The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2

MAY, 1813-DECEMBER, 1813.

THE ‘GIAOUR’ AND ‘BRIDE OF ABYDOS’.

* * * *

290.—­To John Murray.

May 13, 1813.

Dear Sir,—­I send a corrected, and, I hope, amended copy of the lines for the “fragment” already sent this evening. [1] Let the enclosed be the copy that is sent to the Devil (the printers) and burn the other.

Yours, etc., B’N.

[Footnote 1:  ‘The Giaour’, which was now in the press, was expanded, either in the course of printing, or in the successive editions, from 400 lines to 1400.  It was published in May, 1813.]

* * *

291.—­To Thomas Moore.

May 19, 1813.

Oh you, who in all names can tickle the town,
Anacreon, Tom Little, Tom Moore, or Tom Brown, [1]—­
For hang me if I know of which you may most brag,
Your Quarto two-pounds, or your Twopenny Post Bag;

* * *

But now to my letter—­to yours ’tis an answer—­
To-morrow be with me, as soon as you can, sir,
All ready and dress’d for proceeding to spunge on
(According to compact) the wit in the dungeon [2]—­
Pray Phoebus at length our political malice
May not get us lodgings within the same palace! 
I suppose that to-night you’re engaged with some codgers,
And for Sotheby’s [3] Blues have deserted Sam Rogers;
And I, though with cold I have nearly my death got,
Must put on my breeches, and wait on the Heathcote. 
But to-morrow at four, we will both play the Scurra,
And you’ll be Catullus, the Regent, Mamurra.

Dear M.,—­having got thus far, I am interrupted by——. 10 o’clock.

Half-past 11.——­is gone.  I must dress for Lady Heathcote’s.—­Addio.

[Footnote 1:  Moore’s ’Intercepted Letters, or the Twopenny Post-bag.  By Thomas Brown, the Younger’, was published in 1813.]

[Footnote 2:  The “wit in the dungeon” was James Henry Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), who was educated at Christ’s Hospital, and began his literary life with “a collection of poems, written between the ages of twelve and sixteen,” and published in 1801 as ‘Juvenilia’.  In 1808 he and his brother John started a weekly newspaper called the ‘Examiner’, which advocated liberal principles with remarkable independence.  On February 24, 1811, Hunt published an article in defence of Peter Finnerty, convicted for a libel on Castlereagh, and exhorting public writers to be bold in the cause of individual liberty.  The same number contained an article on the savagery of military floggings, for which he was prosecuted, defended by Brougham, and acquitted.  His acquittal drew from Shelley a letter of congratulation, addressed to Hunt as “one of the most fearless enlighteners of the public mind” (Dowden’s ’Life of Shelley’, vol. i. p. 113).

In March, 1812, the ‘Morning Post’ printed a poem, speaking of the Prince Regent as the “Mæcenas of the Age,” the “Exciter of Desire,” the “Glory of the People,” an “Adonis of Loveliness,” etc.  The ‘Examiner’ for March 12, 1812, thus translated this adulation into “the language of truth:” 

“What person, unacquainted with the true state of the case, would imagine, in reading these astounding eulogies, that this ’Glory of the People’ was the subject of millions of shrugs and reproaches!... that this ‘Exciter of Desire’ (bravo!  Messieurs of the ’Post’!), this ‘Adonis in Loveliness,’ was a corpulent man of fifty!—­in short, this ’delightful, blissful, wise, pleasureable, honourable, virtuous, true’, and ‘immortal’ prince was a violator of his word, a libertine over head and ears in disgrace, a despiser of domestic ties, the companion of gamblers and demireps, a man who has just closed half a century without one single claim on the gratitude of his country or the respect of posterity.”

Crabb Robinson, who met Leigh Hunt, four days later, at Charles Lamb’s, says (’Diary’, vol. i. p. 376),

“Leigh Hunt is an enthusiast, very well intentioned, and, I believe, prepared for the worst.  He said, pleasantly enough, ’No one can accuse me of not writing a libel.  Everything is a libel, as the law is now declared, and our security lies only in their shame.’”

For this libel John and Leigh Hunt were convicted in the Court of King’s Bench on December 9, 1812.  In the following February they were sentenced to two years’ imprisonment and a fine of £500 a-piece.  John was imprisoned in Coldbath-fields, Leigh in the Surrey County Gaol.  They were released on February 2 or 3, 1815.

Shelley, on reading the sentence, proposed a subscription for

  “the brave and enlightened man… to whom the public owes a debt as
  the champion of their liberties and virtues”

(Dowden, ‘Life of Shelley’, vol. i. p. 325).  Keats wrote a sonnet to Hunt on the day he left his prison, beginning: 

  “What though for showing truth to flatter’d state,
  Kind Hunt was shut in prison.”

A political alliance was thus cemented, which, for the time, was disastrous to the literary prospects of Shelley and Keats.  To Hunt Shelley dedicated the ‘Cenci’, and Keats his first volume of ‘Poems’ (1817).  He is the “gentlest of the wise” in Shelley’s ‘Adonais’; and, in a suppressed stanza of the same poem, the poet speaks of Hunt’s “sweet and earnest looks,” “soft smiles,” and “dark and night-like eyes.”  The words inscribed on Shelley’s tomb—­“Cor Cordium”—­were Hunt’s choice.  In his various papers Hunt zealously championed his friends.  In the ‘Examiner’ for September to October, 1819, he defended Shelley’s personal character; in the same paper for June to July, 1817, he praised Keats’s first volume of ‘Poems’; he reviewed “Lamia” in the ‘Indicator’ for August 2-9, 1820, and “La Belle Dame sans Merci” in that for May 10, 1820.  In his ‘Foliage’ (1818) are three sonnets addressed to Keats.

Shelley believed in Hunt to the end.  It was mainly through him that Hunt came to Pisa in June, 1822, to join with Byron in ‘The Liberal’.  But he doubted whether the alliance between the “wren and the eagle” could continue (’Life of Shelley’, vol. ii. p. 519).  Keats, on the other hand, lost his faith in Hunt.  In a letter to Haydon (May, 1817), speaking of Hunt, he says,

  “There is no greater Sin after the seven deadly than to flatter
  oneself into an idea of being a great Poet.”

Again (March, 1818) he writes,

  “It is a great Pity that People should, by associating themselves with
  the finest things, spoil them.  Hunt has damned Hampstead, and masks,
  and sonnets, and Italian tales.”

He writes still more severely (December, 1818-January, 1819),

“If I were to follow my own inclinations, I should never meet any one of that set again, not even Hunt, who is certainly a pleasant fellow in the main when you are with him; but in reality he is vain, egotistical, and disgusting in matters of taste and morals.  Hunt does one harm by making fine things petty, and beautiful things hateful.  Through him I am indifferent to Mozart.  I care not for white Busts—­and many a glorious thing when associated with him becomes a nothing.”

Haydon considered that Hunt was the “great unhinger” of Keats’s best dispositions (’Works of Keats’, ed.  H.B.  Forman, vol. iv. p. 359); and Severn attributes Keats’s temporary “mawkishness” to Hunt’s society (’ibid’., p. 376).

Nathaniel Hawthorne (’Our Old Home’, p. 229, ed. 1884) says of Hunt, and means it as high praise, that

  “there was not an English trait in him from head to foot—­morally,
  intellectually, or physically.  Beef, ale or stout, brandy or
  port-wine, entered not at all into his composition.”

He was, in fact, a man of weak fibre, who allowed himself to sponge upon his friends, such as Talfourd, Haydon, and Shelley.  Though Dickens denied (’All the Year Round’, Dec. 24, 1859) that “Harold Skimpole” was intended for Hunt, the picture was recognized as a portrait.  On the other hand, Hunt was a man of kindly and genial disposition.

  “He loves everything,” says Crabb Robinson (’Diary’, vol. ii. p. 192),
  “he catches the sunny side of everything, and, excepting that he has a
  few polemical antipathies, finds everything beautiful.”

In his essays, the best of which appeared in the ‘Indicator’ (1819-21), he communicates some of his own sense of enjoyment to those of his readers who are content to take him as he is.  His circle is limited; but in it his observation is minute and suggestive.  The Vale of Health is to him, in a degree proportioned to their respective powers, what the Temple was to Lamb.  His style is neat, pretty, and would be affected if it were not the man himself.  As a literary journalist, a dramatic critic, and an essayist, he has a place in literature.  His poetry is less successful; his affectations, innate vulgarity, and habit of pawing his subjects repel even those who are attracted by its sweetness.  Yet his ‘Story of Rimini’ (1816), which he dedicated to Byron, was admired in its day.  Byron, though he condemned its affected style, thought the poem a “devilish good one.”  Moore held the same opinion; and Jeffrey, writing to him May 28, 1816 (’Memoirs, etc., of Thomas Moon,’ vol. ii. p. 100), says,

“I certainly shall not be ill-natured to ‘Rimini’.  It is very sweet and very lively in many places, and is altogether piquant, as being by far the best imitation of Chaucer and some of his Italian contemporaries that modern times have produced.”

No two men could be more unlike than Byron and Hunt, or have less in common.  Yet, with a singular capacity for self-delusion, Hunt told his wife that the texture of Byron’s mind resembled his to a thread (’Correspondence of L. Hunt’, vol. i. p. 88).  The friendship began in political sympathy; but two years later (see Byron’s letter to Moore, June 1, 1818) it had, on one side at least, cooled.  In June, 1822, Hunt came to Pisa to launch The Liberal, with the aid of Shelley and Byron.  ‘The Liberal:  Verse and Prose from the South’, started in 1822, lived through four numbers, and died in July, 1823.  During that time Byron expressed to Lady Blessington (’Conversations’, p. 77)

“a very good opinion of the talents and principle of Mr. Hunt, though, as he said, ’our tastes are so opposite that we are totally unsuited to each other … in short, we are more formed to be friends at a distance, than near.’”

For the best part of two years Hunt was Byron’s guest:  he repaid his hospitality by publishing his ’Lord Byron and Some of his Contemporaries’ (1828).  Though Lady Blessington said the book “gave, in the main, a fair account” of Byron (Crabb Robinson’s ‘Diary’, vol. iii. p. 13), its publication was a breach of honour.  As such it was justly attacked by Moore in “The ‘Living Dog’ and the ‘Dead Lion’”: 

  “Next week will be published (as ‘Lives’ are the rage)
  The whole Reminiscences, wondrous and strange,
Of a small puppy-dog, that lived once in the cage
  Of the late noble Lion at Exeter ’Change.

“Though the dog is a dog of the kind they call ‘sad,’
  ’Tis a puppy that much to good breeding pretends;
And few dogs have such opportunities had
  Of knowing how Lions behave—­among friends.

“How that animal eats, how he snores, how he drinks,
  Is all noted down by this Boswell so small;
And ’tis plain, from each sentence, the puppy-dog thinks
  That the Lion was no such great things after all.

“Though he roared pretty well—­this the puppy allows—­
  It was all, he says, borrowed—­all second-hand roar;
And he vastly prefers his own little bow-wows
  To the loftiest war-note the Lion could pour.

“’Tis, indeed, as good fun as a ‘Cynic’ could ask,
  To see how this cockney-bred setter of rabbits
Takes gravely the Lord of the Forest to task,
  And judges of Lions by puppy-dog habits.

“Nay, fed as he was (and this makes it a dark case)
  With sops every day from the Lion’s own pan,
He lifts up his leg at the noble beast’s carcass,
  And—­does all a dog, so diminutive, can.

“However, the book’s a good book, being rich in
  Examples and warnings to lions high-bred,
How they suffer small mongrelly curs in their kitchen,
  Who’ll feed on them living, and foul them when dead.

“Exeter ‘Change’.

T. PIDCOCK.”

For the reply of Hunt or one of his friends, “The Giant and the Dwarf,” see Appendix VI.]

[Footnote 3:  William Sotheby (1757-1833), once a cavalry officer, afterwards a man of letters and of fortune, published his ‘Oberon’ in 1798, and his ‘Georgics’ in 1800 (see ‘English Bards, etc.’, line 818, and ’note’).  The following passage from Byron’s ‘Detached Thoughts’ (1821) refers to him: 

“Sotheby is a good man; rhymes well (if not wisely), but is a bore.  He seizes you by the button.  One night of a rout, at Mrs. Hope’s, he had fastened upon me (something about Agamemnon or Orestes—­or some of his plays), notwithstanding my symptoms of manifest distress, (for I was in love and had just nicked a minute when neither mothers, nor husbands, nor rivals, nor gossips, were near my then idol, who was beautiful as the Statues of the Gallery where we stood at the time).  Sotheby, I say, had seized upon me by the button, and the heart-strings, and spared neither.  W. Spencer, who likes fun, and don’t dislike mischief, saw my case, and, coming up to us both, took me by the hand and pathetically bade me farewell, ‘for,’ said he, ’I see it is all over with you.’  Sotheby then went away.  ’Sic me servavit Apollo.’”]

[Footnote 4:  See Catullus, xxix. 3: 

  “Quis hoc potest videre, quis potest pati,
  Nisi impudicus et vorax, et aleo,
  Mamurram habere, quod Comata Gallia
  Habebat uncti et ultima Britannia?”

See also xli. 4, xliii. 5 (compare Horace, ‘Sat’. i. 5. 37), and lvii. 2.]

* * *

292.—­To John Murray.

May 22nd, 1813.

Dear Sir,—­I return the “Curiosities of Literature.” [1] Pray is it fair to ask if the “Twopenny Postbag” is to be reviewed in this No.? because, if not, I should be glad to undertake it, and leave it to Chance and the Editor for a reception into your pages.

Yours truly,

B.

P.S.—­You have not sent me Eustace’s ‘Travels’. [2]

[Footnote 1:  The first volume of Isaac Disraeli’s ’Curiosities of Literature’ was published in 1791.  The remaining volumes were published at intervals:  vol. ii., 1793; vol. iii., 1817; vols. iv. and v., in 1823; vol. vi., 1834.]

[Footnote 2:  John Chetwode Eustace (’circ’. 1762-1815) published his ‘Tour through Italy’ in 1813.]

* * *

293.—­To John Murray.

May 23rd, 1813.

Dear Sir,—­I question whether ever author before received such a compliment from his master.  I am glad you think the thing is tolerably vamped and will be vendible.

Pray look over the proof again.  I am but a careless reviser, and let me have 12 struck off, and one or two for yourself to serve as MS. for the thing when published in the body of the volume.  If Lady Caroline Lamb sends for it, do not let her have it, till the copies are all ready, and then you can send her one.

Yours truly,

[Greek:  Mpairon].

P.S.—­H.’s book is out at last; I have my copy, which I have lent already.

* * *

294.—­To John Murray.

June 2, 1813.

Dear Sir,—­I presented a petition to the house yesterday, [1] which gave rise to some debate, and I wish you to favour me for a few minutes with the ‘Times’ and ‘Herald’ to look on their hostile report.

You will find, if you like to look at my ‘prose’, my words nearly ‘verbatim’ in the ‘M.  Chronicle’.

B’N.

[Footnote 1:  The petition was from Major Cartwright, and was presented June 1, 1813. (For Byron’s speech, see Appendix II. (3).) Returning from the House, he called on Moore, and, while the latter was dressing for dinner, walked up and down the next room,

“spouting in a sort of mock heroic voice, detached sentences of the speech he had just been delivering.  ‘I told them,’ he said, ’that it was a most flagrant violation of the Constitution—­that, if such things were permitted, there was an end of English freedom, and that—­’

  “‘But what was this dreadful grievance?’ asked Moore.

  “‘The grievance?’ he repeated, pausing as if to consider, ’oh,
  that I forget.’”]

* * *

295.—­To Thomas Moore.

My Dear Moore,—­“When Rogers” [1] must not see the inclosed, which I send for your perusal.  I am ready to fix any day you like for our visit.  Was not Sheridan good upon the whole?  The “Poulterer” was the first and best. [2]

Ever yours, etc.

  1.

  When Thurlow this damn’d nonsense sent,
  (I hope I am not violent),
  Nor men nor gods knew what he meant.

2.

And since not ev’n our Rogers’ praise
To common sense his thoughts could raise—­
Why would they let him print his lays?

3.

* * *

4.

* * *

5.

To me, divine Apollo, grant—­O! 
Hermilda’s first and second canto,
I’m fitting up a new portmanteau;

6.

  And thus to furnish decent lining,
  My own and others’ bays I’m twining—­
  So, gentle Thurlow, throw me thine in.

* * *

296.—­To John Hanson.

June 3d, 1813.

Dear Sir,—­When you receive this I shall have left town for a week, and, as it is perfectly right we should understand each other, I think you will not be surprised at my persisting in my intention of going abroad.  If the Suit can be carried on in my absence,—­well; if not, it must be given up.  One word, one letter, to Cn. would put an end to it; but this I shall not do, at all events without acquainting you before hand; nor at all, provided I am able to go abroad again.  But at all hazards, at all losses, on this last point I am as determined as I have been for the last six months, and you have always told me that you would endeavour to assist me in that intention.  Every thing is ordered and ready now.  Do not trifle with me, for I am in very solid serious earnest, and if utter ruin were, or is before me, on the one hand—­and wealth at home on the other,—­I have made my choice, and go I will.

If you wish to write, address a line before Saturday to Salthill Post Office; Maidenhead, I believe, but am not sure, is the Post town; but I shall not be in town till Wednesday next.

Believe me, yours ever,

BN.

P.S.—­Let all the books go to Mr. Murray’s immediately, and let the plate, linen, etc., which I find excepted by the contract, be sold, particularly a large silver vase—­with the contents not removed as they are curious, and a silver cup (not the skull) be sold also—­both are of value.

The Pictures also, and every moveable that is mine, and can be converted into cash; all I want is a few thousand pounds, and then adieu.  You shan’t be troubled with me these ten years, if ever.

* * *

297.—­To Francis Hodgson.

June 6, 1813.

MY DEAR HODGSON,—­I write to you a few lines on business.  Murray has thought proper at his own risk, and peril, and profit (if there be any) to publish ‘The Giaour’; and it may possibly come under your ordeal in the ‘Monthly’ [1] I merely wish to state that in the published copies there are additions to the amount of ten pages, text and margin (chiefly the last), which render it a little less unfinished (but more unintelligible) than before.  If, therefore, you review it, let it be from the published copies and not from the first sketch.  I shall not sail for this month, and shall be in town again next week, when I shall be happy to hear from you but more glad to see you.  You know I have no time or turn for correspondence(!).  But you also know, I hope, that I am not the less

Yours ever,

[Greek:  MPAIRON].

[Footnote 1:  ‘The Giaour’ was reviewed in the ‘Monthly Review’ for June, 1813 (N.S. vol. lxxi. p. 202).  In the Editor’s copy is added in MS. at the end of the article, as indicating the author of the review, the word “Den.”]

* * *

298.—­To Francis Hodgson.

June 8th, 1813.

My dear Hodgson,—­In town for a night I find your card.  I had written to you at Cambridge merely to say that Murray has thought it expedient to publish ‘The Giaour’ at his own risk (and reimbursement, if he can), and that, as it will probably be in your department in the ‘Monthly’, I wished to state that, in the published copies, there are additions to the tune of 300 lines or so towards the end, and, if reviewed, it should not be from the privately printed copy.  So much for scribbling.

I shall manage to see you somewhere before I sail, which will be next month; till then I am yours here, and afterwards any where and every where,

Dear H., tutto tuo,

BN.

* * *

299.—­To John Murray.

Je. 9, 1813.

Dear Sir,—­I regret much that I have no profane garment to array you with for the masquerade.  As my motions will be uncertain, you need not write nor send the proofs till my return.

Yours truly,

BN.

P.S.—­My wardrobe is out of town—­or I could have dressed you as an
Albanian—­or a Turk—­or an officer—­or a Waggoner.

* * *

300.—­To John Murray.

June 12, 1813.

Dear Sir,—­Having occasion to send a servant to London, I will thank you to inform me whether I left with the other things 3 miniatures in your care (—­if not—­I know where to find them), and also to “report progress” in unpacking the books?  The bearer returns this evening.

How does Hobhouse’s work go on, or rather off—­for that is the essential part?  In yesterday’s paper, immediately under an advertisement on “Strictures in the Urethra,” I see—­most appropriately consequent—­a poem with “strictures on Ld B., Mr. Southey and others,”[1] though I am afraid neither “Mr. S.’s” poetical distemper, nor “mine,” nor “others,” is of the suppressive or stranguary kind.  You may read me the prescription of this kill or cure physician.  The medicine is compounded at White and Cochrane’s, Fleet Street.  As I have nothing else to do, I may enjoy it like Sir Fretful, or the Archbishop of Grenada, or any other personage in like predicament.

Recollect that my lacquey returns in the Evening, and that I set out for Portsmouth [2] to-morrow.  All here are very well, and much pleased with your politeness and attention during their stay in town.

Believe me, yours truly,

B.

P.S.—­Are there anything but books?  If so, let those extras remain untouched for the present.  I trust you have not stumbled on any more “Aphrodites,” and have burnt those.  I send you both the advertisements, but don’t send me the first treatise—­as I have no occasion for Caustic in that quarter.

[Footnote 1:  In the ‘Morning Chronicle’ (June 10, 1813) appeared advertisements of the two following books:—­’Practical Observations on the best mode of curing Strictures, etc., with Remarks on Inefficacy, etc., of Caustic Applications’.  By William Wadd.  Printed for J. Callow, Soho.  ’Modern Poets; a Dialogue in Verse, containing some Strictures on the Poetry of Lord Byron, Mr. Southey, and Others’.  Printed for White, Cochrane, and Co., Fleet Street.

In a note on ‘Modern Poets’ (p. 7) occurs the following passage: 

“In ‘English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers’ the same respectable corps of critics is successively exhibited, in the course of only ten lines, under the following significant but somewhat incongruous forms, viz. (1) Northern Wolves, (2) Harpies, (3) Bloodhounds.”

In proof the writer quotes lines 426-437 of the Satire.  Then follows a long review of ‘Childe Harold’, in which the critic condemns Harold, the hero, as “an uncouth incumbrance of this flighty Lord;” the want of “plot ... action and fable, interest, order, end;” and asks: 

  “Shall he immortal bays aspire to wear
  Who immortality from man would tear,
  Repress the sigh which hopes a happier home,
  And chase the visions of a life to come?”]

[Footnote 2:  For Byron’s intention to go abroad with Lord and Lady Oxford, see p. 164, ‘note’ 3 [Footnote 6 of Letter 256.]]

* * *

301.—­To John Murray.

[Maidenhead], June 13, 1813.

Dear Sir,—­Amongst the books from Bennet St. is a small vol. of abominable poems by the Earl of Haddington which must not be in ye Catalogue on Sale—­also—­a vol. of French Epigrams in the same predicament.

On the title page of Meletius is an inscription in writing which must be erased and made illegible.

I have read the strictures, which are just enough, and not grossly abusive, in very fair couplets.  There is a note against Massinger near the end, but one cannot quarrel with one’s company, at any rate.  The author detects some incongruous figures in a passage of ’E.  Bds’., page 23., but which edition I do not know.  In the sole copy in your possession—­I mean the fifth edition—­you may make these alterations, that I may profit (though a little too late) by his remarks:—­For “hellish instinct,” substitute “brutal instinct;” “harpies” alter to “felons;” and for “blood-hounds” write “hell-hounds.”  These be “very bitter words, by my troth,” and the alterations not much sweeter; but as I shall not publish the thing, they can do no harm, but are a satisfaction to me in the way of amendment.  The passage is only 12 lines.

You do not answer me about H.’s book; I want to write to him, and not to say anything unpleasing.  If you direct to Post Office, Portsmouth, till called for, I will send and receive your letter.  You never told me of the forthcoming critique on ‘Columbus’ [1] which is not too fair; and I do not think justice quite done to the ‘Pleasures’, which surely entitles the author to a higher rank than that assigned to him in the ‘Quarterly’.  But I must not cavil at the decisions of the invisible infallibles; and the article is very well written.  The general horror of “fragments” [2] makes me tremulous for “The Giaour;” but you would publish it—­I presume, by this time, to your repentance.  But as I consented, whatever be its fate, I won’t now quarrel with you, even though I detect it in my pastry; but I shall not open a pye without apprehension for some weeks.

The Books which may be marked G.O.  I will carry out.  Do you know Clarke’s ‘Naufragia’ [3]?  I am told that he asserts the first volume of ‘Robinson Crusoe’ was written by the first Lord Oxford, when in the Tower, and given by him to Defoe; if true, it is a curious anecdote.  Have you got back Lord Brooke’s MS.? and what does Heber say of it?  Write to me at Portsmouth.

Ever yours, etc.,

Bn.

[Footnote 1:  Rogers’s Columbus was reviewed by Ward in the Quarterly for March, 1813.  The reviewer detects “evident marks of haste” in the poem.]

[Footnote 2:  The Giaour, like Columbus, was written in fragments.]

[Footnote 3:  James Stanier Clarke, a Navy Chaplain (1765-1834), published, in 1805, ‘Naufragia, or Historical Memoirs of Shipwrecks’.  In that work he does not himself attribute the first volume of ’Robinson Crusoe’ to Lord Oxford.  The following is the passage to which Byron refers (’Naufragia’, vol. i. pp. 12, 13):  “But before I conclude this Section, I wish to make the admirers of this Nautical Romance mindful of a Report, which prevailed many years ago; that Defoe, after all, was not the real author of Robinson Crusoe.  This assertion is noticed in an article in the seventh volume of the ‘Edinburgh Magazine’ Dr. Towers, in his ‘Life’ of Defoe in the ‘Biographia’, is inclined to pay no attention to it; but was that writer aware of the following letter, which also appeared in the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ for 1788? (vol. lviii. part i. p. 208).  At least no notice is taken of it in his ‘Life’ of Defoe: 

  “’Dublin, February 25.

“Mr. Urban,—­In the course of a late conversation with a nobleman of the first consequence and information in this kingdom, he assured me, that Mr. Benjamin Holloway, of Middleton Stony, assured him, some time ago:  that he knew for fact, that the celebrated Romance of ’Robinson Crusoe’ was really written by the Earl of Oxford, when confined in the Tower of London:  that his Lordship gave the manuscript to Daniel Defoe, who frequently visited him during his confinement:  and that Defoe, having afterwards added the second volume, published the whole as his own production.  This anecdote I would not venture to send to your valuable magazine, if I did not think my information good, and imagine it might be acceptable to your numerous readers, not-withstanding the work has heretofore been generally attributed to the latter.  W. W.’

“It is impossible for me to enter on a discussion of this literary subject; though I thought the circumstance ought to be more generally known.  And yet I must observe, that I always discerned a very striking falling off between the composition of the first and second volumes of this Romance—­they seem to bear evident marks of having been the work of different writers.”

A volume of memoranda in the handwriting of Warton, the Laureate, preserved in the British Museum, contains the following: 

“Mem.  Jul. 10, 1774.  In the year 1759, I was told by the Rev. Mr. Benjamin Holloway, rector of Middleton Stony, in Oxfordshire, then about 70 years old, and in the early part of his life domestic Chaplain to Lord Sunderland, that he had often heard Lord Sunderland say that Lord Oxford, while a prisoner in the Tower of London, wrote the first volume of the History of Robinson Crusoe, merely as an amusement under confinement; and gave it to Daniel De Foe, who frequently visited Lord Oxford in the Tower, and was one of his Pamphlet writers.  That De Foe, by Lord Oxford’s permission, printed it as his own, and, encouraged by its extraordinary success, added himself the second volume, the inferiority of which is generally acknowledged.  Mr. Holloway also told me, from Lord Sunderland, that Lord Oxford dictated some parts of the manuscript to De Foe.  Mr. Holloway was a grave conscientious clergyman, not vain of telling anecdotes, very learned, particularly a good orientalist, author of some theological tracts, bred at Eton School, and a Master of Arts at St. John’s College, Cambridge.  He lived many years with great respect in Lord Sunderland’s family, and was like to the late Duke of Marlborough.  He died, as I remember, about the year 1761.” ]

* * *

302.—­To John Murray.

June 18, 1813.

Dear Sir,—­Will you forward the enclosed answer to the kindest letter I ever received in my life, my sense of which I can neither express to Mr. Gifford himself nor to any one else?

Ever yours,

B’N.

* * *

303.—­To W. Gifford.

June 18, 1813.

My Dear Sir,—­I feel greatly at a loss how to write to you at all—­still more to thank you as I ought.  If you knew the veneration with which I have ever regarded you, long before I had the most distant prospect of becoming your acquaintance, literary or personal, my embarrassment would not surprise you.

Any suggestion of yours, even were it conveyed in the less tender shape of the text of the ‘Baviad’, or a Monk Mason note in Massinger, [1] would have been obeyed; I should have endeavoured to improve myself by your censure:  judge then if I shall be less willing to profit by your kindness.  It is not for me to bandy compliments with my elders and my betters:  I receive your approbation with gratitude, and will not return my brass for your Gold by expressing more fully those sentiments of admiration, which, however sincere, would, I know, be unwelcome.

To your advice on Religious topics, I shall equally attend.  Perhaps the best way will be by avoiding them altogether.  The already published objectionable passages have been much commented upon, but certainly have been rather strongly interpreted.  I am no Bigot to Infidelity, and did not expect that, because I doubted the immortality of Man, I should be charged with denying the existence of a God.  It was the comparative insignificance of ourselves and our world, when placed in competition with the mighty whole, of which it is an atom, that first led me to imagine that our pretensions to eternity might be over-rated.

This, and being early disgusted with a Calvinistic Scotch school, where I was cudgelled to Church for the first ten years of my life, afflicted me with this malady; for, after all, it is, I believe, a disease of the mind as much as other kinds of hypochondria.

I regret to hear you talk of ill-health.  May you long exist! not only to enjoy your own fame, but outlive that of fifty such ephemeral adventurers as myself.

As I do not sail quite so soon as Murray may have led you to expect (not till July) I trust I have some chance of taking you by the hand before my departure, and repeating in person how sincerely and affectionately I am

Your obliged servant,

BYRON.

[Footnote 1:  See ‘Letters’, vol. i. p. 198 [Footnote 4 of Letter 192.]]

* * *

304.—­To John Murray.

June 22, 1813.

Dear Sir,—­I send you a corrected copy of the lines with several important alterations,—­so many that this had better be sent for proof rather than subject the other to so many blots.

You will excuse the eternal trouble I inflict upon you.  As you will see, I have attended to your Criticism, and softened a passage you proscribed this morning.

Yours veritably,

B.

* * *

305.—­To Thomas Moore.

June 22, 1813.

Yesterday I dined in company with Stael, the “Epicene,” [1] whose politics are sadly changed.  She is for the Lord of Israel and the Lord of Liverpool—­a vile antithesis of a Methodist and a Tory—­talks of nothing but devotion and the ministry, and, I presume, expects that God and the government will help her to a pension.

Murray, the [Greek:  anax] of publishers, the Anak of stationers, has a design upon you in the paper line.  He wants you to become the staple and stipendiary editor of a periodical work.  What say you?  Will you be bound, like “Kit Smart, to write for ninety-nine years in the Universal Visitor?” [2]

Seriously, he talks of hundreds a year, and—­though I hate prating of the beggarly elements—­his proposal may be to your honour and profit, and, I am very sure, will be to our pleasure.

I don’t know what to say about “friendship.”  I never was in friendship but once, in my nineteenth year, and then it gave me as much trouble as love.  I am afraid, as Whitbread’s sire said to the king, when he wanted to knight him, that I am “too old;” [3] but nevertheless, no one wishes you more friends, fame, and felicity, than

Yours, etc.

[Footnote 1: 

  “’And ah! what verse can grace thy stately mien,
  Guide of the world, preferment’s golden queen,
  Neckar’s fair daughter, Staël the ‘Epicene’! 
  Bright o’er whose flaming cheek and pumple nose
  The bloom of young desire unceasing glows! 
  Fain would the Muse—­but ah! she dares no more,
  A mournful voice from lone ‘Guyana’s’ shore,
  Sad Quatremer, the bold presumption checks,
  Forbid to question thy ambiguous sex.’

“These lines contain the Secret History of Quatremer’s deportation.  He presumed, in the Council of Five Hundred, to arraign Madame de Staël’s conduct, and even to hint a doubt of her sex.  He was sent to ‘Guyana’.  The transaction naturally brings to one’s mind the dialogue between Falstaff and Hostess Quickly in Shakespeare’s ’Henry IV’.”

‘Canning’s New Morality’, lines 293-301 (Edmonds’ edition of the ’Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin’, pp. 282, 283).

Anne Louise Germaine Necker (1766-1817), only child of the Minister Necker and his wife Suzanne Curchod, Gibbon’s early love, married, in 1786, the Swedish Ambassador Baron de Staël Holstein, who died in 1802.  She married, as her second husband, in 1811, M. de Rocca, a young French officer, who had been severely wounded in Spain, but survived her by a year (Madame de Récamier, ‘Souvenirs’, vol. i. p. 272).  Her book, ’De l’Allemagne’, seized and destroyed by Napoleon, was brought out in June, 1813, by John Murray.  Byron thought her

“certainly the cleverest, though not the most agreeable woman he had ever known.  ‘She declaimed to you instead of conversing with you,’ said he, ’never pausing except to take breath; and if during that interval a rejoinder was put in, it was evident that she did not attend to it, as she resumed the thread of her discourse as though it had not been interrupted’”

(Lady Blessington’s ‘Conversations’, p. 26).  Croker (’Croker Papers’, vol. i. p. 327) describes her as

“ugly, and not of an intellectual ugliness.  Her features were coarse, and the ordinary expression rather vulgar, she had an ugly mouth, and one or two irregularly prominent teeth, which perhaps gave her countenance an habitual gaiety.  Her eye was full, dark, and expressive; and when she declaimed, which was almost whenever she spoke, she looked eloquent, and one forgot that she was plain.”

Madame de Staël

  “did not affect to conceal her preference for the society of men to
  that of her own sex,”

and was entirely above, or below, studying the feminine arts of pleasing.  In 1802 Miss Berry called on her in Paris.

  “Found her in an excessively dirty ’cabinet’—­sofa singularly so;
  her own dress, a loose spencer with a bare neck”

(’Journal’, vol. ii. p. 145).  A similar experience is mentioned by Crabb Robinson (’Diary’, 1804).

“On the 28th of January,” he writes, “I first waited on Madame de Staël.  I was shown into her bedroom, for which, not knowing Parisian customs, I was unprepared.  She was sitting, most decorously, ‘in’ her bed, and writing.  She had her night-cap on, and her face was not made up for the day.  It was by no means a captivating spectacle; but I had a very cordial reception, and two bright black eyes smiled benignantly on me.”

Of her political opinions Sir John Bowring (’Autobiographical Recollections’, pp. 375, 376) has left a sketch.

“Madame de Staël was a perfect aristocrat, and her sympathies were wholly with the great and prosperous.  She saw nothing in England but the luxury, stupidity, and pride of the Tory aristocracy, and the intelligence and magnificence of the Whig aristocracy.  These latter talked about truth, and liberty and herself, and she supposed it was all as it should be.  As to the millions, the people, she never inquired into their situation.  She had a horror of the ‘canaille’, but anything of ‘sangre asul’ had a charm for her.  When she was dying she said, ’Let me die in peace; let my last moments be undisturbed.’  Yet she ordered the cards of every visitor to be brought to her.  Among them was one from the Duc de Richelieu.  ‘What!’ exclaimed she indignantly, ’What! have you sent away the ‘Duke’?  Hurry!  Fly after him.  Bring him back.  Tell him that, though I die for all the world, I live for ‘him’.’”

Napoleon’s hatred of her was intense.  “Do not allow that jade, Madame de Staël,” he writes to Fouché, December 31, 1806 (’New Letters of Napoleon I.’, p. 35), “to come near Paris.”  Again, March 15, 1807 (’ibid.’, p. 39), “You are not to allow Madame de Staël to come within forty leagues of Paris.  That wicked schemer ought to make up her mind to behave herself at last.”  In a third letter, April 19, 1807 (’ibid.’, p. 40), he speaks of her as “paying court, one day to the great—­a patriot, a democrat, the next!... a fright, ... a worthless woman” (Léon Lecestre’s ‘Lettres inédites de Napoléon I’er’, 2nd ed. vol. i. pp. 84, 88, 93).]

[Footnote 2: 

“Old Gardner the bookseller employed Rolt and Smart to write a monthly miscellany called the ‘Universal Visitor’.  There was a formal written contract, which Allen the printer saw….  They were bound to write nothing else; they were to have, I think, a third of the profits of his sixpenny pamphlet; and the contract was for ninety-nine years”

(Boswell’s ‘Life of Dr. Johnson’, ed.  Birrell, vol. iii. p. 192).]

[Footnote 3: 

  “But first the Monarch, so polite,
  Ask’d Mister Whitbread if he’d be a ‘Knight’. 
  Unwilling in the list to be enroll’d,
  Whitbread contemplated the Knights of ‘Peg’,
  Then to his generous Sov’reign made a leg,
  And said, ’He was afraid he was ‘too old’,’” etc.

Peter Pindar’s ’Instructions to a Laureat’.]

* * *

306.—­To the Hon. Augusta Leigh.

4, Bennet Street, June 26th, 1813.

MY DEAREST AUGUSTA,—­Let me know when you arrive, and when, and where, and how, you would like to see me,—­any where in short but at dinner.  I have put off going into ye country on purpose to waylay you.

Ever yours, Byron

* * *

307.—­To the Hon. Augusta Leigh.

[June, 1813.]

MY DEAREST AUGUSTA,—­And if you knew whom I had put off besides my journey—­you would think me grown strangely fraternal.  However I won’t overwhelm you with my own praises.

Between one and two be it—­I shall, in course, prefer seeing you all to myself without the incumbrance of third persons, even of your (for I won’t own the relationship) fair cousin of eleven page memory [1], who, by the bye, makes one of the finest busts I have seen in the Exhibition, or out of it.  Good night!

Ever yours, BYRON.

P.S.—­Your writing is grown like my Attorney’s, and gave me a qualm, till I found the remedy in your signature.

[Footnote 1:  ‘Letters’, vol. i. p. 54 [end of Footnote 3 of Letter 13.], Lady Gertrude Howard married, in 1806, William Sloane Stanley, and died in 1870.]

* * *

308.—­To the Hon. Augusta Leigh.

[Sunday], June 27th, 1813.

MY DEAREST AUGUSTA,—­If you like to go with me to ye Lady Davy’s [1] [ to-night, I have an invitation for you.

There you will see the Stael, some people whom you know, and me whom you do not know,—­and you can talk to which you please, and I will watch over you as if you were unmarried and in danger of always being so.  Now do as you like; but if you chuse to array yourself before or after half past ten, I will call for you.  I think our being together before 3d people will be a new sensation to both.

Ever yours,

B.

[Footnote 1:  Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829), the son of a wood-carver of Penzance, was apprenticed to John Borlase, a surgeon at Penzance, in whose dispensary he became a chemist.  He wrote poetry as a young man, but soon abandoned the pursuit for science.  Two poems on Byron by Davy, one written in 1823, the other in 1824, will be found in Dr. Davy’s ‘Memoirs of the Life of Sir H. Davy’, vol. ii. pp. 168, 169.  In October, 1798, he joined Dr. Beddoes at Bristol, where he superintended the laboratory at his Pneumatic Institution.  His ’Researches, Chemical and Philosophical’ (1799), made him famous.  At the Royal Institution in London, founded in 1799, Davy became assistant-lecturer in chemistry, and director of the chemical laboratory.  There his lecture-room was crowded by some of the most distinguished men and women of the day.  Within the next few years his discoveries in electricity and galvanism, (1806-7) brought him European celebrity; his lectures on agricultural chemistry (1810) marked a fresh era in farming, and inaugurated the new movement of “science with practice.”  His famous discovery of the Safety Lamp was made in 1816.  He was created a baronet in 1818.  A skilful fisherman, he wrote, when in declining health, ’Salmonia, or Days of Fly-fishing’, published in 1827.  Ticknor (’Life’, vol. i. p. 57), speaking of Davy in 1815, says,

“He is now about thirty-three, but with all the freshness and bloom of five-and-twenty, and one of the handsomest men I have seen in England.  He has a great deal of vivacity, talks rapidly, though with great precision, and is so much interested in conversation, that his excitement amounts to nervous impatience, and keeps him in constant motion.”

Davy married, in 1812, a rich widow, Jane Aprecce, ‘née’ Kerr (1780-1855).  The marriage brought him wealth; but it also, it is said, impaired the simplicity of his character, and made him ambitious of social distinction.  Miss Berry (’Journal’, vol. ii. p. 535) supped with Lady Davy in May, 1813, to meet the Princess of Wales, and notes that among the other guests was Byron.  Lady Davy, who was so dark a brunette that Sydney Smith said she was as brown as a dry toast, was for many years a prominent figure in the society of London and Rome.  It was of her that Madame de Staël said that she had “all Corinne’s talents without her faults or extravagances.”  Ticknor, who called on her in June, 1815,

“found her in her parlour, working on a dress, the contents of her basket strewed about the table, and looking more like home than anything since I left it.  She is small, with black eyes and hair, a very pleasant face, an uncommonly sweet smile, and, when she speaks, has much spirit and expression in her countenance.  Her conversation is agreeable, particularly in the choice and variety of her phraseology, and has more the air of eloquence than I have ever heard before from a lady.” (’Life of George Ticknor’, vol. i.  P. 57).]

* * *

309.—­To John Murray.

July 1st, 1813.

DEAR SIR,—­There is an error in my dedication. [1] The word “my” must be struck out—­“my” admiration, etc.; it is a false construction and disagrees with the signature.  I hope this will arrive in time to prevent a cancel and serve for a proof; recollect it is only the “my” to be erased throughout.

There is a critique in the ‘Satirist’, [2] which I have read,—­fairly written, and, though vituperative, very fair in judgment.  One part belongs to you, viz., the 4_s_. and 6_d_ charge; it is unconscionable, but you have no conscience.

Yours truly,

B.

[Footnote 1:  The dedication was originally printed thus: 

  “To Samuel Rogers, Esq., as a slight but most sincere token of my
  admiration of his genius.”]

[Footnote 2:  ‘The Satirist’ for July 1, 1813 (pp. 70-88), reviews the ‘Giaour’ at length.  It condemns it for its fragmentary character and consequent obscurity, its carelessness and defects of style; but it also admits that the poem “abounds with proofs of genius:” 

“A word in conclusion.  The noble lord appears to have an aristocratical solicitude to be read only by the opulent.  Four shillings and sixpence for forty-one octavo pages of poetry! and those pages verily happily answering to Mr. Sheridan’s image of a rivulet of text flowing through a meadow of margin.  My good Lord Byron, while you are revelling in all the sensual and intellectual luxury which the successful sale of Newstead Abbey has procured for you, you little think of the privations to which you have subjected us unfortunate Reviewers, ... in order to enable us to purchase your lordship’s expensive publication.”]

* * *

310.—­To Thomas Moore.

4, Benedictine Street, St. James’s, July 8, 1813.

I presume by your silence that I have blundered into something noxious in my reply to your letter, for the which I beg leave to send beforehand a sweeping apology, which you may apply to any, or all, parts of that unfortunate epistle.  If I err in my conjecture, I expect the like from you in putting our correspondence so long in quarantine.  God he knows what I have said; but he also knows (if he is not as indifferent to mortals as the nonchalant deities of Lucretius), that you are the last person I want to offend.  So, if I have,—­why the devil don’t you say it at once, and expectorate your spleen?

Rogers is out of town with Madame de Stael, who hath published an Essay against Suicide, [1] which, I presume, will make somebody shoot himself;—­as a sermon by Blenkinsop, in proof of Christianity, sent a hitherto most orthodox acquaintance of mine out of a chapel of ease a perfect atheist.  Have you found or founded a residence yet? and have you begun or finished a poem?  If you won’t tell me what I have done, pray say what you have done, or left undone, yourself.  I am still in equipment for voyaging, and anxious to hear from, or of, you before I go, which anxiety you should remove more readily, as you think I sha’n’t cogitate about you afterwards.  I shall give the lie to that calumny by fifty foreign letters, particularly from any place where the plague is rife,—­without a drop of vinegar or a whiff of sulphur to save you from infection.

The Oxfords have sailed almost a fortnight, and my sister is in town, which is a great comfort,—­for, never having been much together, we are naturally more attached to each other.  I presume the illuminations have conflagrated to Derby (or wherever you are) by this time. [2] We are just recovering from tumult and train oil, and transparent fripperies, and all the noise and nonsense of victory.  Drury Lane had a large M.W., which some thought was Marshal Wellington; others, that it might be translated into Manager Whitbread; while the ladies of the vicinity of the saloon conceived the last letter to be complimentary to themselves.  I leave this to the commentators to illustrate.  If you don’t answer this, I sha’n’t say what you deserve, but I think I deserve a reply.  Do you conceive there is no Post-Bag but the Twopenny? [3] Sunburn me, if you are not too bad.

[Footnote 1: 

“Madame de Stael treats me as the person whom she most delights to honour; I am generally ordered with her to dinner, as one orders beans and bacon:  she is one of the few persons who surpass expectation; she has every sort of talent, and would be universally popular, if, in society, she were to confine herself to her inferior talents—­ pleasantry, anecdote, and literature.  I have reviewed her ’Essay on Suicide’ in the last ‘Edinburgh Review’:  it is not one of her best, and I have accordingly said more of the author and the subject than of the work.”

Sir J. Mackintosh (’Life’, vol. ii. p. 269).]

[Footnote 2:  One result of the illuminations in honour of the battle of Vittoria (June 21, 1813), which took place July 7, was a great fire at Woolwich.  Moore was at this time living at Mayfield Cottage near Ashbourne, in Derbyshire.]

[Footnote 3:  Moore’s ‘Intercepted Letters, or the Twopenny Post-bag’, was published, without his name, in 1813.]

* * *

311.—­To Thomas Moore.

July 13, 1813.

Your letter set me at ease; for I really thought (as I hear of your susceptibility) that I had said—­I know not what—­but something I should have been very sorry for, had it, or I, offended you;—­though I don’t see how a man with a beautiful wife—­his own children,—­quiet—­fame —­competency and friends, (I will vouch for a thousand, which is more than I will for a unit in my own behalf,) can be offended with any thing.

Do you know, Moore, I am amazingly inclined—­remember I say but inclined—­to be seriously enamoured with Lady A[delaide] F[orbes] this——­has ruined all my prospects.  However, you know her; is she clever, or sensible, or good-tempered? either would do—­I scratch out the will.  I don’t ask as to her beauty—­that I see; but my circumstances are mending, and were not my other prospects blackening, I would take a wife, and that should be the woman, had I a chance.  I do not yet know her much, but better than I did.

I want to get away, but find difficulty in compassing a passage in a ship of war.  They had better let me go; if I cannot, patriotism is the word—­“nay, an they’ll mouth, I’ll rant as well as they.” [2]

Now, what are you doing?—­writing, we all hope, for our own sakes.  Remember you must edit my posthumous works, with a Life of the Author, for which I will send you Confessions, dated “Lazaretto,” Smyrna, Malta, or Palermo—­one can die any where.

There is to be a thing on Tuesday ycleped a national fête [3].  The Regent and——­are to be there, and every body else, who has shillings enough for what was once a guinea.  Vauxhall is the scene—­there are six tickets issued for the modest women, and it is supposed there will be three to spare.  The passports for the lax are beyond my arithmetic.

P. S.—­The Stael last night attacked me most furiously—­said that I had “no right to make love—­that I had used——­barbarously—­that I had no feeling, and was totally insensible to la belle passion, and had been all my life.”  I am very glad to hear it, but did not know it before.  Let me hear from you anon.

[Footnote 1: 

“Lady A. F——­’was’ also very handsome.  It is melancholy to talk of women in the past tense.  What a pity, that of all flowers, none fade so soon as beauty!  Poor Lady A. F—­has not got married.  Do you know, I once had some thoughts of her as a wife; not that I was in love, as people call it, but I had argued myself into a belief that I ought to marry, and, meeting her very often in society, the notion came into my head, not heart, that she would suit me.  Moore, too, told me so much of her good qualities—­all which was, I believe, quite true—­that I felt tempted to propose to her, but did not, whether ‘tant mieux’ or ‘tant pis’, God knows, supposing my proposal accepted.”

(Lady Blessington’s ‘Conversations’, pp. 108, 109).

Lady Adelaide Forbes, whom Byron in Rome compared to the “Belvedere Apollo,” was the daughter of George, sixth Earl of Granard, and his wife, Lady Selina Rawdon, daughter of the first Earl of Moira.  Born in 1789, she died at Dresden, in 1858, unmarried.  Lord Moira was Moore’s patron, and, through this connection and political sympathies, Moore was acquainted with Lord Granard and his family.]

[Footnote 2:  Byron possibly quoted the actual words from ‘Hamlet’ (act v. sc. 1), referring to Moore’s attack on the Regent in ’The Two-penny Post-bag’: 

      “Nay, an thou’lt mouth,
  I’ll rant as well as thou.”

But the letter is destroyed.]

[Footnote 3:  The ‘Morning Chronicle’ for July 12 contains the announcement that “the Prince Regent has projected a ’Grand National Fête’ in honour of the battle of Vittoria.  It is to be held at Vauxhall Gardens.”  The ‘fête’ was held on Tuesday, July 20, beginning with a banquet, at which such toasts were drunk as “The Marquis of Wellington,” “Sir Thomas Graham and the other officers engaged,” “The Spanish Armies and the brave Guerillas.”  The ‘báton’ of Marshal Jourdan was “disposed among the plate, so as to be obvious to all.”  The proceedings ended with illuminations and dancing.]

* * *

312.—­To John Hanson.

Sunday, July 18th, 1813.

DEAR SIR,—­A Report is in general circulation (which has distressed my friends, and is not very pleasing to me), that the Purchaser of Newstead is a young man, who has been over-reached, ill-treated, and ruined, by me in this transaction of the sale, and that I take an unfair advantage of the law to enforce the contract.  This must be contradicted by a true and open statement of the circumstances attending, and subsequent to, the sale, and that immediately and publicly.  Surely, if anyone is ill treated it is myself.  He bid his own price; he took time before he bid at all, and now, when I am actually granting him further time as a favour, I hear from all quarters that I have acted unfairly.  Pray do not delay on this point; see him, and let a proper and true statement be drawn up of the sale, etc., and inserted in the papers.

Ever yours,

B.

P.S.—­Mr. C. himself, if he has either honour or feeling, will be the first to vindicate me from so unfounded an implication.  It is surely not for his credit to be supposed ruined or over-reached.

* * *

313.—­To John Murray.

July 22nd, 1813.

Dear Sir,—­I have great pleasure in accepting your invitation to meet anybody or nobody as you like best.

Pray what should you suppose the book in the inclosed advertisement to be? is it anything relating to Buonaparte or Continental Concerns?  If so, it may be worth looking after, particularly if it should turn out to be your purchase—­Lucien’s Epic.

Believe me, very truly yours,

BYRON.

* * *

314.—­To Thomas Moore.

July 25, 1813.

I am not well versed enough in the ways of single woman to make much matrimonial progress.

I have been dining like the dragon of Wantley [1] for this last week.  My head aches with the vintage of various cellars, and my brains are muddled as their dregs.  I met your friends the Daltons:—­she sang one of your best songs so well, that, but for the appearance of affectation, I could have cried; he reminds me of Hunt, but handsomer, and more musical in soul, perhaps.  I wish to God he may conquer his horrible anomalous complaint.  The upper part of her face is beautiful, and she seems much attached to her husband.  He is right, nevertheless, in leaving this nauseous town.  The first winter would infallibly destroy her complexion,—­and the second, very probably, every thing else.

I must tell you a story.  Morris [2] (of indifferent memory) was dining out the other day, and complaining of the Prince’s coldness to his old wassailers.  D’Israeli (a learned Jew) bored him with questions—­why this? and why that?  “Why did the Prince act thus?”—­“Why, sir, on account of Lord——­, who ought to be ashamed of himself.”—­“And why ought Lord——­to be ashamed of himself?”—­“Because the Prince, sir, —-—“-“And why, sir, did the Prince cut you?”-“Because, G-d d—­mme, sir, I stuck to my principles.”—­“And why did you stick to your principles?”

Is not this last question the best that was ever put, when you consider to whom?  It nearly killed Morris.  Perhaps you may think it stupid, but, as Goldsmith said about the peas, [3] it was a very good joke when I heard it—­as I did from an ear-witness—­and is only spoilt in my narration.

The season has closed with a dandy ball; [4]—­but I have dinners with the Harrowbys, Rogers, and Frere and Mackintosh [5], where I shall drink your health in a silent bumper, and regret your absence till “too much canaries” wash away my memory, or render it superfluous by a vision of you at the opposite side of the table.  Canning has disbanded his party by a speech from his [——­]—­the true throne of a Tory [6].

Conceive his turning them off in a formal harangue, and bidding them think for themselves.  “I have led my ragamuffins where they are well peppered.  There are but three of the 150 left alive,” [7] and they are for the Townsend (query, might not Falstaff mean the Bow Street officer?  I dare say Malone’s posthumous edition will have it so) for life.

Since I wrote last, I have been into the country.  I journeyed by night—­no incident, or accident, but an alarm on the part of my valet on the outside, who, in crossing Epping Forest, actually, I believe, flung down his purse before a mile-stone, with a glow-worm in the second figure of number XIX—­mistaking it for a footpad and dark lantern.  I can only attribute his fears to a pair of new pistols wherewith I had armed him; and he thought it necessary to display his vigilance by calling out to me whenever we passed any thing—­no matter whether moving or stationary.  Conceive ten miles, with a tremor every furlong.  I have scribbled you a fearfully long letter.  This sheet must be blank, and is merely a wrapper, to preclude the tabellarians [8] of the post from peeping.  You once complained of my not writing;—­I will “heap coals of fire upon your head” by not complaining of your not reading.  Ever, my dear Moore, your’n (isn’t that the Staffordshire termination?), BYRON.

[Footnote 1:  Under the title of “An excellent Ballad of a most dreadful combat, fought between Moore of Moore-Hall and the Dragon of Wantley,” this ballad forms (in the 12th edition) the Argument of ’The Dragon of Wantley, a Burlesque Opera’, performed at Covent Garden, the libretto of which is by Sig.  Carini, ‘i.e.’  Henry Carey: 

  “Have you not heard of the ‘Trojan’ Horse;
    With Seventy Men in his Belly? 
  This Dragon was not quite so big,
    But very near, I’ll tell you;
  Devoured he poor Children three,
    That could not with him grapple;
  And at one sup he eat them up,
    As one would eat an Apple.

  “All sorts of Cattle this Dragon did eat,
    Some say he eat up Trees,
  And that the Forest sure he would
    Devour by degrees. 
  For Houses and Churches were to him Geese and Turkies;
    He eat all, and left none behind,
  But some Stones, dear Jack, which he could not crack,
    Which on the Hills you’ll find.”]

[Footnote 2:  Charles Morris (1745-1838) served in the 17th Foot, the Royal Irish Dragoons, and finally in the Second Life Guards.  He was laureate and punch-maker to the Beef-steak Club, founded in 1735 by John Rich, patentee of Covent Garden Theatre.  The Prince of Wales became a member of the Club in 1785, and Morris was a frequent guest at Carlton House.  Another member of the Club was the Duke of Norfolk, who gave Morris the villa at Brockham, near Betchworth, where he lived and died.

Morris, who was an admirable song-writer and singer, attached himself politically to the Prince’s party, and attacked Pitt in such popular ballads as “Billy’s too young to drive us,” and “Billy Pitt and the Farmer.”  He was, however, disappointed in his hope of reward from his political patrons, and vented his spleen in his ode, “The Old Whig Poet to his Old Buff Waistcoat”

  “Farewell, thou poor rag of the Muse! 
  In the bag of the clothesman go lie;
  A farthing thou’lt fetch from the Jews,
  Which the hard-hearted Christians deny,” etc.

Some of his poems deserve the censure of ‘The Shade of Pope’ (line 225): 

  “There reeling Morris and his bestial songs.”

But others, in their ease and vivacity, hold their own with all but the best of Moore’s songs.  A collection of them was printed in two volumes by Bentley, in 1840, under the title of ’Lyra Urbanica’.]

[Footnote 3:  In Forster’s ‘Life of Goldsmith’ (vol. i. p. 34) it is related that Goldsmith ran away from Trinity College, Dublin, because he had been beaten by one of the Fellows.  He started for Cork with a shilling in his pocket, on which he lived for three days.  He told Reynolds that he thought

  “a handful of grey pease, given him by a girl at a wake (after fasting
  for twenty-four hours) the most comfortable repast he had ever made.”

Byron may mean that any joke seems good to a man who had not heard one for a day.]

[Footnote 4: 

“I liked the Dandies,” says Byron, in his ‘Detached Thoughts’; “they were always very civil to me, though in general they disliked literary people, and persecuted and mystified Madme. de Staël, Lewis, Horace Twiss, and the like, damnably.  They persuaded Madme. de Staël that Alvanley had a hundred thousand a year, etc., etc., till she praised him to his face for his beauty! and made a set at him for Albertine (’Libertine’, as Brummell baptized her, though the poor girl was, and is, as correct as maid or wife can be, and very amiable withal), and a hundred other fooleries besides.  The truth is, that, though I gave up the business early, I had a tinge of Dandyism in my minority, and probably retained enough of it to conciliate the great ones at four and twenty.  I had gamed and drunk and taken my degrees in most dissipations, and, having no pedantry, and not being overbearing, we ran quietly together.  I knew them all more or less, and they made me a member of Watier’s (a superb club at that time), being, I take it, the only literary man (except ‘two’ others, both men of the world, M[oore] and S[pencer]) in it.  Our Masquerade was a grand one; so was the Dandy Ball too—­at the Argyle,—­but ‘that’ (the latter) was given by the four chiefs—­B[rummel?], M[idmay?], A[lvanley?], and P[ierreoint?], if I err not.”]

[Footnote 5:  Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832), after studying medicine, was called to the English Bar in 1795.  Originally a supporter of the French Revolution, he answered Burke’s ‘Reflections’ with his ’Vindiciæ Gallicæ’ (1791).  He is “Mr. Macfungus” in the ‘Anti-Jacobin’s’ account of the “Meeting of the Friends of Freedom.”  But his revolutionary sympathies rapidly cooled, and he publicly disavowed them in his ‘Introductory Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations’ (1799).  He remained, however, throughout his life, a Whig.  His lectures on “’The Law of Nature and Nations’,” delivered at Lincoln’s Inn, in 1799, brought him into prominence, both at the Bar and in society.  In 1803 he was knighted on accepting the Recordership of Bombay.  He returned to England in 1812, entered Parliament as member for Nairn, advocated some useful measures, became a Privy Councillor in 1828, and held office in the Whig Ministry of 1830 as Commissioner of the Board of Control.  In politics, as well as in literature, he disappointed expectation.  His principal works, besides those mentioned above, were his ‘Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy’ (1830), and his ‘History of the Revolution in England in 1688’ (1834).

His great intellectual powers were shown to most advantage in society.  Rogers (’Table-Talk’, pp. 197, 198) thought him one of the three acutest men he had ever known.

  “He had a prodigious memory, and could repeat by heart more of Cicero
  than you could easily believe….  I never met a man with a fuller mind
  than Mackintosh,—­such readiness on all subjects, such a talker.”

“Till subdued by age and illness,” wrote Sydney Smith (’Life of Mackintosh’, vol. ii. p. 500), “his conversation was more brilliant and instructive than that of any human being I ever had the good fortune to be acquainted with.”

As in political life, so in society, he was too much of the lecturer.  Ticknor (’Life’, vol. i. p. 265) thought him “a little too precise, a little too much made up in his manners and conversation.”  But on all sides there is evidence to confirm the testimony of Rogers (’Table-Talk’, p. 207) that he was a man “who had not a particle of envy or jealousy in his nature.”]

[Footnote 6:  George Canning (1770-1827) had been offered the Foreign Office in 1812 after the assassination of Perceval, on condition that Castlereagh should lead the House of Commons.  He refused the offer.  Elected M.P. for Liverpool in 1812, he had, in July, 1813, disbanded his followers, and in 1814 left England.  He supported Lord Liverpool in carrying the repressive measures known as the Six Acts (1817-20), and, on the death of Lord Londonderry, in 1822, entered the Government as Secretary for Foreign Affairs.  It is to the private speech to his followers, in July, 1813, that Byron refers.

The ‘Morning Chronicle’ for July 29, 1813, has the following paragraph: 

“Mr. Canning it seems has (to use a French phrase) ‘reformed’ his political corps.  He assembled them at the close of the Session, and with many expressions of regret for the failure of certain negociations, which might have been favourable to them as a body, relieved them from their oaths of allegiance, and recommended them to pursue in future their objects separately.  The Right Honourable gentleman, perhaps, finds it more convenient for himself to act unencumbered; and both he and one or two others may find their interest in disbanding the squad; but some of them are turned off ’without a character’.”

The ‘Courier’ for July 29, quoting the first part of the statement, adds,

  “We believe … that Mr. Canning is not indisposed to join the present
  Cabinet, and may wish one or two of his particular friends to come in
  with him.”]

[Footnote 7: 

  “I have led my ragamuffins where they are pepper’d:  there’s but three
  of my hundred and fifty left alive; and they are for the town’s end,
  to beg during life.”

(’Henry IV’., Part I. act v. sc. 3).  Townshend, the Bow Street officer, is described by Cronow (’Reminiscences’, vol. i. p. 286) as

“a little fat man with a flaxen wig, Kersey-mere breeches, a blue straight-cut coat, and a broad-brimmed white hat.  To the most daring courage he added great dexterity and cunning; and was said, ’in propria persona’, to have taken more thieves than all the other Bow Street officers put together.”]

[Footnote 8: 

  “Epistolam, quam attulerat Phileros tabellarius.”

(Cic., ’Fam’.,9, 15).]

* * *

315.—­To Thomas Moore.

July 27, 1813.

When you next imitate the style of “Tacitus,” pray add, de moribus Germannorum;—­this last was a piece of barbarous silence, and could only be taken from the Woods, and, as such, I attribute it entirely to your sylvan sequestration at Mayfield Cottage.  You will find, on casting up accounts, that you are my debtor by several sheets and one epistle.  I shall bring my action;—­if you don’t discharge, expect to hear from my attorney.  I have forwarded your letter to Ruggiero [1]; but don’t make a postman of me again, for fear I should be tempted to violate your sanctity of wax or wafer.

Believe me, ever yours _ indignantly_, BN.

[Footnote 1:  i. e. Samuel Rogers.]

* * *

316.—­To Thomas Moore.

July 28, 1813.

Can’t you be satisfied with the pangs of my jealousy of Rogers, without actually making me the pander of your epistolary intrigue?  This is the second letter you have enclosed to my address, notwithstanding a miraculous long answer, and a subsequent short one or two of your own.  If you do so again, I can’t tell to what pitch my fury may soar.  I shall send you verse or arsenic, as likely as any thing,—­four thousand couplets on sheets beyond the privilege of franking; that privilege, sir, of which you take an undue advantage over a too susceptible senator, by forwarding your lucubrations to every one but himself.  I won’t frank from you, or for you, or to you—­may I be curst if I do, unless you mend your manners.  I disown you—­I disclaim you—­and by all the powers of Eulogy, I will write a panegyric upon you—­or dedicate a quarto—­if you don’t make me ample amends.

P.S.—­I am in training to dine with Sheridan [1] and Rogers this evening.  I have a little spite against R., and will shed his “Clary wines pottle-deep.” [2] This is nearly my ultimate or penultimate letter; for I am quite equipped, and only wait a passage.  Perhaps I may wait a few weeks for Sligo, but not if I can help it.

[Footnote 1:  In his ‘Detached Thoughts’ Byron has noted the following impressions of Sheridan: 

“In society I have met Sheridan frequently:  he was superb!  He had a sort of liking for me, and never attacked me, at least to my face, as he did every body else—­high names, and wits, and orators, some of them poets also.  I have seen him cut up Whitbread, quiz Madame de Staël, annihilate Colman, and do little less by some others (whose names, as friends, I set not down) of good fame and ability.  Poor fellow! he got drunk very thoroughly and very soon.  It occasionally fell to my lot to pilot him home—­no sinecure, for he was so tipsy that I was obliged to put on his cocked hat for him.  To be sure, it tumbled off again, and I was not myself so sober as to be able to pick it up again.

“The last time I met him was, I think, at Sir Gilbert Elliot’s, where he was as quick as ever—­no, it was not the last time; the last time was at Douglas Kinnaird’s.  I have met him in all places and parties—­at Whitehall with the Melbournes, at the Marquis of Tavistock’s, at Robins’s the auctioneer’s, at Sir Humphry Davy’s, at Sam Rogers’s,—­in short, in most kinds of company, and always found him very convivial and delightful.

  “I have seen Sheridan weep two or three times.  It may be that he was
  maudlin; but this only renders it more impressive, for who would see

    ’From Marlborough’s eyes the tears of dotage flow,
    And Swift expire a driveller and a show’?

“Once I saw him cry at Robins’s the auctioneer’s, after a splendid dinner, full of great names and high spirits.  I had the honour of sitting next to Sheridan.  The occasion of his tears was some observation or other upon the subject of the sturdiness of the Whigs in resisting office and keeping to their principles:  Sheridan turned round:  ’Sir, it is easy for my Lord G. or Earl G. or Marquis B. or Lord H. with thousands upon thousands a year, some of it either ‘presently’ derived, or ‘inherited’ in sinecure or acquisitions from the public money, to boast of their patriotism and keep aloof from temptation; but they do not know from what temptation those have kept aloof who had equal pride, at least equal talents, and not unequal passions, and nevertheless knew not in the course of their lives what it was to have a shilling of their own.’  And in saying this he wept.

“There was something odd about Sheridan.  One day, at dinner, he was slightly praising that pert pretender and impostor, Lyttelton (the Parliamentary puppy, still alive, I believe).  I took the liberty of differing from him; he turned round upon me, and said, ’Is that your real opinion?’ I confirmed it.  Then said he, ’Fortified by this concurrence, I beg leave to say that it, in fact, is ‘my’ opinion also, and that he is a person whom I do absolutely and utterly despise, abhor, and detest.’  He then launched out into a description of his despicable qualities, at some length, and with his usual wit, and evidently in earnest (for he hated Lyttelton).  His former compliment had been drawn out by some preceding one, just as its reverse was by my hinting that it was unmerited.

  “I have more than once heard him say, ’that he never had a shilling of
  his own.’  To be sure, he contrived to extract a good many of other
  people’s.

“In 1815 I had occasion to visit my lawyer in Chancery Lane; he was with Sheridan.  After mutual greetings, etc., Sheridan retired first.  Before recurring to my own business, I could not help inquiring ‘that’ of Sheridan.  ‘Oh,’ replied the attorney, ’the usual thing! to stave off an action from his wine-merchant, my client.’—­’Well,’ said I, ‘and what do you mean to do?’—­’Nothing at all for the present,’ said he:  ’would you have us proceed against old Sherry? what would be the use of it?’ and here he began laughing, and going over Sheridan’s good gifts of conversation.

“Now, from personal experience, I can vouch that my attorney is by no means the tenderest of men, or particularly accessible to any kind of impression out of the statute or record; and yet Sheridan, in half an hour, had found the way to soften and seduce him in such a manner, that I almost think he would have thrown his client (an honest man, with all the laws, and some justice, on his side) out of the window, had he come in at the moment.

  “Such was Sheridan! he could soften an attorney!  There has been
  nothing like it since the days of Orpheus.

“One day I saw him take up his own ‘’Monody on Garrick’.’  He lighted upon the Dedication to the Dowager Lady Spencer.  On seeing it, he flew into a rage, and exclaimed ’that it must be a forgery, that he had never dedicated any thing of his to such a damned canting bitch,’ etc., etc.—­and so went on for half an hour abusing his own dedication, or at least the object of it.  If all writers were equally sincere, it would be ludicrous.

“He told me that, on the night of the grand success of his ’School for Scandal’ he was knocked down and put into the watch-house for making a row in the street, and being found intoxicated by the watchmen.  Latterly, when found drunk one night in the kennel, and asked his name by the watchmen, he answered, ‘Wilberforce.’

“When dying he was requested to undergo ‘an operation.’  He replied that he had already submitted to two, which were enough for one man’s lifetime.  Being asked what they were, he answered, ’having his hair cut, and sitting for his picture.”

“I have met George Colman occasionally, and thought him extremely pleasant and convivial.  Sheridan’s humour, or rather wit, was always saturnine, and sometimes savage; he never laughed (at least that ‘I’ saw, and I watched him), but Colman did.  If I had to ‘choose’ and could not have both at a time I should say, ’Let me begin the evening with Sheridan, and finish it with Colman.’  Sheridan for dinner, Colman for supper; Sheridan for claret or port but Colman for every thing, from the madeira and champagne at dinner the claret with a ‘layer’ of ‘port’ between the glasses up to the punch of the night, and down to the grog, or gin and water, of daybreak;—­all these I have threaded with both the same.  Sheridan was a grenadier company of life guards, but Colman a whole regiment—­of ‘light infantry’, to be sure, but still a regiment.”]

[Footnote 2: 

  “Potations pottle deep”

‘Othello’, act ii. sc. 3, line 54.]

* * *

317.—­To John Murray.

July 31, 1813.

Dear Sir—­As I leave town early tomorrow, the proof must be sent to-night, or many days will be lost.  If you have any reviews of the ‘Giaour’ to send, let me have them now.  I am not very well to day.  I thank you for the ‘Satirist’, which is short but savage on this unlucky affair, and personally facetious on me which is much more to the purpose than a tirade upon other peoples’ concerns [1].

Ever yours,
B.

[Footnote 1:  In the ‘Satirist’ (vol. xiii. pp. 150, 151) is an article headed “Scandalum Magnatum,” with the motto from ‘Rejected Addresses’: 

                  With horn-handled knife,
    To kill a tender lamb as dead as mutton.”

“A short time back (say the newspapers, and newspapers never say ’the thing which is not’) Lady H. gave a ball and supper.  Among the company were Lord B—­n, Lady W—­, and Lady C. L—­b.  Lord B., it would appear, is a favourite with the latter Lady; on this occasion, however, he seemed to lavish his attention on another fair object.  This preference so enraged Lady C. L. that in a paroxysm of jealousy she took up a dessert-knife and stabbed herself.  The gay circle was, of course, immediately plunged in confusion and dismay, which however, was soon succeeded by levity and scandal.  The general cry for medical assistance was from Lady W—­d:  Lady W—­d!!!  And why?  Because it was said that, early after her marriage, Lady W—­also took a similar liberty with her person for a similar cause, and was therefore considered to have learned from experience the most efficacious remedy for the complaint.  It was also whispered that the Lady’s husband had most to grieve, that the attempt had not fully succeeded.  Lady C. L. is still living.

“The poet has told us how ‘Ladies wish to be who love their Lords;’ but this is the first public demonstration in our times to show us how Ladies wish to be who love, not their own, but others’ Lords.  ’Better be with the dead than thus,’ cried the jealous fair; and, casting a languishing look at Lord B—­, who, Heaven knows, is more like Pan than Apollo, she whipt up as pretty a little dessert-knife as a Lady could desire to commit suicide with,

    ‘And stuck it in her wizzard.’

  “The desperate Lady was carried out of the room, and the affair
  endeavoured to be hushed up, etc., etc.” ]

* * *

318.—­To John Wilson Croker [1].

Bt.  Str., August 2, 1813.

Dear Sir,—­I was honoured with your unexpected and very obliging letter, when on the point of leaving London, which prevented me from acknowledging my obligation as quickly as I felt it sincerely.  I am endeavouring all in my power to be ready before Saturday—­and even if I should not succeed, I can only blame my own tardiness, which will not the less enhance the benefit I have lost.  I have only to add my hope of forgiveness for all my trespasses on your time and patience, and with my best wishes for your public and private welfare, I have the honour to be, most truly, Your obliged and most obedient servant, BYRON.

[Footnote 1:  J. W. Croker (1780-1857),—­the “Wenham” of Thackeray, the “Rigby” of Disraeli, and the “Con Crawley” of Lady Morgan’s ’Florence Macarthy’, had been made Secretary to the Admiralty in 1809.  At his request Captain Carlton of the ‘Boyne’, “just then ordered to re-enforce Sir Edward Pellew” in the Mediterranean, had consented to receive Byron into his cabin for the voyage,]

* * *

319.—­To John Murray.

If you send more proofs, I shall never finish this infernal story—­“Ecce signum”—­thirty-three more lines enclosed! to the utter discomfiture of the printer, and, I fear, not to your advantage.  B.

* * *

320.—­To John Murray.

Half-past two in the morning, Aug. 10, 1813.

Dear Sir,—­Pray suspend the proofs, for I am bitten again, and have quantities for other parts of the bravura.  Yours ever, B.

P. S.—­You shall have them in the course of the day.

* * *

321.—­To James Wedderburn Webster.

August 12, 1813.

My Dear Webster,—­I am, you know, a detestable correspondent, and write to no one person whatever; you therefore cannot attribute my silence to any thing but want of good breeding or good taste, and not to any more atrocious cause; and as I confess the fault to be entirely mine—­why—­you will pardon it.

I have ordered a copy of the ‘Giaour’ (which is nearly doubled in quantity in this edition) to be sent, and I will first scribble my name in the title page.  Many and sincere thanks for your good opinion of book, and (I hope to add) author.

Rushton shall attend you whenever you please, though I should like him to stay a few weeks, and help my other people in forwarding my chattels.  Your taking him is no less a favor to me than him; and I trust he will behave well.  If not, your remedy is very simple; only don’t let him be idle; honest I am sure he is, and I believe good-hearted and quiet.  No pains has been spared, and a good deal of expense incurred in his education; accounts and mensuration, etc., he ought to know, and I believe he does.

I write this near London, but your answer will reach me better in Bennet Street, etc. (as before).  I am going very soon, and if you would do the same thing—­as far as Sicily—­I am sure you would not be sorry.  My sister, Mrs. L. goes with me—­her spouse is obliged to retrench for a few years (but he stays at home); so that his link boy prophecy (if ever he made it) recoils upon himself.

I am truly glad to hear of Lady Frances’s good health.  Have you added to your family?  Pray make my best respects acceptable to her Ladyship.

Nothing will give me more pleasure than to hear from you as soon and as fully as you please.  Ever most truly yours,

BYRON.

* * *

322.—­To Thomas Moore.

Bennet Street, August 22, 1813.

As our late—­I might say, deceased—­correspondence had too much of the town-life leaven in it, we will now, paulo majora, prattle a little of literature in all its branches; and first of the first—­criticism.  The Prince is at Brighton, and Jackson, the boxer, gone to Margate, having, I believe, decoyed Yarmouth to see a milling in that polite neighbourhood [1].

Mad’e. de Stael Holstein has lost one of her young barons [2], who has been carbonadoed by a vile Teutonic adjutant,—­kilt and killed in a coffee-house at Scrawsenhawsen.  Corinne is, of course, what all mothers must be,—­but will, I venture to prophesy, do what few mothers could—­write an Essay upon it.  She cannot exist without a grievance—­and somebody to see, or read, how much grief becomes her.  I have not seen her since the event; but merely judge (not very charitably) from prior observation.

In a “mail-coach copy” of the Edinburgh [3] I perceive The Giaour is second article.  The numbers are still in the Leith smack—­pray which way is the wind? The said article is so very mild and sentimental, that it must be written by Jeffrey in love [4];—­you know he is gone to America to marry some fair one, of whom he has been, for several quarters, éperdument amoureux.  Seriously—­as Winifred Jenkins [5] says of Lismahago—­Mr. Jeffrey (or his deputy) “has done the handsome thing by me,” and I say nothing.  But this I will say, if you and I had knocked one another on the head in this quarrel, how he would have laughed, and what a mighty bad figure we should have cut in our posthumous works.  By the by, I was call’d in the other day to mediate between two gentlemen bent upon carnage, and—­after a long struggle between the natural desire of destroying one’s fellow-creatures, and the dislike of seeing men play the fool for nothing,—­I got one to make an apology, and the other to take it, and left them to live happy ever after [6].

One was a peer, the other a friend untitled, and both fond of high play;—­and one, I can swear for, though very mild, “not fearful,” and so dead a shot, that, though the other is the thinnest of men, he would have split him like a cane.  They both conducted themselves very well, and I put them out of pain as soon as I could.

There is an American Life of G. F. Cooke [7], Scurra deceased, lately published.  Such a book!—­I believe, since Drunken Barnaby’s Journal [8] nothing like it has drenched the press.  All green-room and tap-room—­drams and the drama—­brandy, whisky-punch, and, latterly, toddy, overflow every page.  Two things are rather marvellous,—­first, that a man should live so long drunk, and, next, that he should have found a sober biographer.  There are some very laughable things in it, nevertheless;—­but the pints he swallowed, and the parts he performed, are too regularly registered.

All this time you wonder I am not gone; so do I; but the accounts of the plague are very perplexing—­not so much for the thing itself as the quarantine established in all ports, and from all places, even from England.  It is true, the forty or sixty days would, in all probability, be as foolishly spent on shore as in the ship; but one likes to have one’s choice, nevertheless.  Town is awfully empty; but not the worse for that.  I am really puzzled with my perfect ignorance of what I mean to do;—­not stay, if I can help it, but where to go?  Sligo is for the North;—­a pleasant place, Petersburgh, in September, with one’s ears and nose in a muff, or else tumbling into one’s neckcloth or pocket-handkerchief!  If the winter treated Buonaparte with so little ceremony, what would it inflict upon your solitary traveller?—­Give me a sun, I care not how hot, and sherbet, I care not how cool, and my Heaven is as easily made as your Persian’s [9].

The Giaour is now a thousand and odd lines.  “Lord Fanny spins a thousand such a day,” [10] eh, Moore?—­thou wilt needs be a wag, but I forgive it.  Yours ever,

BYRON.

P. S.—­I perceive I have written a flippant and rather cold-hearted letter! let it go, however.  I have said nothing, either, of the brilliant sex; but the fact is, I am at this moment in a far more serious, and entirely new, scrape [11] than any of the last twelve months,—­and that is saying a good deal.  It is unlucky we can neither live with nor without these women.

I am now thinking of regretting that, just as I have left Newstead, you reside near it.  Did you ever see it? do—­but don’t tell me that you like it.  If I had known of such intellectual neighbourhood, I don’t think I should have quitted it.  You could have come over so often, as a bachelor,—­for it was a thorough bachelor’s mansion—­plenty of wine and such sordid sensualities—­with books enough, room enough, and an air of antiquity about all (except the lasses) that would have suited you, when pensive, and served you to laugh at when in glee.  I had built myself a bath and a vault—­and now I sha’n’t even be buried in it.  It is odd that we can’t even be certain of a grave, at least a particular one.  I remember, when about fifteen, reading your poems there, which I can repeat almost now,—­and asking all kinds of questions about the author, when I heard that he was not dead according to the preface; wondering if I should ever see him—­and though, at that time, without the smallest poetical propensity myself, very much taken, as you may imagine, with that volume.  Adieu—­I commit you to the care of the gods—­Hindoo, Scandinavian, and Hellenic!

P.S. 2d.—­There is an excellent review of Grimm’s Correspondence and Madame de Stael in this No. of the E[dinburgh] R[eview] Jeffrey, himself, was my critic last year; but this is, I believe, by another hand.  I hope you are going on with your grand coup—­pray do—­or that damned Lucien Buonaparte will beat us all.  I have seen much of his poem in MS., and he really surpasses every thing beneath Tasso.  Hodgson is translating him against another bard.  You and (I believe Rogers,) Scott, Gifford, and myself, are to be referred to as judges between the twain,—­that is, if you accept the office.  Conceive our different opinions!  I think we, most of us (I am talking very impudently, you will think—­us, indeed!) have a way of our own,—­at least, you and Scott certainly have.

[Footnote 1:  The fight, in which Harry Harmer, “the Coppersmith” (1784-1834), beat Jack Ford, took place at St. Nicholas, near Margate, August 23, 1813.

Francis Charles Seymour Conway, Earl of Yarmouth (1777-1842), succeeded his father as second Marquis of Hertford in 1822.  The colossal libertinism and patrician splendour of his life inspired Disraeli to paint him as “Monmouth” in ‘Coningsby’, and Thackeray as “Steyne” in ‘Vanity Fair’.  He married, in 1798, Maria Fagniani, claimed as a daughter by George Selwyn and by “Old Q.,” and enriched by both.  Yarmouth, as an intimate friend of the Regent, and the son of the Prince’s female favourite, was the butt of Moore and the Whig satirists.  Byron gibes at Yarmouth’s red whiskers, which helped to gain him the name of “Red Herrings” in the ‘Waltz’, line 142, ‘note’ 1.  Yarmouth, like Byron, patronized the fancy, and, like him also, was a frequenter of Manton’s shooting-gallery in Davies Street; but there is no record of their being acquainted, though the house, which Byron occupied (13, Piccadilly Terrace) during his brief married life, was in the occupation of Lord Yarmouth before Byron took it from the Duchess of Devonshire.]

[Footnote 2:  Albert de Staël

“led an irregular life, and met a deplorable death at Doberan, a small city of the duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, on the coast of the Baltic Sea, a favourite resort in summer for bathing, gambling, etc.  Some officers of the état-major of Bernadotte had gone to try their luck in this place of play and pleasure.  They quarrelled over some louis, and a duel immediately ensued.  I well remember that the Grand-Duke Paul of Mecklenburg-Schwerin told me he was there at the time, and, while walking with his tutors in the park, suddenly heard the clinking of swords in a neighbouring thicket.  They ran to the place, and reached it just in time to see the head of Albert fall, cleft by one of those long and formidable sabres which were carried by the Prussian cavalry.”

The above passage is quoted from the unpublished ‘Souvenirs’ of M. Pictet de Sergy, given by A. Stevens in his ‘Life of Madame de Staël’, vol. ii. pp. 204, 205.]

[Footnote 3:  Only special copies of books published in Edinburgh came to London by coach:  the bulk was forwarded in Leith smacks.

In the ‘Edinburgh Review’ for July, 1813, the ‘Giaour’ was reviewed as a poem “full of spirit, character, and originality,” and producing an effect at once “powerful and pathetic.”  But the reviewer considers that “energy of character and intensity of emotion… presented in combination with worthlessness and guilt,” are “most powerful corrupters and perverters of our moral nature,” and he deplores Byron’s exclusive devotion to gloomy and revolting subjects.]

[Footnote 4:  Francis Jeffrey (1773-1850) succeeded Sidney Smith as editor of the ‘Edinburgh Review’ (founded 1802), and held the editorship till 1829.  The first number of the ‘Review’, says Francis Horner, brought to light “the genius of that little man.”  During the first six years of its existence, he wrote upwards of seventy articles.  At the same time, he was a successful lawyer.  Called to the Scottish Bar in 1794, he became successively Dean of the Faculty of Advocates (1829), Lord Advocate (1830), and a Judge of the Court of Sessions (1834) with the title of Lord Jeffrey.  He married, as his second wife, at New York, in October, 1813, Charlotte Wilkes, a grandniece of John Wilkes.

Jeffrey is described at considerable length by Ticknor, in a letter, dated February 8, 1814 (’Life of G. Ticknor’, vol. i. pp. 43-47): 

“You are to imagine, then, before you a short, stout, little gentleman, about five and a half feet high, with a very red face, black hair, and black eyes.  You are to suppose him to possess a very gay and animated countenance, and you are to see in him all the restlessness of a will-o’-wisp …  He enters a room with a countenance so satisfied, and a step so light and almost fantastic, that all your previous impressions of the dignity and severity of the ’Edinburgh Review’ are immediately put to flight …  It is not possible, however, to be long in his presence without understanding something of his real character, for the same promptness and assurance which mark his entrance into a room carry him at once into conversation.  The moment a topic is suggested—­no matter what or by whom—­he comes forth, and the first thing you observe is his singular fluency,” etc., etc.

By the side of this description may be set that given of Jeffrey by Francis Horner (’Life of Jeffrey’, 2nd edition, vol. i. p. 212): 

“His manner is not at first pleasing; what is worse, it is of that cast which almost irresistibly impresses upon strangers the idea of levity and superficial talents.  Yet there is not any man whose real character is so much the reverse.”

The secret of his success, both as editor and critic, is that he made the ‘Review’ the expression of the Whig character, both in its excellences and its limitations.  A man of clear, discriminating mind, of cool and placid judgment, he refused to accept the existing state of things, was persuaded that it might be safely improved, saw the practical steps required, and had the courage of his convictions.  He was suspicious of large principles, somewhat callous to enthusiasm or sentiment, intolerant of whatever was incapable of precise expression.  His intellectual strength lay not in the possession of one great gift, but in the simultaneous exercise of several well-adjusted talents.  His literary taste was correct; but it consisted rather in recognizing compliance with accepted rules of proved utility than in the readiness to appreciate novelties of thought and treatment.  Hence his criticism, though useful for his time, has not endured beyond his day.  It may be doubted whether more could be expected from a man who was eminently successful in addressing a jury.  “He might not know his subject, but he knew his readers” (Bagehot’s ‘Literary Studies’, vol. i. p. 30).

Byron, believing him to have been the author of the famous article on ‘Hours of Idleness’, attacked him bitterly in ’English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers’; (lines 460-528).  He afterwards recognized his error.  ’Don Juan’ (Canto X. stanza xvi.) expresses his mature opinion of a critic who, whatever may have been his faults, was as absolutely honest as political prejudice would permit: 

  “And all our little feuds, at least all ‘mine’,
  Dear Jeffrey, once my most redoubted foe
  (As far as rhyme and criticism combine
  To make such puppets of us things below),
  Are over; Here’s a health to ‘Auld Lang Syne!’
  I do not know you, and may never know
  Your face—­but you have acted, on the whole,
  Most nobly; and I own it from my soul.”

Jeffrey reviewed ‘Childe Harold’ in the ‘Edinburgh Review’, No. 38, art. 10; the ‘Giaour’, No. 42, art. 2; the ‘Corsair’ and ‘Bride of Abydos’, No. 45, art. 9; Byron’s ‘Poetry’, No. 54, art.  I; ‘Manfred’, No. 56, art. 7; ‘Beppo’, No. 58, art. 2; ‘Marino Faliero’, No. 70, art.  I; Byron’s ‘Tragedies’, No. 72, art. 5.]

[Footnote 5:  Winifred Jenkins is the maid to Miss Tabitha Bramble, who marries Captain Lismahago, in Smollett’s ’Humphrey Clinker’.]

[Footnote 6:  Lord Foley and Scrope Davies.]

[Footnote 7:  G. F. Cooke (1755-1812), from 1794 to 1800 was the hero of the Dublin stage, with the exception of an interval, during which he served in the army.  On October 31, 1800, he appeared at Covent Garden as “Richard III.,” and afterwards played such parts in tragedy as “Iago” and “Shylock” with great success.  In comedy he was also a favourite, especially as “Kitely” in ‘Every Man in his Humour’, and “Sir Pertinax MacSycophant” in ‘The Man of the World’.  His last appearance on the London stage was as “Falstaff,” June 5, 1810.  In that year he sailed for New York, and, September 26, 1812, died there from his “incorrigible habits of drinking.”

Byron uses the word ‘scurra’, which generally means a “parasite,” in its other sense of a “buffoon.”  ’Memoirs of George Frederic Cooke, late of the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden’, by W. Dunlap, in 2 vols., was published in 1813]

[Footnote 8:  The original edition of ‘Drunken Barnaby’s Journal’, a small square volume, without date, was probably printed about 1650.  The author was supposed to be Barnaby Harrington of Queen’s College, Oxford.  But Joseph Haslewood, whose edition (1818) is the best, attributed it to Richard Brathwait (circ. 1588-1673).  The title of the second edition (1716) runs as follows:  ’Drunken Barnaby’s Four Journeys to the North of England.  In Latin and English Verse.  Wittily and merrily (tho’ near one hundred years ago) composed; found among some old musty books, that had a long time lain by in a corner; and now at last made publick.  To which is added, Bessy Bell’.

“Drunken Barnaby” was also the burden of an old ballad quoted by Haslewood: 

  “Barnaby, Barnaby, thou’st been drinking,
  I can tell by thy nose, and thy eyes winking;
  Drunk at Richmond, drunk at Dover,
  Drunk at Newcastle, drunk all over. 
  Hey, Barnaby! tak’t for a warning,
  Be no more drunk, nor dry in a morning!”]

[Footnote 9: 

   “A Persian’s Heav’n is easily made—­
  ’Tis but black eyes and lemonade.”]

[Footnote 10:  Pope’s ‘Imitations of Horace’, Satire I. line 6.]

[Footnote 11:  With Lady Frances Wedderburn Webster.]

[Footnote 12:  The review of Madame de Staël’s ‘Germany’ was by Mackintosh.]

* * *

323.—­To John Murray.

August 26, 1813.

Dear Sir,—­I have looked over and corrected one proof, but not so carefully (God knows if you can read it through, but I can’t) as to preclude your eye from discovering some omission of mine or commission of y’e Printer.  If you have patience, look it over.  Do you know any body who can stop—­I mean point-commas, and so forth? for I am, I hear, a sad hand at your punctuation.  I have, but with some difficulty, not added any more to this snake of a poem, which has been lengthening its rattles every month.  It is now fearfully long, being more than a canto and a half of C.  H., which contains but 882 lines per book, with all late additions inclusive.

The last lines Hodgson likes—­it is not often he does—­and when he don’t, he tells me with great energy, and I fret and alter.  I have thrown them in to soften the ferocity of our Infidel, and, for a dying man, have given him a good deal to say for himself.

Do you think you shall get hold of the female MS. you spoke of to day? if so, you will let me have a glimpse; but don’t tell our master (not W’s), or we shall be buffeted.

I was quite sorry to hear you say you stayed in town on my account, and I hope sincerely you did not mean so superfluous a piece of politeness.

Our six critiques!—­they would have made half a Quarterly by themselves; but this is the age of criticism.

Ever yours,

B.

* * *

324.—­To Thomas Moore.

August 28, 1813.

Ay, my dear Moore, “there was a time”—­I have heard of your tricks, when “you was campaigning at the King of Bohemy.”

I am much mistaken if, some fine London spring, about the year 1815, that time does not come again.  After all, we must end in marriage; and I can conceive nothing more delightful than such a state in the country, reading the county newspaper, etc., and kissing one’s wife’s maid.  Seriously, I would incorporate with any woman of decent demeanour to-morrow—­that is, I would a month ago, but, at present,——­

Why don’t you “parody that Ode?”—­Do you think [2] I should be tetchy? or have you done it, and won’t tell me?—­You are quite right about Giamschid, and I have reduced it to a dissyllable within this half hour [3].

I am glad to hear you talk of Richardson because it tells me what you won’t—­that you are going to beat Lucien.  At least tell me how far you have proceeded.  Do you think me less interested about your works, or less sincere than our friend Ruggiero?  I am not—­and never was.  In that thing of mine, the English Bards, at the time when I was angry with all the world, I never “disparaged your parts,” although I did not know you personally;—­and have always regretted that you don’t give us an entire work, and not sprinkl