"FRANCESCA OF RIMINI.

"Translation from the Inferno of Dante, Canto 5th.

"'The land where I was born sits by the seas, Upon that shore to which the Po descends, With all his followers, in search of peace. Love, which the gentle heart soon apprehends, Seized him for the fair person which was ta'en From me, and me even yet the mode offends. Love, who to none beloved to love again Remits, seized me with wish to please, so strong, That, as thou seest, yet, yet it doth remain. Love to one death conducted us along, But Caina waits for him our life who ended:' These were the accents utter'd by her tongue,— Since first I listen'd to these souls offended, I bow'd my visage and so kept it till—

{then} 'What think'st thou?' said the bard; { when } I unbended, And recommenced: 'Alas! unto such ill How many sweet thoughts, what strong ecstasies Led these their evil fortune to fulfil!' And then I turn'd unto their side my eyes, And said, 'Francesca, thy sad destinies Have made me sorrow till the tears arise. But tell me, in the season of sweet sighs, By what and how thy Love to Passion rose, So as his dim desires to recognise?' Then she to me: 'The greatest of all woes {recall to mind} Is to { remind us of } our happy days {this} In misery, and { that } thy teacher knows.

But if to learn our passion's first root preys Upon thy spirit with such sympathy, { relate } I will {do[70] even} as he who weeps and says.— We read one day for pastime, seated nigh, Of Lancilot, how Love enchain'd him too. We were alone, quite unsuspiciously, But oft our eyes met, and our cheeks in hue All o'er discolour'd by that reading were; { overthrew } But one point only wholly {us o'erthrew;} { desired } When we read the {long-sighed-for} smile of her, {a fervent} To be thus kiss'd by such { devoted } lover, He who from me can be divided ne'er Kiss'd my mouth, trembling in the act all over. Accursed was the book and he who wrote! That day no further leaf we did uncover.— While thus one Spirit told us of their lot, The other wept, so that with pity's thralls I swoon'd as if by death I had been smote, And fell down even as a dead body falls.'"

[Footnote 70: "In some of the editions, it is, 'diro,' in others 'faro;'—an essential difference between 'saying' and 'doing,' which I know not how to decide. Ask Foscolo. The d——d editions drive me mad."]

* * * * *

LETTER 363. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, March 23. 1820.

"I have received your letter of the 7th. Besides the four packets you have already received, I have sent the Pulci a few days after, and since (a few days ago) the four first Cantos of Dante's Prophecy, (the best thing I ever wrote, if it be not unintelligible,) and by last post a literal translation, word for word (versed like the original), of the episode of Francesca of Rimini. I want to hear what you think of the new Juans, and the translations, and the Vision. They are all things that are, or ought to be, very different from one another.

"If you choose to make a print from the Venetian, you may; but she don't correspond at all to the character you mean her to represent. On the contrary, the Contessa G. does (except that she is fair), and is much prettier than the Fornarina; but I have no picture of her except a miniature, which is very ill done; and, besides, it would not be proper, on any account whatever, to make such a use of it, even if you had a copy.

"Recollect that the two new Cantos only count with us for one. You may put the Pulci and Dante together: perhaps that were best. So you have put your name to Juan, after all your panic. You are a rare fellow. I must now put myself in a passion to continue my prose. Yours," &c.

"I have caused write to Thorwaldsen. Pray be careful in sending my daughter's picture—I mean, that it be not hurt in the carriage, for it is a journey rather long and jolting."

* * * * *

LETTER 364. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, March 28. 1820.

"Enclosed is a 'Screed of Doctrine' for you, of which I will trouble you to acknowledge the receipt by next post. Mr. Hobhouse must have the correction of it for the press. You may show it first to whom you please.

"I wish to know what became of my two Epistles from St. Paul (translated from the Armenian three years ago and more), and of the letter to R——ts of last autumn, which you never have attended to? There are two packets with this.

"P.S. I have some thoughts of publishing the 'Hints from Horace,' written ten years ago[71],—if Hobhouse can rummage them out of my papers left at his father's,—with some omissions and alterations previously to be made when I see the proofs."

[Footnote 71: When making the observations which occur in the early part of this work, on the singular preference given by the noble author to the "Hints from Horace," I was not aware of the revival of this strange predilection, which (as it appears from the above letter, and, still more strongly, from some that follow) took place so many years after, in the full maturity of his powers and taste. Such a delusion is hardly conceivable, and can only, perhaps, be accounted for by that tenaciousness of early opinions and impressions by which his mind, in other respects so versatile, was characterised.]

* * * * *

LETTER 365. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, March 29. 1820.

"Herewith you will receive a note (enclosed) on Pope, which you will find tally with a part of the text of last post. I have at last lost all patience with the atrocious cant and nonsense about Pope, with which our present * *s are overflowing, and am determined to make such head against it as an individual can, by prose or verse; and I will at least do it with good will. There is no bearing it any longer; and if it goes on, it will destroy what little good writing or taste remains amongst us. I hope there are still a few men of taste to second me; but if not, I'll battle it alone, convinced that it is in the best cause of English literature.

"I have sent you so many packets, verse and prose, lately, that you will be tired of the postage, if not of the perusal. I want to answer some parts of your last letter, but I have not time, for I must 'boot and saddle,' as my Captain Craigengelt (an officer of the old Napoleon Italian army) is in waiting, and my groom and cattle to boot.

"You have given me a screed of metaphor and what not about Pulci, and manners, and 'going without clothes, like our Saxon ancestors.' Now, the Saxons did not go without clothes; and, in the next place, they are not my ancestors, nor yours either; for mine were Norman, and yours, I take it by your name, were Gael. And, in the next, I differ from you about the 'refinement' which has banished the comedies of Congreve. Are not the comedies of Sheridan? acted to the thinnest houses? I know (as ex-committed) that 'The School for Scandal' was the worst stock piece upon record. I also know that Congreve gave up writing because Mrs. Centlivre's balderdash drove his comedies off. So it is not decency, but stupidity, that does all this; for Sheridan is as decent a writer as need be, and Congreve no worse than Mrs. Centlivre, of whom Wilks (the actor) said, 'not only her play would be damned, but she too.' He alluded to 'A Bold Stroke for a Wife.' But last, and most to the purpose, Pulci is not an indecent writer—at least in his first Canto, as you will have perceived by this time.

"You talk of refinement:—are you all more moral? are you so moral? No such thing. I know what the world is in England, by my own proper experience of the best of it—at least of the loftiest; and I have described it every where as it is to be found in all places.

"But to return. I should like to see the proofs of mine answer, because there will be something to omit or to alter. But pray let it be carefully printed. When convenient let me have an answer.

"Yours."

* * * * *

LETTER 366. TO MR. HOPPNER.

"Ravenna, March 31. 1820.

"Ravenna continues much the same as I described it. Conversazioni all Lent, and much better ones than any at Venice. There are small games at hazard, that is, faro, where nobody can point more than a shilling or two;—other card-tables, and as much talk and coffee as you please. Every body does and says what they please; and I do not recollect any disagreeable events, except being three times falsely accused of flirtation, and once being robbed of six sixpences by a nobleman of the city, a Count * * *. I did not suspect the illustrious delinquent; but the Countess V * * * and the Marquis L * * * told me of it directly, and also that it was a way he had, of filching money when he saw it before him; but I did not ax him for the cash, but contented myself with telling him that if he did it again, I should anticipate the law.

"There is to be a theatre in April, and a fair, and an opera, and another opera in June, besides the fine weather of nature's giving, and the rides in the Forest of Pine. With my best respects to Mrs. Hoppner, believe me ever, &c. BYRON.

"P.S. Could you give me an item of what books remain at Venice? I don't want them, but want to know whether the few that are not here are there, and were not lost by the way. I hope and trust you have got all your wine safe, and that it is drinkable. Allegra is prettier, I think, but as obstinate as a mule, and as ravenous as a vulture: health good, to judge of the complexion—temper tolerable, but for vanity and pertinacity. She thinks herself handsome, and will do as she pleases."

* * * * *

LETTER 367. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, April 9. 1820.

"In the name of all the devils in the printing-office, why don't you write to acknowledge the receipt of the second, third, and fourth packets, viz. the Pulci translation and original, the Danticles, the Observations on, &c.? You forget that you keep me in hot water till I know whether they are arrived, or if I must have the bore of re-copying.

"Have you gotten the cream of translations, Francesca of Rimini, from the Inferno? Why, I have sent you a warehouse of trash within the last month, and you have no sort of feeling about you: a pastry-cook would have had twice the gratitude, and thanked me at least for the quantity.

"To make the letter heavier, I enclose you the Cardinal Legate's (our Campeius) circular for his conversazione this evening. It is the anniversary of the Pope's tiara-tion, and all polite Christians, even of the Lutheran creed, must go and be civil. And there will be a circle, and a faro-table, (for shillings, that is, they don't allow high play,) and all the beauty, nobility, and sanctity of Ravenna present. The Cardinal himself is a very good-natured little fellow, bishop of Muda, and legate here,—a decent believer in all the doctrines of the church. He has kept his housekeeper these forty years * * * *; but is reckoned a pious man, and a moral liver.

"I am not quite sure that I won't be among you this autumn, for I find that business don't go on—what with trustees and lawyers—as it should do, 'with all deliberate speed.' They differ about investments in Ireland.

"Between the devil and deep sea, Between the lawyer and trustee,

I am puzzled; and so much time is lost by my not being upon the spot, what with answers, demurs, rejoinders, that it may be I must come and look to it; for one says do, and t'other don't, so that I know not which way to turn: but perhaps they can manage without me.

"Yours, &c.

"P.S. I have begun a tragedy on the subject of Marino Faliero, the Doge of Venice; but you sha'n't see it these six years, if you don't acknowledge my packets with more quickness and precision. Always write, if but a line, by return of post, when any thing arrives, which is not a mere letter.

"Address direct to Ravenna; it saves a week's time, and much postage."

* * * * *

LETTER 368. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, April 16. 1820.

"Post after post arrives without bringing any acknowledgment from you of the different packets (excepting the first) which I sent within the last two months, all of which ought to be arrived long ere now; and as they were announced in other letters, you ought at least to say whether they are come or not. You are not expected to write frequent, or long letters, as your time is much occupied; but when parcels that have cost some pains in the composition, and great trouble in the copying, are sent to you, I should at least be put out of suspense, by the immediate acknowledgment, per return of post, addressed directly to Ravenna. I am naturally—knowing what continental posts are—anxious to hear that they are arrived; especially as I loathe the task of copying so much, that if there was a human being that could copy my blotted MSS. he should have all they can ever bring for his trouble. All I desire is two lines, to say, such a day I received such a packet. There are at least six unacknowledged. This is neither kind nor courteous.

"I have, besides, another reason for desiring you to be speedy, which is, that there is THAT brewing in Italy which will speedily cut off all security of communication, and set all your Anglo-travellers flying in every direction, with their usual fortitude in foreign tumults. The Spanish and French affairs have set the Italians in a ferment; and no wonder: they have been too long trampled on. This will make a sad scene for your exquisite traveller, but not for the resident, who naturally wishes a people to redress itself. I shall, if permitted by the natives, remain to see what will come of it, and perhaps to take a turn with them, like Dugald Dalgetty and his horse, in case of business; for I shall think it by far the most interesting spectacle and moment in existence, to see the Italians send the barbarians of all nations back to their own dens. I have lived long enough among them to feel more for them as a nation than for any other people in existence. But they want union, and they want principle; and I doubt their success. However, they will try, probably, and if they do, it will be a good cause. No Italian can hate an Austrian more than I do: unless it be the English, the Austrians seem to me the most obnoxious race under the sky.

"But I doubt, if any thing be done, it won't be so quietly as in Spain. To be sure, revolutions are not to be made with rose-water, where there are foreigners as masters.

"Write while you can; for it is but the toss up of a paul that there will not be a row that will somewhat retard the mail by and by.

"Yours," &c.

* * * * *

LETTER 369. TO MR. HOPPNER.

"Ravenna, April 18. 1820.

"I have caused write to Siri and Willhalm to send with Vincenza, in a boat, the camp-beds and swords left in their care when I quitted Venice. There are also several pounds of Mantons best powder in a Japan case; but unless I felt sure of getting it away from V. without seizure, I won't have it ventured. I can get it in here, by means of an acquaintance in the customs, who has offered to get it ashore for me; but should like to be certiorated of its safety in leaving Venice. I would not lose it for its weight in gold—there is none such in Italy, as I take it to be.

"I wrote to you a week or so ago, and hope you are in good plight and spirits. Sir Humphry Davy is here, and was last night at the Cardinal's. As I had been there last Sunday, and yesterday was warm, I did not go, which I should have done, if I had thought of meeting the man of chemistry. He called this morning, and I shall go in search of him at Corso time. I believe to-day, being Monday, there is no great conversazione, and only the family one at the Marchese Cavalli's, where I go as a relation sometimes, so that, unless he stays a day or two, we should hardly meet in public.

"The theatre is to open in May for the fair, if there is not a row in all Italy by that time,—the Spanish business has set them all a constitutioning, and what will be the end, no one knows—it is also necessary thereunto to have a beginning.

"Yours, &c.

"P.S. My benediction to Mrs. Hoppner. How is your little boy? Allegra is growing, and has increased in good looks and obstinacy."

* * * * *

LETTER 370. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, April 23. 1820.

"The proofs don't contain the last stanzas of Canto second, but end abruptly with the 105th stanza.

"I told you long ago that the new Cantos[72] were not good, and I also told you a reason. Recollect, I do not oblige you to publish them; you may suppress them, if you like, but I can alter nothing. I have erased the six stanzas about those two impostors * * * * (which I suppose will give you great pleasure), but I can do no more. I can neither recast, nor replace; but I give you leave to put it all into the fire, if you like, or not to publish, and I think that's sufficient.

"I told you that I wrote on with no good will—that I had been, not frightened, but hurt by the outcry, and, besides, that when I wrote last November, I was ill in body, and in very great distress of mind about some private things of my own; but you would have it: so I sent it to you, and to make it lighter, cut it in two—but I can't piece it together again. I can't cobble: I must 'either make a spoon or spoil a horn,'—and there's an end; for there's no remeid: but I leave you free will to suppress the whole, if you like it.

"About the Morgante Maggiore, I won't have a line omitted. It may circulate, or it may not; but all the criticism on earth sha'n't touch a line, unless it be because it is badly translated. Now you say, and I say, and others say, that the translation is a good one; and so it shall go to press as it is. Pulci must answer for his own irreligion: I answer for the translation only.

"Pray let Mr. Hobhouse look to the Italian next time in the proofs: this time, while I am scribbling to you, they are corrected by one who passes for the prettiest woman in Romagna, and even the Marches, as far as Ancona, be the other who she may.

"I am glad you like my answer to your enquiries about Italian society. It is fit you should like something, and be d——d to you.

"My love to Scott. I shall think higher of knighthood ever after for his being dubbed. By the way, he is the first poet titled for his talent in Britain: it has happened abroad before now; but on the Continent titles are universal and worthless. Why don't you send me Ivanhoe and the Monastery? I have never written to Sir Walter, for I know he has a thousand things, and I a thousand nothings, to do; but I hope to see him at Abbotsford before very long, and I will sweat his claret for him, though Italian abstemiousness has made my brain but a shilpit concern for a Scotch sitting 'inter pocula.' I love Scott, and Moore, and all the better brethren; but I hate and abhor that puddle of water-worms whom you have taken into your troop.

"Yours, &c.

"P.S. You say that one half is very good: you are wrong; for, if it were, it would be the finest poem in existence. Where is the poetry of which one half is good? is it the AEneid? is it Milton's? is it Dryden's? is it any one's except Pope's and Goldsmith's, of which all is good? and yet these two last are the poets your pond poets would explode. But if one half of the two new Cantos be good in your opinion, what the devil would you have more? No—no; no poetry is generally good—only by fits and starts—and you are lucky to get a sparkle here and there. You might as well want a midnight all stars as rhyme all perfect.

"We are on the verge of a row here. Last night they have overwritten all the city walls with 'Up with the republic!' and 'Death to the Pope!' &c. &c. This would be nothing in London, where the walls are privileged. But here it is a different thing: they are not used to such fierce political inscriptions, and the police is all on the alert, and the Cardinal glares pale through all his purple.

"April 24. 1820. 8 o'clock, P.M.

"The police have been, all noon and after, searching for the inscribers, but have caught none as yet. They must have been all night about it, for the 'Live republics—Death to Popes and Priests,' are innumerable, and plastered over all the palaces: ours has plenty. There is 'Down with the Nobility,' too; they are down enough already, for that matter. A very heavy rain and wind having come on, I did not go out and 'skirr the country;' but I shall mount to-morrow, and take a canter among the peasantry, who are a savage, resolute race, always riding with guns in their hands. I wonder they don't suspect the serenaders, for they play on the guitar here all night, as in Spain, to their mistresses.

"Talking of politics, as Caleb Quotem says, pray look at the conclusion of my Ode on Waterloo, written in the year 1815, and, comparing it with the Duke de Berri's catastrophe in 1820, tell me if I have not as good a right to the character of 'Vates' in both senses of the word, as Fitzgerald and Coleridge?

"'Crimson tears will follow yet—'

and have not they?

"I can't pretend to foresee what will happen among you Englishers at this distance, but I vaticinate a row in Italy; in whilk case, I don't know that I won't have a finger in it. I dislike the Austrians, and think the Italians infamously oppressed; and if they begin, why, I will recommend 'the erection of a sconce upon Drumsnab,' like Dugald Dalgetty."

[Footnote 72: Of Don Juan.]

* * * * *

LETTER 371. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, May 8. 1820.

"From your not having written again, an intention which your letter of the 7th ultimo indicated, I have to presume that the 'Prophecy of Dante' has not been found more worthy than its predecessors in the eyes of your illustrious synod. In that case, you will be in some perplexity; to end which, I repeat to you, that you are not to consider yourself as bound or pledged to publish any thing because it is mine, but always to act according to your own views, or opinions, or those of your friends; and to be sure that you will in no degree offend me by 'declining the article,' to use a technical phrase. The prose observations on John Wilson's attack, I do not intend for publication at this time; and I send a copy of verses to Mr. Kinnaird (they were written last year on crossing the Po) which must not be published either. I mention this, because it is probable he may give you a copy. Pray recollect this, as they are mere verses of society, and written upon private feelings and passions. And, moreover, I can't consent to any mutilations or omissions of Pulci: the original has been ever free from such in Italy, the capital of Christianity, and the translation may be so in England; though you will think it strange that they should have allowed such freedom for many centuries to the Morgante, while the other day they confiscated the whole translation of the fourth Canto of Childe Harold, and have persecuted Leoni, the translator—so he writes me, and so I could have told him, had he consulted me before his publication. This shows how much more politics interest men in these parts than religion. Half a dozen invectives against tyranny confiscate Childe Harold in a month; and eight and twenty cantos of quizzing monks and knights, and church government, are let loose for centuries. I copy Leoni's account.

"'Non ignorera forse che la mia versione del 4 deg. Canto del Childe Harold fu confiscata in ogni parte: ed io stesso ho dovuto soffrir vessazioni altrettanto ridicole quanto illiberaii, ad arte che alcuni versi fossero esclusi dalla censura. Ma siccome il divieto non fa d'ordinario che accrescere la curiosita cos! quel carme sull' Italia e ricercato piu che mai, e penso di farlo ristampare in Inghil-terra senza nulla escludere. Sciagurata condizione di questa mia patria! se patria si puo chiamare una terra cosi avvilita dalla fortuna, dagli uomini, da se medesima.'

"Rose will translate this to you. Has he had his letter? I enclosed it to you months ago.

"This intended piece of publication I shall dissuade him from, or he may chance to see the inside of St. Angelo's. The last sentence of his letter is the common and pathetic sentiment of all his countrymen.

"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 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 gasen 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 any thing,' 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.

"I did not tell Sir Humphry of this last piece of philosophy, not knowing how he might take it. Davy was much taken with Ravenna, and the PRIMITIVE Italianism of the people, who are unused to foreigners: but he only stayed a day.

"Send me Scott's novels and some news.

"P.S. I have begun and advanced into the second act of a tragedy on the subject of the Doge's conspiracy (i.e. the story of Marino Faliero); but my present feeling is so little encouraging on such matters, that I begin to think I have mined my talent out, and proceed in no great phantasy of finding a new vein.

"P.S. I sometimes think (if the Italians don't rise) of coming over to England in the autumn after the coronation, (at which I would not appear, on account of my family schism,) but as yet I can decide nothing. The place must be a great deal changed since I left it, now more than four years ago."

* * * * *

LETTER 372. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, May 20. 1820.

"Murray, my dear, make my respects to Thomas Campbell, and tell him from me, with faith and friendship, three things that he must right in his poets: Firstly, he says Anstey's Bath Guide characters are taken from Smollett. 'Tis impossible:—the Guide was published in 1766, and Humphrey Clinker in 1771—dunque, 'tis Smollett who has taken from Anstey. Secondly, he does not know to whom Cowper alludes, when he says that there was one who 'built a church to God, and then blasphemed his name:' it was 'Deo erexit Voltaire' to whom that maniacal Calvinist and coddled poet alludes. Thirdly, he misquotes and spoils a passage from Shakspeare, 'to gild refined gold, to paint the lily,' &c.; for lily he puts rose, and bedevils in more words than one the whole quotation.

"Now, Tom is a fine fellow; but he should be correct; for the first is an injustice (to Anstey), the second an ignorance, and the third a blunder. Tell him all this, and let him take it in good part; for I might have rammed it into a review and rowed him—instead of which, I act like a Christian.

"Yours," &c.

* * * * *

LETTER 373. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, May 20. 1820.

"First and foremost, you must forward my letter to Moore dated 2d January, which I said you might open, but desired you to forward. Now, you should really not forget these little things, because they do mischief among friends. You are an excellent man, a great man, and live among great men, but do pray recollect your absent friends and authors.

"In the first place, your packets; then a letter from Kinnaird, on the most urgent business; another from Moore, about a communication to Lady Byron of importance; a fourth from the mother of Allegra; and, fifthly, at Ravenna, the Countess G. is on the eve of being separated. But the Italian public are on her side, particularly the women,—and the men also, because they say that he had no business to take the business up now after a year of toleration. All her relations (who are numerous, high in rank, and powerful) are furious against him for his conduct. I am warned to be on my guard, as he is very capable of employing sicarii—this is Latin as well as Italian, so you can understand it; but I have arms, and don't mind them, thinking that I could pepper his ragamuffins, if they don't come unawares, and that, if they do, one may as well end that way as another; and it would besides serve you as an advertisement:—

"Man may escape from rope or gun, &c. But he who takes woman, woman, woman, &c.

"Yours.

"P.S. I have looked over the press, but heaven knows how. Think what I have on hand and the post going out to-morrow. Do you remember the epitaph on Voltaire?

"'Ci-git l'enfant gate,' &c.

"'Here lies the spoilt child Of the world which he spoil'd.'

The original is in Grimm and Diderot, &c. &c. &c."

* * * * *

LETTER 374. TO MR. MOORE.

"Ravenna, May 24. 1820.

"I wrote to you a few days ago. There is also a letter of January last for you at Murray's, which will explain to you why I am here. Murray ought to have forwarded it long ago. I enclose you an epistle from a countrywoman of yours at Paris, which has moved my entrails. You will have the goodness, perhaps, to enquire into the truth of her story, and I will help her as far as I can,—though not in the useless way she proposes. Her letter is evidently unstudied, and so natural, that the orthography is also in a state of nature.

"Here is a poor creature, ill and solitary, who thinks, as a last resource, of translating you or me into French! Was there ever such a notion? It seems to me the consummation of despair. Pray enquire, and let me know, and, if you could draw a bill on me here for a few hundred francs, at your banker's, I will duly honour it,—that is, if she is not an impostor.[73] If not, let me know, that I may get something remitted by my banker Longhi, of Bologna, for I have no correspondence myself, at Paris: but tell her she must not translate;—if she does, it will be the height of ingratitude.

"I had a letter (not of the same kind, but in French and flattery) from a Madame Sophie Gail, of Paris, whom I take to be the spouse of a Gallo-Greek of that name. Who is she? and what is she? and how came she to take an interest in my poeshie or its author? If you know her, tell her, with my compliments, that, as I only read French, I have not answered her letter; but would have done so in Italian, if I had not thought it would look like an affectation. I have just been scolding my monkey for tearing the seal of her letter, and spoiling a mock book, in which I put rose leaves. I had a civet-cat the other day, too; but it ran away, after scratching my monkey's cheek, and I am in search of it still. It was the fiercest beast I ever saw, and like * * in the face and manner.

"I have a world of things to say; but, as they are not come to a denouement, I don't care to begin their history till it is wound up. After you went, I had a fever, but got well again without bark. Sir Humphry Davy was here the other day, and liked Ravenna very much. He will tell you any thing you may wish to know about the place and your humble servitor.

"Your apprehensions (arising from Scott's) were unfounded. There are no damages in this country, but there will probably be a separation between them, as her family, which is a principal one, by its connections, are very much against him, for the whole of his conduct;—and he is old and obstinate, and she is young and a woman, determined to sacrifice every thing to her affections. I have given her the best advice, viz. to stay with him,—pointing out the state of a separated woman, (for the priests won't let lovers live openly together, unless the husband sanctions it,) and making the most exquisite moral reflections,—but to no purpose. She says, 'I will stay with him, if he will let you remain with me. It is hard that I should be the only woman in Romagna who is not to have her Amico; but, if not, I will not live with him; and as for the consequences, love, &c. &c. &c.'—you know how females reason on such occasions.

"He says he has let it go on till he can do so no longer. But he wants her to stay, and dismiss me; for he doesn't like to pay back her dowry and to make an alimony. Her relations are rather for the separation, as they detest him,—indeed, so does every body. The populace and the women are, as usual, all for those who are in the wrong, viz. the lady and her lover. I should have retreated, but honour, and an erysipelas which has attacked her, prevent me,—to say nothing of love, for I love her most entirely, though not enough to persuade her to sacrifice every thing to a frenzy. 'I see how it will end; she will be the sixteenth Mrs. Shuffleton.'

"My paper is finished, and so must this letter.

"Yours ever, B.

"P.S. I regret that you have not completed the Italian Fudges. Pray, how come you to be still in Paris? Murray has four or five things of mine in hand—the new Don Juan, which his back-shop synod don't admire;—a translation of the first Canto of Pulci's Morgante Maggiore, excellent;—short ditto from Dante, not so much approved; the Prophecy of Dante, very grand and worthy, &c. &c. &c.;—a furious prose answer to Blackwood's Observations on Don Juan, with a savage Defence of Pope—likely to make a row. The opinions above I quote from Murray and his Utican senate;—you will form your own, when you see the things.

"You will have no great chance of seeing me, for I begin to think I must finish in Italy. But, if you come my way, you shall have a tureen of macaroni. Pray tell me about yourself, and your intents.

"My trustees are going to lend Earl Blessington sixty thousand pounds (at six per cent.) on a Dublin mortgage. Only think of my becoming an Irish absentee!"

[Footnote 73: According to his desire, I waited upon this young lady, having provided myself with a rouleau of fifteen or twenty Napoleons to present to her from his Lordship; but, with a very creditable spirit, my young countrywoman declined the gift, saying that Lord Byron had mistaken the object of her application to him, which was to request that, by allowing her to have the sheets of some of his works before publication, he would enable her to prepare early translations for the French booksellers, and thus afford her the means of acquiring something towards a livelihood.]

* * * * *

LETTER 375. TO MR. HOPPNER.

"Ravenna, May 25. 1820.

"A German named Ruppsecht has sent me, heaven knows why, several Deutsche Gazettes, of all which I understand neither word nor letter. I have sent you the enclosed to beg you to translate to me some remarks, which appear to be Goethe's upon Manfred—and if I may judge by two notes of admiration (generally put after something ridiculous by us) and the word 'hypocondrisch,' are any thing but favourable. I shall regret this, for I should have been proud of Goethe's good word; but I sha'n't alter my opinion of him, even though he should be savage.

"Will you excuse this trouble, and do me this favour?—Never mind—soften nothing—I am literary proof—having had good and evil said in most modern languages.

"Believe me," &c.

* * * * *

LETTER 376. TO MR. MOORE.

"Ravenna, June 1. 1820,

"I have received a Parisian letter from W.W., which I prefer answering through you, if that worthy be still at Paris, and, as he says, an occasional visiter of yours. In November last he wrote to me a well-meaning letter, stating, for some reasons of his own, his belief that a re-union might be effected between Lady B. and myself. To this I answered as usual; and he sent me a second letter, repeating his notions, which letter I have never answered, having had a thousand other things to think of. He now writes as if he believed that he had offended me by touching on the topic; and I wish you to assure him that I am not at all so,—but, on the contrary, obliged by his good nature. At the same time acquaint him the thing is impossible. You know this, as well as I,—and there let it end.

"I believe that I showed you his epistle in autumn last. He asks me if I have heard of my 'laureat' at Paris[74],—somebody who has written 'a most sanguinary Epitre' against me; but whether in French, or Dutch, or on what score, I know not, and he don't say,—except that (for my satisfaction) he says it is the best thing in the fellow's volume. If there is any thing of the kind that I ought to know, you will doubtless tell me. I suppose it to be something of the usual sort;—he says, he don't remember the author's name.

"I wrote to you some ten days ago, and expect an answer at your leisure.

"The separation business still continues, and all the world are implicated, including priests and cardinals. The public opinion is furious against him, because he ought to have cut the matter short at first, and not waited twelve months to begin. He has been trying at evidence, but can get none sufficient; for what would make fifty divorces in England won't do here—there must be the most decided proofs.

"It is the first cause of the kind attempted in Ravenna for these two hundred years; for, though they often separate, they assign a different motive. You know that the continental incontinent are more delicate than the English, and don't like proclaiming their coronation in a court, even when nobody doubts it.

"All her relations are furious against him. The father has challenged him—a superfluous valour, for he don't fight, though suspected of two assassinations—one of the famous Monzoni of Forli. Warning was given me not to take such long rides in the Pine Forest without being on my guard; so I take my stiletto and a pair of pistols in my pocket during my daily rides.

"I won't stir from this place till the matter is settled one way or the other. She is as femininely firm as possible; and the opinion is so much against him, that the advocates decline to undertake his cause, because they say that he is either a fool or a rogue—fool, if he did not discover the liaison till now; and rogue, if he did know it, and waited, for some bad end, to divulge it. In short, there has been nothing like it since the days of Guido di Polenta's family, in these parts.

"If the man has me taken off, like Polonius 'say, he made a good end,'—for a melodrama. The principal security is, that he has not the courage to spend twenty scudi—the average price of a clean-handed bravo—otherwise there is no want of opportunity, for I ride about the woods every evening, with one servant, and sometimes an acquaintance, who latterly looks a little queer in solitary bits of bushes.

"Good bye.—Write to yours ever," &c.

[Footnote 74: M. Lamartine.]

* * * * *

LETTER 377. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, June 7. 1820.

"Enclosed is something which will interest you, to wit, the opinion of the greatest man of Germany—perhaps of Europe—upon one of the great men of your advertisements, (all 'famous hands,' as Jacob Tonson used to say of his ragamuffins,)—in short, a critique of Goethe's upon Manfred. There is the original, an English translation, and an Italian one; keep them all in your archives,—for the opinions of such a man as Goethe, whether favourable or not, are always interesting—and this is more so, as favourable. His Faust I never read, for I don't know German; but Matthew Monk Lewis, in 1816, at Coligny, translated most of it to me viva voce, and I was naturally much struck with it; but it was the Steinbach and the Jungfrau, and something else, much more than Faustus, that made me write Manfred. The first scene, however, and that of Faustus are very similar. Acknowledge this letter.

"Yours ever.

"P.S. I have received Ivanhoe;—good. Pray send me some tooth-powder and tincture of myrrh, by Waite, &c. Ricciardetto should have been translated literally, or not at all. As to puffing Whistlecraft, it won't do. I'll tell you why some day or other. Cornwall's a poet, but spoilt by the detestable schools of the day. Mrs. Hemans is a poet also, but too stiltified and apostrophic,—and quite wrong. Men died calmly before the Christian era, and since, without Christianity: witness the Romans, and, lately, Thistlewood, Sandt, and Lovel—men who ought to have been weighed down with their crimes, even had they believed. A deathbed is a matter of nerves and constitution, and not of religion. Voltaire was frightened, Frederick of Prussia not: Christians the same, according to their strength rather than their creed. What does H * * H * * mean by his stanza? which is octave got drunk or gone mad. He ought to have his ears boxed with Thor's hammer for rhyming so fantastically."

* * * * *

The following is the article from Goethe's "Kunst und Alterthum," enclosed in this letter. The grave confidence with which the venerable critic traces the fancies of his brother poet to real persons and events, making no difficulty even of a double murder at Florence to furnish grounds for his theory, affords an amusing instance of the disposition so prevalent throughout Europe, to picture Byron as a man of marvels and mysteries, as well in his life as his poetry. To these exaggerated, or wholly false notions of him, the numerous fictions palmed upon the world of his romantic tours and wonderful adventures in places he never saw, and with persons that never existed[75], have, no doubt, considerably contributed; and the consequence is, so utterly out of truth and nature are the representations of his life and character long current upon the Continent, that it may be questioned whether the real "flesh and blood" hero of these pages,—the social, practical-minded, and, with all his faults and eccentricities, English Lord Byron,—may not, to the over-exalted imaginations of most of his foreign admirers, appear but an ordinary, unromantic, and prosaic personage.

[Footnote 75: Of this kind are the accounts, filled with all sorts of circumstantial wonders, of his residence in the island of Mytilene;—his voyages to Sicily,—to Ithaca, with the Countess Guiccioli, &c. &c. But the most absurd, perhaps, of all these fabrications, are the stories told by Pouqueville, of the poet's religious conferences in the cell of Father Paul, at Athens; and the still more unconscionable fiction in which Rizo has indulged, in giving the details of a pretended theatrical scene, got up (according to this poetical historian) between Lord Byron and the Archbishop of Arta, at the tomb of Botzaris, in Missolonghi.]

* * * * *

"GOETHE ON MANFRED.

[1820.]

"Byron's tragedy, Manfred, was to me a wonderful phenomenon, and one that closely touched me. This singular intellectual poet has taken my Faustus to himself, and extracted from it the strongest nourishment for his hypochondriac humour. He has made use of the impelling principles in his own way, for his own purposes, so that no one of them remains the same; and it is particularly on this account that I cannot enough admire his genius. The whole is in this way so completely formed anew, that it would be an interesting task for the critic to point out not only the alterations he has made, but their degree of resemblance with, or dissimilarity to, the original: in the course of which I cannot deny that the gloomy heat of an unbounded and exuberant despair becomes at last oppressive to us. Yet is the dissatisfaction we feel always connected with esteem and admiration.

"We find thus in this tragedy the quintessence of the most astonishing talent born to be its own tormentor. The character of Lord Byron's life and poetry hardly permits a just and equitable appreciation. He has often enough confessed what it is that torments him. He has repeatedly pourtrayed it; and scarcely any one feels compassion for this intolerable suffering, over which he is ever laboriously ruminating. There are, properly speaking, two females whose phantoms for ever haunt him, and which, in this piece also, perform principal parts—one under the name of Astarte, the other without form or actual presence, and merely a voice. Of the horrid occurrence which took place with the former, the following is related:—When a bold and enterprising young man, he won the affections of a Florentine lady. Her husband discovered the amour, and murdered his wife; but the murderer was the same night found dead in the street, and there was no one on whom any suspicion could be attached. Lord Byron removed from Florence, and these spirits haunted him all his life after.

"This romantic incident is rendered highly probable by innumerable allusions to it in his poems. As, for instance, when turning his sad contemplations inwards, he applies to himself the fatal history of the king of Sparta. It is as follows:—Pausanias, a Lacedemonian general, acquires glory by the important victory at Plataea, but afterwards forfeits the confidence of his countrymen through his arrogance, obstinacy, and secret intrigues with the enemies of his country. This man draws upon himself the heavy guilt of innocent blood, which attends him to his end; for, while commanding the fleet of the allied Greeks, in the Black Sea, he is inflamed with a violent passion for a Byzantine maiden. After long resistance, he at length obtains her from her parents, and she is to be delivered up to him at night. She modestly desires the servant to put out the lamp, and, while groping her way in the dark, she overturns it. Pausanias is awakened from his sleep—apprehensive of an attack from murderers, he seizes his sword, and destroys his mistress. The horrid sight never leaves him. Her shade pursues him unceasingly, and he implores for aid in vain from the gods and the exorcising priests.

"That poet must have a lacerated heart who selects such a scene from antiquity, appropriates it to himself, and burdens his tragic image with it. The following soliloquy, which is overladen with gloom and a weariness of life, is, by this remark, rendered intelligible. We recommend it as an exercise to all friends of declamation. Hamlet's soliloquy appears improved upon here."[76]

[Footnote 76: The critic here subjoins the soliloquy from Manfred, beginning "We are the fools of time and terror," in which the allusion to Pausanias occurs.]

* * * * *

LETTER 378. TO MR. MOORE.

"Ravenna, June 9. 1820.

"Galignani has just sent me the Paris edition of your works (which I wrote to order), and I am glad to see my old friends with a French face. I have been skimming and dipping, in and over them, like a swallow, and as pleased as one. It is the first time that I had seen the Melodies without music; and, I don't know how, but I can't read in a music-book—the crotchets confound the words in my head, though I recollect them perfectly when sung. Music assists my memory through the ear, not through the eye; I mean, that her quavers perplex me upon paper, but they are a help when heard. And thus I was glad to see the words without their borrowed robes;—to my mind they look none the worse for their nudity.

"The biographer has made a botch of your life—calling your father 'a venerable old gentleman,' and prattling of 'Addison,' and 'dowager countesses.' If that damned fellow was to write my life, I would certainly take his. And then, at the Dublin dinner, you have 'made a speech' (do you recollect, at Douglas K.'s, 'Sir, he made me a speech?') too complimentary to the 'living poets,' and somewhat redolent of universal praise. I am but too well off in it, but * * *.

"You have not sent me any poetical or personal news of yourself. Why don't you complete an Italian Tour of the Fudges? I have just been turning over Little, which I knew by heart in 1803, being then in my fifteenth summer. Heigho! I believe all the mischief I have ever done, or sung, has been owing to that confounded book of yours.

"In my last I told you of a cargo of 'Poeshie,' which I had sent to M. at his own impatient desire;—and, now he has got it, he don't like it, and demurs. Perhaps he is right. I have no great opinion of any of my last shipment, except a translation from Pulci, which is word for word, and verse for verse.

"I am in the third Act of a Tragedy; but whether it will be finished or not, I know not: I have, at this present, too many passions of my own on hand to do justice to those of the dead. Besides the vexations mentioned in my last, I have incurred a quarrel with the Pope's carabiniers, or gens d'armerie, who have petitioned the Cardinal against my liveries, as resembling too nearly their own lousy uniform. They particularly object to the epaulettes, which all the world with us have on upon gala days. My liveries are of the colours conforming to my arms, and have been the family hue since the year 1066.

"I have sent a tranchant reply, as you may suppose; and have given to understand that, if any soldados of that respectable corps insult my servants, I will do likewise by their gallant commanders; and I have directed my ragamuffins, six in number, who are tolerably savage, to defend themselves, in case of aggression; and, on holidays and gaudy days, I shall arm the whole set, including myself, in case of accidents or treachery. I used to play pretty well at the broad-sword, once upon a time, at Angelo's; but I should like the pistol, our national buccaneer weapon, better, though I am out of practice at present. However, I can 'wink and hold out mine iron.' It makes me think (the whole thing does) of Romeo and Juliet—'now, Gregory, remember thy swashing blow.'

"All these feuds, however, with the Cavalier for his wife, and the troopers for my liveries, are very tiresome to a quiet man, who does his best to please all the world, and longs for fellowship and good will. Pray write. I am yours," &c.

* * * * *

LETTER 379. TO MR. MOORE.

"Ravenna, July 13. 1820.

"To remove or increase your Irish anxiety about my being 'in a wisp[77],' I answer your letter forth-with; premising that, as I am a 'Will of the wisp,' I may chance to flit out of it. But, first, a word on the Memoir;—I have no objection, nay, I would rather that one correct copy was taken and deposited in honourable hands, in case of accidents happening to the original; for you know that I have none, and have never even re-read, nor, indeed, read at all what is there written; I only know that I wrote it with the fullest intention to be 'faithful and true' in my narrative, but not impartial—no, by the Lord! I can't pretend to be that, while I feel. But I wish to give every body concerned the opportunity to contradict or correct me.

"I have no objection to any proper person seeing what is there written,—seeing it was written, like every thing else, for the purpose of being read, however much many writings may fail in arriving at that object.

"With regard to 'the wisp,' the Pope has pronounced their separation. The decree came yesterday from Babylon,—it was she and her friends who demanded it, on the grounds of her husband's (the noble Count Cavalier's) extraordinary usage. He opposed it with all his might because of the alimony, which has been assigned, with all her goods, chattels, carriage, &c. to be restored by him. In Italy they can't divorce. He insisted on her giving me up, and he would forgive every thing,—* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * But, in this country, the very courts hold such proofs in abhorrence, the Italians being as much more delicate in public than the English, as they are more passionate in private.

"The friends and relatives, who are numerous and powerful, reply to him—'You, yourself, are either fool or knave,—fool, if you did not see the consequences of the approximation of these two young persons,—knave, if you connive at it. Take your choice,—but don't break out (after twelve months of the closest intimacy, under your own eyes and positive sanction) with a scandal, which can only make you ridiculous and her unhappy.'

"He swore that he thought our intercourse was purely amicable, and that I was more partial to him than to her, till melancholy testimony proved the contrary. To this they answer, that 'Will of this wisp' was not an unknown person, and that 'clamosa Fama' had not proclaimed the purity of my morals;—that her brother, a year ago, wrote from Rome to warn him that his wife would infallibly be led astray by this ignis fatuus, unless he took proper measures, all of which he neglected to take, &c. &c.

"Now he says that he encouraged my return to Ravenna, to see 'in quanti piedi di acqua siamo,' and he has found enough to drown him in. In short,

"'Ce ne fut pas le tout; sa femme se plaignit— Proces—La parente se joint en excuse et dit Que du Docteur venoit tout le mauvais menage; Que cet homme etoit fou, que sa femme etoit sage. On fit casser le mariage.'

It is but to let the women alone, in the way of conflict, for they are sure to win against the field. She returns to her father's house, and I can only see her under great restrictions—such is the custom of the country. The relations behave very well:—I offered any settlement, but they refused to accept it, and swear she shan't live with G. (as he has tried to prove her faithless), but that he shall maintain her; and, in fact, a judgment to this effect came yesterday. I am, of course, in an awkward situation enough.

"I have heard no more of the carabiniers who protested against my liveries. They are not popular, those same soldiers, and, in a small row, the other night, one was slain, another wounded, and divers put to flight, by some of the Romagnuole youth, who are dexterous, and somewhat liberal of the knife. The perpetrators are not discovered, but I hope and believe that none of my ragamuffins were in it, though they are somewhat savage, and secretly armed, like most of the inhabitants. It is their way, and saves sometimes a good deal of litigation.

"There is a revolution at Naples. If so, it will probably leave a card at Ravenna in its way to Lombardy.

"Your publishers seem to have used you like mine. M. has shuffled, and almost insinuated that my last productions are dull. Dull, sir!—damme, dull! I believe he is right. He begs for the completion of my tragedy on Marino Faliero, none of which is yet gone to England. The fifth act is nearly completed, but it is dreadfully long—40 sheets of long paper of 4 pages each—about 150 when printed; but 'so full of pastime and prodigality' that I think it will do.

"Pray send and publish your Pome upon me; and don't be afraid of praising me too highly. I shall pocket my blushes.

"'Not actionable!'—Chantre d'enfer![78]—by * * that's 'a speech,' and I won't put up with it. A pretty title to give a man for doubting if there be any such place!

"So my Gail is gone—and Miss Mahony won't take Money. I am very glad of it—I like to be generous free of expense. But beg her not to translate me.

"Oh, pray tell Galignani that I shall send him a screed of doctrine if he don't be more punctual. Somebody regularly detains two, and sometimes four, of his Messengers by the way. Do, pray, entreat him to be more precise. News are worth money in this remote kingdom of the Ostrogoths.

"Pray, reply. I should like much to share some of your Champagne and La Fitte, but I am too Italian for Paris in general. Make Murray send my letter to you—it is full of epigrams.

"Yours," &c.

[Footnote 77: An Irish phrase for being in a scrape.]

[Footnote 78: The title given him by M. Lamartine, in one of his Poems.]

* * * * *

In the separation that had now taken place between Count Guiccioli and his wife, it was one of the conditions that the lady should, in future, reside under the paternal roof:—in consequence of which, Madame Guiccioli, on the 16th of July, left Ravenna and retired to a villa belonging to Count Gamba, about fifteen miles distant from that city. Here Lord Byron occasionally visited her—about once or twice, perhaps, in a month—passing the rest of his time in perfect solitude. To a mind like his, whose world was within itself, such a mode of life could have been neither new nor unwelcome; but to the woman, young and admired, whose acquaintance with the world and its pleasures had but just begun, this change was, it must be confessed, most sudden and trying. Count Guiccioli was rich, and, as a young wife, she had gained absolute power over him. She was proud, and his station placed her among the highest in Ravenna. They had talked of travelling to Naples, Florence, Paris,—and every luxury, in short, that wealth could command was at her disposal.

All this she now voluntarily and determinedly sacrificed for Byron. Her splendid home abandoned—her relations all openly at war with her—her kind father but tolerating, from fondness, what he could not approve—she was now, upon a pittance of 200l. a year, living apart from the world, her sole occupation the task of educating herself for her illustrious friend, and her sole reward the few brief glimpses of him which their now restricted intercourse allowed. Of the man who could inspire and keep alive so devoted a feeling, it may be pronounced with confidence that he could not have been such as, in the freaks of his own wayward humour, he represented himself; while, on the lady's side, the whole history of her attachment goes to prove how completely an Italian woman, whether by nature or from her social position, is led to invert the usual course of such frailties among ourselves, and, weak in resisting the first impulses of passion, to reserve the whole strength of her character for a display of constancy and devotedness afterwards.

* * * * *

LETTER 380. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, July 17. 1820.

"I have received some books, and Quarterlies, and Edinburghs, for all which I am grateful: they contain all I know of England, except by Galignani's newspaper.

"The tragedy is completed, but now comes the task of copy and correction. It is very long, (42 sheets of long paper, of four pages each,) and I believe must make more than 140 or 150 pages, besides many historical extracts as notes, which I mean to append. History is closely followed. Dr. Moore's account is in some respects false, and in all foolish and flippant. None of the chronicles (and I have consulted Sanuto, Sandi, Navagero, and an anonymous Siege of Zara, besides the histories of Laugier, Daru, Sismondi, &c.) state, or even hint, that he begged his life; they merely say that he did not deny the conspiracy. He was one of their great men,—commanded at the siege of Zara,—beat 80,000 Hungarians, killing 8000, and at the same time kept the town he was besieging in order,—took Capo d'Istria,—was ambassador at Genoa, Rome, and finally Doge, where he fell for treason, in attempting to alter the government, by what Sanuto calls a judgment on him for, many years before (when Podesta and Captain of Treviso), having knocked down a bishop, who was sluggish in carrying the host at a procession. He 'saddles him,' as Thwackum did Square, 'with a judgment;' but he does not mention whether he had been punished at the time for what would appear very strange, even now, and must have been still more so in an age of papal power and glory. Sanuto says, that Heaven took away his senses for this buffet, and induced him to conspire. 'Pero fu permesso che il Faliero perdette l'intelletto,' &c.

"I do not know what your parlour-boarders will think of the Drama I have founded upon this extraordinary event. The only similar one in history is the story of Agis, King of Sparta, a prince with the commons against the aristocracy, and losing his life therefor. But it shall be sent when copied.

"I should be glad to know why your Quartering Reviewers, at the close of 'The Fall of Jerusalem,' accuse me of Manicheism? a compliment to which the sweetener of 'one of the mightiest spirits' by no means reconciles me. The poem they review is very noble; but could they not do justice to the writer without converting him into my religious antidote? I am not a Manichean, nor an Any-chean. I should like to know what harm my 'poeshies' have done? I can't tell what people mean by making me a hobgoblin."

* * * * *

LETTER 381. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, August 31. 1820.

"I have 'put my soul' into the tragedy (as you if it); but you know that there are d——d souls as well as tragedies. Recollect that it is not a political play, though it may look like it: it is strictly historical. Read the history and judge.

"Ada's picture is her mother's. I am glad of it—the mother made a good daughter. Send me Gifford's opinion, and never mind the Archbishop. I can neither send you away, nor give you a hundred pistoles, nor a better taste: I send you a tragedy, and you ask for 'facetious epistles;' a little like your predecessor, who advised Dr. Prideaux to 'put some more humour into his Life of Mahomet.'

"Bankes is a wonderful fellow. There is hardly one of my school or college contemporaries that has not turned out more or less celebrated. Peel, Palmerstone, Bankes, Hobhouse, Tavistock, Bob Mills, Douglas Kinnaird, &c. &c. have all talked and been talked about.

"We are here going to fight a little next month, if the Huns don't cross the Po, and probably if they do. I can't say more now. If any thing happens, you have matter for a posthumous work, in MS.; so pray be civil. Depend upon it, there will be savage work, if once they begin here. The French courage proceeds from vanity, the German from phlegm, the Turkish from fanaticism and opium, the Spanish from pride, the English from coolness, the Dutch from obstinacy, the Russian from insensibility, but the Italian from anger; so you'll see that they will spare nothing."

* * * * *

LETTER 382. TO MR. MOORE.

"Ravenna, August 31, 1820.

"D——n your 'mezzo cammin[79]'—you should say 'the prime of life,' a much more consolatory phrase. Besides, it is not correct. I was born in 1788, and consequently am but thirty-two. You are mistaken on another point. The 'Sequin Box' never came into requisition, nor is it likely to do so. It were better that it had, for then a man is not bound, you know. As to reform, I did reform—what would you have? 'Rebellion lay in his way, and he found it.' I verily believe that nor you, nor any man of poetical temperament, can avoid a strong passion of some kind. It is the poetry of life. What should I have known or written, had I been a quiet, mercantile politician, or a lord in waiting? A man must travel, and turmoil, or there is no existence. Besides, I only meant to be a Cavalier Servente, and had no idea it would turn out a romance, in the Anglo fashion.

"However, I suspect I know a thing or two of Italy—more than Lady Morgan has picked up in her posting. What do Englishmen know of Italians beyond their museums and saloons—and some hack * *, en passant? Now, I have lived in the heart of their houses, in parts of Italy freshest and least influenced by strangers,—have seen and become (pars magna fui) a portion of their hopes, and fears, and passions, and am almost inoculated into a family. This is to see men and things as they are.

"You say that I called you 'quiet [80]'—I don't recollect any thing of the sort. On the contrary, you are always in scrapes.

"What think you of the Queen? I hear Mr. Hoby says, 'that it makes him weep to see her, she reminds him so much of Jane Shore.'

"Mr. Hoby the bootmaker's heart is quite sore, For seeing the Queen makes him think of Jane Shore; And, in fact, * *

Pray excuse this ribaldry. What is your poem about? Write and tell me all about it and you.

"Yours, &c.

"P.S. Did you write the lively quiz on Peter Bell? It has wit enough to be yours, and almost too much to be any body else's now going. It was in Galignani the other day or week."

[Footnote 79: I had congratulated him upon arriving at what Dante calls the "mezzo cammin" of life, the age of thirty-three.]

[Footnote 80: I had mistaken the concluding words of his letter of the 9th of June.]

* * * * *

LETTER 383. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, September 7. 1820.

"In correcting the proofs you must refer to the manuscript, because there are in it various readings. Pray attend to this, and choose what Gifford thinks best, Let me hear what he thinks of the whole.

"You speak of Lady * *'s illness; she is not of those who die:—the amiable only do; and those whose death would do good live. Whenever she is pleased to return, it may be presumed she will take her 'divining rod' along with her: it may be of use to her at home, as well as to the 'rich man' of the Evangelists.

"Pray do not let the papers paragraph me back to England. They may say what they please, any loathsome abuse but that. Contradict it.

"My last letters will have taught you to expect an explosion here: it was primed and loaded, but they hesitated to fire the train. One of the cities shirked from the league. I cannot write more at large for a thousand reasons. Our 'puir hill folk' offered to strike, and raise the first banner, but Bologna paused; and now 'tis autumn, and the season half over. 'O Jerusalem! Jerusalem!' The Huns are on the Po; but if once they pass it on their way to Naples, all Italy will be behind them. The dogs—the wolves—may they perish like the host of Sennacherib! If you want to publish the Prophecy of Dante, you never will have a better time."

* * * * *

LETTER 384. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, Sept. 11. 1820.

"Here is another historical note for you. I want to be as near truth as the drama can be.

"Last post I sent you a note fierce as Faliero himself[81], in answer to a trashy tourist, who pretends that he could have been introduced to me. Let me have a proof of it, that I may cut its lava into some shape.

"What Gifford says is very consolatory (of the first act). English, sterling genuine English, is a desideratum amongst you, and I am glad that I have got so much left; though Heaven knows how I retain it: I hear none but from my valet, and his is Nottinghamshire: and I see none but in your new publications, and theirs is no language at all, but jargon. Even your * * * * is terribly stilted and affected, with 'very, very' so soft and pamby.

"Oh! if ever I do come amongst you again, I will give you such a 'Baviad and Maeviad!' not as good as the old, but even better merited. There never was such a set as your ragamuffins (I mean not yours only, but every body's). What with the Cockneys, and the Lakers, and the followers of Scott, and Moore, and Byron, you are in the very uttermost decline and degradation of literature. I can't think of it without all the remorse of a murderer. I wish that Johnson were alive again to crush them!"

[Footnote 81: The angry note against English travellers appended to this tragedy, in consequence of an assertion made by some recent tourist, that he (or as it afterwards turned out, she) "had repeatedly declined an introduction to Lord Byron while in Italy."]

* * * * *

LETTER 385. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, Sept. 14. 1820.

"What! not a line? Well, have it your own way.

"I wish you would inform Perry, that his stupid paragraph is the cause of all my newspapers being stopped in Paris. The fools believe me in your infernal country, and have not sent on their gazettes, so that I know nothing of your beastly trial of the Queen.

"I cannot avail myself of Mr. Gifford's remarks, because I have received none, except on the first act. Yours, &c.

"P.S. Do, pray, beg the editors of papers to say any thing blackguard they please; but not to put me amongst their arrivals. They do me more mischief by such nonsense than all their abuse can do."

* * * * *

LETTER 386. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, Sept. 21. 1820.

"So you are at your old tricks again. This is the second packet I have received unaccompanied by a single line of good, bad, or indifferent. It is strange that you have never forwarded any further observations of Gifford's. How am I to alter or amend, if I hear no further? or does this silence mean that it is well enough as it is, or too bad to be repaired? If the last, why do you not say so at once, instead of playing pretty, while you know that soon or late you must out with the truth.

"Yours, &c.

"P.S. My sister tells me that you sent to her to enquire where I was, believing in my arrival, driving a curricle, &c. &c. into Palace-yard. Do you think me a coxcomb or a madman, to be capable of such an exhibition? My sister knew me better, and told you, that could not be me. You might as well have thought me entering on 'a pale horse,' like Death in the Revelations."

* * * * *

LETTER 387. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, Sept. '23. 1820.

"Get from Mr. Hobhouse, and send me a proof (with the Latin) of my Hints from Horace; it has now the nonum prematur in annum complete for its production, being written at Athens in 1811. I have a notion that, with some omissions of names and passages, it will do; and I could put my late observations for Pope amongst the notes, with the date of 1820, and so on. As far as versification goes, it is good; and, on looking back to what I wrote about that period, I am astonished to see how little I have trained on. I wrote better then than now; but that comes of my having fallen into the atrocious bad taste of the times. If I can trim it for present publication, what with the other things you have of mine, you will have a volume or two of variety at least, for there will be all measures, styles, and topics, whether good or no. I am anxious to hear what Gifford thinks of the tragedy: pray let me know. I really do not know what to think myself.

"If the Germans pass the Po, they will be treated to a mass out of the Cardinal de Retz's Breviary. * *'s a fool, and could not understand this: Frere will. It is as pretty a conceit as you would wish to see on a summer's day.

"Nobody here believes a word of the evidence against the Queen. The very mob cry shame against their countrymen, and say, that for half the money spent upon the trial, any testimony whatever may be brought out of Italy. This you may rely upon as fact. I told you as much before. As to what travellers report, what are travellers? Now I have lived among the Italians—not Florenced, and Romed, and galleried, and conversationed it for a few months, and then home again; but been of their families, and friendships, and feuds, and loves, and councils, and correspondence, in a part of Italy least known to foreigners,—and have been amongst them of all classes, from the Conte to the Contadine; and you may be sure of what I say to you.

"Yours," &c.

* * * * *

LETTER 388. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, Sept. 28. 1820.

"I thought that I had told you long ago, that it never was intended nor written with any view to the stage. I have said so in the preface too. It is too long and too regular for your stage, the persons too few, and the unity too much observed. It is more like a play of Alfieri's than of your stage (I say this humbly in speaking of that great man); but there is poetry, and it is equal to Manfred, though I know not what esteem is held of Manfred.

"I have now been nearly as long out of England as I was there during the time I saw you frequently. I came home July 14th, 1811, and left again April 25th, 1816: so that Sept. 28th, 1820, brings me within a very few months of the same duration of time of my stay and my absence. In course, I can know nothing of the public taste and feelings, but from what I glean from letters, &c. Both seem to be as bad as possible.

"I thought Anastasius excellent: did I not say so? Matthews's Diary most excellent; it, and Forsyth, and parts of Hobhouse, are all we have of truth or sense upon Italy. The Letter to Julia very good indeed, I do not despise * * * * * *; but if she knit blue stockings instead of wearing them, it would be better. You are taken in by that false stilted trashy style, which is a mixture of all the styles of the day, which are all bombastic (I don't except my own—no one has done more through negligence to corrupt the language); but it is neither English nor poetry. Time will show.

"I am sorry Gifford has made no further remarks beyond the first Act: does he think all the English equally sterling as he thought the first? You did right to send the proofs: I was a fool; but I do really detest the sight of proofs: it is an absurdity; but comes from laziness.

"You can steal the two Juans into the world quietly, tagged to the others. The play as you will—the Dante too; but the Pulci I am proud of: it is superb; you have no such translation. It is the best thing I ever did in my life. I wrote the play from beginning to end, and not a single scene without interruption, and being obliged to break off in the middle; for I had my hands full, and my head, too, just then; so it can be no great shakes—I mean the play; and the head too, if you like.

"P.S. Politics here still savage and uncertain. However, we are all in our 'bandaliers,' to join the 'Highlanders if they cross the Forth,' i.e. to crush the Austrians if they cross the Po. The rascals!—and that dog Liverpool, to say their subjects are happy! If ever I come back, I'll work some of these ministers.

"Sept. 29.

"I opened my letter to say, that on reading more of the four volumes on Italy, where the author says 'declined an introduction,' I perceive (horresco referens) it is written by a WOMAN!!! In that case you must suppress my note and answer, and all I have said about the book and the writer. I never dreamed of it until now, in my extreme wrath at that precious note. I can only say that I am sorry that a lady should say any thing of the kind. What I would have said to one of the other sex you know already. Her book too (as a she book) is not a bad one; but she evidently don't know the Italians, or rather don't like them, and forgets the causes of their misery and profligacy (Matthews and Forsyth are your men for truth and tact), and has gone over Italy in company—always a bad plan: you must be alone with people to know them well. Ask her, who was the 'descendant of Lady M.W. Montague,' and by whom? by Algarotti?

"I suspect that, in Marino Faliero, you and yours won't like the politics, which are perilous to you in these times; but recollect that it is not a political play, and that I was obliged to put into the mouths of the characters the sentiments upon which they acted. I hate all things written like Pizarro, to represent France, England, and so forth. All I have done is meant to be purely Venetian, even to the very prophecy of its present state.

"Your Angles in general know little of the Italians, who detest them for their numbers and their GENOA treachery. Besides, the English travellers have not been composed of the best company. How could they?—out of 100,000, how many gentlemen were there, or honest men?

"Mitchell's Aristophanes is excellent. Send me the rest of it.

"These fools will force me to write a book about Italy myself, to give them 'the loud lie.' They prate about assassination; what is it but the origin of duelling—and 'a wild justice,' as Lord Bacon calls it? It is the fount of the modern point of honour in what the laws can't or won't reach. Every man is liable to it more or less, according to circumstances or place. For instance, I am living here exposed to it daily, for I have happened to make a powerful and unprincipled man my enemy;—and I never sleep the worse for it, or ride in less solitary places, because precaution is useless, and one thinks of it as of a disease which may or may not strike. It is true that there are those here, who, if he did, would 'live to think on't;' but that would not awake my bones: I should be sorry if it would, were they once at rest."

* * * * *

LETTER 389. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, 8bre 6 deg., 1820.

"You will have now received all the Acts, corrected, of the Marino Faliero. What you say of the 'bet of 100 guineas' made by some one who says that he saw me last week, reminds me of what happened in 1810: you can easily ascertain the fact, and it is an odd one.

"In the latter end of 1811, I met one evening at the Alfred my old school and form fellow (for we were within two of each other, he the higher, though both very near the top of our remove,) Peel, the Irish secretary. He told me that, in 1810, he met me, as he thought, in St. James's Street, but we passed without speaking. He mentioned this, and it was denied as impossible, I being then in Turkey. A day or two afterward, he pointed out to his brother a person on the opposite side of the way:—'There,' said he, 'is the man whom I took for Byron.' His brother instantly answered, 'Why, it is Byron, and no one else.' But this is not all:—I was seen by somebody to write down my name amongst the enquirers after the King's health, then attacked by insanity. Now, at this very period, as nearly as I could make out, I was ill of a strong fever at Patras, caught in the marshes near Olympia, from the malaria. If I had died there, this would have been a new ghost story for you. You can easily make out the accuracy of this from Peel himself, who told it in detail. I suppose you will be of the opinion of Lucretius, who (denies the immortality of the soul, but) asserts that from the 'flying off of the surfaces of bodies, these surfaces or cases, like the coats of an onion, are sometimes seen entire when they are separated from it, so that the shapes and shadows of both the dead and living are frequently beheld.'

"But if they are, are their coats and waistcoats also seen? I do not disbelieve that we may be two by some unconscious process, to a certain sign, but which of these two I happen at present to be, I leave you to decide. I only hope that t'other me behaves like a gemman.

"I wish you would get Peel asked how far I am accurate in my recollection of what he told me; for I don't like to say such things without authority.

"I am not sure that I was not spoken with; but this also you can ascertain. I have written to you such letters that I stop.

"Yours, &c.

"P.S. Last year (in June, 1819), I met at Count Mosti's, at Ferrara, an Italian who asked me 'if I knew Lord Byron?' I told him no (no one knows himself, you know). 'Then,' says he, 'I do; I met him at Naples the other day.' I pulled out my card and asked him if that was the way he spelt his name: he answered, yes. I suspect that it was a blackguard navy surgeon, who attended a young travelling madam about, and passed himself for a lord at the post-houses. He was a vulgar dog—quite of the cock-pit order—and a precious representative I must have had of him, if it was even so; but I don't know. He passed himself off as a gentleman, and squired about a Countess * * (of this place), then at Venice, an ugly battered woman, of bad morals even for Italy."

* * * * *

LETTER 390. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, 8bre 8 deg., 1820.

"Foscolo's letter is exactly the thing wanted; firstly, because he is a man of genius; and, next, because he is an Italian, and therefore the best judge of Italics. Besides,

"He's more an antique Roman than a Dane;

that is, he is more of the ancient Greek than of the modern Italian. Though 'somewhat,' as Dugald Dalgetty says, 'too wild and salvage' (like 'Ronald of the Mist'), 'tis a wonderful man, and my friends Hobhouse and Rose both swear by him; and they are good judges of men and of Italian humanity.

"Here are in all two worthy voices gain'd:

Gifford says it is good 'sterling genuine English,' and Foscolo says that the characters are right Venetian. Shakspeare and Otway had a million of advantages over me, besides the incalculable one of being dead from one to two centuries, and having been both born blackguards (which ARE such attractions to the gentle living reader); let me then preserve the only one which I could possibly have—that of having been at Venice, and entered more into the local spirit of it. I claim no more.

"I know what Foscolo means about Calendaro's spitting at Bertram; that's national—the objection, I mean. The Italians and French, with those 'flags of abomination,' their pocket handkerchiefs, spit there, and here, and every where else—in your face almost, and therefore object to it on the stage as too familiar. But we who spit nowhere—but in a man's face when we grow savage—are not likely to feel this. Remember Massinger, and Kean's Sir Giles Overreach—

"Lord! thus I spit at thee and at thy counsel!

Besides, Calendaro does not spit in Bertram's face; he spits at him, as I have seen the Mussulmans do upon the ground when they are in a rage. Again, he does not in fact despise Bertram, though he affects it—as we all do, when angry with one we think our inferior. He is angry at not being allowed to die in his own way (although not afraid of death); and recollect that he suspected and hated Bertram from the first. Israel Bertuccio, on the other hand, is a cooler and more concentrated fellow: he acts upon principle and impulse; Calendaro upon impulse and example.

"So there's argument for you.

"The Doge repeats;—true, but it is from engrossing passion, and because he sees different persons, and is always obliged to recur to the cause uppermost in his mind. His speeches are long:—true, but I wrote for the closet, and on the French and Italian model rather than yours, which I think not very highly of, for all your old dramatists, who are long enough too, God knows:—look into any of them.

"I return you Foscolo's letter, because it alludes also to his private affairs. I am sorry to see such a man in straits, because I know what they are, or what they were. I never met but three men who would have held out a finger to me: one was yourself, the other William Bankes, and the other a nobleman long ago dead: but of these the first was the only one who offered it while I really wanted it; the second from good will—but I was not in need of Bankes's aid, and would not have accepted it if I had (though I love and esteem him); and the third ————.[82]

"So you see that I have seen some strange things in my time. As for your own offer, it was in 1815, when I was in actual uncertainty of five pounds. I rejected it; but I have not forgotten it, although you probably have.

"P.S. Foscolo's Ricciardo was lent, with the leaves uncut, to some Italians, now in villeggiatura, so that I have had no opportunity of hearing their decision, or of reading it. They seized on it as Foscolo's, and on account of the beauty of the paper and printing, directly. If I find it takes, I will reprint it here. The Italians think as highly of Foscolo as they can of any man, divided and miserable as they are, and with neither leisure at present to read, nor head nor heart to judge of any thing but extracts from French newspapers and the Lugano Gazette.

"We are all looking at one another, like wolves on their prey in pursuit, only waiting for the first falling on to do unutterable things. They are a great world in chaos, or angels in hell, which you please; but out of chaos came Paradise, and out of hell—I don't know what; but the devil went in there, and he was a fine fellow once, you know.

"You need never favour me with any periodical publication, except the Edinburgh Quarterly, and an occasional Blackwood; or now and then a Monthly Review; for the rest I do not feel curiosity enough to look beyond their covers.

"To be sure I took in the British finely. He fell precisely into the glaring trap laid for him. It was inconceivable how he could be so absurd as to imagine us serious with him.

"Recollect, that if you put my name to 'Don Juan' in these canting days, any lawyer might oppose my guardian right of my daughter in Chancery, on the plea of its containing the parody;—such are the perils of a foolish jest. I was not aware of this at the time, but you will find it correct, I believe; and you may be sure that the Noels would not let it slip. Now I prefer my child to a poem at any time, and so should you, as having half a dozen.

"Let me know your notions.

"If you turn over the earlier pages of the Huntingdon peerage story, you will see how common a name Ada was in the early Plantagenet days. I found it in my own pedigree in the reign of John and Henry, and gave it to my daughter. It was also the name of Charlemagne's sister. It is in an early chapter of Genesis, as the name of the wife of Lamech; and I suppose Ada is the feminine of Adam. It is short, ancient, vocalic, and had been in my family; for which reason I gave it to my daughter."

[Footnote 82: The paragraph is left thus imperfect in the original.]

* * * * *

LETTER 391. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, 8bre 12 deg., 1820.

"By land and sea carriage a considerable quantity of books have arrived; and I am obliged and grateful: but 'medio de fonte leporum, surgit amari aliquid,' &c. &c.; which, being interpreted, means,

"I'm thankful for your books, dear Murray; But why not send Scott's Monastery?

the only book in four living volumes I would give a baioccolo to see—'bating the rest of the same author, and an occasional Edinburgh and Quarterly, as brief chroniclers of the times. Instead of this, here are Johnny Keats's * * poetry, and three novels by God knows whom, except that there is Peg * * *'s name to one of them—a spinster whom I thought we had sent back to her spinning. Crayon is very good; Hogg's Tales rough, but RACY, and welcome.

"Books of travels are expensive, and I don't want them, having travelled already; besides, they lie. Thank the author of 'The Profligate' for his (or her) present. Pray send me no more poetry but what is rare and decidedly good. There is such a trash of Keats and the like upon my tables that I am ashamed to look at them. I say nothing against your parsons, your S * *s and your C * *s—it is all very fine—but pray dispense me from the pleasure. Instead of poetry, if you will favour me with a few soda-powders, I shall be delighted: but all prose ('bating travels and novels NOT by Scott) is welcome, especially Scott's Tales of my Landlord, and so on.

"In the notes to Marino Faliero, it may be as well to say that 'Benintende' was not really of the Ten, but merely Grand Chancellor, a separate office (although important): it was an arbitrary alteration of mine. The Doges too were all buried in St. Mark's before Faliero. It is singular that when his predecessor, Andrea Dandolo, died, the Ten made a law that all the future Doges should be buried with their families, in their own churches,—one would think by a kind of presentiment. So that all that is said of his ancestral Doges, as buried at St. John's and Paul's, is altered from the fact, they being in St. Mark's. Make a note of this, and put Editor as the subscription to it.

"As I make such pretensions to accuracy, I should not like to be twitted even with such trifles on that score. Of the play they may say what they please, but not so of my costume and dram. pers. they having been real existences.