Life of Lord Byron Volume IV Part 12

And then thou hast the 'Navy List,'

My Murray.

"And Heaven forbid I should conclude Without 'the Board of Longitude,'

Although this narrow paper would, My Murray!"

[Footnote 18: There follows, in this place, among other matter, a long string of verses, in various metres, to the amount of about sixty lines, so full of light gaiety and humour, that it is with some reluctance I suppress them. They might, however, have the effect of giving pain in quarters where even the author himself would not have deliberately inflicted it;--from a pen like his, touches may be wounds, and without being actually intended as such.]

LETTER 314. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Venice, April 12. 1818.

"This letter will be delivered by Signor Gioe. Bata. Missiaglia, proprietor of the Apollo library, and the princ.i.p.al publisher and bookseller now in Venice. He sets out for London with a view to business and correspondence with the English booksellers: and it is in the hope that it may be for your mutual advantage that I furnish him with this letter of introduction to you. If you can be of use to him, either by recommendation to others, or by any personal attention on your own part, you will oblige him and gratify me. You may also perhaps both be able to derive advantage, or establish some mode of literary communication, pleasing to the public, and beneficial to one another.

"At any rate, be civil to him for my sake, as well as for the honour and glory of publishers and authors now and to come for evermore.

"With him I also consign a great number of MS. letters written in English, French, and Italian, by various English established in Italy during the last century:--the names of the writers, Lord Hervey, Lady M.W. Montague, (hers are but few--some billets-doux in French to Algarotti, and one letter in English, Italian, and all sorts of jargon, to the same,) Gray, the poet (one letter), Mason (two or three), Garrick, Lord Chatham, David Hume, and many of lesser note,--all addressed to Count Algarotti. Out of these, I think, with discretion, an amusing miscellaneous volume of letters might be extracted, provided some good editor were disposed to undertake the selection, and preface, and a few notes, &c.

"The proprietor of these is a friend of mine, _Dr. Aglietti_,--a great name in Italy,--and if you are disposed to publish, it will be for _his benefit_, and it is to and for him that you will name a price, if you take upon you the work. _I_ would _edite_ it myself, but am too far off, and too lazy to undertake it; but I wish that it could be done. The letters of Lord Hervey, in Mr. Rose's[19]

opinion and mine, are good; and the _short_ French love letters _certainly_ are Lady M.W. Montague's--the _French_ not good, but the sentiments beautiful. Gray's letter good; and Mason's tolerable. The whole correspondence must be _well weeded_; but this being done, a small and pretty popular volume might be made of it.--There are many ministers' letters--Gray, the amba.s.sador at Naples, Horace Mann, and others of the same kind of animal.

"I thought of a preface, defending Lord Hervey against Pope's attack, but Pope--_quoad_ Pope, the poet--against all the world, in the unjustifiable attempts begun by Warton and carried on at this day by the new school of critics and scribblers, who think themselves poets because they do _not_ write like Pope. I have no patience with such cursed humbug and bad taste; your whole generation are not worth a Canto of the Rape of the Lock, or the Essay on Man, or the Dunciad, or 'any thing that is his.'--But it is three in the matin, and I must go to bed. Yours alway," &c.

[Footnote 19: Among Lord Byron's papers, I find some verses addressed to him, about this time, by Mr. W. Rose, with the following note annexed to them:--"These verses were sent to me by W.S. Rose, from Abaro, in the spring of 1818. They are good and true; and Rose is a fine fellow, and one of the few English who understand _Italy_, without which Italian is nothing." The verses begin thus:

"Byron[20], while you make gay what circle fits ye, Bandy Venetian slang with the Benzn, Or play at company with the Albrizzi, The self-pleased pedant, and patrician crone, Grimanis, Mocenigos, Balbis, Rizzi, Compa.s.sionate our cruel case,--alone, Our pleasure an academy of frogs, Who nightly serenade us from the bogs," &c. &c.

[Footnote 20: "I have _hunted_ out a precedent for this unceremonious address."]

LETTER 315. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Venice, April 17. 1818.

"A few days ago, I wrote to you a letter, requesting you to desire Hanson to desire his messenger to come on from Geneva to Venice, because I won't go from Venice to Geneva; and if this is not done, the messenger may be d.a.m.ned, with him who mis-sent him. Pray reiterate my request.

"With the proofs returned, I sent two additional stanzas for Canto fourth: did they arrive?

"Your Monthly reviewer has made a mistake: _Cavaliere_, alone, is well enough; but '_Cavalier' servente_' has always the _e_ mute in conversation, and omitted in writing; so that it is not for the sake of metre; and pray let Griffiths know this, with my compliments. I humbly conjecture that I know as much of Italian society and language as any of his people; but, to make a.s.surance doubly sure, I asked, at the Countess Benzona's last night, the question of more than one person in _the office_, and of these 'cavalieri serventi' (in the plural, recollect) I found that they all accorded in p.r.o.nouncing for 'cavalier' servente' in the _singular_ number. I wish Mr. * * * * (or whoever Griffiths'

scribbler may be) would not talk of what he don't understand. Such fellows are not fit to be intrusted with Italian, even in a quotation.

"Did you receive two additional stanzas, to be inserted towards the close of Canto fourth? Respond, that (if not) they may be sent.

"Tell Mr. * * and Mr. Hanson that they may as well expect Geneva to come to me, as that I should go to Geneva. The messenger may go on or return, as he pleases; I won't stir: and I look upon it as a piece of singular absurdity in those who know me imagining that I should;--not to say _malice_, in attempting unnecessary torture.

If, on the occasion, my interests should suffer, it is their neglect that is to blame; and they may all be d----d together.

"It is ten o'clock and time to dress.

"Yours," &c.

LETTER 316. TO MR. MURRAY.

"April 23. 1818.

"The time is past in which I could feel for the dead,--or I should feel for the death of Lady Melbourne, the best, and kindest, and ablest female I ever knew, old or young. But 'I have supped full of horrors,' and events of this kind have only a kind of numbness worse than pain,--like a violent blow on the elbow or the head.

There is one link less between England and myself.

"Now to business. I presented you with Beppo, as part of the contract for Canto fourth,--considering the price you are to pay for the same, and intending to eke you out in case of public caprice or my own poetical failure. If you choose to suppress it entirely, at Mr. * * * *'s suggestion, you may do as you please.

But recollect it is not to be published in a _garbled_ or _mutilated_ state. I reserve to my friends and myself the right of correcting the press;--if the publication continue, it is to continue in its present form.

"As Mr. * * says that he did not write this letter, &c. I am ready to believe him; but for the firmness of my former persuasion, I refer to Mr. * * * *, who can inform you how sincerely I erred on this point. He has also the note--or, at least, had it, for I gave it to him with my verbal comments thereupon. As to 'Beppo,' I will not alter or suppress a syllable for any man's pleasure but my own.

"You may tell them this; and add, that nothing but force or necessity shall stir me one step towards places to which they would wring me.

"If your literary matters prosper let me know. If 'Beppo' pleases, you shall have more in a year or two in the same mood. And so 'Good morrow to you, good Master Lieutenant.' Yours," &c.

LETTER 317. TO MR. MOORE.

"Palazzo Mocenigo, Ca.n.a.l Grande,

"Venice, June 1. 1818.

"Your letter is almost the only news, as yet, of Canto fourth, and it has by no means settled its fate,--at least, does not tell me how the 'Poeshie' has been received by the public. But I suspect, no great things,--firstly, from Murray's 'horrid stillness;'

secondly, from what you say about the stanzas running into each other[21], which I take _not_ to be _yours_, but a notion you have been dinned with among the Blues. The fact is, that the terza rima of the Italians, which always _runs_ on and in, may have led me into experiments, and carelessness into conceit--or conceit into carelessness--in either of which events failure will be probable, and my fair woman, 'superne,' end in a fish; so that Childe Harold will be like the mermaid, my family crest, with the fourth Canto for a tail thereunto. I won't quarrel with the public, however, for the 'Bulgars' are generally right; and if I miss now, I may hit another time:--and so, the 'G.o.ds give us joy.'

"You like Beppo, that's right. I have not had the Fudges yet, but live in hopes. I need not say that your successes are mine. By the way, Lydia White is here, and has just borrowed my copy of 'Lalla Rookh.'

"Hunt's letter is probably the exact piece of vulgar c.o.xcombry you might expect from his situation. He is a good man, with some poetical elements in his chaos; but spoilt by the Christ-Church Hospital and a Sunday newspaper,--to say nothing of the Surrey gaol, which conceited him into a martyr. But he is a good man. When I saw 'Rimini' in MS., I told him that I deemed it good poetry at bottom, disfigured only by a strange style. His answer was, that his style was a system, or _upon system_, or some such cant; and, when a man talks of system, his case is hopeless: so I said no more to him, and very little to any one else.

"He believes his trash of vulgar phrases tortured into compound barbarisms to be _old_ English; and we may say of it as Aimwell says of Captain Gibbet's regiment, when the Captain calls it an 'old corps,'--'the _oldest_ in Europe, if I may judge by your uniform.' He sent out his 'Foliage' by Percy Sh.e.l.ley * * *, and, of all the ineffable Centaurs that were ever begotten by Self-love upon a Night-mare, I think this monstrous Sagittary the most prodigious. _He_ (Leigh H.) is an honest charlatan, who has persuaded himself into a belief of his own impostures, and talks Punch in pure simplicity of heart, taking himself (as poor Fitzgerald said of _himself_ in the Morning Post) for _Vates_ in both senses, or nonsenses, of the word. Did you look at the translations of his own which he prefers to Pope and Cowper, and says so?--Did you read his skimble-skamble about * * being at the head of his own _profession_, in the _eyes_ of _those_ who followed it? I thought that poetry was an _art_, or an _attribute_, and not a _profession_;--but be it one, is that * * * * * * at the head of _your_ profession in _your_ eyes? I'll be curst if he is of _mine_, or ever shall be. He is the only one of us (but of us he is not) whose coronation I would oppose. Let them take Scott, Campbell, Crabbe, or you, or me, or any of the living, and throne him;--but not this new Jacob Behmen, this * * * * * * whose pride might have kept him true, even had his principles turned as perverted as his _soi-disant_ poetry.

"But Leigh Hunt is a good man, and a good father--see his Odes to all the Masters Hunt;--a good husband--see his Sonnet to Mrs.

Hunt;--a good friend--see his Epistles to different people;--and a great c.o.xcomb and a very vulgar person in every thing about him.

But that's not his fault, but of circ.u.mstances.[22]

"I do not know any good model for a life of Sheridan but that of _Savage_. Recollect, however, that the life of such a man may be made far more amusing than if he had been a Wilberforce;--and this without offending the living, or insulting the dead. The Whigs abuse him; however, he never left them, and such blunderers deserve neither credit nor compa.s.sion. As for his creditors,--remember, Sheridan _never had_ a shilling, and was thrown, with great powers and pa.s.sions, into the thick of the world, and placed upon the pinnacle of success, with no other external means to support him in his elevation. Did Fox * * * _pay his_ debts?--or did Sheridan take a subscription? Was the * *'s drunkenness more excusable than his?

Were his intrigues more notorious than those of all his contemporaries? and is his memory to be blasted, and theirs respected? Don't let yourself be led away by clamour, but compare him with the coalitioner Fox, and the pensioner Burke, as a man of principle, and with ten hundred thousand in personal views, and with none in talent, for he beat them all _out_ and _out_. Without means, without connection, without character, (which might be false at first, and make him mad afterwards from desperation,) he beat them all, in all he ever attempted. But alas, poor human nature!

Good night--or rather, morning. It is four, and the dawn gleams over the Grand Ca.n.a.l, and unshadows the Rialto. I must to bed; up all night--but, as George Philpot says, 'it's life, though, damme, it's life!' Ever yours, B.

"Excuse errors--no time for revision. The post goes out at noon, and I sha'n't be up then. I will write again soon about your _plan_ for a publication."