1820.] SPREAD OF THE SPANISH REVOLUTION.

III

both let our wits run away with our sentiments; for I am sure that we are both Queen's men at bottom.1 But there is no resisting a clinch-it is so clever! Apropos of that we have a "diphthong" also in this part of the world-not a Greek, but a Spanish one-do you understand me?—which is about to blow up the whole alphabet. It was first pronounced at Naples, and is spreading; but we are nearer the barbarians, who are in great force on the Po, and will pass it, with the first legitimate pretext.

There will be the devil to pay, and there is no saying who will or who will not be set down in his bill. If "honour should come unlooked for "2 to any of your acquaintance, make a Melody of it, that his ghost, like poor Yorick's, may have the satisfaction of being plaintively pitied-or still more nobly commemorated, like "Oh breathe not his name." "13 In case you should not think him worth it, here is a Chant for you instead—

When a man hath no freedom to fight for at home,
Let him combat for that of his neighbours;
Let him think of the glories of Greece and of Rome,
And get knock'd on the head for his labours.

1. Moore was a supporter of the Queen. In his Diary for November 11, 1820 (Memoirs, etc., vol. iii. p. 168), he writes, "The decision of the House of Lords against the Queen occupying "every one's mind and tongue. What a barefaced defiance of all 'law and justice, and what precious scoundrels there are in the "high places of the world!"

2. Henry IV., Part I. act v. sc. 3. Compare Pope's Temple of Fame, line 513.

3. Moore's song, of which the first stanza runs as follows:

"O breathe not his name, let it sleep in the shade,

Where cold and unhonour'd his relics are laid;

Sad, silent, and dark be the tears that we shed,

As the night-dew that falls on the grass o'er his head;"

appeared in No. i. of the Irish Melodies.

To do good to mankind is the chivalrous plan,

And is always as nobly requited;

Then battle for freedom wherever you can,

And, if not shot or hang'd, you'll get knighted.

So you have gotten the letter of "Epigrams"-I am glad of it. You will not be so, for I shall send you more. Here is one I wrote for the endorsement of "the Deed "of Separation" in 1816; but the lawyers objected to it, as superfluous. It was written as we were getting up the signing and sealing. has the original.

Endorsement to the Deed of Separation, in the April of 1816.

A year ago you swore, fond she!

"To love, to honour," and so forth: Such was the vow you pledged to me, And here's exactly what 'tis worth.

For the anniversary of January 2, 1821, I have a small grateful anticipation, which, in case of accident, I add

To Penelope, January 2, 1821.

This day, of all our days, has done

The worst for me and you :

'Tis just six years since we were one,

And five since we were two.

Pray excuse all this nonsense; for I must talk nonsense just now, for fear of wandering to more serious topics, which, in the present state of things, is not safe by a foreign post.

I told you in my last, that I had been going on with

1820.]

GOETHE'S HUSBAND-KILLING STORY.

113

the "Memoirs," and have got as far as twelve more sheets. But I suspect they will be interrupted. In that case I will send them on by post, though I feel remorse at making a friend pay so much for postage, for we can't frank here beyond the frontier.

I shall be glad to hear of the event of the Queen's concern. As to the ultimate effect, the most inevitable one to you and me (if they and we live so long) will be that the Miss Moores and Miss Byrons will present us with a great variety of grandchildren by different fathers.

Pray, where did you get hold of Goethe's Florentine husband-killing story? Upon such matters, in general, I may say, with Beau Clincher, in reply to Errand's wife

"Oh the villain, he hath murdered my poor Timothy ! "Clincher. Damn your Timothy!-I tell you, woman, 'your husband has murdered me—he has carried away "my fine jubilee clothes." 1

So Bowles has been telling a story, too (t is in the Quarterly), about the woods of "Madeira," and so forth. I shall be at Bowles again, if he is not quiet. He misstates, or mistakes, in a point or two. The paper is finished, and so is the letter.

845.-To John Murray.

Yours, etc.

R[avenn]a, 9bre 9°, 1820.

DEAR MORAY,-The talent you approve of is an amiable one, and as you say might prove a national "Service," but unfortunately I must be angry with a man before I draw his real portrait; and I can't deal in "generals," so that I trust never to have provocation

1. Farquhar's Constant Couple, or a Trip to the Jubilee, act iv. sc. I. (For Goethe's story, see his review of Manfred, Appendix II. P. 504.)

VOL. V.

I

enough to make a Gallery. If "the person" had not by many little dirty sneaking traits provoked it, I should have been silent, though I had observed him. follows an alteration. Put

Devil with such delight in damning,

That if at the resurrection

Unto him the free selection

Of his future could be given,

'Twould be rather Hell than Heaven.

Here

That is to say, if these two new lines do not too much lengthen out and weaken the amiability of the original thought and expression. You have a discretionary power about showing: I should think that Croker and D'Israeli would not disrelish a sight of these light little humorous things, and may be indulged now and then.

D'Israeli wrote the article on Spence: I know him by the mark in his mouth. I am glad that the Quarterly has had so much Classical honesty as to insert it: it is good and true.

Hobhouse writes me a facetious letter about my indolence and love of Slumber. It becomes him: he is in active life; he writes pamphlets against Canning, to which he does not put his name; he gets into Newgate and into Parliament-both honourable places of refuge; and he "greatly daring dines" at all the taverns (why don't he set up a tap room at once), and then writes to quiz my laziness.

Why, I do like one or two vices, to be sure; but I can back a horse and fire a pistol "without winking or "blinking" like Major Sturgeon; I have fed at times for

1. In Foote's Mayor of Garratt, act i. sc. I, Major Sturgeon says, "In a week I could shoulder, and rest, and poise, and turn to the "right, and wheel to the left; and in less than a month I could fire "without winking or blinking."

1820.]

A QUARREL BETWEEN FRIENDS.

115

two months together on sheer biscuit and water (without metaphor); I can get over seventy or eighty miles a day riding post, and swim five at a Stretch, taking a piece before and after, as at Venice, in 1818, or at least I could do, and have done it ONCE, and I never was ten minutes in my life over a solitary dinner.

Now, my friend Hobhouse, when we were wayfaring men, used to complain grievously of hard beds and sharp insects, while I slept like a top, and to awaken me with his swearing at them: he used to damn his dinners daily, both quality and cookery and quantity, and reproach me for a sort of "brutal" indifference, as he called it, to these particulars; and now he writes me facetious sneerings because I do not get up early in a morning, when there is no occasion-if there were, he knows that I was always out of bed before him, though it is true that my ablutions detained me longer in dressing than his noble contempt of that "oriental scrupulosity" permitted.

Then he is still sore about "the ballad"-he!! why, he lampooned me at Brighton, in 1808, about Jackson the boxer and bold Webster, etc.: in 1809, he turned the death of my friend E Long into ridicule and rhyme, because his name was susceptible of a pun; and, although he saw that I was distressed at it, before I left England in 1816, he wrote rhymes upon D. Kinnaird, you, and myself; and at Venice he parodied the lines "Though "the day of my destiny's over" in a comfortable quizzing way and now he harps on my ballad about his election! Pray tell him all this, for I will have no underhand work with my "old Cronies." If he can deny the facts, let him. I maintain that he is more carnivorously and carnally sensual than I am, though I am bad enough too 1. See Letters, vol. iv. p. 73, note 1.