Life of Lord Byron Volume IV Part 10

LETTER 306. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Venice, January 27. 1818.

"My father--that is, my Armenian father, Padre Pasquali--in the name of all the other fathers of our Convent, sends you the enclosed, greeting.

"Inasmuch as it has pleased the translators of the long-lost and lately-found portions of the text of Eusebius to put forth the enclosed prospectus, of which I send six copies, you are hereby implored to obtain subscribers in the two Universities, and among the learned, and the unlearned who would unlearn their ignorance--This _they_ (the Convent) request, _I_ request, and _do you_ request.

"I sent you Beppo some weeks agone. You must publish it alone; it has politics and ferocity, and won't do for your isthmus of a Journal.

"Mr. Hobhouse, if the Alps have not broken his neck, is, or ought to be, swimming with my commentaries and his own coat of mail in his teeth and right hand, in a cork jacket, between Calais and Dover.

"It is the height of the Carnival, and I am in the extreme and agonies of a new intrigue with I don't exactly know whom or what, except that she is insatiate of love, and won't take money, and has light hair and blue eyes, which are not common here, and that I met her at the Masque, and that when her mask is off, I am as wise as ever. I shall make what I can of the remainder of my youth."

LETTER 307. TO MR. MOORE.

"Venice, February 2. 1818.

"Your letter of December 8th arrived but this day, by some delay, common but inexplicable. Your domestic calamity is very grievous, and I feel with you as much as I _dare_ feel at all. Throughout life, your loss must be my loss, and your gain my gain; and, though my heart may ebb, there will always be a drop for you among the dregs.

"I know how to feel with you, because (selfishness being always the substratum of our d.a.m.nable clay) I am quite wrapt up in my own children. Besides my little legitimate, I have made unto myself an _il_legitimate since (to say nothing of one before[13]), and I look forward to one of these as the pillar of my old age, supposing that I ever reach--which I hope I never shall--that desolating period. I have a great love for my little Ada, though perhaps she may torture me, like * * *.

"Your offered address will be as acceptable as you can wish. I don't much care what the wretches of the world think of me--all _that's_ past. But I care a good deal what _you_ think of me, and, so, say what you like. You _know_ that I am not sullen; and, as to being _savage_, such things depend on circ.u.mstances. However, as to being in good humour in _your_ society, there is no great merit in that, because it would be an effort, or an insanity, to be otherwise.

"I don't know what Murray may have been saying or quoting.[14] I called Crabbe and Sam the fathers of present Poesy; and said, that I thought--except them--_all_ of '_us youth_' were on a wrong tack.

But I never said that we did not sail well. Our fame will be hurt by _admiration_ and _imitation_. When I say _our_, I mean _all_ (Lakers included), except the postscript of the Augustans. The next generation (from the quant.i.ty and facility of imitation) will tumble and break their necks off our Pegasus, who runs away with us; but we keep the _saddle_, because we broke the rascal and can ride. But though easy to mount, he is the devil to guide; and the next fellows must go back to the riding-school and the manege, and learn to ride the 'great horse.'

"Talking of horses, by the way, I have transported my own, four in number, to the Lido (_beach_ in English), a strip of some ten miles along the Adriatic, a mile or two from the city; so that I not only get a row in my gondola, but a spanking gallop of some miles daily along a firm and solitary beach, from the fortress to Malamocco, the which contributes considerably to my health and spirits.

"I have hardly had a wink of sleep this week past. We are in the agonies of the Carnival's last days, and I must be up all night again, as well as to-morrow. I have had some curious masking adventures this Carnival; but, as they are not yet over, I shall not say on. I will work the mine of my youth to the last veins of the ore, and then--good night. I have lived, and am content.

"Hobhouse went away before the Carnival began, so that he had little or no fun. Besides, it requires some time to be thoroughgoing with the Venetians; but of all this anon, in some other letter.

"I must dress for the evening. There is an opera and ridotto, and I know not what, besides b.a.l.l.s; and so, ever and ever yours,

"B.

"P.S. I send this without revision, so excuse errors. I delight in the fame and fortune of Lalla, and again congratulate you on your well-merited success."

[Footnote 13: This possibly may have been the subject of the Poem given in p. 152. of the first volume.]

[Footnote 14: Having seen by accident the pa.s.sage in one of his letters to Mr. Murray, in which he denounces, as false and worthless, the poetical system on which the greater number of his contemporaries, as well as himself, founded their reputation, I took an opportunity, in the next letter I wrote to him, of jesting a little on this opinion, and his motives for it. It was, no doubt (I ventured to say), excellent policy in him, who had made sure of his own immortality in this style of writing, thus to _throw overboard_ all _us poor devils_, who were embarked with him. He was, in fact, I added, behaving towards us much in the manner of the methodist preacher who said to his congregation--"You may think, at the Last Day, to get to heaven by laying hold on my skirts; but I'll cheat you all, for I'll wear a spencer, I'll wear a spencer!"]

Of his daily rides on the Lido, which he mentions in this letter, the following account, by a gentleman who lived a good deal with him at Venice, will be found not a little interesting:--

"Almost immediately after Mr. Hobhouse's departure, Lord Byron proposed to me to accompany him in his rides on the Lido. One of the long narrow islands which separate the Lagune, in the midst of which Venice stands, from the Adriatic, is more particularly distinguished by this name. At one extremity is a fortification, which, with the Castle of St. Andrea on an island on the opposite side, defends the nearest entrance to the city from the sea. In times of peace this fortification is almost dismantled, and Lord Byron had hired here of the Commandant an unoccupied stable, where he kept his horses. The distance from the city was not very considerable; it was much less than to the Terra Firma, and, as far as it went, the spot was not ineligible for riding.

"Every day that the weather would permit, Lord Byron called for me in his gondola, and we found the horses waiting for us outside of the fort.

We rode as far as we could along the sea-sh.o.r.e, and then on a kind of d.y.k.e, or embankment, which has been raised where the island was very narrow, as far as another small fort about half way between the princ.i.p.al one which I have already mentioned, and the town or village of Malamocco, which is near the other extremity of the island,--the distance between the two forts being about three miles.

"On the land side of the embankment, not far from the smaller fort, was a boundary stone which probably marked some division of property,--all the side of the island nearest the Lagune being divided into gardens for the cultivation of vegetables for the Venetian markets. At the foot of this stone Lord Byron repeatedly told me that I should cause him to be interred, if he should die in Venice, or its neighbourhood, during my residence there; and he appeared to think, as he was not a Catholic, that, on the part of the government, there could be no obstacle to his interment in an unhallowed spot of ground by the sea-side. At all events, I was to overcome whatever difficulties might be raised on this account. I was, by no means, he repeatedly told me, to allow his body to be removed to England, nor permit any of his family to interfere with his funeral.

"Nothing could be more delightful than these rides on the Lido were to me. We were from half to three quarters of an hour crossing the water, during which his conversation was always most amusing and interesting.

Sometimes he would bring with him any new book he had received, and read to me the pa.s.sages which most struck him. Often he would repeat to me whole stanzas of the poems he was engaged in writing, as he had composed them on the preceding evening; and this was the more interesting to me, because I could frequently trace in them some idea which he had started in our conversation of the preceding day, or some remark, the effect of which he had been evidently trying upon me. Occasionally, too, he spoke of his own affairs, making me repeat all I had heard with regard to him, and desiring that I would not spare him, but let him know the worst that was said."

LETTER 308. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Venice, Feb. 20. 1818.

"I have to thank Mr. Croker for the arrival, and you for the contents, of the parcel which came last week, much quicker than any before, owing to Mr. Croker's kind attention and the official exterior of the bags; and all safe, except much friction amongst the magnesia, of which only two bottles came entire; but it is all very well, and I am exceedingly obliged to you.

"The books I have read, or rather am reading. Pray, who may be the s.e.xagenarian, whose gossip is very amusing? Many of his sketches I recognise, particularly Gifford, Mackintosh, Drummond, Dutens, H.

Walpole, Mrs. Inchbald, Opie, &c., with the Scotts, Loughborough, and most of the divines and lawyers, besides a few shorter hints of authors, and a few lines about a certain '_n.o.ble author_,'

characterised as malignant and sceptical, according to the good old story, 'as it was in the beginning, is now, but _not_ always shall be:' do you know such a person, Master Murray? eh?--And pray, of the booksellers, which be _you_? the dry, the dirty, the honest, the opulent, the finical, the splendid, or the c.o.xcomb bookseller?

Stap my vitals, but the author grows scurrilous in his grand climacteric!

"I remember to have seen Porson at Cambridge, in the hall of our college, and in private parties, but not frequently; and I never can recollect him except as drunk or brutal, and generally both: I mean in an evening, for in the hall he dined at the Dean's table, and I at the Vice-master's, so that I was not near him; and he then and there appeared sober in his demeanour, nor did I ever hear of excess or outrage on his part in public,--commons, college, or chapel; but I have seen him in a private party of undergraduates, many of them fresh men and strangers, take up a poker to one of them, and heard him use language as blackguard as his action. I have seen Sheridan drunk, too, with all the world; but his intoxication was that of Bacchus, and Porson's that of Silenus. Of all the disgusting brutes, sulky, abusive, and intolerable, Porson was the most b.e.s.t.i.a.l, as far as the few times that I saw him went, which were only at William Bankes's (the Nubian discoverer's) rooms. I saw him once go away in a rage, because n.o.body knew the name of the 'Cobbler of Messina,' insulting their ignorance with the most vulgar terms of reprobation. He was tolerated in this state amongst the young men for his talents, as the Turks think a madman inspired, and bear with him. He used to recite, or rather vomit, pages of all languages, and could hiccup Greek like a Helot; and certainly Sparta never shocked her children with a grosser exhibition than this man's intoxication.

"I perceive, in the book you sent me, a long account of him, which is very savage. I cannot judge, as I never saw him sober, except in _hall_ or combination-room; and then I was never near enough to hear, and hardly to see him. Of his drunken deportment, I can be sure, because I saw it.

"With the Reviews I have been much entertained. It requires to be as far from England as I am to relish a periodical paper properly: it is like soda-water in an Italian summer. But what cruel work you make with Lady * * * *! You should recollect that she is a woman; though, to be sure, they are now and then very provoking; still, as auth.o.r.esses, they can do no great harm; and I think it a pity so much good invective should have been laid out upon her, when there is such a fine field of us Jacobin gentlemen for you to work upon.

"I heard from Moore lately, and was sorry to be made aware of his domestic loss. Thus it is--'medio de fonte leporum'--in the acme of his fame and his happiness comes a drawback as usual.

"Mr. Hoppner, whom I saw this morning, has been made the father of a very fine boy[15].--Mother and child doing very well indeed. By this time Hobhouse should be with you, and also certain packets, letters, &c. of mine, sent since his departure.--I am not at all well in health within this last eight days. My remembrances to Gifford and all friends.

"Yours, &c.

"B.

"P.S. In the course of a month or two, Hanson will have probably to send off a clerk with conveyances to sign (Newstead being sold in November last for ninety-four thousand five hundred pounds), in which case I supplicate supplies of articles as usual, for which, desire Mr. Kinnaird to settle from funds in their bank, and deduct from my account with him.

"P.S. To-morrow night I am going to see 'Otello,' an opera from our 'Oth.e.l.lo,' and one of Rossini's best, it is said. It will be curious to see in Venice the Venetian story itself represented, besides to discover what they will make of Shakspeare in music."

[Footnote 15: On the birth of this child, who was christened John William Rizzo, Lord Byron wrote the four following lines, which are in no other respect remarkable than that they were thought worthy of being metrically translated into no less than ten different languages; namely, Greek, Latin, Italian (also in the Venetian dialect), German, French, Spanish, Illyrian, Hebrew, Armenian, and Samaritan:--

"His father's sense, his mother's grace In him, I hope, will always fit so; With (still to keep him in good case) The health and appet.i.te of Rizzo."

The original lines, with the different versions just mentioned, were printed, in a small neat volume (which now lies before me), in the seminary of Padua.]

LETTER 309. TO MR. HOPPNER.