neck, for what can he do? he can't take place; he can't take power in any case; if he succeeds in reforming, he will be stoned for his pains;—and if he fails, there he is stationary as Lecturer for Westminster.

Would you go to the House by the true gate,
Much faster than ever Whig Charley went;
Let Parliament send you to Newgate,

And Newgate will send you to Parliament.

But Hobhouse is a man of real talent however, and will make the best of his situation as he has done hitherto.

Yours ever and truly,

BYRON.

P.S.-My benediction to Mrs. Hoppner. How is your little boy? Allegra is growing, and has increased in good looks and obstinacy.

793.-To Richard Belgrave Hoppner.

Ravenna, April 22 1820.

MY DEAR HOPPNER,-With regard to Gnoatto, I cannot relent in favour of Madame Mocenigo, who protects a rascal and retains him in her service. Suppose the case of your Servant or mine, you having the same claim upon F[letche]r or I upon your Tim, would either of us retain them an instant unless they paid the debt? As there is no force in the decrees of Venice," 1 no Justice to be obtained from the tribunals,-because even conviction does not compel payment, nor enforce punishment, you must excuse me when I repeat that not one farthing of the rent shall be paid, till either Gnoatto pays me his debt, or quits Madame Mocenigo's service. I

66

1. Merchant of Venice, act iv. sc. I.

1

1820.]

NO REDRESS, NO RENT.

13

will abide by the consequences; but I could wish that no time was lost in apprizing her of the affair. You must not mind her relation Seranzo's statement; he may be a very good man, but he is but a Venetian, which I take to be in the present age the ne plus ultra of human abasement in all moral qualities whatsoever. I dislike differing from you in opinion; but I have no other course to take, and either Gnoatto pays me, or quits her Service, or I will resist to the uttermost the liquidation of her rent. I have nothing against her, nor for her; I owe her neither ill will, nor kindness;-but if she protects a Scoundrel, and there is no other redress, I will make some.

It has been and always will be the case where there is no law. Individuals must then right themselves. They have set the example "and it shall go hard but I "will better the Instruction." 1 Two words from her would suffice to make the villain do his duty; if they are not said, or if they have no effect, let him be dismissed; if not, as I have said, so will I do.

I wrote last week to Siri to desire Vincenzo to be sent to take charge of the beds and Swords to this place by I am in no hurry for the books,-none whatever,

-and don't want them.

Pray has not Mingaldo the Biography of living people ? 2—it is not here, nor in your list. I am not at all sure that he has it either, but it may be possible.

Let Castelli go on to the last. I am determined to see Merryweather out in this business, just to discover what is or is not to be done in their tribunals, and if ever I cross him, as I have tried the law in vain, (since

1. Merchant of Venice, act iii. sc. I.

2. Probably Colburn's Biographical Dictionary of the Living Authors of Great Britain and Ireland: comprising Literary Memoirs and Anecdotes of their Lives, etc. London, 1816, 8vo.

it has but convicted him and then done nothing in consequence)-I will try a shorter process with that personage.

66

About Allegra, I can only say to Claire 1-that I so

1. After Allegra returned in October, 1818, from her stay at Este with her mother, she remained with Byron, under the care of a maid chosen by Mrs. Hoppner. She had suffered from the unwholesome climate of Venice, and, as Mrs. Hoppner wrote to Mary Shelley, January, 1819, 'est devenue tranquille et sérieuse comme une petite vieille, ce qui nous peine beaucoup" (Dowden's Life of Shelley, vol. ii. p. 328). For several months no news of the child was heard by the Shelleys, except that Mrs. Vavassour's offer to adopt her had been declined by Byron (Letters, vol. iv. p. 325, note 1). When Byron settled at Ravenna, in the house of Count Guiccioli, Miss Clairmont appealed to him through the Hoppners to be allowed to see Allegra. This appeal Byron answers in the following paragraph. The substance of his reply was communicated, April 30, by Mrs. Hoppner to Claire, who refers in her journal to the answer as concerning green_fruit and God" (Dowden's Life of Shelley, vol. ii. p. 329, note). Professor Dowden prints, from a rough draft in Miss Clairmont's handwriting (ibid., pp. 329, 330), the mother's direct appeal to see her child, and her protest against the idea, here apparently for the first time expressed, of placing Allegra in a convent :

་་

"I beg from you the indulgence of a visit from my child, because "that I am weaker every day, and more miserable. I have already proved in ten thousand ways that I have so loved her as to have "commanded, nay, to have destroyed, such of my feelings as would "have been injurious to her welfare. You answer my request by "menacing, if I do not continue to suffer in silence, that you will "inflict the greatest of all evils on my child-you threaten to put "her in a convent, where she will be equally divided from us both. ". . . This calls to my remembrance the story in the Bible, where "Solomon judges between the two women; the false parent was "willing the child should be divided, but the feelings of the real "one made her consent to any deprivation rather than her child "should be destroyed: so I am willing to undergo any affliction "rather than her whole life should be spoilt by a convent education."

Byron's reply, though necessarily shown to Miss Clairmont, was written to Shelley, who in answer condemns its harsh tone, but admits the wisdom of Byron's resolution to separate the mother and the child (May 26, 1820). The letters from Shelley to Byron, and from Shelley to Jane Clairmont, printed in Appendix I., dated respectively September 17, 1820, and March, 1822 (?), illustrate the writer's sound judgment and good feeling. In the same Appendix will be found Jane Clairmont's appeal to Byron against placing Allegra in the convent at Bagnacavallo.

1820.]

ALLEGRA'S EDUCATION.

15

totally disapprove of the mode of Children's treatment in their family, that I should look upon the Child as going into a hospital. Is it not so? Have they reared one 1? Her health here has hitherto been excellent, and her temper not bad; she is sometimes vain and obstinate, but always clean and cheerful, and as, in a year or two, I shall either send her to England, or put her in a Convent for education, these defects will be remedied as far as they can in human nature. But the Child shall not quit me again to perish of Starvation, and green fruit, or be taught to believe that there is no Deity. Whenever there is convenience of vicinity and access, her Mother can always have her with her; otherwise no. It was so stipulated from the beginning.

The Girl is not so well off as with you, but far better than with them; the fact is she is spoilt, being a great favourite with every body on account of the fairness of her Skin, which shines among their dusky children like the milky way, but there is no comparison of her situation now, and that under Elise, or with them. She has grown considerably, is very clean, and lively. She has plenty of air and exercise at home, and she goes out daily with M. Guiccioli in her carriage to the Corso.

The paper is finished and so must the letter be.

Yours ever,
B.

My best respects to Mrs. H. and the little boy--and Dorville.

1. Shelley and his wife Mary had lost three children--an infant, born February 22, 1815, died March 6, 1815; Clara Everina, born September 2, 1817, died at Venice, September 24, 1818; William, born January 24, 1816, died at Rome, June 7, 1819.

794.-To John Murray.

Ravenna, April 23, 1820.

DEAR MURRAY,-The proofs don't contain the last stanzas of Canto second, but end abruptly with the 105th Stanza.

I told you long ago that the new Cantos were not good, and I also told you a reason: recollect, I do not oblige you to publish them; you may suppress them, if you like, but I can alter nothing. I have erased the six stanzas about those two impostors, Southey and Wordsworth (which I suppose will give you great pleasure), but I can do no more. I can neither recast, nor replace; but I give you leave to put it all into the fire, if you like, or not to publish, and I think that's sufficient.

I told you that I wrote on with no good will-that I had been, not frightened, but hurt by the outcry, and, besides that, when I wrote last November, I was ill in body, and in very great distress of mind about some private things of my own; but you would have it so I sent it to you, and to make it lighter, cut it in two-but I can't piece it together again. I can't cobble: I must "either make a spoon or spoil a horn," 2-and there's an end; for there's no remeid: but I leave you free will to suppress the whole, if you like it.

1. Don Juan, Cantos III., IV.

2. So the elder Mr. Fairford, when his son, Alan, made his successful début in the case of "Poor Peter Peebles versus Plainstanes," answered the congratulations of his friends, "his voice faltering, as "he replied, Ay, ay, I kend Alan was the lad to make a spoon or "spoil a horn."" Scott explains in a note the origin of the proverb: "Said of an adventurous gipsy, who resolves at all risks to convert 66 a sheep's horn into a spoon " (Redgauntlet, chap. i. of the "Narrative"). So also Baillie Nicol Jarvie (Rob Roy, chap. xxii.) says, "Mr. Osbald stone is a gude honest gentleman; but I aye "said he was ane o' them wad make a spune or spoil a horn, as my "father the worthy deacon used to say."