Thomas Moore - Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II

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"Now, my dear M., the effect must have been from your words, and
certainly not my music. I merely mention this foolish story to show
you how much I am indebted to you for even your pastimes. A man
may praise and praise, but no one recollects but that which
pleases--at least, in composition. Though I think no one equal to
you in that department, or in satire,--and surely no one was ever
so popular in both,--I certainly am of opinion that you have not
yet done all _you_ can do, though more than enough for any one
else. I want, and the world expects, a longer work from you; and I
see in you what I never saw in poet before, a strange diffidence of
your own powers, which I cannot account for, and which must be
unaccountable, when a _Cossac_ like me can appal a _cuirassier_.
Your story I did not, could not, know,--I thought only of a Peri. I
wish you had confided in me, not for your sake, but mine, and to
prevent the world from losing a much better poem than my own, but
which, I yet hope, this _clashing_ will not even now deprive them
of.[87] Mine is the work of a week, written, _why_ I have partly
told you, and partly I cannot tell you by letter--some day I will.

"Go on--I shall really be very unhappy if I at all interfere with
you. The success of mine is yet problematical; though the public
will probably purchase a certain quantity, on the presumption of
their own propensity for 'The Giaour' and such 'horrid mysteries.'
The only advantage I have is being on the spot; and that merely
amounts to saving me the trouble of turning over books which I had
better read again. If _your chamber_ was furnished in the same way,
you have no need to _go there_ to describe--I mean only as to
_accuracy_--because I drew it from recollection.

"This last thing of mine _may_ have the same fate, and I assure you
I have great doubts about it. But, even if not, its little day will
be over before you are ready and willing. Come out--'screw your
courage to the sticking-place.' Except the Post Bag (and surely you
cannot complain of a want of success there), you have not been
_regularly_ out for some years. No man stands higher,--whatever you
may think on a rainy day, in your provincial retreat. 'Aucun homme,
dans aucune langue, n'a ete, peut-etre, plus completement le poete
du coeur et le poete des femmes. Les critiques lui reprochent de
n'avoir represente le monde ni tel qu'il est, ni tel qu'il doit
etre; _mais les femmes repondent qu'il l'a represente tel qu'elles
le desirent_.'--I should have thought Sismondi had written this for
you instead of Metastasio.

"Write to me, and tell me of _yourself_. Do you remember what
Rousseau said to some one--'Have we quarrelled? you have talked to
me often, and never once mentioned yourself.'

"P.S.--The last sentence is an indirect apology for my own
egotism,--but I believe in letters it is allowed. I wish it was
_mutual_. I have met with an odd reflection in Grimm; it shall
not--at least the bad part--be applied to you or me, though _one_
of us has certainly an indifferent name--but this it is:--'Many
people have the reputation of being wicked, with whom we should be
too happy to pass our lives.' I need not add it is a woman's
saying--a Mademoiselle de Sommery's."

[Footnote 87: Among the stories intended to be introduced into Lalla
Rookh, which I had begun, but, from various causes, never finished,
there was one which I had made some progress in, at the time of the
appearance of "The Bride," and which, on reading that poem, I found to
contain such singular coincidences with it, not only in locality and
costume, but in plot and characters, that I immediately gave up my story
altogether, and began another on an entirely new subject, the
Fire-worshippers. To this circumstance, which I immediately communicated
to him, Lord Byron alludes in this letter. In my hero (to whom I had
even given the name of "Zelim," and who was a descendant of Ali,
outlawed, with all his followers, by the reigning Caliph) it was my
intention to shadow out, as I did afterwards in another form, the
national cause of Ireland. To quote the words of my letter to Lord Byron
on the subject:--"I chose this story because one writes best about what
one feels most, and I thought the parallel with Ireland would enable me
to infuse some vigour into my hero's character. But to aim at vigour and
strong feeling after _you_ is hopeless;--that region 'was made for
Caesar.'"]

* * * * *

At this time Lord Byron commenced a Journal, or Diary, from the pages of
which I have already selected a few extracts, and of which I shall now
lay as much more as is producible before the reader. Employed
chiefly,--as such a record, from its nature, must be,--about persons
still living, and occurrences still recent, it would be impossible, of
course, to submit it to the public eye, without the omission of some
portion of its contents, and unluckily, too, of that very portion which,
from its reference to the secret pursuits and feelings of the writer,
would the most livelily pique and gratify the curiosity of the reader.
Enough, however, will, I trust, still remain, even after all this
necessary winnowing, to enlarge still further the view we have here
opened into the interior of the poet's life and habits, and to indulge
harmlessly that taste, as general as it is natural, which leads us to
contemplate with pleasure a great mind in its undress, and to rejoice in
the discovery, so consoling to human pride, that even the mightiest, in
their moments of ease and weakness, resemble ourselves.[88]

[Footnote 88: "C'est surtout aux hommes qui sont hors de toute
comparaison par le genie qu'on aime a ressembler au moins par les
foiblesses."--GINGUENE.]

"JOURNAL, BEGUN NOVEMBER 14. 1813.

"If this had been begun ten years ago, and faithfully kept!!!--heigho!
there are too many things I wish never to have remembered, as it is.
Well,--have had my share of what are called the pleasures of this life,
and have seen more of the European and Asiatic world than I have made a
good use of. They say 'Virtue is its own reward,'--it certainly should
be paid well for its trouble. At five-and-twenty, when the better part
of life is over, one should be _something_;--and what am I? nothing but
five-and-twenty--and the odd months. What have I seen? the same man all
over the world,--ay, and woman too. Give _me_ a Mussulman who never asks
questions, and a she of the same race who saves one the trouble of
putting them. But for this same plague--yellow fever--and Newstead
delay, I should have been by this time a second time close to the
Euxine. If I can overcome the last, I don't so much mind your
pestilence; and, at any rate, the spring shall see me there,--provided I
neither marry myself, nor unmarry any one else in the interval. I wish
one was--I don't know what I wish. It is odd I never set myself
seriously to wishing without attaining it--and repenting. I begin to
believe with the good old Magi, that one should only pray for the
nation, and not for the individual;--but, on my principle, this would
not be very patriotic.

"No more reflections--Let me see--last night I finished 'Zuleika,' my
second Turkish Tale. I believe the composition of it kept me alive--for
it was written to drive my thoughts from the recollection of--

'Dear sacred name, rest ever unreveal'd.'

At least, even here, my hand would tremble to write it. This afternoon I
have burnt the scenes of my commenced comedy. I have some idea of
expectorating a romance, or rather a tale in prose;--but what romance
could equal the events--

'quaeque ipse ...vidi,
Et quorum pars magna fui.'

"To-day Henry Byron called on me with my little cousin Eliza. She will
grow up a beauty and a plague; but, in the mean time, it is the
prettiest child! dark eyes and eyelashes, black and long as the wing of
a raven. I think she is prettier even than my niece, Georgina,--yet I
don't like to think so neither; and though older, she is not so clever.

"Dallas called before I was up, so we did not meet. Lewis, too,--who
seems out of humour with every thing. What can be the matter? he is not
married--has he lost his own mistress, or any other person's wife?
Hodgson, too, came. He is going to be married, and he is the kind of man
who will be the happier. He has talent, cheerfulness, every thing that
can make him a pleasing companion; and his intended is handsome and
young, and all that. But I never see any one much improved by matrimony.
All my coupled contemporaries are bald and discontented. W. and S. have
both lost their hair and good humour; and the last of the two had a good
deal to lose. But it don't much signify what falls _off_ a man's temples
in that state.

"Mem. I must get a toy to-morrow, for Eliza, and send the device for the
seals of myself and * * * * * Mem. too, to call on the Stael and Lady
Holland to-morrow, and on * *, who has advised me (without seeing it, by
the by) not to publish 'Zuleika;' I believe he is right, but experience
might have taught him that not to print is _physically_ impossible. No
one has seen it but Hodgson and Mr. Gifford. I never in my life _read_ a
composition, save to Hodgson, as he pays me in kind. It is a horrible
thing to do too frequently;--better print, and they who like may read,
and if they don't like, you have the satisfaction of knowing that they
have, at least, _purchased_ the right of saying so.

"I have declined presenting the Debtors' Petition, being sick of
parliamentary mummeries. I have spoken thrice; but I doubt my ever
becoming an orator. My first was liked; the second and third--I don't
know whether they succeeded or not. I have never yet set to it _con
amore_;--one must have some excuse to one's self for laziness, or
inability, or both, and this is mine. 'Company, villanous company, hath
been the spoil of me;'--and then, I have 'drunk medicines,' not to make
me love others, but certainly enough to hate myself.

"Two nights ago I saw the tigers sup at Exeter 'Change. Except Veli
Pacha's lion in the Morea,--who followed the Arab keeper like a
dog,--the fondness of the hyaena for her keeper amused me most. Such a
conversazione!--There was a 'hippopotamus,' like Lord L----l in the
face; and the 'Ursine Sloth' hath the very voice and manner of my
valet--but the tiger talked too much. The elephant took and gave me my
money again--took off my hat--opened a door--_trunked_ a whip--and
behaved so well, that I wish he was my butler. The handsomest animal on
earth is one of the panthers; but the poor antelopes were dead. I should
hate to see one _here_:--the sight of the _camel_ made me pine again for
Asia Minor. 'Oh quando te aspiciam?'

"November 16.

"Went last night with Lewis to see the first of Antony and Cleopatra. It
was admirably got up, and well acted--a salad of Shakspeare and Dryden,
Cleopatra strikes me as the epitome of her sex--fond, lively, sad,
tender, teasing, humble, haughty, beautiful, the devil!--coquettish to
the last, as well with the 'asp' as with Antony. After doing all she can
to persuade him that--but why do they abuse him for cutting off that
poltroon Cicero's head? Did not Tully tell Brutus it was a pity to have
spared Antony? and did he not speak the Philippics? and are not '_words
things_?' and such '_words_' very pestilent '_things_' too? If he had
had a hundred heads, they deserved (from Antony) a rostrum (his was
stuck up there) apiece--though, after all, he might as well have
pardoned him, for the credit of the thing. But to resume--Cleopatra,
after securing him, says, 'yet go--it is your interest,' &c.--how like
the sex! and the questions about Octavia--it is woman all over.

"To-day received Lord Jersey's invitation to Middleton--to travel sixty
miles to meet Madame * *! I once travelled three thousand to get among
silent people; and this same lady writes octavos, and _talks_ folios. I
have read her books--like most of them, and delight in the last; so I
won't hear it, as well as read.

"Read Burns to-day. What would he have been, if a patrician? We should
have had more polish--less force--just as much verse, but no
immortality--a divorce and a duel or two, the which had he survived, as
his potations must have been less spirituous, he might have lived as
long as Sheridan, and outlived as much as poor Brinsley. What a wreck is
that man! and all from bad pilotage; for no one had ever better gales,
though now and then a little too squally. Poor dear Sherry! I shall
never forget the day he and Rogers and Moore and I passed together; when
_he_ talked, and _we_ listened, without one yawn, from six till one in
the morning.

"Got my seals * * * * * * Have again forgot a plaything for _ma petite
cousine_ Eliza; but I must send for it to-morrow. I hope Harry will
bring her to me. I sent Lord Holland the proofs of the last 'Giaour,'
and 'The Bride of Abydos.' He won't like the latter, and I don't think
that I shall long. It was written in four nights to distract my dreams
from * *. Were it not thus, it had never been composed; and had I not
done something at that time, I must have gone mad, by eating my own
heart,--bitter diet!--Hodgson likes it better than 'The Giaour,' but
nobody else will,--and he never liked the Fragment. I am sure, had it
not been for Murray, _that_ would never have been published, though the
circumstances which are the groundwork make it * * * heigh-ho!

"To-night I saw both the sisters of * *; my God! the youngest so like! I
thought I should have sprung across the house, and am so glad no one was
with me in Lady H.'s box. I hate those likenesses--the mock-bird, but
not the nightingale--so like as to remind, so different as to be
painful.[89] One quarrels equally with the points of resemblance and of
distinction.

[Footnote 89:

"Earth holds no other like to thee,
Or, if it doth, in vain for me:
For worlds I dare not view the dame
Resembling thee, yet not the same."
THE GIAOUR.
]

"Nov. 17.

"No letter from * *; but I must not complain. The respectable Job says,
'Why should a _living man_ complain?' I really don't know, except it be
that a _dead man_ can't; and he, the said patriarch, _did_ complain,
nevertheless, till his friends were tired and his wife recommended that
pious prologue, 'Curse--and die;' the only time, I suppose, when but
little relief is to be found in swearing. I have had a most kind letter
from Lord Holland on 'The Bride of Abydos,' which he likes, and so does
Lady H. This is very good-natured in both, from whom I don't deserve any
quarter. Yet I _did_ think, at the time, that my cause of enmity
proceeded from Holland House, and am glad I was wrong, and wish I had
not been in such a hurry with that confounded satire, of which I would
suppress even the memory;--but people, now they can't get it, make a
fuss, I verily believe, out of contradiction.

"George Ellis and Murray have been talking something about Scott and me,
George pro Scoto,--and very right too. If they want to depose him, I
only wish they would not set me up as a competitor. Even if I had my
choice, I would rather be the Earl of Warwick than all the _kings_ he
ever made! Jeffrey and Gifford I take to be the monarch-makers in poetry
and prose. The British Critic, in their Rokeby Review, have presupposed
a comparison, which I am sure my friends never thought of, and W.
Scott's subjects are injudicious in descending to. I like the man--and
admire his works to what Mr. Braham calls _Entusymusy_. All such stuff
can only vex him, and do me no good. Many hate his politics--(I hate all
politics); and, here, a man's politics are like the Greek _soul_--an
[Greek: eidolon], besides God knows what _other soul_; but their
estimate of the two generally go together.

"Harry has not brought _ma petite cousine_. I want us to go to the play
together;--she has been but once. Another short note from Jersey,
inviting Rogers and me on the 23d. I must see my agent to-night. I
wonder when that Newstead business will be finished. It cost me more
than words to part with it--and to _have_ parted with it! What matters
it what I do? or what becomes of me?--but let me remember Job's saying,
and console myself with being 'a living man.'

"I wish I could settle to reading again,--my life is monotonous, and yet
desultory. I take up books, and fling them down again. I began a comedy,
and burnt it because the scene ran into _reality_;--a novel, for the
same reason. In rhyme, I can keep more away from facts; but the thought
always runs through, through ... yes, yes, through. I have had a letter
from Lady Melbourne--the best friend I ever had in my life, and the
cleverest of women.

"Not a word from * *. Have they set out from * *? or has my last
precious epistle fallen into the lion's jaws? If so--and this silence
looks suspicious, I must clap on my 'musty morion' and 'hold out my
iron.' I am out of practice--but I won't begin again at Manton's now.
Besides, I would not return his shot. I was once a famous
wafer-splitter; but then the bullies of society made it necessary. Ever
since I began to feel that I had a bad cause to support, I have left off
the exercise.

"What strange tidings from that Anakim of anarchy--Buonaparte! Ever
since I defended my bust of him at Harrow against the rascally
time-servers, when the war broke out in 1803, he has been a 'Heros de
Roman' of mine--on the Continent; I don't want him here. But I don't
like those same flights--leaving of armies, &c. &c. I am sure when I
fought for his bust at school, I did not think he would run away from
himself. But I should not wonder if he banged them yet. To be beat by
men would be something; but by three stupid, legitimate-old-dynasty
boobies of regular-bred sovereigns--O-hone-a-rie!--O-hone-a-rie! It must
be, as Cobbett says, his marriage with the thick-lipped and thick-headed
_Autrichienne_ brood. He had better have kept to her who was kept by
Barras. I never knew any good come of your young wife, and legal
espousals, to any but your 'sober-blooded boy' who 'eats fish' and
drinketh 'no sack.' Had he not the whole opera? all Paris? all France?
But a mistress is just as perplexing--that is, _one_--two or more are
manageable by division.

"I have begun, or had begun, a song, and flung it into the fire. It was
in remembrance of Mary Duff, my first of flames, before most people
begin to burn. I wonder what the devil is the matter with me! I can do
nothing, and--fortunately there is nothing to do. It has lately been in
my power to make two persons (and their connections) comfortable, _pro
tempore_, and one happy, _ex tempore_,--I rejoice in the last
particularly, as it is an excellent man[90]. I wish there had been more
inconvenience and less gratification to my self-love in it, for then
there had been more merit. We are all selfish--and I believe, ye gods of
Epicurus! I believe in Rochefoucault about _men_, and in Lucretius (not
Busby's translation) about yourselves. Your bard has made you very
_nonchalant_ and blest; but as he has excused _us_ from damnation, I
don't envy you your blessedness _much_--a little, to be sure. I
remember, last year, * * said to me, at * *, 'Have we not passed our
last month like the gods of Lucretius?' And so we had. She is an adept
in the text of the original (which I like too); and when that booby Bus.
sent his translating prospectus, she subscribed. But, the devil
prompting him to add a specimen, she transmitted him a subsequent
answer, saying, that 'after perusing it, her conscience would not permit
her to allow her name to remain on the list of subscribblers.' Last
night, at Lord H.'s--Mackintosh, the Ossulstones, Puysegur, &c. there--I
was trying to recollect a quotation (as _I_ think) of Stael's, from some
Teutonic sophist about architecture. 'Architecture,' says this
Macoronico Tedescho, 'reminds me of frozen music.' It is somewhere--but
where?--the demon of perplexity must know and won't tell. I asked M.,
and he said it was not in her: but P----r said it must be _hers_, it was
so _like_. H. laughed, as he does at all 'De l'Allemagne,'--in which,
however, I think he goes a little too far. B., I hear, condemns it too.
But there are fine passages;--and, after all, what is a work--any--or
every work--but a desert with fountains, and, perhaps, a grove or two,
every day's journey? To be sure, in Madame, what we often mistake, and
'pant for,' as the 'cooling stream,' turns out to be the '_mirage_'
(critice _verbiage_); but we do, at last, get to something like the
temple of Jove Ammon, and then the waste we have passed is only
remembered to gladden the contrast.

"Called on C * *, to explain * * *. She is very beautiful, to my taste,
at least; for on coming home from abroad, I recollect being unable to
look at any woman but her--they were so fair, and unmeaning, and
_blonde_. The darkness and regularity of her features reminded me of my
'Jannat al Aden.' But this impression wore off; and now I can look at a
fair woman, without longing for a Houri. She was very good-tempered, and
every thing was explained.

"To-day, great news--'the Dutch have taken Holland,'--which, I suppose,
will be succeeded by the actual explosion of the Thames. Five provinces
have declared for young Stadt, and there will be inundation,
conflagration, constupration, consternation, and every sort of nation
and nations, fighting away, up to their knees, in the damnable quags of
this will-o'-the-wisp abode of Boors. It is said Bernadotte is amongst
them, too; and, as Orange will be there soon, they will have (Crown)
Prince Stork and King Log in their Loggery at the same time. Two to one
on the new dynasty!

"Mr. Murray has offered me one thousand guineas for 'The Giaour' and
'The Bride of Abydos.' I won't--it is too much, though I am strongly
tempted, merely for the _say_ of it. No bad price for a fortnight's (a
week each) what?--the gods know--it was intended to be called poetry.

"I have dined regularly to-day, for the first time since Sunday
last--this being Sabbath, too. All the rest, tea and dry biscuits--six
_per diem_, I wish to God I had not dined now!--It kills me with
heaviness, stupor, and horrible dreams;--and yet it was but a pint of
bucellas, and fish.[91] Meat I never touch,--nor much vegetable diet. I
wish I were in the country, to take exercise,--instead of being obliged
to cool by abstinence, in lieu of it. I should not so much mind a little
accession of flesh,--my bones can well bear it. But the worst is, the
devil always came with it,--till I starved him out,--and I will _not_ be
the slave of _any_ appetite. If I do err, it shall be my heart, at
least, that heralds the way. Oh, my head--how it aches?--the horrors of
digestion! I wonder how Buonaparte's dinner agrees with him?

"Mem. I must write to-morrow to 'Master Shallow, who owes me a thousand
pounds,' and seems, in his letter, afraid I should ask him for
it[92];--as if I would!--I don't want it (just now, at least,) to begin
with; and though I have often wanted that sum, I never asked for the
repayment of 10_l._ in my life--from a friend. His bond is not due this
year, and I told him when it was, I should not enforce it. How often
must he make me say the same thing?

"I am wrong--I did once ask * * * [93] to repay me. But it was under
circumstances that excused me _to him_, and would to any one. I took no
interest, nor required security. He paid me soon,--at least, his
_padre_. My head! I believe it was given me to ache with. Good even.

[Footnote 90: Evidently, Mr. Hodgson.]

[Footnote 91: He had this year so far departed from his strict plan of
diet as to eat fish occasionally.]

[Footnote 92: We have here another instance, in addition to the
munificent aid afforded to Mr. Hodgson, of the generous readiness of the
poet, notwithstanding his own limited means, to make the resources he
possessed available for the assistance of his friends.]

[Footnote 93: Left blank thus in the original.]

"Nov. 22. 1813.

"'Orange Boven!' So the bees have expelled the bear that broke open
their hive. Well,--if we are to have new De Witts and De Ruyters, God
speed the little republic! I should like to see the Hague and the
village of Brock, where they have such primitive habits. Yet, I don't
know,--their canals would cut a poor figure by the memory of the
Bosphorus; and the Zuyder Zee look awkwardly after 'Ak-Denizi.' No
matter,--the bluff burghers, puffing freedom out of their short
tobacco-pipes, might be worth seeing; though I prefer a cigar or a
hooka, with the rose-leaf mixed with the milder herb of the Levant. I
don't know what liberty means,--never having seen it,--but wealth is
power all over the world; and as a shilling performs the duty of a pound
(besides sun and sky and beauty for nothing) in the East,--_that_ is the
country. How I envy Herodes Atticus!--more than Pomponius. And yet a
little _tumult_, now and then, is an agreeable quickener of sensation;
such as a revolution, a battle, or an _aventure_ of any lively
description. I think I rather would have been Bonneval, Ripperda,
Alberoni, Hayreddin, or Horuc Barbarossa, or even Wortley Montague, than
Mahomet himself.

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