The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals Volume II Part 88

"Dear fatal name! rest ever unrevealed, Nor pa.s.s these lips in holy silence sealed."

Pope's 'Eloisa to Abelard', lines 9, 10.]

[Footnote 2: Virgil, 'aeneid', ii. 5:

". ... quoeque ipse miserrima vidi Et quorum pars magna fui."]

[Footnote 3: The Rev. Henry Byron, second son of the Rev. and Hon.

Richard Byron, and nephew of William, fifth Lord Byron, died in 1821.

His daughter Eliza married, in 1830, George Rochford Clarke. Byron's "niece Georgina" was the daughter of Mrs. Leigh.]

[Footnote 4: Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818), intended by his father for the diplomatic service, was educated at Westminster and Christ Church, Weimar, and Paris. He soon showed his taste for literature. At the age of seventeen he had translated a play from the French, and written a farce, a comedy called 'The East Indian' (acted at Drury Lane, April 22, 1799), "two volumes of a novel, two of a romance, besides numerous poems" ('Life, etc., of M. G. Lewis', vol. i. p. 70). In 1794 he was attached to the British Emba.s.sy at the Hague. There, stimulated ('ibid'., vol. i. p. 123) by reading Mrs. Radcliffe's 'Mysteries of Udolpho', he wrote 'Ambrosio, or the Monk'. The book, published in 1795, made him famous in fashionable society, and decided his career. Though he sat in Parliament for Hindon from 1796 to 1802, he took no part in politics, but devoted himself to literature.

The moral and outline of 'The Monk' are taken, as Lewis says in a letter to his father ('Life, etc.', vol. i. pp. 154-158), and as was pointed out in the 'Monthly Review' for August, 1797, from Addison's "Santon Barsisa" in the 'Guardian' (No. 148). The book was severely criticized on the score of immorality. Mathias ('Pursuits of Literature', Dialogue iv.) attacks Lewis, whom he compares to John Cleland, whose 'Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure' came under the notice of the law courts:

"Another Cleland see in Lewis rise.

Why sleep the ministers of truth and law?"

An injunction was, in fact, moved for against the book; but the proceedings dropped.

Lewis had a remarkable gift of catching the popular taste of the day, both in his tales of horror and mystery, and in his ballads. In the latter he was the precursor of Scott. Many of his songs were sung to music of his own composition. His 'Tales of Terror' (1799) were dedicated to Lady Charlotte Campbell, afterwards Bury, with whom he was in love. To his 'Tales of Wonder' (1801) Scott, Southey, and others contributed. His most successful plays were 'The Castle Spectre' (Drury Lane, December 14, 1797), and 'Timour the Tartar' (Covent Garden, April 29, 1811).

In 1812, by the death of his father, "the Monk" became a rich man, and the owner of plantations in the West Indies. He paid two visits to his property, in 1815-16 and 1817-18. On the voyage home from the last visit he died of yellow fever, and was buried at sea. His 'Journal of a West Indian Proprietor', published in 1834, is written in sterling English, with much quiet humour, and a graphic power of very high order.

Among his 'Detached Thoughts' Byron has the following notes on Lewis:

"Sheridan was one day offered a bet by M. G. Lewis: 'I will bet you, Mr. Sheridan, a very large sum--I will bet you what you owe me as Manager, for my 'Castle Spectre'.'

"'I never make _large bets_,' said Sheridan, 'but I will lay you a _very small_ one. I will bet you _what it is_ WORTH!'"

"Lewis, though a kind man, hated Sheridan, and we had some words upon that score when in Switzerland, in 1816. Lewis afterwards sent me the following epigram upon Sheridan from Saint Maurice:

"'For worst abuse of finest parts Was Misophil begotten; There might indeed be _blacker_ hearts, But none could be more _rotten_.'"

Lewis at Oatlands was observed one morning to have his eyes red, and his air sentimental; being asked why? he replied 'that when people said anything 'kind' to him, it affected him deeply, and just now the d.u.c.h.ess had said something so kind to him'--here tears began to flow again. 'Never mind, Lewis,' said Col. Armstrong to him, 'never mind--don't cry, she could not mean it'.'

"Lewis was a good man--a clever man, but a bore--a d.a.m.ned bore, one may say. My only revenge or consolation used to be setting him by the ears with some vivacious person who hated bores especially--Me. de Stael or Hobhouse, for example. But I liked Lewis; he was a Jewel of a Man had he been better set, I don't mean _personally_, but less _tiresome_, for he was tedious, as well as contradictory to everything and everybody. Being short-sighted, when we used to ride out together near the Brenta in the twilight in summer, he made me go _before_ to pilot him. I am absent at times, especially towards evening, and the consequence of this pilotage was some narrow escapes to the Monk on horseback. Once I led him into a ditch, over which I had pa.s.sed as usual, forgetting to warn my convoy; once I led him nearly into the river instead of on the 'moveable' bridge which _in_commodes pa.s.sengers; and twice did we both run against the diligence, which, being heavy and slow, did communicate less damage than it received in its leaders, who were 'terra.s.sed' by the charge. Thrice did I lose him in the gray of the gloaming and was obliged to bring to, to his distant signals of distance and distress. All the time he went on talking without intermission, for he was a man of many words. Poor fellow, he died a martyr to his new riches--of a second visit to Jamaica.

"'I'd give the lands of Deloraine Dark Musgrave were alive again!'

_that is_ 'I would give many a Sugar Cane Monk Lewis were alive again!'

"Lewis said to me, 'Why do you talk 'Venetian' (such as I could talk, not very fine to be sure) to the Venetians, and not the usual Italian?' I answered, partly from habit and partly to be understood, if possible. 'It may be so,' said Lewis, 'but it sounds to me like talking with a 'brogue' to an _Irishman_.'"

In a MS. note by Sir Walter Scott on these pa.s.sages from Byron's 'Detached Thoughts', he says,

"Mat had queerish eyes; they projected like those of some insect, and were flattish in their orbit. His person was extremely small and boyish; he was, indeed, the least man I ever saw to be strictly well and neatly made. I remember a picture of him by Saunders being handed round at Dalkeith House. The artist had ungenerously flung a dark folding mantle round the form, under which was half hid a dagger, or dark lanthorn, or some such cut-throat appurtenance. With all this the features were preserved and enn.o.bled. It pa.s.sed from hand to hand into that of Henry, Duke of Buccleuch, who, hearing the general voice affirm that it was very like, said aloud, 'Like Mat Lewis? Why, that picture is like a 'man'.' He looked, and lo! Mat Lewis's head was at his elbow. His boyishness went through life with him. He was a child, and a spoiled child, but a child of high imagination, so that he wasted himself in ghost stories and German nonsense. He had the finest ear for the rhythm of verse I ever heard--finer than Byron's.

"Lewis was fonder of great people than he ought to have been, either as a man of talent or a man of fortune. He had always dukes and d.u.c.h.esses in his mouth, and was particularly fond of any one who had a t.i.tle. You would have sworn he had been a 'parvenu' of yesterday, yet he had been all his life in good society.

"He was one of the kindest and best creatures that ever lived. His father and mother lived separately. Mr. Lewis allowed his son a handsome income; but reduced it more than one half when he found that he gave his mother half of it. He restricted himself in all his expenses, and shared the diminished income with his mother as before.

He did much good by stealth, and was a most generous creature.

"I had a good picture drawn me, I think by Thos. Thomson, of Fox, in his latter days, suffering the fatigue of an attack from Lewis. The great statesman was become bulky and lethargic, and lay like a fat ox which for sometime endures the persecution of a buzzing fly, rather than rise to get rid of it; and then at last he got up, and heavily plodded his way to the other side of the room."

Referring to Byron's story of Lewis near the Brenta, Scott adds,

"I had a worse adventure with Mat Lewis. I had been his guide from the cottage I then had at Laswade to the Chapel of Roslin. We were to go up one side of the river and come down the other. In the return he was dead tired, and, like the Israelites, he murmured against his guide for leading him into the wilderness. I was then as strong as a poney, and took him on my back, dressed as he was in his shooting array of a close sky-blue jacket, and the brightest 'red' pantaloons I ever saw on a human breech. He also had a kind of feather in his cap. At last I could not help laughing at the ridiculous figure we must both have made, at which my rider waxed wroth. It was an ill-chosen hour and place, for I could have served him as Wallace did Fawden--thrown him down and twisted his head off. We returned to the cottage weary wights, and it cost more than one gla.s.s of Noyau, which he liked in a decent way, to get Mat's temper on its legs again."]

[Footnote 5: 'The Bride of Abydos' was originally called 'Zuleika'. ]

[Footnote 6: The pet.i.tion, directed against Lord Redesdale's Insolvent Debtors Act, was presented by Romilly in the House of Commons, November 11, 1813, and by Lord Holland in the House of Lords, November 15, 1813.]

[Footnote 7: Henry IV., Part I. act in. sc. 3.]

November 16.

Went last night with Lewis to see the first of 'Antony and Cleopatra'

[1]. It was admirably got up, and well acted--a salad of Shakspeare and Dryden. Cleopatra strikes me as the epitome of her s.e.x--fond, lively, sad, tender, teasing, humble, haughty, beautiful, the devil!--coquettish to the last, as well with the "asp" as with Antony. After doing all she can to persuade him that--but why do they abuse him for cutting off that poltroon Cicero's head? Did not Tully tell Brutus it was a pity to have spared Antony? and did he not speak the Philippics? and are not "_words things_?" [2] and such "_words_" very pestilent "_things_" too? If he had had a hundred heads, they deserved (from Antony) a rostrum (his was stuck up there) apiece--though, after all, he might as well have pardoned him, for the credit of the thing. But to resume--Cleopatra, after securing him, says, "yet go--it is your interest," etc.--how like the s.e.x! and the questions about Octavia--it is woman all over.

To-day received Lord Jersey's invitation to Middleton--to travel sixty miles to meet Madame De Stael! I once travelled three thousand to get among silent people; and this same lady writes octavos, and _talks_ folios. I have read her books--like most of them, and delight in the last; so I won't hear it, as well as read.

Read Burns to-day. What would he have been, if a patrician? We should have had more polish--less force--just as much verse, but no immortality--a divorce and a duel or two, the which had he survived, as his potations must have been less spirituous, he might have lived as long as Sheridan, and outlived as much as poor Brinsley. What a wreck is that man! and all from bad pilotage; for no one had ever better gales, though now and then a little too squally. Poor dear Sherry! I shall never forget the day he and Rogers and Moore and I pa.s.sed together; when _he_ talked, and _we_ listened, without one yawn, from six till one in the morning.

Got my seals----. Have again forgot a play-thing for _ma pet.i.te cousine_ Eliza; but I must send for it to-morrow. I hope Harry will bring her to me. I sent Lord Holland the proofs of the last "_Giaour_"

and "_The Bride of Abydos_" He won't like the latter, and I don't think that I shall long. It was written in four nights to distract my dreams from----. Were it not thus, it had never been composed; and had I not done something at that time, I must have gone mad, by eating my own heart,--bitter diet;--Hodgson likes it better than "_The Giaour_" but n.o.body else will,--and he never liked the Fragment. I am sure, had it not been for Murray, _that_ would never have been published, though the circ.u.mstances which are the ground-work make it----heigh-ho!

To-night I saw both the sisters of----; my G.o.d! the youngest so like! I thought I should have sprung across the house, and am so glad no one was with me in Lady H.'s box. I hate those likenesses--the mock-bird, but not the nightingale--so like as to remind, so different as to be painful [3].

One quarrels equally with the points of resemblance and of distinction.

[Footnote 1: 'Antony and Cleopatra' was revived at Covent Garden, November 15, 1813, with additions from Dryden's 'All for Love, or the World Well Lost'(1678). "Cleopatra" was acted by Mrs. Fawcit; "Marc Antony" by Young. (See for the allusions, act v. se. 2, and act i. sc.