ET. 33.

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.

:

"Ravenna, October 21. 1821.

"I shall be (the gods willing) in Bologna on Saturday next. This is a curious answer to your letter; but I have taken a house in Pisa for the winter, to which all my chattels, furniture, horses, carriages, and live stock are already removed, and I am preparing to follow.

"The cause of this removal is, shortly, the exile or proscription of all my friends' relations and connections here into Tuscany, on account of our late politics; and where they go, I accompany them. I merely remained till now to settle some arrangements about my daughter, and to give time for my furniture, &c. to precede me. I have not here a seat or a bed hardly, except some jury chairs, and tables, and a mattress for the week to come.

"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 also their owner. If you could do this, we

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may, at least, cross the Apennines together; or if you are going by another road, we shall meet at Bologna, I hope. I address this to the post-office (as you desire), and you will probably find me at the Albergo di San Marco. If you arrive first, wait till I come up, which will be (barring accidents) on Saturday or Sunday at farthest.

"I presume you are alone in your voyages. Moore is in London incog. according to my latest advices from those climes.

'It is better than a lustre (five years and six months and some days, more or less) since we met; and, like the man from Tadcaster in the farce (Love laughs at Locksmiths'), whose acquaintances, including the cat and the terrier, who caught a halfpenny in his mouth,' were all 'gone dead,' but too many of our acquaintances have taken the same path. Lady Melbourne, Grattan, Sheridan, Curran, &c. &c., almost every body of much name of the old school. But so am not I, said the foolish fat scullion,' therefore let us make the most of our remainder. "Let me find two lines from you at the hostel or inn."

TO MR. MOORE.
"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 take off my bed-clothes · - blankets inclusive -in case of temptation from the apparel of sheets to my eyelids.

66

Samuel Rogers is or is to be-at Bologna, as he writes from Venice.

"I thought our Magnifico would 'pound you,' if possible. He is trying to 'pound' me, too; but I'll specie the rogue-or at least, I'll have the odd shillings out of him in keen iambics.

"Your approbation of Sardanapalus' is agreeable, for more reasons than one. Hobhouse is pleased to think as you do of it, and so do some others- but the Arimaspian,' whom, like 'a Gryphon in the wilderness,' I will follow for his gold' (as I exhorted you to do before), did or doth disparage it'stinting me in my sizings.' His notable 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 people are tending they want a row with me, and they shall have it. I only regret 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!

till

&c. &c.' it is all very fine and very well, but, 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 Ms. Specie.

"Yours ever, &c.

CHAPTER XLVII.

GUICCIOLI.

1821.

DEPARTURE FROM RAVENNA, MODE OF LIFE THERE SKETCHED BY MADAME 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.

In the month of August, Madame Guiccioli had joined her father at Pisa, and was now superintending the preparations at the Casa spacious palaces of that city, Lanfranchi, one of the most ancient and for the reHe left Raception of her noble friend. and 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 prevedenda dei mali assai grandi per voi altri e massime per vai; 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:

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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."

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Came, and all stood breathless with hope and fear,
Sent round his cap; and he who thrumm'd his wire
And sang, with pleading look and plaintive strain
Melting the passenger. Thy thousand cries, 2
So well portray'd and by a son of thine,
Whose voice had swell'd the hubbub in his youth,
Were hush'd, BOLOGNA silence in the streets,
The squares; when hark, the clattering of fleet hoofs;
And soon a courier, posting as from far,
Housing and holster, boot and belted coat
And doublet, stain'd with many a various soil,
Stopt and alighted. 'Twas where hangs aloft
That ancient sign, the Pilgrim, welcoming
All who arrive there, all perhaps save those
Clad like himself, with staff and scallop-shell,
Those on a pilgrimage. And now approach'd
Wheels, through the lofty porticoes resounding,
Arch beyond arch, a shelter or a shade
As the sky changes. To the gate they came;
And, ere the man had half his story done,
Mine host received the Master - one long used
To sojourn among strangers, every where
(Go where he would, along the wildest track)
Flinging a charm that shall not soon be lost,
And leaving footsteps to be traced by those
Who love the haunts of Genius; one who saw,
Observed, nor shunn'd the busy scenes of life,
But mingled not; and mid the din, the stir,
Lived as a separate Spirit.

"Much had pass'd

Since last we parted; and those five short years-
Much had they told! His clustering locks were turn'd
Grey; nor did aught recall the youth that swam
From Sestos to Abydos. Yet his voice,
Still it was sweet; still from his eye the thought
Flash'd lightning-like, nor lingered on the way,
Waiting for words. Far, far into the night
We sat, conversing - no unwelcome hour,
The hour we met; and, when Aurora rose,
Rising, we climb'd the rugged Apennine.

"Well I remember how the golden sun
Fill'd with its beams the unfathomable gulfs
As on we travell'd, and along the ridge,
'Mid groves of cork, and cistus, and wild fig,
His motley household came. - Not last nor least,
Battista, who upon the moonlight-sea

Of Venice had so ably, zealously

Served, and at parting thrown his oar away
To follow through the world; who without stain
Had worn so long that honourable badge, 3
The gondolier's, in a Patrician House
Arguing unlimited trust. Not last nor least,
Thou, though declining in thy beauty and strength,
Faithful Moretto, to the latest hour
Guarding his chamber-door, and now along
The silent, sullen strand of MissOLONGHI
Howling in grief.

"He had just left that Place
Of old renown, once in the ADRIAN sea, ◄
RAVENNA; where from DANTE's sacred tomb
He had so oft, as many a verse declares, 5
Drawn inspiration; where, at twilight-time,
Through the pine-forest wandering with loose rein,
Wandering and lost, he had so oft beheld, 6

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."

"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,
The chase, the slaughter, and the festal mirth
Suddenly blasted. 'T was a theme he loved,
But others claim'd their turn; and many a tower,
Shatter'd, uprooted from its native rock,
Its strength the pride of some heroic age,
Appear'd and vanish'd (many a sturdy steer1
Yoked and unyoked), while, as in happier days,
He pour'd his spirit forth. The past forgot,
All was enjoyment. Not a cloud obscured
Present or future.

"He is now at rest;

And praise and blame fall on his ear alike,
Now dull in death. Yes, BYRON, thou art gone,-
Gone like a star that through the firmament
Shot and was lost, in its eccentric course
Dazzling, perplexing. Yet thy heart, methinks,
Was generous, noble-noble in its scorn
Of all things low or little; nothing there
Sordid or servile. If imagined wrongs
Pursued thee, urging thee sometimes to do
Things long regretted, oft, as many know,
None more than I, thy gratitude would build
On slight foundations; and, if in thy life
Not happy, in thy death thou surely wert,
Thy wish accomplish'd; dying in the land
Where thy young mind had caught ethereal fire,-
Dying in GREECE, and in a cause so glorious!

They in thy train — ah, little did they think,
As round we went, that they so soon should sit
Mourning beside thee, while a Nation mourn'd,
Changing her festal for her funeral song;
That they so soon should hear the minute-gun,
As morning gleam'd on what remain'd of thee,
Roll o'er the sea, the mountains, numbering
Thy years of joy and sorrow.

"Thou art gone;
And he who would assail thee in thy grave,
Oh, let him pause! For who among us all,
Tried as thou wert- even from thine earliest years,
When wandering, yet unspoilt, a highland boy –
Tried as thou wert, and with thy soul of flame;
Pleasure, while yet the down was on thy cheek,
Uplifting, pressing, and to lips like thine,
Her charmed cup- ah, who among us all
Could say he had not err'd as much, and more?"

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 bed 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 alonethe only four minutes I could snatch of any feeling for the works around me. I do not 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

every hill."