Life of Lord Byron Volume II Part 23

"In a 'mail-coach copy' of the Edinburgh, 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_;--you know he is gone to America to marry some fair one, of whom he has been, for several _quarters, eperdument amoureux_. Seriously--as Winifred Jenkins 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 called _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. One was a peer, the other a friend unt.i.tled, 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, _Scurra_ deceased, lately published. Such a book!--I believe, since Drunken Barnaby's Journal, 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 sh.o.r.e as in the s.h.i.+p; but one like's 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?[77] Sligo is for the North;--a pleasant place, Petersburgh, in September, with one's ears and nose in a m.u.f.f, 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.[78] The Giaour is now a thousand and odd lines. 'Lord f.a.n.n.y spins a thousand such a day,' eh, Moore?--thou wilt needs be a wag, but I forgive it. Yours ever,

"BN.

"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 s.e.x; but the fact is, I am at this moment in a far more serious, and entirely new, sc.r.a.pe 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 la.s.ses) 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 G.o.ds--Hindoo, Scandinavian, and h.e.l.lenic!

"P.S. 2d. There is an excellent review of Grimm's Correspondence and Made. de Stael in this No. of the E.R. 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 d.a.m.ned Lucien Buonaparte will beat us all. I have seen much of his poem in MS., and he really surpa.s.ses every thing beneath Ta.s.so. 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 77: One of his travelling projects appears to have been a visit to Abyssinia:--at least, I have found, among his papers, a letter founded on that supposition, in which the writer entreats of him to procure information concerning "a kingdom of Jews mentioned by Bruce as residing on the mountain of Samen in that country. I have had the honour," he adds, "of some correspondence with the Rev. Dr. Buchanan and the reverend and learned G.S. Faber, on the subject of the existence of this kingdom of Jews, which, if it prove to be a fact, will more clearly elucidate many of the Scripture prophecies; ... and, if Providence favours your Lords.h.i.+p's mission to Abyssinia, an intercourse might be established between England and that country, and the English s.h.i.+ps, according to the Rev. Mr. Faber, might be the princ.i.p.al means of transporting the kingdom of Jews, now in Abyssinia, to Egypt, in the way to their own country, Palestine."]

[Footnote 78:

"A Persian's Heav'n is easily made-- 'Tis but black eyes and lemonade."

LETTER 134. TO MR. 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, &c., 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?'[79]--Do you think 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.[80] 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 sprinkle yourself in detached pieces--beautiful, I allow, and quite _alone_ in our language[81], but still giving us a right to expect a _Shah Nameh_ (is that the name?) as well as gazels. Stick to the East;--the oracle, Stael, told me it was the only poetical policy. The North, South, and West, have all been exhausted; but from the East, we have nothing but S * *'s unsaleables,--and these he has contrived to spoil, by adopting only their most outrageous fictions. His personages don't interest us, and yours will. You will have no compet.i.tor; and, if you had, you ought to be glad of it. The little I have done in that way is merely a 'voice in the wilderness' for you; and if it has had any success, that also will prove that the public are orientalising, and pave the path for you.

"I have been thinking of a story, grafted on the amours of a Peri and a mortal--something like, only more _philanthropical_ than, Cazotte's Diable Amoureux. It would require a good deal of poesy, and tenderness is not my forte. For that, and other reasons, I have given up the idea, and merely suggest it to you, because, in intervals of your greater work, I think it a subject you might make much of.[82] If you want any more books, there is 'Castellan's Moeurs des Ottomans,' the best compendium of the kind I ever met with, in six small tomes. I am really taking a liberty by talking in this style to my 'elders and my betters;'--pardon it, and don't _Rochefoucault_ my motives."

[Footnote 79: The Ode of Horace,

"Natis in usum laet.i.tiae," &c.;

some pa.s.sages of which I told him might be parodied, in allusion to some of his late adventures:

"Quanta laboras in Charybdi!

Digne puer meliore flamma!"

[Footnote 80: In his first edition of The Giaour he had used this word as a trisyllable,--"Bright as the gem of Giamschid,"--but on my remarking to him, upon the authority of Richardson's Persian Dictionary, that this was incorrect, he altered it to "Bright as the ruby of Giamschid." On seeing this, however, I wrote to him, "that, as the comparison of his heroine's eye to a 'ruby' might unluckily call up the idea of its being blood-shot, he had better change the line to "Bright as the jewel of Giamschid;"--which he accordingly did in the following edition.]

[Footnote 81: Having already endeavoured to obviate the charge of vanity, to which I am aware I expose myself by being thus accessory to the publication of eulogies, so warm and so little merited, on myself, I shall here only add, that it will abundantly console me under such a charge, if, in whatever degree the judgment of my n.o.ble friend may be called in question for these praises, he shall, in the same proportion, receive credit for the good-nature and warm-heartedness by which they were dictated.]

[Footnote 82: I had already, singularly enough, antic.i.p.ated this suggestion, by making the daughter of a Peri the heroine of one of my stories, and detailing the love adventures of her aerial parent in an episode. In acquainting Lord Byron with this circ.u.mstance, in my answer to the above letter, I added, "All I ask of your friends.h.i.+p is--not that you will abstain from Peris on my account, for that is too much to ask of human (or, at least, author's) nature--but that, whenever you mean to pay your addresses to any of these aerial ladies, you will, at once, tell me so, frankly and instantly, and let me, at least, have my choice whether I shall be desperate enough to go on, with such a rival, or at once surrender the whole race into your hands, and take, for the future, to Antediluvians with Mr. Montgomery."]

LETTER 135. TO MR. MOORE.

"August--September, I mean--1. 1813.

"I send you, begging your acceptance, Castellan, and three vols. on Turkish Literature, not yet looked into. The _last_ I will thank you to read, extract what you want, and return in a week, as they are lent to me by that brightest of Northern constellations, Mackintosh,--amongst many other kind things into which India has warmed him, for I am sure your _home_ Scotsman is of a less genial description.

"Your Peri, my dear M., is sacred and inviolable; I have no idea of touching the hem of her petticoat. Your affectation of a dislike to encounter me is so flattering, that I begin to think myself a very fine fellow. But you are laughing at me--'Stap my vitals, Tarn!

thou art a very impudent person;' and, if you are not laughing at me, you deserve to be laughed at. Seriously, what on earth can you, or have you, to dread from any poetical flesh breathing? It really puts me out of humour to hear you talk thus.

"'The Giaour' I have added to a good deal; but still in foolish fragments. It contains about 1200 lines, or rather more--now printing. You will allow me to send you a copy. You delight me much by telling me that I am in your good graces, and more particularly as to temper; for, unluckily, I have the reputation of a very bad one. But they say the devil is amusing when pleased, and I must have been more venomous than the old serpent, to have hissed or stung in your company. It may be, and would appear to a third person, an incredible thing, but I know you will believe me when I say, that I am as anxious for your success as one human being can be for another's,--as much as if I had never scribbled a line.

Surely the field of fame is wide enough for all; and if it were not, I would not willingly rob my neighbour of a rood of it. Now you have a pretty property of some thousand acres there, and when you have pa.s.sed your present Inclosure Bill, your income will be doubled, (there's a metaphor, worthy of a Templar, namely, pert and low,) while my wild common is too remote to incommode you, and quite incapable of such fertility. I send you (which return per post, as the printer would say) a curious letter from a friend of mine[83], which will let you into the origin of 'The Giaour.' Write soon. Ever, dear Moore, yours most entirely, &c.

"P.S.--This letter was written to me on account of a _different story_ circulated by some gentlewomen of our acquaintance, a little too close to the text. The part erased contained merely some Turkish names, and circ.u.mstantial evidence of the girl's detection, not very important or decorous."

[Footnote 83: The letter of Lord Sligo, already given.]

LETTER 136. TO MR. MOORE.

"Sept. 5. 1813.

"You need not tie yourself down to a day with Toderini, but send him at your leisure, having anatomised him into such annotations as you want; I do not believe that he has ever undergone that process before, which is the best reason for not sparing him now.

"* * has returned to town, but not yet recovered of the Quarterly.

What fellows these reviewers are! 'these bugs do fear us all.' They made you fight, and me (the milkiest of men) a satirist, and will end by making * * madder than Ajax. I have been reading Memory again, the other day, and Hope together, and retain all my preference of the former. His elegance is really wonderful--there is no such thing as a vulgar line in his book.

"What say you to Buonaparte? Remember, I back him against the field, barring Catalepsy and the Elements. Nay, I almost wish him success against all countries but this,--were it only to choke the Morning Post, and his undutiful father-in-law, with that rebellious b.a.s.t.a.r.d of Scandinavian adoption, Bernadotte. Rogers wants me to go with him on a crusade to the Lakes, and to besiege you on our way.

This last is a great temptation, but I fear it will not be in my power, unless you would go on with one of us somewhere--no matter where. It is too late for Matlock, but we might hit upon some scheme, high life or low,--the last would be much the best for amus.e.m.e.nt. I am so sick of the other, that I quite sigh for a cider-cellar, or a cruise in a smuggler's sloop.

"You cannot wish more than I do that the Fates were a little more accommodating to our parallel lines, which prolong ad infinitum without coming a jot nearer. I almost wish I were married, too--which is saying much. All my friends, seniors and juniors, are in for it, and ask me to be G.o.dfather,--the only species of parentage which, I believe, will ever come to my share in a lawful way; and, in an unlawful one, by the blessing of Lucina, we can never be certain,--though the parish may. I suppose I shall hear from you to-morrow. If not, this goes as it is; but I leave room for a P.S., in case any thing requires an answer. Ever, &c.

"No letter--_n'importe_. R. thinks the Quarterly will be at _me_ this time: if so, it shall be a war of extermination--no _quarter_.

From the youngest devil down to the oldest woman of that review, all shall perish by one fatal lampoon. The ties of nature shall be torn asunder, for I will not even spare my bookseller; nay, if one were to include readers also, all the better."

LETTER 137. TO MR. MOORE.

"September 8. 1813.

"I am sorry to see Tod. again so soon, for fear your scrupulous conscience should have prevented you from fully availing yourself of his spoils. By this coach I send you a copy of that awful pamphlet 'The Giaour,' which has never procured me half so high a compliment as your modest alarm. You will (if inclined in an evening) perceive that I have added much in quant.i.ty,--a circ.u.mstance which may truly diminish your modesty upon the subject.

"You stand certainly in great need of a 'lift' with Mackintosh. My dear Moore, you strangely under-rate yourself. I should conceive it an affectation in any other; but I think I know you well enough to believe that you don't know your own value. However, 'tis a fault that generally mends; and, in your case, it really ought. I have heard him speak of you as highly as your wife could wish; and enough to give all your friends the jaundice.

"Yesterday I had a letter from _Ali Pacha!_ brought by Dr. Holland, who is just returned from Albania. It is in Latin, and begins 'Excellentissime _nec non_ Carissime,' and ends about a gun he wants made for him;--it is signed 'Ali Vizir.' What do you think he has been about? H. tells me that, last spring, he took a hostile town, where, forty-two years ago, his mother and sisters were treated as Miss Cunigunde was by the Bulgarian cavalry. He takes the town, selects all the survivors of this exploit--children, grandchildren, &c. to the tune of six hundred, and has them shot before his face. Recollect, he spared the rest of the city, and confined himself to the Tarquin pedigree,--which is more than I would. So much for 'dearest friend.'"