chase of men. I bought it. The next day, on jand so good morrow to you, good master lieutenshoeing the horse, we discovered the thrush, the ant.' With regard to other things, I will write animal being warranted sound. I sent to reclaim soon, but I have been quarrelling and fooling till ï the contract and the money. The lieutenant de- can scribble no more." sired to speak with me in person. I consented. He came. It was his own particular request. He began a story. I asked him if he would return the money. He said no-but he would exchange. He asked an exorbitant price for his other horses. I told him that he was a thief. He said he was an officer and a man of honor, and pulled out a Parmesan passport signed by General Count Neifperg. LETTER CCCCIV TO MR. HOPPNER. "Oct. 22, 1819. I answered, that as he was an officer, I would treat know how to congratulate you-unless you think "I am glad to hear of your return, but I do not him as such; and that as to his being a gentleman, differently of Venice from what I think now, and he might prove it by returning the money; as for his Parmesan passport, I should have valued it you thought always. I am, besides, about to renew more if it had been a Parmesan cheese. He ans- Mr. Edgecombe and myself in a small matter of your troubles by requesting you to be judge between wered in high terms, and said that if it were in the morning (it was about eight o'clock in the evening) part of that phoenix of secretaries. As I knew that imputed peculation and irregular accounts on the he would have satisfaction. I then lost my temper: -it will be mutual satisfaction, I can assure you. offered him his choice of any person, the least As for THAT,' I replied, you shall have it directly, you had not parted friends, at the same time that I refused for my own part any judgment but yours, I You are a thief, and, as you say, an officer: my scoundrel native to be found in Venice, as his own pistols are in the next room, loaded; take one of the candles, examine, and make your choice of umpire; but he expressed himself so convinced of He replied that pistols were English This is in his favor. The paper within will explain your impartiality, that he declined any but you. weapons; he always fought with the sword. I told to the default in his accounts. You will hear him that I was able to accommodate him, having his explanation, and decide, if it so please you. I three regimental swords in a drawer near us; and shall not appeal from the decision. he might take the longest, and put himself on guard. weapons.' you "As he complained that his salary was insuffiand the enclosed was the result. It is all in black cient, I determined to have his accounts examined, and white with documents, and I have despatched Fletcher to explain (or rather to perplex) the matter. "I have had much civility and kindness from Mr. Dorville during your journey, and I thank him accordingly. "All this passed in presence of a third person. He then said No, but to-morrow morning he would give me the meeting at any time or place. I answered that it was not usual to appoint meetings in the presence of witnesses, and that we had best speak man to man, and appoint time and instruments. But as the man present was leaving the room, the Lieutenant **, before he could shut the displeased me very much-not that it might not "Your letter reached me at your departure,* and door after him, ran out, roaring 'help and murder be true in its statement and kind in its intention, most lustily, and fell into a sort of hysteric in the but you have lived long enough to know how usearms of about fifty people, who all saw that I had less all such representations ever are and must be no weapon of any sort or kind about me, and fol- in cases where the passions are concerned. To realowed him, asking him what the devil was the mat-son with men in such a situation is like reasoning ter with him. Nothing would do: he ran away with a drunkard in his cups-the only answer you without his hat, and went to bed, ill of the fright. will get from him is that he is sober, and you are He then tried his complaint at the police, which drunk. dismissed it as frivolous. He is, I believe, gone "Upon that subject we will (if you like) be silent. away, or going. "The horse was warranted, but, I believe, so out answering any purpose whatever; and I have You might only say what would distress me withworded that the villain will not be obliged to re- too many obligations to you to answer you in the fund, according to law. He endeavored to raise up same style. So that you should recollect that you an indictment of assault and battery, but as it was have also that advantage over me. in a public inn, in a frequented street, there were I hope to see too many witnesses to the contrary; and, as a mili- you soon. tary man, he has not cut a martial figure, even in that I was arrested at Bologna as a carbonaro—a "I suppose you know that they said at Venice, the opinion of the priests. He ran off in such a hurry that he left his hat, and never missed it till story about as true as their usual conversation. hurry that he left his hat, and never missed it till Moore has been here-I lodged him in my house at he got to his hostel or inn. The facts are as I tell Venice, and went to see him daily; but I could not you, I can assure you. He began by coming Cap-Venice, He began by coming Cap- at that time quit La Mira entirely. You and I were tain Grand over me,' or I should never have thought not very far from meeting in Switzerland. With of trying his 'cunning in fence.' But what could I do? He talked of honor, and satisfaction, and my best respects to Mrs. Hoppner, believe me ever his commission;' he produced a military passport; and truly, &c. there are severe punishments for regular duels on 'P. S. Allegra is here in good health and spirits the continent, and trifling ones for rencontres, so I shall keep her with me till I go to England, that it is best to fight it out directly; he had rob- which will perhaps be in the spring. It has just bed, and then wanted to insult me;-what could I occurred to me that you may not perhaps like to do? My patience was gone, and the weapons at undertake the office of judge between Mr. Edgehand, fair and equal. Besides, it was just after combe and your humble servant. Of course, as dinner, when my digestion was bad, and I don't Mr. Liston (the comedian, not the ambassador), like to be disturbed. His friend ** is at Forli; we says, 'it is all hoptional;' but I have no other reshall meet on my way back to Ravenna. The Hano verian seems the greater rogue of the two; and if • Mr. Hoppner, before his departure from Venice for Switzerland, had my valor does not ooze away like Acres's Odds written a letter to Lord Byron, entreating him "to leave Ravenna, while flints and triggers!' if it should be a rainy morn-yet he had a whole skin, and urging him not to risk the safety of a person he ing, and my stomach in disorder, there may be some-appeared so sincerely attached to as well as his own--for the gratification of thing for the obituary. a momentary passion, which could only be a source of regret to both "Now, pray, 'Sir Lucius, do not you look upon had heard lately at Venice, which, though possibly, he said, unfounded, had parties.' In the same letter Mr. Hoppner informed him of some reports he me as a very ill-used gentleman?' I send my lieu- much increased his anxiety respecting the consequence of the connexion enart to match Mr Hobhouse's Major Cartwright: formed by him.--Moore. source. I do not wish to find him a rascal, if it can | third canto is in advance about one hundred stan be avoided, and would rather think him guilty of zas; but the failure of the first two has weakened carelessness than cheating. The case is this-can my estro, and it will neither be so good as the former I, or not, give him a character for honesty? It is not my intention to continue him in my service." LETTER CCCCV. TO MR. HOPPNER. "October 25, 1819. two, nor completed, unless I get a little more riscaldato in its behalf.* I understand the outcry was beyond every thing.-Pretty cant for people who read Tom Jones, and Roderick Random, and the Bath Guide, and Ariosto, and Dryden, and Popeto say nothing of Little's Poems. Of course I refer to the morality of these works, and not to any pretension of mine to compete with them in any thing but decency. I hope yours is the Paris edition, and that you did not pay the London price. I have seen neither, except in the newspapers. "You need not have made any excuses about the letter; I never said but that you might, could, "Pray make my respects to Mrs. H., and take should; or would have reason. I merely described care of your little boy. All my household have the my own state of inaptitude to listen to it at that fever and ague, except Fletcher, Allegra, and mysen, time, and in those circumstances. Besides, you did (as we used to say in Nottinghamshire,) and the not speak from your own authority-but from what horses, and Mutz, and Moretto. In the beginning you said you had heard. Now my blood boils to of November, perhaps sooner, I expect to have the hear an Italian speaking ill of another Italian, be-pleasure of seeing you. To-day I got drenched by cause, though they lie in particular, they speak a thunder-storm, and my horse and groom too, and truth in general by speaking ill at all-and although his horse all bemired up to the middle in a crossthey know that they are trying and wishing to lie, road. It was summer, at noon, and at five we were they do not succeed, merely because they can say bewintered; but the lightning was sent, perhaps, to nothing so bad of each other, that it may not, and let us know that the summer was not yet over. It must not be true from the atrocity of their long-is queer weather for the 27th of October. debased national character. LETTER CCCCVII. TO MR. MURRAY. "Yours, &c " "With regard to Edgecombe, you will perceive a most irregular, extravagant account, without proper documents to support it. He demanded an increase of salary, which made me suspect him; he supported an outrageous extravagance of expenditure, and did not like the dismission of the cook; he never complained of him-as in duty bound-at the time of his robberies. I can only say, that the "Venice, October 29, 1819. house expense is now under one-half of what it then "Yours of the 15th came yesterday. I am sorry was, as he himself admits. He charged for a comb that you do not mention a large letter addressed to eighteen francs,-the real price was eight. He your care for Lady Byron, from me, at Bologna, two charged a passage from Fusina for a person named months ago. Pray tell me was this letter received Iambelli, who paid it herself, as she will prove, if and forwarded? necessary. He fancies, or asserts himself, the vic- "You say nothing of the vice-consulate for the tim of a domestic complot against him ;-accounts Ravenna patrician, from which is to be inferred that are accounts-prices are prices :-let him make out the thing will not be done. a fair detail. I am not prejudiced against him— "I had written about a hundred stanzas of a on the contrary, I supported him against the com- third canto to Don Juan, but the reception of the plaints of his wife, and of his former master, at a first two is no encouragement to you nor me to protime when I could have crushed him like an ear-ceed. wig, and if he is a scoundrel, he is the greatest of "I had also written about six hundred lines of a scoundrels, an ungrateful one. The truth is, pro- poem, the Vision (or Prophecy) of Dante, the subbably, that he thought I was leaving Venice, and ject a view of Italy in the ages down to the present determined to make the most of it. At present he At present he supposing Dante to speak in his own person, prekeeps bringing in account after account, though he vious to his death and embracing all topics in the had always money in hand-as I believe you know way of prophecy, like. Lycophron's Cassandra; but my system was never to allow longer than a week's this and the other are both at a stand-still for the bills to run. Pray read him this letter-I desire present. fend himself. nothing to be concealed against which he may de- "I gave Moore, who is gone to Rome, my life in MS. in seventy-eight folio sheets, brought down to Pray how is your little boy? and how are you 1816. But this I put into his hands for his care, as -I shall be up in Venice very soon, and we will be he has some other MSS. of mine-a journal kept in bilious together. I hate the place and all that it 1814, &c. Neither are for publication during my inherits. LETTER CCCCVI. TO MR. HOPPNER. "Yours, &c.* "October 28, 1819. life, but when I am cold, you may do what you please. In the mean time, if you like to read them you may, and show them to any body you like-I care not. "The life is memoranda and not confessions. I have left out all my loves, (except in a general way,) and many other of the most important things, (because I must not compromise other people,) so that it is like the play of Hamlet-' The part of Hamlet "I have to thank you for your letter, and your omitted by particular desire.' But you will find compliment to Don Juan. I said nothing to you many opinions, and some fun, with a detailed acabout it, understanding that it is a sore subject with count of my marriage and its consequences, as true the moral reader, and has been the cause of a great as a party concerned can make such account, for I row; but I am glad you like it. I will say nothing suppose we are all prejudiced. "I have never read over this life since it was about the shipwreck, except that I hope you think it is as nautical and technical as verse could admit written, so that I know not exactly what it may rein the octave measure. peat or contain. Moore and I passed some merry "The poem has not sold well, so Murray says-days together. but the best judges, &c., say, &c.,' so says that worthy man. I have never seen it in print. The * See Letter, ccclxxx. "I probably must return for business, or in my good creature, too,-an excellent creature. Pray-way to America. Pray, did you get a letter for Hob-um !-how do you pass your evenings?' It is a devil house, who will have told you the contents? I un-of a question that, and perhaps as easy to answer derstand that the Venezulean commissioners had with a wife as with a mistress. orders to treat with emigrants; now I want to go "If you go to Milan, pray leave at least a Vicethere. I should not make a bad South American Consul-the only vice that will ever be wanting at planter, and I should take my natural daughter, Al-Venice. D'Orville is a good fellow. But you shall legra, with me, and settle. I wrote, at length, to go to England in the spring with me, and plant Hobhouse, to get information from Perry, who, I Mrs. Hoppner at Berne with her relations for a few suppose, is the best topographer and trumpeter of months. I wish you had been here (at Venice, I the new republicans. Pray write. mean, not the Mira) when Moore was here-we were very merry and tipsy. He hated Venice by-the-way, and swore it was a sad place. So Madame Albrizzi's death is in danger-poor * * * "Yours, ever. "P. S. Moore and I did nothing but laugh. He will tell you of my whereabouts,' and all my proceedings at this present; they are as usual. You woman! should not let those fellows publish false Don Moore told me that at Geneva they had made a Juans;' but do not put my name, because I mean devil of a story of the Fornaretta: Young lady to cut Roberts up like a gourd in the preface, if I seduced!-subsequent abandonment!-leap into the continue the poem." Grand Canal,'-and her being in the 'hospital of fous in consequence!' I should like to know who was nearest being made fou,' and be d-d to them! Don't you think me in the interesting character of a very ill-used gentleman? I hope your little boy is well. Allegrina is flourishing like a pomegranate blossom. Yours, &c." LETTER CCCCVIII. TO MR. HOPPNER. "October 29, 1819. LETTER CCCCIX. TO MR. MURRAY. "Venice, November, 8, 1819. "The Ferrara story is of a piece with all the rest of the Venetian manufacture,*-you may judge: I only changed horses there since I wrote to you, after my visit in June last. Convent,' and 'carry off,' quotha! and girl.' I should like to know who has been carried off, except poor dear me. I have been more ravished myself than any body since the Trojan war; but as to the arrest, and its causes, one Paris edition, which he tells me is read in Switzer"Mr. Hoppner has lent me a copy of Don Juan,' is as true as the other, and I can account for the land by clergymen and ladies, with considerable apinvention of neither. I suppose it is some confusion of the tale of the Fornaretta and of Me. probation. In the second canto, you must alter the Guiccioli, and half a dozen more; but it is useless forty-ninth stanza to to unravel the web, when one has only to brush it away. I shall settle with Master E., who looks very blue at your in-decision, and swears that he is the best arithmetician in Europe; and so I think also, for he makes out two and two to be five. "'Twas twilight, and the sunless day went down "You may see me next week. I have a horse or two more, (five in all,) and I shall repossess myself of Lido and I will rise earlier, and we will go and shake our livers over the beach, as heretofore, if "I have been ill these eight days with a tertian you like—and we will make the Adriatic roar again fever, caught in the country on horseback in a with our hatred of that now empty oyster-shell, thunder-storm. Yesterday I had the fourth attack : without its pearl, the city of Venice. the two last were very smart, the first day as well as "Murray sent me a letter yesterday: the impos- the last being preceded by vomiting. It is the tors have published two new third cantos of Don fever of the place and the season. I feel weakened, Juan-the devil take the impudence of some black- but not unwell, in the intervals, except headache guard bookseller or other therefor! Perhaps I did and lassitude. not make myself understood; he told me the sale "Count Guiccioli has arrived in Venice, and has had been great, twelve hundred out of fifteen hun- presented his spouse (who had preceded him two dred quarto, I believe, (which is nothing, after, sell- months for her health and the prescriptions of Dr. ing thirteen thousand of the Corsair in one day;) Aglietti) with a paper of conditions, regulations of but that the best judges,' &c., had said it was hours, and conduct, and morals, &c., &c., &c., very fine, and clever, and particulary good English, which he insist on her accepting, and she persists in and poetry, and all those consolatory things, which refusing. I am expressly, it should seem, excluded are not, however, worth a single copy to a book- by this treaty, as an indispensable preliminary; so seller and as to the author, of course I am in a that they are in high dissension, and what the red-ned passion at the bad taste of the times, and sult may be, I know not, particularly as they are swear there is nothing like posterity, who, of course, consulting friends. never * * * * must know more of the matter than their grand- "To-night, as Countess Guiccioli observed me fathers. There has been an eleventh command- poring over 'Don Juan,' she stumbled by mere ment to the women not to read it, and what is still chance on the one hundred and thirty-seventh more extraordinary, they seem not to have broken stanza of the first canto, and asked me what it it. But that can be of little import to them, poor meant. I told her, 'Nothing, but " your husthings, for the reading or non-reading a book will band is coming." As I said this in Italian with some emphasis, she started up in a fright, and said, "Count G. comes to Venice next week, and I am Oh, my God, is he coming? thinking it was her requested to consign his wife to him, which shall be own, who either was or ought to have been at the done. * What you theatre. You may suppose we laughed when she say of the long evenings at the Mira, or Venice, re- found out the mistake. You will be amused, as I minds me of what Curran said to Moore:-'So I was; it happened not three hours ago. hear you have married a pretty woman, and a very "I wrote to you last week, but have added no * * * See Letter cccc. • Corrected in this edition. * * * * thing to the third canto since my fever, nor to 'The treasury, admirality and the like,-others become Prophecy of Dante.' Of the former there are reformers and orators,-many settled in life, as it is about a hundred octaves done; of the latter about called, and others settled in death; among the five hundred lines-perhaps more. Moore saw the latter (by-the-way, not our fellow-collegians), third Juan, as far as it then went. I do not know Sheridan, Curran, Lady Melbourne, Monk Lewis, if my fever will let me go on with either, and the Frederick Douglas, &c., &c., &c.; but you will still tertian lasts, they say, a good while. I had it in find Mr. ** living and all his family, as also Malta on my way home, and the malaria fever in Greece the year before that. The Venetian is not "Should you come up this way, and I am still very fierce, but I was delirious one of the nights here, you need not be assured how glad I shall be with it, for an hour or two, and, on my senses to see you; I long to hear some part, from you, of coming back, found Fletcher sobbing on one side of that which I expect in no long time to see. At the bed, and La Contessa Guiccioli weeping on the length you have had better fortune than any traother; so that I had no want of attendance. I have veller of equal enterprise, (except Humboldt,) in renot yet taken any physician, because, though I turning safe; and after the fate of the Brownes, think they may relieve in chronic disorders, such as and the Parkes, and the Burckhardts, it is hardly gout and the like, &c., &c., &c., (though they can't less surprise than satisfaction to get you back cure them)-just as surgeons are necessary to set again. "Believe me ever bones and tend wounds-yet I think fevers quite "And very affectionately yours, out of their reach, and remediable only by diet and "BYRON." LETTER CCCCXI. TO MR. MURRAY. "Venice, Dec. 4, 1819. "You may do as you please, but you are about a hopeless experiment.* Eldon will decide against You will also recollect that if the publication is you, were it only that my name is in the record. "Tell Rose that somebody at Milan (an Austrian, Mr. Hoppner says) is answering his book. William Bankes is in quarantine at Trieste. I have not lately heard from you. Excuse this paper: it is long paper shortened for the occasion. What folly is this of Carlisle's trial? why let him have the honors of a martyr? it will only advertise the books in question. "Yours, &c. "P. S. As I tell you that the Guiccioli business is on the eve of exploding in one way or the other, I will just add, that without attempting to influ- pronounced against, on the grounds you mention, pends upon it. If she and her husband make it up, all paternal authority, and every thing concerning ence the decision of the Contessa, a good deal de-as indecent and blasphemous, that I lose all right in my daughter's guardianship and education, in short, you will perhaps see me in England sooner than you her, except * expect. If not, I shall retire with her to France or It was so decided in Shelley's case, because he had America, change my name, and lead a quiet pro- written Queen Mab, &c., &c. However, you can vincial life. All this may seem odd, but I have got ask the lawyers, and do as you like: I do not inthe poor girl into a scrape; and as neither her birth, hibit you trying the question; I merely state one nor her rank, nor her connexions by birth or mar- of the consequences to me. riage, are inferior to my own, I am in honor bound copyright, it is hard that you should pay for a nonWith regard to the to support her through. Besides, she is a very entity: I will, therefore, refund it, which I can very pretty woman-ask Moore-and not yet one-and-well do, not having spent it, nor begun upon it; and so we will be quits on that score. banker's. twenty. "If she gets over this, and I get over my tertian, I will perhaps look in at Albemarle street, some of these days, en passant to Bolivar." LETTER CCCCX. TO MR. BANKES. "Venice, November 20, 1819. * * It lies at my "Of the Chancellor's law I am no judge; but take up Tom Jones, and read his Mrs. Waters and Molly Seagrim; or Prior's Hans Carvel and Paulo Purganti; Smollett's Roderick Random, the chapter of Lord Strutwell, and many others; Peregrine Pickle, the scene of the Beggar Girl; Johnson's London, for coarse expressions; for instance, the words ‘* *,' and '* *; ' Anstey's Bath Guide, the Hearken Lady Betty, hearken; '-take up, in short, Pope, Prior, Congreve, Dryden, Fielding, Smollett, and their copyright, if his Wat Tyler decision is to pass let the council select passages, and what becomes of into a precedent? I have nothing more to say: you must judge for yourselves. “A tertian ague which has troubled me for some time, and the indisposition of my daughter, have prevented me from replying before to your welcome letter. I have not been ignorant of your progress nor of your discoveries, and I trust that you are no teritan ague; my daughter Allegra has been ill also, "I wrote to you some time ago. I have had a worse in health from your labors. You may rely and I have been almost obliged to run away with a upon finding every body in England eager to reap married woman; but with some difficulty, and many the fruits of them; and as you have done more than internal struggles, I reconciled the lady with her other men, I hope you will not limit yourself to lord, and cured the fever of the child with bark, and saying less than may do justice to the talents and time you have bestowed on your perilous researches. England by the Tyrol in a few days, so that I could my own with cold water. I think of setting out for The first sentence of my letter will have explained wish you to direct your next letter to Calais. to you why I cannot join you at Trieste. I was on cuse my writing in great haste and late in the mornthe point of setting out for England, (before I ing, or night, whichever you please to call it. knew of your arrival,) when my child's illness has third canto of 'Don Juan' is completed, in about made her and me dependent on a Venetian Proto- two hundred stanzas; very decent, I believe, but dc Medico. not know, and it is useless to discuss until it be "It is now seven years since you and I met;-ascertained, if it may or may not be a property. which time you have employed better for others, 'My present determination to quit Italy was unand more honorably for yourself, than I have done. 'In England you will find considerable changes, public and private, you will see some of our old infringement of his copyright, in publishing a pirated edition of Don Juan. college contemporaries turned into lords of the Ex The • Mr. Murray had commenced a suit against a London bookseller, for at ↑ See Letter dlxxxi. |