(Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron - Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6)

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[Footnote 10: Here follow some details respecting his friend Charles S.
Matthews, which have already been given in the first volume of this
work.]

[Footnote 11: The ghost-story, in which he here professes such serious
belief, forms the subject of one of Mr. Rogers's beautiful Italian
sketches.--See "Italy," p. 43. edit. 1830.]

* * * * *

LETTER 399. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, 9bre 18 deg., 1820.

"The death of Waite is a shock to the--teeth, as well as to the
feelings of all who knew him. Good God, he and _Blake_[12] both
gone! I left them both in the most robust health, and little
thought of the national loss in so short a time as five years. They
were both as much superior to Wellington in rational greatness, as
he who preserves the hair and the teeth is preferable to 'the
bloody blustering warrior' who gains a name by breaking heads and
knocking out grinders. Who succeeds him? Where is tooth-powder
_mild_ and yet efficacious--where is _tincture_--where are clearing
_roots_ and _brushes_ now to be obtained? Pray obtain what
information you can upon these '_Tusc_ulan questions.' My jaws ache
to think on't. Poor fellows! I anticipated seeing both again; and
yet they are gone to that place where both teeth and hair last
longer than they do in this life. I have seen a thousand graves
opened, and always perceived, that whatever was gone, the _teeth_
and _hair_ remained with those who had died with them. Is not this
odd? They go the very first things in _youth_, and yet last the
longest in the dust, if people will but _die_ to preserve them! It
is a queer life, and a queer death, that of mortals.

"I knew that Waite had married, but little thought that the other
decease was so soon to overtake him. Then he was such a delight,
such a coxcomb, such a jewel of a man! There is a tailor at Bologna
so like him! and also at the top of his profession. Do not neglect
this commission. _Who_ or _what_ can replace him? What says the
public?

"I remand you the Preface. _Don't forget_ that the Italian extract
from the Chronicle must _be translated_. With regard to what you
say of retouching the Juans and the Hints, it is all very well; but
I can't _furbish_. I am like the tiger (in poesy), if I miss the
first spring, I go growling back to my jungle. There is no second;
I can't correct; I can't, and I won't. Nobody ever succeeds in it,
great or small. Tasso remade the whole of his Jerusalem; but who
ever reads that version? all the world goes to the first. Pope
_added_ to 'The Rape of the Lock,' but did not reduce it. You must
take my things as they happen to be. If they are not likely to
suit, reduce their _estimate_ accordingly. I would rather give them
away than hack and hew them. I don't say that you are not right: I
merely repeat that I cannot better them. I must 'either make a
spoon, or spoil a horn;' and there's an end.

"Yours.

"P.S. Of the praises of that little * * * Keats. I shall observe as
Johnson did when Sheridan the actor got a _pension_: 'What! has
_he_ got a pension? Then it is time that I should give up _mine_!'
Nobody could be prouder of the praise of the Edinburgh than I was,
or more alive to their censure, as I showed in English Bards and
Scotch Reviewers. At present _all the men_ they have ever praised
are degraded by that insane article. Why don't they review and
praise 'Solomon's Guide to Health?' it is better sense and as much
poetry as Johnny Keats.

"Bowles must be _bowled_ down. 'Tis a sad match at cricket if he
can get any notches at Pope's expense. If he once get into
'_Lord's_ ground,' (to continue the pun, because it is foolish,) I
think I could beat him in one innings. You did not know, perhaps,
that I was once (_not metaphorically_, but _really_,) a good
cricketer, particularly in _batting_, and I played in the Harrow
match against the Etonians in 1805, gaining more notches (as one of
our chosen eleven) than any, except Lord Ipswich and Brookman, on
our side."

[Footnote 12: A celebrated hair-dresser.]

* * * * *

LETTER 400. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, 9bre 23 deg., 1820.

"The 'Hints,' Hobhouse says, will require a good deal of slashing
to suit the times, which will be a work of time, for I don't feel
at all laborious just now. Whatever effect they are to have would
perhaps be greater in a separate form, and they also must have my
name to them. Now, if you publish them in the same volume with Don
Juan, they identify Don Juan as mine, which I don't think worth a
Chancery suit about my daughter's guardianship, as in your present
code a facetious poem is sufficient to take away a man's rights
over his family.

"Of the state of things here it would be difficult and not very
prudent to speak at large, the Huns opening all letters. I wonder
if they can read them when they have opened them; if so, they may
see, in my MOST LEGIBLE HAND, THAT I THINK THEM DAMNED SCOUNDRELS
AND BARBARIANS, and THEIR EMPEROR a FOOL, and themselves more fools
than he; all which they may send to Vienna for any thing I care.
They have got themselves masters of the Papal police, and are
bullying away; but some day or other they will pay for all: it may
not be very soon, because these unhappy Italians have no
consistency among themselves; but I suppose that Providence will
get tired of them at last, * *

"Yours," &c.

* * * * *

LETTER 401. TO MR. MOORE.

"Ravenna, Dec. 9. 1820.

"Besides this letter, you will receive _three_ packets, containing,
in all, 18 more sheets of Memoranda, which, I fear, will cost you
more in postage than they will ever produce by being printed in the
next century. Instead of waiting so long, if you could make any
thing of them _now_ in the way of _reversion_, (that is, after _my_
death,) I should be very glad,--as, with all due regard to your
progeny, I prefer you to your grandchildren. Would not Longman or
Murray advance you a certain sum _now_, pledging themselves _not_
to have them published till after _my_ decease, think you?--and
what say you?

"Over these latter sheets I would leave you a discretionary
power[13]; because they contain, perhaps, a thing or two which is
too sincere for the public. If I consent to your disposing of their
reversion _now_, where would be the harm? Tastes may change. I
would, in your case, make my essay to dispose of them, _not_
publish, now; and if _you_ (as is most likely) survive me, add what
you please from your own knowledge; and, _above all, contradict_
any thing, if I have _mis_-stated; for my first object is the
truth, even at my own expense.

"I have some knowledge of your countryman Muley Moloch, the
lecturer. He wrote to me several letters upon Christianity, to
convert me: and, if I had not been a Christian already, I should
probably have been now, in consequence. I thought there was
something of wild talent in him, mixed with a due leaven of
absurdity,--as there must be in all talent, let loose upon the
world, without a martingale.

"The ministers seem still to persecute the Queen * * * but they
_won't_ go out, the sons of b----es. Damn Reform--I want a
place--what say you? You must applaud the honesty of the
declaration, whatever you may think of the intention.

"I have quantities of paper in England, original and
translated--tragedy, &c. &c. and am now copying out a fifth Canto
of Don Juan, 149 stanzas. So that there will be near _three thin_
Albemarle, or _two thick_ volumes of all sorts of my Muses. I mean
to plunge thick, too, into the contest upon Pope, and to lay about
me like a dragon till I make manure of * * * for the top of
Parnassus.

"These rogues are right--_we do_ laugh at _t'others_--eh?--don't
we?[14] You shall see--you shall see what things I'll say, an' it
pleases Providence to leave us leisure. But in these parts they are
all going to war; and there is to be liberty, and a row, and a
constitution--when they can get them. But I won't talk politics--it
is low. Let us talk of the Queen, and her bath, and her
bottle--that's the only _motley_ nowadays.

"If there are any acquaintances of mine, salute them. The priests
here are trying to persecute me,--but no matter. Yours," &c.

[Footnote 13: The power here meant is that of omitting passages that
might be thought objectionable. He afterwards gave me this, as well as
every other right, over the whole of the manuscript.]

[Footnote 14: He here alludes to a humorous article, of which I had told
him, in Blackwood's Magazine, where the poets of the day were all
grouped together in a variety of fantastic shapes, with "Lord Byron and
little Moore laughing behind, as if they would split," at the rest of
the fraternity.]

* * * * *

LETTER 402. TO MR. MOORE.

"Ravenna, Dec. 9. 1820.

"I open my letter to tell you a fact, which will show the state of
this country better than I can. The commandant of the troops is
_now_ lying _dead_ in my house. He was shot at a little past eight
o'clock, about two hundred paces from my door. I was putting on my
great-coat to visit Madame la Contessa G. when I heard the shot. On
coming into the hall, I found all my servants on the balcony,
exclaiming that a man was murdered. I immediately ran down, calling
on Tita (the bravest of them) to follow me. The rest wanted to
hinder us from going, as it is the custom for every body here, it
seems, to run away from 'the stricken deer.'

"However, down we ran, and found him lying on his back, almost, if
not quite, dead, with five wounds, one in the heart, two in the
stomach, one in the finger, and the other in the arm. Some soldiers
cocked their guns, and wanted to hinder me from passing. However,
we passed, and I found Diego, the adjutant, crying over him like a
child--a surgeon, who said nothing of his profession--a priest,
sobbing a frightened prayer--and the commandant, all this time, on
his back, on the hard, cold pavement, without light or assistance,
or any thing around him but confusion and dismay.

"As nobody could, or would, do any thing but howl and pray, and as
no one would stir a finger to move him, for fear of consequences, I
lost my patience--made my servant and a couple of the mob take up
the body--sent off two soldiers to the guard--despatched Diego to
the Cardinal with the news, and had the commandant carried up
stairs into my own quarter. But it was too late, he was gone--not
at all disfigured--bled inwardly--not above an ounce or two came
out.

"I had him partly stripped--made the surgeon examine him, and
examined him myself. He had been shot by cut balls, or slugs. I
felt one of the slugs, which had gone through him, all but the
skin. Every body conjectures why he was killed, but no one knows
how. The gun was found close by him--an old gun, half filed down.

"He only said, 'O Dio!' and 'Gesu!' two or three times, and
appeared to have suffered little. Poor fellow! he was a brave
officer, but had made himself much disliked by the people. I knew
him personally, and had met him often at conversazioni and
elsewhere. My house is full of soldiers, dragoons, doctors,
priests, and all kinds of persons,--though I have now cleared it,
and clapt sentinels at the doors. To-morrow the body is to be
moved. The town is in the greatest confusion, as you may suppose.

"You are to know that, if I had not had the body moved, they would
have left him there till morning in the street, for fear of
consequences. I would not choose to let even a dog die in such a
manner, without succour--and, as for consequences, I care for none
in a duty. Yours, &c.

"P.S. The lieutenant on duty by the body is smoking his pipe with
great composure.--A queer people this."

* * * * *

LETTER 403. TO MR. MOORE.

"Ravenna, Dec. 25. 1820.

"You will or ought to have received the packet and letters which I
remitted to your address a fortnight ago (or it may be more days),
and I shall be glad of an answer, as, in these times and places,
packets per post are in some risk of not reaching their
destination.

"I have been thinking of a project for you and me, in case we both
get to London again, which (if a Neapolitan war don't suscitate)
may be calculated as possible for one of us about the spring of
1821. I presume that you, too, will be back by that time, or never;
but on that you will give me some index. The project, then, is for
you and me to set up jointly a _newspaper_--nothing more nor
less--weekly, or so, with some improvement or modifications upon
the plan of the present scoundrels, who degrade that
department,--but a _newspaper_, which we will edite in due form,
and, nevertheless, with some attention.

"There must always be in it a piece of poesy from one or other of
us _two_, leaving room, however, for such dilettanti rhymers as may
be deemed worthy of appearing in the same column; but _this_ must
be a _sine qua non_; and also as much prose as we can compass. We
will take an _office_--our names _not_ announced, but
suspected--and, by the blessing of Providence, give the age some
new lights upon policy, poesy, biography, criticism, morality,
theology, and all other _ism_, _ality_, and _ology_ whatsoever.

"Why, man, if we were to take to this in good earnest, your debts
would be paid off in a twelvemonth, and by dint of a little
diligence and practice, I doubt not that we could distance the
common-place blackguards, who have so long disgraced common sense
and the common reader. They have no merit but practice and
impudence, both of which we may acquire; and, as for talent and
culture, the devil's in't if such proofs as we have given of both
can't furnish out something better than the 'funeral baked meats'
which have coldly set forth the breakfast table of all Great
Britain for so many years. Now, what think you? Let me know; and
recollect that, if we take to such an enterprise, we must do so in
good earnest. Here is a hint,--do you make it a plan. We will
modify it into as literary and classical a concern as you please,
only let us put out our powers upon it, and it will most likely
succeed. But you must _live_ in London, and I also, to bring it to
bear, and _we must keep it a secret_.

"As for the living in London, I would make that not difficult to
you (if you would allow me), until we could see whether one means
or other (the success of the plan, for instance) would not make it
quite easy for you, as well as your family; and, in any case, we
should have some fun, composing, correcting, supposing, inspecting,
and supping together over our lucubrations. If you think this worth
a thought, let me know, and I will begin to lay in a small literary
capital of composition for the occasion.

"Yours ever affectionately,

"B.

"P.S. If you thought of a middle plan between a _Spectator_ and a
newspaper, why not?--only not on a _Sunday_. Not that Sunday is not
an excellent day, but it is engaged already. We will call it the
'Tenda Rossa,' the name Tassoni gave an answer of his in a
controversy, in allusion to the delicate hint of Timour the Lame,
to his enemies, by a 'Tenda' of that colour, before he gave battle.
Or we will call it 'Gli,' or 'I Carbonari,' if it so please you--or
any other name full of 'pastime and prodigality,' which you may
prefer. Let me have an answer. I conclude poetically, with the
bellman, 'A merry Christmas to you!'"

* * * * *

The year 1820 was an era signalised, as will be remembered, by the many
efforts of the revolutionary spirit which, at that time, broke forth,
like ill-suppressed fire, throughout the greater part of the South of
Europe. In Italy, Naples had already raised the Constitutional standard,
and her example was fast operating through the whole of that country.
Throughout Romagna, secret societies, under the name of Carbonari, had
been organised, which waited but the word of their chiefs to break out
into open insurrection. We have seen from Lord Byron's Journal in 1814,
what intense interest he took in the last struggles of Revolutionary
France under Napoleon; and his exclamations, "Oh for a
Republic!--'Brutus, thou sleepest!'" show the lengths to which, in
theory at least, his political zeal extended. Since then, he had but
rarely turned his thoughts to politics; the tame, ordinary vicissitude
of public affairs having but little in it to stimulate a mind like his,
whose sympathies nothing short of a crisis seemed worthy to interest.
This the present state of Italy gave every promise of affording him;
and, in addition to the great national cause itself, in which there was
every thing that a lover of liberty, warm from the pages of Petrarch and
Dante, could desire, he had also private ties and regards to enlist him
socially in the contest. The brother of Madame Guiccioli, Count Pietro
Gamba, who had been passing some time at Rome and Naples, was now
returned from his tour; and the friendly sentiments with which,
notwithstanding a natural bias previously in the contrary direction, he
at length learned to regard the noble lover of his sister, cannot better
be described than in the words of his fair relative herself.

"At this time," says Madame Guiccioli, "my beloved brother, Pietro,
returned to Ravenna from Rome and Naples. He had been prejudiced by some
enemies of Lord Byron against his character, and my intimacy with him
afflicted him greatly; nor had my letters succeeded in entirely
destroying the evil impression which Lord Byron's detractors had
produced. No sooner, however, had he seen and known him, than he became
inspired with an interest in his favour, such as could not have been
produced by mere exterior qualities, but was the result only of that
union he saw in him of all that is most great and beautiful, as well in
the heart as mind of man. From that moment every former prejudice
vanished, and the conformity of their opinions and studies contributed
to unite them in a friendship, which only ended with their lives."[15]

The young Gamba, who was, at this time, but twenty years of age, with a
heart full of all those dreams of the regeneration of Italy, which not
only the example of Naples, but the spirit working beneath the surface
all around him, inspired, had, together with his father, who was still
in the prime of life, become enrolled in the secret bands now organising
throughout Romagna, and Lord Byron was, by their intervention, admitted
also among the brotherhood. The following heroic Address to the
Neapolitan Government (written by the noble poet in Italian,[16] and
forwarded, it is thought, by himself to Naples, but intercepted on the
way,) will show how deep, how earnest, and expansive was his zeal in
that great, general cause of Political Freedom, for which he soon after
laid down his life among the marshes of Missolonghi.

"An Englishman, a friend to liberty, having understood that the
Neapolitans permit even foreigners to contribute to the good cause, is
desirous that they should do him the honour of accepting a thousand
louis, which he takes the liberty of offering. Having already, not long
since, been an ocular witness of the despotism of the Barbarians in the
States occupied by them in Italy, he sees, with the enthusiasm natural
to a cultivated man, the generous determination of the Neapolitans to
assert their well-won independence. As a member of the English House of
Peers, he would be a traitor to the principles which placed the reigning
family of England on the throne, if he were not grateful for the noble
lesson so lately given both to people and to kings. The offer which he
desires to make is small in itself, as must always be that presented
from an individual to a nation; but he trusts that it will not be the
last they will receive from his countrymen. His distance from the
frontier, and the feeling of his personal incapacity to contribute
efficaciously to the service of the nation, prevents him from proposing
himself as worthy of the lowest commission, for which experience and
talent might be requisite. But if, as a mere volunteer, his presence
were not a burden to whomsoever he might serve under, he would repair to
whatever place the Neapolitan Government might point out, there to obey
the orders and participate in the dangers of his commanding officer,
without any other motive than that of sharing the destiny of a brave
nation, defending itself against the self-called Holy Alliance, which
but combines the vice of hypocrisy with despotism."[17]

It was during the agitation of this crisis, while surrounded by rumours
and alarms, and expecting, every moment, to be summoned into the field,
that Lord Byron commenced the Journal which I am now about to give; and
which it is impossible to peruse, with the recollection of his former
Diary of 1814 in our minds, without reflecting how wholly different, in
all the circumstances connected with them, were the two periods at which
these records of his passing thoughts were traced. The first he wrote at
a time which may be considered, to use his own words, as "the most
poetical part of his whole life,"--_not_ certainly, in what regarded the
powers of his genius, to which every succeeding year added new force and
range, but in all that may be said to constitute the poetry of
character,--those fresh, unworldly feelings of which, in spite of his
early plunge into experience, he still retained the gloss, and that
ennobling light of imagination, which, with all his professed scorn of
mankind, still followed in the track of his affections, giving a lustre
to every object on which they rested. There was, indeed, in his
misanthropy, as in his sorrows, at that period, to the full as much of
fancy as of reality; and even those gallantries and loves in which he at
the same time entangled himself partook equally, as I have endeavoured
to show, of the same imaginative character. Though brought early under
the dominion of the senses, he had been also early rescued from this
thraldom by, in the first place, the satiety such excesses never fail to
produce, and, at no long interval after, by this series of half-fanciful
attachments which, though in their moral consequences to society,
perhaps, still more mischievous, had the varnish at least of refinement
on the surface, and by the novelty and apparent difficulty that invested
them served to keep alive that illusion of imagination from which such
pursuits derive their sole redeeming charm.

With such a mixture, or rather predominance, of the ideal in his loves,
his hates, and his sorrows, the state of his existence at that period,
animated as it was, and kept buoyant, by such a flow of success, must be
acknowledged, even with every deduction for the unpicturesque
associations of a London life, to have been, in a high degree, poetical,
and to have worn round it altogether a sort of halo of romance, which
the events that followed were but too much calculated to dissipate. By
his marriage, and its results, he was again brought back to some of
those bitter realities of which his youth had had a foretaste. Pecuniary
embarrassment--that ordeal, of all others, the most trying to delicacy
and high-mindedness--now beset him with all the indignities that usually
follow in its train; and he was thus rudely schooled into the advantages
of _possessing_ money, when he had hitherto thought but of the generous
pleasure of _dispensing_ it. No stronger proof, indeed, is wanting of
the effect of such difficulties in tempering down even the most
chivalrous pride, than the necessity to which he found himself reduced
in 1816, not only of departing from his resolution never to profit by
the sale of his works, but of accepting a sum of money, for copyright,
from his publisher, which he had for some time persisted in refusing
for himself, and, in the full sincerity of his generous heart, had
destined for others.

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