LETTER CLVIII. TO W. GIFFORD, ESQ. "June 18, 1813. LETTER CLX. TO MR. MOORE. "4, Benedictine street, St. James's July 8, 1813. "MY DEAR SIR, "I presume by your silence that I have blundered "I feel greatly at a loss how to write to you at all into something noxious in my reply to your letter; -still more to thank you as I ought. If you knew for the which I beg leave to send, beforehand, a the veneration with which I have ever regarded you, sweeping apology, which you may apply to any, or long before I had the most distant prospect of be- all, parts of that unfortunate epistle. If I err in coming your acquaintance, literary or personal, my my conjecture, I expect the like from you, in putembarrassment would not surprise you. ting our correspondence so long in quarantine. "Any suggestion of yours, even were it conveyed God, he knows what I have said; but he also knows, in the less tender shape of the text of the Baviad, (if he is not as indifferent to mortals as the nonor a Monk Mason note in Massinger, would have chalant deities of Lucretius,) that you are the last been obeyed; I should have endeavored to improve person I want to offend. So, if I have,-why the myself by your censure: judge then if I should be devil don't you say it at once, and expectorate your less willing to profit by your kindness. It is not spleen? for me to bandy compliments with my elders and "Rogers is out of town with Madame de Staël, my betters: I receive your approbation with grati- who hath published an Essay against Suicide, tude, and will not return my brass for your gold, by which, I presume, will make somebody shoot himexpressing more fully those sentiments of admira- self; as a sermon by Blinkensop, in proof of Christion, which, however sincere, would, I know, be tianity, sent a hitherto most orthodox acquaintance unwelcome. of mine out of a chapel of ease a perfect atheist. "To your advice on religious topics, I shall equal- Have you found or founded a residence yet? and ly attend. Perhaps the best way will be by avoiding have you begun or finished a Poem? If you them altogether. The already published objection- won't tell me what I have done, pray say what able passages have been much commented upon, you have done, or left undone, yourself. I am but certainly have been rather strongly interpreted. still in equipment for voyaging, and anxious to I am no bigot to infidelity, and did not expect that, hear from, or of, you before go, which anxiety because I doubted the immortality of man, I should you should remove more readily, as you think I be charged with denying the existence of a God. shan't cogitate about you afterward. I shall give It was the comparative insignificance of ourselves the lie to that calumny by fifty foreign letters, parand our world, when placed in comparison with the ticularly from any place where the plague is rife,mighty whole, of which it is an atom, that first led without a drop of vinegar or a whiff of sulphur to me to imagine that our pretensions to eternity save you from infection. Pray write: I am sorry to might be overrated. * say that * "This, and being early disgusted with a Calvan- The Oxfords have sailed almost a fortnight, istic Scotch school, when I was cudgelled to church, and my sister is in town, which is a great comfortfor the first ten years of my life, afflicted me with for, never having been much together, we are natthis malady; for, after all, it is, I believe, a disease urally more attached to each other. I presume the of the mind as much as other kinds of hypochon-illuminations have conflagrated to Derby (or wherdria." LETTER CLIX. 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. ever 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 and the saloon conceived the last letter to be complimentary to themselves. I leave this to the commentators to illuminate. If you don't answer this, I shan'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." "Murray, the avaş of publishers, the Anac of "Your letter set me at ease; for I really thought stationers, has a design upon you in the paper line. (as I hear of your susceptibility) that I had said-I He wants you to become the staple and stipendiary know not what-but something I should have been editor of a periodical work. What say you? Will very sorry for, had it, or I, offended you; though I you be bound, like 'Kit Smart, to write for ninety- don't see how a man with a beautiful wife, his own nine years in the Universal Visiter?' Seriously, he children, quiet, fame, competency, and friends, (I talks of hundreds a year, and—though I hate prat- will vouch for a thousand, which is more than I will ing of the beggerly elements-his proposal may be for a unit in my own behalf,) can be offended with to your honor and profit, and, I am very sure, will any thing. be to our pleasure. "Do you know, Moore, I am amazingly inclined -remember I say but inclined to be seriously enamored 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 "I don't know what to say about 'friendship.' I-remember 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." would take a wife, and that should be the woman, the one hundred and fifty left alive, and they are had I a chance. I do not yet know her much, but for the Town's-end (query, might not Falstaff mean better than I did. the Bow-street officer? I dare say Malone's post "I want to get away, but find difficulty in com- humous edition will have it so) for life. passing a passage in a ship of war. They had bet- "Since I wrote last, I have been into the country. ter let me go; if I cannot, patriotism is the word-I journeyed by night-no incident or accident, but 'nay, an' they'll mouth, I'll rant as well as they.' an alarm on the part of ray valet on the_outside, Now, what are you doing? writing, we all hope, for who, in crossing Epping Forest, actually, I believe, our own sakes. Remember you must edit my flung down his purse before a mile-stone, with a posthumous works, with a Life of the Author, for glowworm in the second figure of number XIX.which I will send you Confessions, dated 'Lazaret-mistaking it for a footpad and dark lantern. I can to, Smyrna, Malta, or Palermo-one can die any only attribute his fears to a pair of new pistols, where. wherewith I had armed him; and he thought it "There is to be a thing on Tuesday ycleped a necessary to display his vigilance by calling out to national fête. The Regent and * are to be me whenever we passed any thing-no matter there, and every body else, who has shillings enough whether moving or stationary. Conceive ten miles, for what was once a guinea. Vauxhall is the scene with a tremor every furlong. I have scribbled you -there are six tickets issued for the modest women, a fearfully long letter. This sheet must be blank, and it is supposed there will be three to spare. The and is merely a wrapper, to preclude the tabellapassports for the lax are beyond my arithmetic. rians of the post from peeping. You once com"P. S. The Staël last night attacked me most plained of my not writing;-I will heap coals of furiously-said that I had 'no right to make lovefire upon your head' by not complaining of your not that I had used✶✶ barbarously-that I had no reading. Ever, my dear Moore, your'n, (isn't that feeling, and was totally insensible to la belle the Staffordshire termination ?) 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." "BYRON." LETTER CLXII. TO MR. MOORE. "July 25, 1813. LETTER CLXIII. TO MR. MOORE. "July 27, 1813. "When you next imitate the style of Tacitus,' "I am not well versed enough in the ways of sin-pray add, de moribus Germanorum;-this last gle women to make much matrimonial progress. ** was a piece of barbarous silence, and could only be "I have been dining like the dragon of Wantley entirely to your sylvan sequestration at Mayfield taken from the Woods, and, as such, I attribute it for this last week. My head aches with the vintage Cottage. You will find, on casting up accounts, of various cellars, and my brains are muddled as that you are my debtor by several sheets and one their dregs. I met your friends, the D**s: she sung one of your best songs so well, that, but for epistle. I shall bring my action;if you don't dissung one of your best songs so well, that, but for charge, expect to hear from my attorney. I have the appearance of affectation, I could have cried; forwarded your letter to Ruggiero; but don't make he reminds me of Hunt, but handsomer, and more postman of me again, for fear I should be tempted musical in soul, perhaps. I wish to God he may to violate your sanctity of wax or wafer. 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. ers. "Believe me ever yours, indignantly, LETTER CLXIV. TO MR. MOORE, "BN." "July, 28, 1813. "I must tell you a story. M** (of indifferent memory) was dining out the other day, and complaining of the Prince's coldness to his old wassailD'** (a learned Jew) bored him with questions-why thus? and why that? Why did the Prince act thus?' Why, sir, on account of Lord "Can't you be satisfied with the pangs of my **, who ought to be ashamed of himself!' 'And jealousy of Rogers, without actually making me why ought Lord ** to be ashamed of himself?' the pander of your epistolary intrigue? This is 'Because the Prince, sir, * * **' the second letter you have enclosed to my address, And why, sir, did the Prince cut you?' 'Because, notwithstanding a miraculous long answer, and a G―d d—mme, sir, I stuck to my principles.' 'And subsequent one or two of your own. If you do so why did you stick to your principles?' again, I can't tell to what pitch my fury may soar. Is not this last question the best that ever was I shall send you verse or arsenic, as likely as any put, when you consider to whom? It nearly killed thing,-four thousand couplets on sheets beyond M**. Perhaps you may think it stupid, but, as the privilege of franking; that privilege, sir, of Goldsmith said about the peas, it was a very good which you take an undue advantage over a too joke when I heard it—as I did from an ear-witness susceptible senator, by forwarding your lucubrations -and is only spoiled in my narration. to every one but himself. I wont frank from you, "The season has closed with a Dandy Ball;-but or for you, or to you, may I be cursed if I do, unless I have dinners with the Harrowbys, Rogers, and you mend your manners. I disown you-I disclaim Frere and Mackintosh, where I shall drink your you-and by all the powers of Eulogy, I will write health in a silent bumper, and regret your absence a panegyric upon you-or dedicate a quarto-if you till 'too much canaries' wash away my memory, don't make me ample amends. * or render it superfluous by a vision of you at the "P. S. I am in training to dine with Sheridan opposite side of the table. Canning has disbanded and Rogers this evening. I have a little spite his party by a speech from his * *-against R., and will shed his Clary wines pottlethe true throne of a Tory. Conceive his turning deep.' This is nearly my ultimate or penultimate them off in a formal harangue, and bidding them letter; for I am quite equipped, and only wait a think for themselves. I have led my ragamuffins passage. Perhaps I may wait a few weeks for where they are well peppered. There are but three of Sligo; but not if I can help it." "Bt. Str. August 2, 1813. "Half past two in the morning, Aug 10, 1811 "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 "I was honored with your unexpected and very "Your obliged and most obedient servant, LETTER CLXVI. TO MR. MURRAY. "August 26, 1815. "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 omission of mine or commission 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 The following notes to Mr. Murray, have reference to a fifth edition of the "Giaour," then in press. The poem first appeared in the May preceding, and contained originally but about four hundred lines, and was gradually increased through successive editions to its present number, nearly fourteen Harold, which contains but eight hundred and eighty-two lines per book, with all late additions hundred. In a note which accompanied the maninclusive. uscript of the paragraph commencing "Fair clime, where every season smiles," he says, "I have not yet fixed the place of insertion for the following lines, but will when I see you." The whole portion from the line down to "For there the rose o'er crag and vale," "And turn to groans his roundelay," was inserted during the revision of the proofs. "Fair clime ! where ceaseless summer smiles Which, seen from far Colonna's height, And give to loneliness delight. That wakes and wafts the fragrance there." The several passages beginning and "He who hath bent him o'er the dead : My memory now is but the tomb: were added to the fourth edition, between which and the first, only six weeks intervened. The verses commencing "The browsing camels' bells are tinkling: and the passage "Yes, love indeed is light from heaven, "She was a form of life and light, "If you send more proofs, I shall never finish this infernal story-Ecce signum '-thirty-three lines more enclosed! to the utter discomfiture of the printer, and, I fear, not to your advantage. "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. * * * P. S. I leave this to your discretion; if any |nage, and,-after a long struggle between the oody thinks the old line a good one, or the cheese a natural desire of destroying one's fellow-creatures, bad one, don't accept either. But, in that case, and the dislike of seeing men play the fool for the word share is repeated soon after in the line-nothing, I got one to make an apology, and the "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. 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, whiskeypunch, and, latterly, toddy, overflow every page. should live so long drunk, and, next, that he should Two things are rather marvellous-first, that a man 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. "I have received and read the British Review. I "All this time you wonder that I am not gone: really think the writer in most points very right. The only mortifying thing is the accusation of so do I; but the accounts of the plague are very imitation. Crabbe's passage I never saw, and Scott perplexing-not so much for the thing itself as the I no further meant to follow than in his lyric quarantine established in all ports, and from all It is true the forty or measure, which is Gray's, Milton's, and any one's places, even from England. my account.' who likes it. The Giaour' is certainly a bad sixty days would, in all probability, be as foolishly character, but not dangerous; and I think his fate spent on shore as in the ship; but one likes to have and his feelings will meet with few proselytes. I one's choice, nevertheless. Town is awfully empty; shall be very glad to hear from or of but not the worse for that. I am really puzzled with when you, please; but don't put yourself out of your way on my perfect ignorance of what I mean to do;-not stay, if I can help it, but where to go? 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 Bonaparte 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. The Giaour is now one 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, "BN." LETTER CLXIX. TO MR. MOORE. "Bennet street, Aug. 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- "P. S. I perceive I have written a flippant and criticism. The Prince is at Brighton, and Jackson, rather cold-hearted letter: let it go, however. I but the boxer, gone to Margate, having, I believe, have said nothing, either, of the brilliant sex; decoyed Yarmouth to see a milling in that polite the fact is, I am at this moment, in a far more serineighborhood. Made. de Staêl Holstein has lost ous, and entirely new scrape than any of the last one of her young barons, who has been carbona- twelvemonth,-and that is saying a good deal. * doed by a vile Teutonic adjutant,-kilt and killed It is unlucky we can neither live with or without in a coffee-house at Scrawsenhawsen. Corinne is, these women. of course, what all mothers must be,-but will, Í "I am now thinking and regretting that just as I venture to prophesy, do what few mothers could have left Newstead, you reside near it. Did you write an Essay upon it. She can not exist without ever see it? do-but don't tell me that you like it. a grievance and somebody to see, or read, how If I had known of such intellectual neighborhood, I much grief becomes her. I have not seen her since don't think I should have quitted it. You could the event; but merely judge (not very charitably) have come over so often, as a bachelor,-for it was from prior observation. a thorough bachelor's mansion-plenty of wine and "In a 'mail-coach copy' of the Edinburgh, I such sordid sensualities-with books enough, room perceive the 'Giaour' is second article. The numbers enough, and an air of antiquity about all (except are still in the Leith smack-pray, which way is the the lasses) that would have suited you, when penwind? The said article is so very mild and senti- sive, and served you to laugh at when in glee. I mental, that it must be written by Jeffrey in love; had built myself a bath and a vault-and now I -you know he is gone to America to marry some shan't even be buried in it. It is odd that we can't fair one, of whom he has been for several quarters, even be certain of a grave, at least a particular one. éperdument amoureux. Seriously-as Winifred Jen- I remember, when about fifteen, reading your poems kins says of Lismahago-Mr. Jeffrey (or his deputy) there, which I can repeat almost now,-And askhas done the handsome thing by me,' and I say ing all kinds of questions about the author, when I nothing. But this I will say,-if you and I had heard he was not dead according to the preface; knocked one another on the head in this quarrel, wondering if I should ever see him-and though, how he would have laughed, and what a mighty at that time, without the smallest poetical propenbad figure we should have cut in our posthumous sity myself, very much taken, as you may imagine, Adieu-I commit you to the works. By-the-by, I was called in the other day to with that volume. mediate between two gentlemen bent upon car * See Don Juan, Canto x., stanza xvi. "A Persian's heav'n is easily made- * * * zare of the gods- Hindoo, Hindoo, Scandinavian, and "I have been thinking of a story, grafted on the Hellenic ! amours of a Peri and a mortal-something like, "P. S. 2d. There is an exellent review of Grimm's only more philanthropical, than Cazotte's Diable Correspondence and Made. de Staël in this No. of Amoreaux.* It would require a good deal of poesy; the Edinburgh Review. * and tenderness is not my forte. For that, and other Jeffrey, himself, was my critic last year; but this reasons, I have given up the idea, and merely is, I believe, by another hand. I hope you are going suggest it to you because, in intervals of your on with your grand coup-pray do-or that damned greater work, I think it a subject you might make Lucien Bonaparte will beat us all. I have seen much of. If you want any more books, there is much of his poem in MS. and he really surpasses 'Castellan's Mœurs des Ottomans,' the best comevery thing beneath Tasso. Hodgson is translating pendium of the kind I ever met with, in six small him against another bard. You and (I believe, tomes. I am really taking a liberty by talking in Rogers) Scott, Gifford, and myself, are to be re- this style to my elders and my betters; '-pardon ferred to as judges between the twain; that is, if you it, and don't Rochefoucault my motives. accept the office. Conceive our different opinions! I think we, most of us (I am talking very impudently, you will think-us, indeed!) have a way of our own,—at least, you and Scott certainly have." LETTER CLXXI. LETTER CLXX. TO MR. MOORE. "Aug. 28, 1813. TO MR. MOORE. "August-September, I mean-1, 1813. * * "I send you, begging your acceptance, Castellan, three vols. on Turkish Literature, not yet looked "Ay, my dear Moore, 'there was a time '—I have into. The last I will thank you to read, extract heard of your tricks when you was campaigning what you want, and return in a week, as they are at the king of Bohemy.' I am much mistaken if, lent to me by the brightest of northern constellasome fine London spring, about the year 1815, that tions, Mackintosh,-among many other kind things time does not come again. After all we must end into which India has warmed him, for I am sure in marriage; and I can conceive nothing more de- your home Scotsman is of a less genial description. lightful than such a state in the country, reading "Your Peri, my dear M., is sacred and inviolable; the county newspaper, &c., and kissing one's wife's I have no idea of touching the hem of her petticoat. maid. Seriously, I would incorporate with any Your affectation of a dislike to encounter me is so woman of decent demeanor to-morrow-that is, I flattering, that I begin to think myself a very fine would a month ago, but, at present, *.fellow. But you are laughing at me-'stap my "Why don't you, parody that Ode?'*-Do you vitals, Tam! thou art a very impudent person; think I should be tetchy? or have you done it, and and, if you are not laughing at me, you deserve to won't tell me?-You are quite right, about Giam-be laughed at. Seriously, what on earth can you, or schid, and I have reduced it to a dissyllable within have you, to dread from any poetical flesh breaththis half-hour.† I am glad to hear you talk of ing? It really puts me out of humor to hear you Richardson, because it tells me what you won't talk thus. that you are going to beat Lucien. At least, tell "The 'Giaour' I have added to a good deal; but me how far you have proceeded. Do you think me still in foolish fragments. It contains about twelve less interested about your works, or less sincere hundred lines, or rather more-now printing. You You delight me than our friend Ruggiero? I am not-and never will allow me to send you a copy. was. In that thing of mine, the 'English Bards,' much by telling me that I am in your good graces, at the time when I was angry with all the world, I and more particularly as to temper; for, unluckily, But never disparaged your parts,' although I did not I have the reputation of a very bad one. know you personally; and have always regretted that they say the devil is amusing when pleased, and I you don't give us an entire work, and not sprinkle must have been more venomous than the old serIt yourself in detatched pieces-beautiful, I allow, and pent, to have hissed or stung in your company. quite alone in our language, but still giving us a may be, and would appear to a third person, an inright to expect a Shah Nameh (is that the name?) credible thing, but I know you will believe me when as well as Gazels. Stick to the East; the oracle, I say that I am as anxious for your success as one Staël, told me it was the only poetical policy. The human being can be for another's, -as much as if North, South, and West, have all been exhausted; I had never scribbled a line. Surely the field of fame but from the East, we have nothing but Southey's is wide enough for all; and if it were not, I would unsaleables, and these he has contrived to spoil, not willingly rob my neighbor of a rood of it. Now by adopting only their most outrageous fictions. you have a pretty property of some thousand acres His personages don't interest us, and yours will. there, and when you have passed your present EnYou will have no competitor; and if you had, you closure Bill, your income will be doubled (there's a ought to be glad of it. The little I have done in metaphor, worthy of a Templar, namely, pert and that way is merely a voice in the wilderness' for low,) while my wild common is too remote to incomyou; and, if it has had any success, that also will mode you, and quite incapable of such fertility. I prove that the public are orientalizing, and pave the send you (which return per post, as the printer path for you. would say) a curious letter from a friend of mine, • The Ode of Horace, "Natis in usum lætitiæ," &c., some passages of which Mr. Moore told him might be parodied, in allusion to some of his late adventures: "Quanta laboras in Charybdi ! † In his first edition of the Giaour he had used this word as a trisyllable, 'Bright as the gem of Giamschid,"--but on Mr. Moore's remarking to him, apon the authority of Richardson's Persian Dictionary, that this was incorrect, se altered it to "Bright as the ruby of Giamschid." On seeing this, however, Mr. M. wrote to him, "that, as the comparison of his heroine's eye to 'ruby' might unlnckily call up the idea of its being bloodshot, he had better change the line to 'Bright as the jewel of Giamschid; accordingly did in the following edition. Albany, Monday, Aug. 31, 1813. • See Heaven and Earth, page 248. The following letter of Lord Sligo.— "My Dear Byron, "You have requested me to tell you all that I heard at Athens about tho affair of that girl who was so near being put an end to while you were there; you have asked me to mention every circumstance, in the remotest degree re lating to it, which 1 heard. In compliance with your wishes, I write to you all I heard, and I cannot imagine it to be very far from the fact, as the cir cumstance happened only a day or two before I arrived at Athens, and con. sequently was a matter of common conversation at the time. "The new governor, unaccustomed to have the same intercourse with the -which he | Christians as his predecessor, had, of course, the barbarous Turkish ideas with regard to women. In consequence and in compliance with the strict letter |