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Thomas Moore - Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II

T >> Thomas Moore >> Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II




"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,
would have been obeyed; I should have endeavoured to improve myself
by your censure: judge then if I should 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 comparison 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."[73]

[Footnote 73: The remainder of this letter, it appears, has been lost.]

* * * * *

LETTER 123. TO MR. MOORE.

"June 22. 1813.

"Yesterday I dined in company with '* *, the Epicene,' 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 Anac 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 Visiter?' 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:' but,
nevertheless, no one wishes you more friends, fame, and felicity,
than Yours," &c.

* * * * *

Having relinquished his design of accompanying the Oxfords to Sicily, he
again thought of the East, as will be seen by the following letters, and
proceeded so far in his preparations for the voyage as to purchase of
Love, the jeweller, of Old Bond Street, about a dozen snuff-boxes, as
presents for some of his old Turkish acquaintances.

LETTER 124. TO MR. 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, which, I presume, will make somebody shoot
himself;--as a sermon by Blinkensop, 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. 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? Sunburn me, if you
are not too bad."

* * * * *

LETTER 125. TO MR. 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.F.--but 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.'
Now, what are you doing?--writing, we all hope, for our own sakes.
Remember you must edite 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 fete. 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."

* * * * *

LETTER 126. TO MR. 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 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 D * * s:--she
sung 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. M * * (of indifferent memory) was dining
out the other day, and complaining of the P----e's coldness to his
old wassailers. D * * (a learned Jew) bored him with questions--why
this? and why that? 'Why did the P----e 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 P----e,
sir, * * * * * * * *.'--'And why, sir, did the P----e 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 M * *. Perhaps you may think it
stupid, but, as Goldsmith said about the peas, 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;--but I have dinners with
the Harrowbys, Rogers, and Frere and Mackintosh, 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. 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,
and they are for the _Towns-end_ (_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 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."

* * * * *

LETTER 127. TO MR. MOORE.

"July 27. 1813.

"When you next imitate the style of 'Tacitus,' pray add, 'de
moribus Germanorum;'--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; 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."

* * * * *

LETTER 128. TO MR. 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 and Rogers this
evening. I have a little spite against R., and will shed his 'Clary
wines pottle-deep.' 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."

* * * * *

He had, with the intention of going to Greece, applied to Mr. Croker,
the Secretary of the Admiralty, to procure him a passage on board a
king's ship to the Mediterranean; and, at the request of this gentleman,
Captain Carlton, of the Boyne, who was just then ordered to reinforce
Sir Edward Pellew, consented to receive Lord Byron into his cabin for
the voyage. To the letter announcing this offer, the following is the
reply.

LETTER 129. TO MR. CROKER.

"Bt. Str., August 2. 1813.

"Dear Sir,

"I was honoured with your unexpected[74] 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 74: He calls the letter of Mr. Croker "unexpected," because,
in their previous correspondence and interviews on the subject, that
gentleman had not been able to hold out so early a prospect of a
passage, nor one which was likely to be so agreeable in point of
society.]

* * * * *

So early as the autumn of this year, a fifth edition of The Giaour was
required; and again his fancy teemed with fresh materials for its pages.
The verses commencing "The browsing camels' bells are tinkling," and the
four pages that follow the line, "Yes, love indeed is light from
heaven," were all added at this time. Nor had the overflowings of his
mind even yet ceased, as I find in the poem, as it exists at present,
still further additions,--and, among them, those four brilliant lines,--

"She was a form of life and light,
That, seen, became a part of sight,
And rose, where'er I turn'd mine eye,
The Morning-star of memory!"

The following notes and letters to Mr. Murray, during these outpourings,
will show how irresistible was the impulse under which he vented his
thoughts.

"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."

* * * * *

"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."

* * * * *

LETTER 130. TO MR. MURRAY.

"August 26. 1813.

"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 _o_mission of mine or _com_mission
of your 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 Childe Harold, 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.

"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."

* * * * *

The following refer apparently to a still later edition.

LETTER 131. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Stilton, Oct. 3. 1813.

"I have just recollected an alteration you may make in the proof to
be sent to Aston.--Among the lines on Hassan's Serai, not far from
the beginning, is this--

"Unmeet for Solitude to share.

Now to share implies more than _one_, and Solitude is a single
gentleman; it must be thus--

"For many a gilded chamber's there,
Which Solitude might well forbear;

and so on.--My address is Aston Hall, Rotherham.

"Will you adopt this correction? and pray accept a Stilton cheese
from me for your trouble. Ever yours, B.

"If[75] the old line stands let the other run thus--

"Nor there will weary traveller halt,
To bless the sacred bread and salt.

"_Note_.--To partake of food--to break bread and taste salt with
your host, ensures the safety of the guest; even though an enemy,
his person from that moment becomes sacred.

"There is another additional note sent yesterday--on the Priest in
the Confessional.

"P.S.--I leave this to your discretion; if any body thinks the old
line a good one or the cheese a bad one, don't accept either. But,
in that case, the word _share_ is repeated soon after in the line--

"To share the master's bread and salt;

and must be altered to--

"To break the master's bread and salt.

This is not so well, though--confound it!"

[Footnote 75: This is written on a separate slip of paper enclosed.]

* * * * *

LETTER 132. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Oct. 12. 1813.

"You must look The Giaour again over carefully; there are a few
lapses, particularly in the last page.--'I _know_ 'twas false; she
could not die;' it was, and ought to be--'I _knew_.' Pray observe
this and similar mistakes.

"I have received and read the British Review. I really think the
writer in most points very right. The only mortifying thing is the
accusation of imitation. _Crabbe_'s passage I never saw[76]; and
Scott I no further meant to follow than in his _lyric_ measure,
which is Gray's, Milton's, and any one's who likes it. The Giaour
is certainly a bad character, but not dangerous; and I think his
fate and his feelings will meet with few proselytes. I shall be
very glad to hear from or of you, when you please; but don't put
yourself out of your way on my account."

[Footnote 76: The passage referred to by the Reviewers is in the poem
entitled "Resentment;" and the following is, I take for granted, the
part which Lord Byron is accused by them of having imitated:--

"Those are like wax--apply them to the fire,
Melting, they take th' impressions you desire;
Easy to mould, and fashion as you please,
And again moulded with an equal ease:
Like smelted iron these the forms retain;
But, once impress'd, will never melt again."
]

* * * * *

LETTER 133. TO MR. 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. Made. de Stael Holstein has
lost one of her young barons, 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, 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 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, _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 shore as in the ship; 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 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.[78] The Giaour is now a thousand and
odd lines. 'Lord Fanny spins a thousand such a day,' eh,
Moore?--thou wilt needs be a wag, but I forgive it. Yours ever,

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