Log-book continued. '

“ February 27. 1821. “I have been a day without continuing the log, because I could not find a blank book. At length I recollected this.

66

Rode, &c. wrote down an additional

stanza for the 5th canto of D. J. which I

had composed in bed this morning. Visited l'Amica. We are invited, on the night of the Veglione (next Dominica) with the Marchesa Clelia Cavalli and the Countess Spinelli Rusponi. I promised to go. Last night there was a row at the ball, of which I am a 'socio.' The Vice-legate had the imprudent insolence to introduce three of his servants in masque without tickets, too! and in spite of remonstrances. The consequence was, that the young men of the ball took it up, and were near throw ing the Vice-legate out of the window. His servants, seeing the scene, withdrew, and he after them. His reverence Monsignore ought to know, that these are not times for the predominance of priests over decorum. Two minutes more, two steps further, and the whole city would have been in arms, and the government driven out of it.

"Such is the spirit of the day, and these fellows appear not to perceive it. As far as the simple fact went, the young men were right, servants being prohibited always at

these festivals.

66

'Yesterday wrote two notes on the 'Bowles and Pope' controversy, and sent them off to Murray by the post. The old woman whom I relieved in the forest (she is ninetyfour years of age) brought me two bunches of violets. Nam vita gaudet mortua floribus.' I was much pleased with the present. An English woman would have presented a pair of worsted stockings, at least, in the month of February. Both excellent things ; but the former are more elegant. The present, at this season, reminds one of Gray's stanza, omitted from his elegy :"Here scatter'd oft, the earliest of the year,

By hands unseen, are showers of violets found; The red-breast loves to build and warble here, And little footsteps lightly print the ground.' As fine a stanza as any in his elegy. I wonder that he could have the heart to omit it. 3

“Last night I suffered horribly—from an indigestion, I believe. I never sup- that is, never at home. But, last night, I was prevailed upon by the Countess Gamba's per

In another paper-book.

2 [Stanza 158

"Thus in the East they are extremely strict,

suasion, and the strenuous example of her brother, to swallow, at supper, a quantity of boiled cockles, and to dilute them, not reluctantly, with some Imola wine. When I came home, apprehensive of the consequences, I swallowed three or four glasses of spirits, which men (the venders) call brandy, rum, or hollands, but which gods would entitle spirits well till I got to bed, when I became someof wine, coloured or sugared. All was pretty what swollen, and considerably vertiginous. I got out, and mixing some soda-powders, drank them off. This brought on temporary relief. I returned to bed; but grew sick and sorry once and again. Took more soda-water. At last I fell into a dreary sleep. Woke, and was ill all day, till I had galloped a few miles. Querywas it the cockles, or what I took to correct them, that caused the commotion? both. I remarked in my illness the complete inertion, inaction, and destruction of my chief mental faculties. I tried to rouse them, and yet could not — and this is the Soul!!! I should believe that it was married to the body, if they did not sympathise so much with each other. If the one rose, when the other fell, it would be a sign that they longed for the natural state of divorce. But as it is, they seem to draw together like post-horses. Let us hope the best-it is the grand possession."

I think

LOVE of THE OLD

MOORE CONCERNING THE MEMOIR AND THE PROJECTED JOURNAL.— MADAME DE STAEL.-ANECDOTES OF MONK LEWIS. CAPTAIN WHITBY. WRITING.-BARRY CORNWALL. DRAMATISTS.-MRS. CENTLIVRE AND CONGREVE. LETTERS CONCERNING THE REPRESENTATION OF MARINO FALIERO. PLAN OF DON JUAN. -BELZONI.-LETTER ON BOWLES'S STRICTURES upon pope. GEORGE BANKES.-TURNER'S TRAVELS. — BOWLES AND CAMPBELL. - POPE'S HOMER -AND COWPER'S.-POPE'S CHARACTER OF SPORUS. PORTRAIT OF MADAME GUIC

CIOLI.-ALLEGRA.-JOHN SCOTT.-DEATH OF KEATES. THE CENCI. ANECDOTES. -OVERTHROW OF THE CARBONARI.

DURING the two months comprised in this Journal, some of the Letters of the follow

editions,but was afterwards omitted, because Gray thought (and in my own opinion very justly) that it was too long a parenthesis in this place. The lines, however, are in themselves exquisitely fine, and demand preservation."

ing series were written. The reader must, therefore, be prepared to find in them occasional notices of the same train of events.

LETTER 404. TO MR. MOORE.

"Ravenna, January 2. 1821.

"Your entering into my project for the Memoir, is pleasant to me. But I doubt (contrary to me my dear Made Mac F * *, whom I always loved, and always shallnot only because I really did feel attached to her personally, but because she and about a dozen others of that sex were all who stuck by me in the grand conflict of 1815) - but I doubt, I say, whether the Memoir could appear in my lifetime; - and, indeed, I had rather it did not; for a man always looks dead after his Life has appeared, and I should certes not survive the appearance of mine. The first part I cannot consent to alter, even although Madame de Stael's opinion of B.C. and my remarks upon Lady C.'s beauty (which is surely great, and I suppose that I have said so at least, I ought) should go down to our grandchildren in unsophisticated naked

1 Of this gentleman, the following notice occurs in the "Detached Thoughts:"-" Lewis was a good man, a clever man, but a bore—a damned bore- one may say. My only revenge or consolation used to be setting him by the ears with some vivacious person who hated bores especially, Madame de Stael or Hobhouse, for example. But I liked Lewis ; he was a jewel of a man, had he been better set; I don't mean personally, but less tiresome, for he was tedious, as well as contradictory to every thing and every body. Being short-sighted, when we used to ride out together near the Brenta in the twilight in summer, he made me go before, to pilot him: I am absent at times, especially towards evening; and the consequence of this pilotage was some narrow escapes to the Monk on horseback. Once I led him into a ditch over which I had passed as usual, forgetting to warn my convoy; once I led him nearly into the river, instead of on the moveable bridge which incommodes passengers; and twice did we both run against the Diligence, which, being heavy and slow, did communicate less damage than it received in its leaders, who were terrafied by the charge; thrice did I lose him in the grey of the gloaming, and was obliged to bring-to to his distant signals of distance and distress; - all the time he went on talking without intermission, for he was a man of many words.

laudable sincerity, that I had named her in a sonnet with Voltaire, Rousseau, &c. 2 and that she could not help it through decency. Now, I have not forgotten this, but I have been generous, as mine acquaintance, the late Captain Whitby, of the navy, used to say to his seamen (when married to the gunner's daughter')'two dozen and let you off easy.' The 'two dozen' were with the cat-o'-nine tails ;- the 'let you off easy' was rather his own opinion than that of the patient.

"My acquaintance with these terms and practices arises from my having been much conversant with ships of war and naval heroes in the year of my voyages in the Mediterranean. Whitby was in the gallant action off Lissa in 1811. He was brave, but a disciplinarian. When he left his frigate, he left a parrot, which was taught by the crew the following sounds-(it must be remarked that Captain Whitby was the image of Fawcett the actor, in voice, face, and figure, and that he squinted).

"I would give many a sugar cane
Monk Lewis were alive again!"

2 [" Rousseau—Voltaire - our Gibbon-and De Stael, Leman! these names are worthy of thy shore," &c. Works, p. 565.]

3 The following passage from the letter of mine, to which the above was an answer, will best explain what follows: "With respect to the newspaper, it is odd enough that Lord **** and myself had been (about a week or two before I received your letter) speculating upon your assistance in a plan somewhat similar, but more literary and less regularly periodical in its appearance. Lord, as you will see by his volume of Essays, if it reaches you, has a very sly, dry, and pithy

+ [Probably Lord John Russell, whose "Essay on the English Government and Constitution" had recently appeared.]

now and then, like * * * *, and then, if I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad. As to that regular, uninterrupted love of writing, which you describe in your friend, I do not understand it. I feel it as a torture, which I must get rid of, but never as a pleasure. On the contrary, I think composition a great pain.

"I wish you to think seriously of the Journal scheme for I am as serious as one can be, in this world, about any thing. As to matters here, they are high and mighty- but not for paper. It is much about the state of things betwixt Cain and Abel. There is, in fact, no law or government at all; and it is wonderful how well things go on without them. Excepting a few occasional murders, (every body killing whomsoever he pleases, and being killed, in turn, by a friend, or relative, of the defunct,) there is as quiet a society and as merry a Carnival as can be met with in a tour through Europe. There is nothing like habit in these things.

"I shall remain here till May or June, and, unless honour comes unlooked for,' we may perhaps meet, in France or England, within the year.

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Yours, &c.

"Of course, I cannot explain to you existing circumstances, as they open all letters. Will you set me right about your curst Champs Elysées?'-are they' és' or 'ées for the adjective? I know nothing of French, being all Italian. Though I can read and understand French, I never attempt to speak it; for I hate it. From the second part of the Memoirs cut what you please."

LETTER 405. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, January 4. 1821.

"I just see, by the papers of Galignani, that there is a new tragedy of great expectation, by Barry Cornwall. 1 ́ Of what I have read of his works I liked the Dramatic Sketches, but thought his Sicilian Story and Marcian Colonna, in rhyme, quite spoilt, by I know not what affectation of Wordsworth, and Moore, and myself, all mixed up into a

way of putting sound truths upon politics and manners; and whatever scheme we adopt, he will be a very useful and active ally in it, as he has a pleasure in writing quite inconceivable to a poor hack scribe like me, who always feel, about my art, as the French husband did when he found a man making love to his (the Frenchman's) wife :-Comment, Monsieur,-sans y étre obligé !' When I say this, however, I mean it only of the executive part of writing; for the imagining, the shadowing out of the future work, is, I own, a delicious fool's paradise."

kind of chaos. I think him very likely to produce a good tragedy, if he keep to a natural style, and not play tricks to form harlequinades for an audience. As he (Barry Cornwall is not his true name) was a schoolfellow of mine, I take more than common interest in his success, and shall be glad to hear of it speedily. If I had been aware that he was in that line, I should have spoken of him in the preface to Marino Faliero. He will do a world's wonder if he produce a great tragedy. I am, however, persuaded, that this is not to be done by following the old dramatists, who are full of gross faults, pardoned only for the beauty of their language, but by writing naturally and regularly, and producing regular tragedies, like the Greeks; but not in imitation, — merely the outline of their conduct, adapted to our own times and circumstances, and of course no chorus.

66

You will laugh, and say, ' Why don't you do so?' I have, you see, tried a sketch in Marino Faliero; but many people think my talent essentially undramatic,' and I am not at all clear that they are not right. If Marino Faliero don't fall - in the perusal — I shall, perhaps, try again (but not for the stage) and, as I think that love is not the principal passion for tragedy (and yet most of ours turn upon it), you will not find me a popular writer. Unless it is love, furious, criminal, and hapless, it ought not to make a tragic subject. When it is melting and maudlin, it does, but it ought not to do; it is then for the gallery and second-price boxes.

"If you want to have a notion of what I am trying, take up a translation of any of the Greek tragedians. If I said the original, it would be an impudent presumption of mine; but the translations are so inferior to the originals, that I think I may risk it. Then judge of the simplicity of plot,' &c. and do not judge me by your old mad dramatists, which is like drinking usquebaugh and then proving a fountain. Yet after all, I suppose that you do not mean that spirits is a nobler element than a clear spring bubbling in the sun? and this I take to be the difference between the Greeks and those turbid mountebanks-always excepting Ben Jonson, who

["Mirandola," the tragedy here alluded to, was brought out at Covent Garden Theatre, with considerable success, in January 1821.]

2 [Bryan Walter Procter. "I told Lord Byron," says Captain Medwin, "that I had had a letter from Procter, and that he had been jeered on Mirandola' not having been included in his (Lord B.'s) enumeration of the dramatic pieces of the day, and that he added, he had been at Harrow with him. Ay,' said Lord Byron, ⚫ I remember the name: he was in the lower school, in such a class. They stood Farrer, Procter, Jocelyn!'"']

was a scholar and classic. Or, take up a translation of Alfieri, and try the interest, &c. of these my new attempts in the old line, by him in English; and then tell me fairly your opinion. But don't measure me by YOUR OWN old or new tailors' yards. Nothing so easy as intricate confusion of plot and rant. Mrs. Centlivre, in comedy, has ten times the bustle of Congreve; but are they to be compared? and yet she drove Congreve from the theatre.

LETTER 406. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, January 19. 1821.

Yours of the 29th ultimo hath arrived. I must really and seriously request that you will beg of Messrs. Harris or Elliston to let the Doge alone: it is not an acting play; it will not serve their purpose; it will destroy yours (the sale); and it will distress me. It is not courteous, it is hardly even gentlemanly, to persist in this appropriation of a man's writings to their mountebanks.

"I have already sent you by last post a short protest 2 to the public (against this proceeding); in case that they persist, which I trust that they will not, you must then publish it in the newspapers. I shall not let them off with that only, if they go on; but make a longer appeal on that subject, and state what I think the injustice of their mode of behaviour. It is hard that I should have all the buffoons in Britain to deal with pirates who will publish, and players who will act when there are thousands of worthy men who can get neither bookseller nor manager for love nor money.

"You never answered me a word about Galignani. If you mean to use the two documents, do; if not, burn them. I do not choose to leave them in any one's possession: suppose some one found them without the letters, what would they think? why, that I had

1 ["The plots of Mrs. Centlivre's plays are busy and well conducted, and her characters in general natural and well marked. Her comedy of The Busy Body,' which all the players had decried before its appearance, forced a run of many nights; while Congreve's Way of the World,' which perhaps contains more intrinsic wit than any dramatic piece ever written, could scarcely make its way at all. The indifferent success of this play completed Congreve's disgust to the theatre, which a long contest with Jeremy Collier had begun, and he determined never more to write for the stage." -Biog. Dram. vol. i. pp. 99. 142.]

2 To the letter which enclosed this protest, and which has been omitted to avoid repetitions, he had subjoined a passage from Spence's Anecdotes (p. 197. of Singer's edition), where Pope says, speaking of himself, “I had taken such strong resolutions against any thing of that kind, from seeing how much every body that did write

6

"Besides, what am I to understand? you and Douglas Kinnaird, and others, write to me, that the two first_published cantos are among the best that I ever wrote, and are reckoned so; Augusta writes that they are thought execrable' (bitter word that for an author-eh, Murray?) as a composition even, and that she had heard so much against them that she would never read them, and never has. Be that as it may, I can't alter; that is not my forte. If you publish the three new ones without ostentation, they may perhaps succeed.

66

Pray publish the Dante and the Pulci (the Prophecy of Dante, I mean). I look upon the Pulci as my grand performance. 4 The remainder of the Hints,' where be they? Now bring them all out about the same time, otherwise the variety' you wot of will be less obvious.

66

I am in bad humour: some obstructions in business with those plaguy trustees, who object to an advantageous loan which I was to furnish to a nobleman on mortgage, because his property is in Ireland, have shown me how a man is treated in his absence. Oh, if I do come back, I will make some of those who little dream of it spin or they or I shall go down.

"Yours ever, &c.

"B."

for the stage was obliged to subject themselves to the players and the town."- Spence's Anecdotes, p. 22. In the same paragraph, Pope is made to say, "After I had got acquainted with the town, I resolved never to write any thing for the stage, though solicited by many of my friends to do so, and particularly Betterton."

3 No further step was ever taken in this affair; and the documents, which were of no use whatever, are, I believe, still in Mr. Murray's possession.

4 The self-will of Lord Byron was in no point more conspicuous than in the determination with which he thus persisted in giving the preference to one or two works of his own which, in the eyes of all other persons, were most decided failures. Of this class was the translation from Pulci, so frequently mentioned by him, which appeared afterwards in the Liberal, and which, though thus rescued from the fate of remaining unpublished, must for ever, I fear, submit to the doom of being unread.

LETTER 407. TO MR. MURRAY.

"January 20. 1821. "I did not think to have troubled you with the plague and postage of a double letter this time, but I have just read in an Italian paper, That Lord Byron has a tragedy coming out,' &c. &c. &c.; and that the Courier and Morning Chronicle, &c. &c. are pulling one another to pieces about it and him, &c.

"Now I do reiterate and desire, that every thing may be done to prevent it from coming out on any theatre, for which it never was designed, and on which (in the present state of the stage of London) it could never succeed. I have sent you my appeal by last post, which you must publish in case of need; and I require you even in your own name (if my honour is dear to you) to declare that such representation would be contrary to my wish and to my judgment. If you do not wish to drive me mad altogether, you will hit upon some way to prevent this.

"Yours, &c.

"P. S. - I cannot conceive how Harris or Elliston should be so insane as to think of acting Marino Faliero; they might as well act the Prometheus of Eschylus. I speak of course humbly, and with the greatest sense of the distance of time and merit between the two performances; but merely to show the absurdity of the attempt.

"Of Wordsworth, the grand metaquizzical poet,
A man of vast merit, though few people know it;
The perusal of whom (as I told you at Mestri)
I owe, in great part, to my passion for pastry.

'Mestri and Fusina are the 'trajects, or common ferries,' to Venice; but it was from Fusina that you and I embarked, though 'the wicked necessity of rhyming' has made me press Mestri into the voyage.

"So, you have had a book dedicated to you? I am glad of it, and shall be very happy to see the volume.

"I am in a peck of troubles about a tra

gedy of mine, which is fit only for the (****) closet, and which it seems that the managers, assuming a right over published poetry, are determined to enact, whether I will or no, with their own alterations by Mr. Dibbin, I presume. I have written to Murray, to the Lord Chamberlain, and to others, to interfere and preserve me from such an exhibition.

want neither the impertinence of their hisses, nor the insolence of their applause. I write only for the reader, and care for nothing but the silent approbation of those who close

Already given in his Journal. See p. 481.