than Milton's Satan? or the Prometheus of Eschylus? or even than the Sadducees of**, the Fall of Jerusalem' **? Are not Adam, Eve, Adah, and Abel, as pious as the catechism? "Gifford is too wise a man to think that such things can have any serious effect: who was ever altered by a poem? I beg leave to observe, that there is no creed nor personal hypothesis of mine in all this: but I was obliged to make Cain and Lucifer talk consistently, and surely this has always been permitted to poesy. Cain is a proud man: if Lucifer promised him kingdom, &c. it would elate him: the object of the Demon is to depress him still further in his own estimation than he was before, by showing him infinite things and his own abasement, till he falls into the frame of mind that leads to the catastrophe, from mere internal irritation, not premeditation, or envy of Abel (which would have made him contemptible), but from the rage and fury against the inadequacy of his state to his conceptions, and which discharges itself rather against life, and the Author of life, than the mere living. "His subsequent remorse is the natural effect of looking on his sudden deed. Had the deed been premeditated, his repentance would have been tardier. "Either dedicate it to Walter Scott, or, if you think he would like the dedication of The Foscaris' better, put the dedication to The Foscaris.' Ask him which. [See Vicar of Wakefield, ch. xx. vol. iii. p. 113. ed. 1837.] 2 ["Heaven and Earth." Though revised by Mr. Gif The bust is not my property, but Hobhouse's. I addressed it to you as an Admiralty man, great at the Custom-house. Pray deduct the expenses of the same, and all others. LETTER 467. "Yours, &c." TO MR. MURRAY. "Pisa, Nov. 9. 1821. "I never read the Memoirs at all, not even since they were written; and I never will: the pain of writing them was enough; you may spare me that of a perusal. Mr. Moore has (or may have) a discretionary power to omit any repetition, or expressions which do not seem good to him, who is a better judge than you or I. "Enclosed is a lyrical drama, (entitled A Mystery 2,' from its subject,) which, perhaps may arrive in time for the volume. You will find it pious enough, I trust, at least some of the Chorus might have been written by Sternhold and Hopkins themselves for that, and perhaps for melody. As it is longer, and more lyrical and Greek, than I intended at first, I have not divided it into acts, but called what I have sent Part First, as there is a suspension of the action, which may either close there without impropriety, or be continued in a way that I have in view. I wish the first part to be published before the second, because, if it don't succeed, it is better to stop there than to go on in a fruitless experiment. "I desire you to acknowledge the arrival of this packet by return of post, if you can conveniently, with a proof. "Your obedient, &c. "B." ford, and printed, it was not published till the following year.] |