MY GRANDMOTHER'S REVIEW. Have not essay'd to multiply their clients, Because they tell me 'twere in vain to try, 91 The matter of fact Editor-William Roberts, a Barristermistook Lord Byron's facetious mockery for a grave accusation, and responded in the Review by an indignant remonstrance which is probably without a parallel for solemn silliness. "No misdemeanor appears to us in so detestable a light as the acceptance of a present by an editor of a review, as the condition of praising an author; and yet the miserable man (for miserable he is, as having a soul of which he cannot get rid), who has given birth to this pestilent poem, has not scrupled to lay this to the charge of "The British Review;' and that, not by insinuation, but has actually stated himself to have sent money in a letter to the editor of this journal, who acknowledged the receipt of the same by a letter in return, with thanks. No peer of the British realm can surely be capable of so calumnious a falsehood, refuted, we trust, by the very character and spirit of the journal so defamed. If somebody personating the editor of the British Review has received money from Lord Byron, or from any other person, by way of bribe to praise his compositions, the fraud might be traced by the production of the letter which the author states himself to have received in return. Surely, then, if the author of this poem has any such letter, he will produce it for this purpose. But lest it should be said that we have not in positive terms denied the charge, we do utterly deny that there is one word of truth, or the semblance of truth, as far as regards this review or its editor, in the assertions made in the stanzas above referred to. We really feel a sense of degradation, as the idea of this odious imputation passes through our minds." It was in reply to this tirade of the infatuated editor that Lord Byron dashed off a "Letter," from which the following amusing passage is taken.] As a believer in the church of England-to say nothing of the State-I have been an occasional reader and great admirer of, though not a subscriber to, your Review, which is rather expensive. But I do not know that any part of its contents ever gave me much surprise till the eleventh article of your twenty-seventh number made its appearance. You have there most vigorously refuted a calumnious accusation of bribery and corruption, the credence of which in the public mind might not only have damaged your reputation as a clergyman and an editor, but, what would have been still worse, have injured the circulation of your journal; which, I regret to hear, is not so extensive as the "purity" (as you well observe) “of its, &c. &c." and the present taste for propriety, would induce us to expect. It is a charge the most revolting to the heart of man from its frequent occurrence; to the mind of a statesman, from its occasional truth; and to the soul of an editor, from its moral impossibility. You are charged, then, in the last line of one octave stanza, and the whole eight lines of the next, viz. 209th and 210th of the first canto of that "pestilent poem " Don Juan, with receiving, and still more foolishly acknowledging the receipt of, certain monies, to eulogise the unknown author, who by this account must be known to you, if to nobody else. An impeachment of this nature, so seriously made, there is but one way of refuting; and it is my firm persuasion, that whether you did or did not (and I believe that you did not) receive the said monies, of which I wish that he had specified the sum, you are quite right in denying all knowledge of the transaction. If charges of this nefarious description are to go forth, sanctioned by all the solemnity of circumstance, and guaranteed by the veracity of verse (as Counsellor Phillips * would say), * Charles Phillips, the Barrister, was in those days celebrated for ultra-Irish eloquence. ITALIAN MANNERS. 93 what is to become of readers hitherto implicitly confident in the not less veracious prose of our critical journals? What is to become of the reviews? And, if the reviews fail, what is to become of the editors? It is common cause, and you have done well to sound the alarm. I myself, in my humble sphere, will be one of your echoes. In the words of the tragedian, Liston, "I love a row," and you seem justly determined to make one. It is barely possible, certainly improbable, that the writer might have been in jest; but this only aggravates his crime. A joke, the proverb says, "breaks no bones;" but it may break a bookseller, or it may be the cause of bones being broken. The jest is but a bad one at the best for the author, and might have been a still worse one for you, if your copious contradiction did not certify to all whom it may concern your own indignant innocence, and the immaculate purity of the British Review. I do not doubt your word, my dear Roberts; yet I cannot help wishing that, in a case of such vital importance, it had assumed the more substantial shape of an affidavit, sworn before the Lord Mayor Atkins, who readily receives any deposition; and doubtless would have brought it in some way as evidence of the designs of the Reformers to set fire to London, at the same time that he himself meditates the same good office towards the river Thames.-Sept. 4, 1819. ITALIAN MANNERS. You ask me for a volume of manners, &c. on Italy. Perhaps I am in the case to know more of them than most Englishmen, because I have lived among the natives, and in parts of the country where Englishmen never resided before (I speak of Romagna and this place particularly); but there are many reasons why I do not choose to treat in print on such a subject. I have lived in their houses and in the heart of their families, and I do not feel myself authorised in making a book of them. Their moral is not your moral; their life is not your life; you would not understand it; it is not English, nor French, nor German, which you would all understand. The conventual education, the cavalier servitude, the habits of thought and living are so entirely different, and the difference becomes so much more striking the more you live intimately with them, that I know not how to make you comprehend a people who are at once temperate and profligate, serious in their characters and buffoons in their amusements, capable of impressions and passions, which are at once sudden and durable (what you find in no other nation), and who actually have no society (what we would call so), as you may see by their comedies; they have no real comedy, not even in Goldoni, and that is because they have no society to draw it from. Their conversazioni are not society at all. They go to the theatre to talk, and into company to hold their tongues. The women sit in a circle, and the men gather into groups, or they play at dreary faro, or "lotto reale," for small sums. Their academie are concerts like our own, with better music and more form. Their best things are the carnival balls and masquerades, when every body runs mad for six weeks. After their dinners and suppers they make extempore verses and buffoon one another; but it is in a humour which you would not enter into, ye of the north. — To Mr. Murray, Ravenna, Feb. 21, 1820. IGNORANCE OF ITALIAN LADIES. 35 95 IGNORANCE OF ITALIAN LADIES. Sir Humphry Davy was here last fortnight, and I was in his company in the house of a very pretty Italian lady of rank, who, by the way of displaying her learning in presence of the great chemist, then describing his fourteenth ascension to Mount Vesuvius, asked "if there was not a similar volcano in Ireland? My only notion of an Irish volcano consisted of the lake of Killarney, which I naturally conceived her to mean; but, on second thoughts, I divined that she alluded to Iceland and to Hecla and so it proved, though she sustained her volcanic topography for some time with all the amiable pertinacity of "the feminie." She soon after turned to me and asked me various questions about Sir Humphry's philosophy, and I explained as well as an oracle his skill in gases, safety lamps, and ungluing the Pompeian MSS. "But what do you call him ?" said she. "A great chemist,” quoth I. "What can he do?" repeated the lady. "Almost anything," said I. "Oh, then, mio caro, do pray beg him to give me something to dye my eyebrows black. I have tried a thousand things, and the colours all come off; and besides, they don't grow; can't he invent something to make them grow?" All this with the greatest earnestness; and what you will be surprised at, she is neither ignorant nor a fool, but really well educated and clever. But they speak like children, when first out of their convents; and, after all, this is better than an English blue-stocking.-To Mr. Murray, Ravenna, May 8, 1820. |