attractions to the gentle living reader); let me then preserve the only one which I could possibly have that of having been at Venice, and entered more into the local spirit of it. I claim no more.

"I know what Foscolo means about Calendaro's spitting at Bertram; that's national

the objection, I mean. The Italians and French, with those 'flags of abomination,' their pocket handkerchiefs, spit there, and here, and every where else in your face almost, and therefore object to it on the stage as too familiar. But we who spit nowhere but in a man's face when we grow savage are not likely to feel this. Remember Massinger, and Kean's Sir Giles Overreach

-as we

"Lord! thus I spit at thee and thy counsel ! Besides, Calendaro does not spit in Bertram's face, he spits at him, as I have seen the Mussulmans do upon the ground when they are in a rage. Again, he does not in fact despise Bertram, though he affects itall do, when angry with one we think our inferior. He is angry at not being allowed to die in his own way (although not afraid of death); and recollect that he suspected and hated Bertram from the first. Israel Bertuccio, on the other hand, is a cooler and more concentrated fellow he acts upon principle and impulse; Calendaro upon impulse and example.

66

"So there's argument for you. 'The Doge repeats ; true, but it is from engrossing passion, and because he sees different persons, and is always obliged to recur to the cause uppermost in his mind. His speeches are long:- true, but I wrote for the closet, and on the French and Italian model rather than yours, which I think not very highly of, for all your old dramatists, who are long enough too, God knows: look into any of them.

"I return you Foscolo's letter, because it alludes also to his private affairs. I am sorry to see such a man in straits, because I know what they are, or what they were. I never met but three men who would have held out a finger to me: one was yourself, the other William Bankes, and the third a nobleman long ago dead: but of these the first was the only one who offered it while I really wanted it; the second from good will-but I was not in need of Bankes's aid, and would not have accepted it if I had (though I love and esteem him); and the third

66

So you see that I have seen some strange things in my time. As for your own offer, it was in 1815, when I was in actual uncer

1 The paragraph is left thus imperfect in the original.

457

tainty of five pounds. I rejected it; but I have not forgotten it, although you probably have.

"P. S.-Foscolo's Ricciardo was lent, with the leaves uncut, to some Italians now in villeggiatura, so that I have had no opportunity of hearing their decision, or of reading it. They seized on it as Foscolo's, and on account of the beauty of the paper and printing, directly. If I find it takes, highly of Foscolo as they can of any man, The Italians think as I will reprint it here. divided and miserable as they are, and with neither leisure at present to read, nor head nor heart to judge of any thing but extracts from French newspapers and the Lugano Gazette.

"We are all looking at one another, like wolves on their prey in pursuit, only waiting for the first faller on to do unutterable things. They are a great world in chaos, or angels in hell, which you please; but out of chaos came Paradise, and out of hell I don't know what; but the devil went in there, and he was a fine fellow once, you know.

"You need never favour me with any periodical publication, except the Edinburgh Quarterly, and an occasional Blackwood; or now and then a Monthly Review; for the rest I do not feel curiosity enough to look beyond their covers.

"To be sure I took in the British Roberts finely. He fell precisely into the glaring trap It was inconceivable how he laid for him. could be so absurd as to think us serious with him.

Recollect, that if you put my name to Don Juan' in these canting days, any lawyer might oppose my guardian right of my daughter in Chancery, on the plea of its containing the parody;- such are the perils of a foolish jest. I was not aware of this at the time, but you will find it correct, I believe; and you may be sure that the Noels would not let it slip. Now I prefer my child to a poem at any time, and so should you, as having half a dozen.

66

"Let me know your notions.

"If you turn over the earlier pages of the Huntingdon peerage story, you will see how common a name Ada was in the early Plantagenet days. I found it in my own pedigree in the reign of John and Henry, and gave it to my daughter. It was also the name of Charlemagne's sister. It is in an early chapter of Genesis, as the name of the wife of Lamech and I suppose Ada is the feminine of Adam. It is short, ancient, vocalic, and had been in my family; for which reason I gave it to my daughter."

LETTER 391. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, 8bre 120, 1820.

"By land and sea carriage a considerable quantity of books have arrived; and I am obliged and grateful: but 'medio de fonte leporum, surgit amari aliquid,' &c. &c.; which, being interpreted, means,

"I'm thankful for your books, dear Murray;

But why not send Scott's Monasturry?

the only book in four living volumes I would give a baioccolo to see- 'bating the rest of the same author, and an occasional Edinburgh and Quarterly, as brief chroniclers of the times. Instead of this, here are Johnny Keats's** [p-a-bed] poetry, and three novels by God knows whom, except that there is Peg Holford's name to one of them a spinster whom I thought we had sent back to her spinning. Crayon is very good; Hogg's Tales rough, but RACY, and welcome.

"Books of travels are expensive, and I don't want them, having travelled already; besides, they lie. Thank the author of "The Profligate, a Comedy,' for his (or her) present. Pray send me no more poetry but what is rare and decidedly good. There is such a trash of Keats and the like upon my tables, that I am ashamed to look at them. I say nothing against your parsons, your Smedleys and your Crolys-it is all very fine - but pray dispense me from the pleasure — as also from Mrs. Hemans. Instead of poetry if will favour me with a few soda-powders, I shall be delighted: but all prose ('bating travels and novels NOT by Scott) is welcome, especially Scott's Tales of my Landlord, and

you

so on.

"In the notes to Marino Faliero, it may be as well to say that Benintende' was not really of the Ten, but merely Grand Chancellor, a separate office (although important): it was an arbitrary alteration of mine. The Doges too were all buried in St. Mark's before Faliero. It is singular that when his predecessor, Andrea Dandolo, died, the Ten made a law that all the future Doges should be buried with their families, in their own churches, one would think by a kind of presentiment. So that all that is said of his ancestral Doges, as buried at St. John's and Paul's, is altered from the fact, they being in St. Mark's. Make a note of this, and put Editor as the subscription to it.

"As I make such pretensions to accuracy, I should not like to be twitted even with such

1 ["The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent." — (Washington Irving.)]

2 ["Ishould recommend your not publishing the prose. It is too late for the Letter to Roberts, and that to Black

trifles on that score. Of the play they may say what they please, but not so of my costume and dram. pers., they having been real existences.

"I omitted Foscolo in my list of living Venetian worthies, in the notes, considering him as an Italian in general, and not a mere provincial like the rest; and as an Italian I have spoken of him in the preface to Canto 4th of Childe Harold.

66

The French translation of us!!! oimè! oime! the German; but I don't understand the latter and his long dissertation at the end about the Fausts. Excuse haste. Of politics it is not safe to speak, but nothing is decided as yet. 2

"I am in a very fierce humour at not having Scott's Monastery. You are too liberal in quantity, and somewhat careless of the quality, of your missives. All the Quarterlies (four in number) I had had before from you, and two of the Edinburghs; but no matter; we shall have new ones by and by. No more Keats, I entreat :-flay him alive; if some of you don't, I must skin him myself. There is no bearing the drivelling idiotism of the manikin.

"I don't feel inclined to care further about Don Juan.' What do you think a very pretty Italian lady said to me the other day? She had read it in the French, and paid me some compliments, with due DRAWBACKS, upon it. I answered that what she said was true, but that I suspected it would live longer than Childe Harold. Ah but (said she) I would rather have the fame of Childe Harold for three years than an IMMORTALITY of Don Juan !' The truth is that it is TOO TRUE, and the women hate every thing which strips off the tinsel of sentiment; and they are right, as it would rob them of their weapons. I never knew a woman who did not hate De Grammont's Memoirs for the same reason: even Lady Oxford used to abuse them.

"Rose's work 3 I never received. It was seized at Venice. Such is the liberality of the Huns, with their two hundred thousand men, that they dare not let such a volume as his circulate."

LETTER 392. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, 8bre 16o, 1830.

"The Abbot' has just arrived: many thanks; as also for the Monastery — when you send it ! ! !

wood is too egotistical, and Hobhouse don't like it, except the part about Pope, which is truth, and very good.”—MS.] 3 [Mr. William Stewart Rose's "Letters from the North of Italy."]

"The Abbot will have a more than ordinary interest for me, for an ancestor of mine by the mother's side, Sir J. Gordon of Gight, the handsomest of his day, died on a scaffold at Aberdeen for his loyalty to Mary, of whom he was an imputed paramour as well as her relation. His fate was much commented on in the Chronicles of the times. If I mistake not, he had something to do with her escape from Loch Leven, or with her captivity But this you will know better

there. 1 than I.

"I recollect Loch Leven as it were but yesterday. I saw it in my way to England in 1798, being then ten years of age. My mother, who was as haughty as Lucifer with her descent from the Stuarts, and her right line, from the old Gordons, not the Seyton Gordons, as she disdainfully termed the ducal branch, told me the story, always reminding me how superior her Gordons were to the southern Byrons, notwithstanding our Norman, and always masculine descent, which has never lapsed into a female, as my mother's Gordons had done in her own person.

"I have written to you so often lately, that the brevity of this will be welcome. "Yours, &c."

LETTER 393. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, 8bre 170, 1820.

"Enclosed is the Dedication of Marino Faliero to Goethe. Query,-is his title Baron or not? I think yes. Let me know your opinion, and so forth.

"P. S.-Let me know what Mr. Hobhouse and you have decided about the two prose letters and their publication.

"I enclose you an Italian abstract of the German translator of Manfred's Appendix, in which you will perceive quoted what Goethe says of the whole body of English poetry (and not of me in particular). On this the Dedication is founded, as you will perceive, though I had thought of it before, for I look upon him as a great man."

The very singular Dedication transmitted with this letter has never before been published, nor, as far as I can learn, ever reached the hands of the illustrious German. It is written in the poet's most whimsical and mocking mood; and the unmeasured severity poured out in it upon the two favourite objects of his wrath and ridicule compels me

[See post, Letter 395.]

[Goethe was ennobled, having the Von prefixed to his name, but never received the title of Baron.]

3 [A work entitled "A Biographical Dictionary of

459

to deprive the reader of some of its most amusing passages.

"DEDICATION TO BARON GOETHE, &c. &c. &c.

'Sir,In the Appendix to an English work lately translated into German and published at Leipsic, a judgment of yours upon English poetry is quoted as follows: That in English poetry, great genius, universal power, a feeling of profundity, with sufficient tenderness and force, are to be found; but that altogether these do not constitute poets,' &c. &c.

"I regret to see a great man falling into a great mistake. This opinion of yours only proves that the 'Dictionary of Ten Thousand living English Authors' has not been translated into German. You will have read, in your friend Schlegel's version, the dialogue in Macbeth

"There are ten thousand! Macbeth. Geese, villain? Answer.

Authors, sir.'

Now, of these 'ten thousand authors,' there are actually nineteen hundred and eightyseven poets, all alive at this moment, whatever their works may be, as their booksellers well know; and amongst these there are several who possess a far greater reputation than mine, although considerably less than yours. It is owing to this neglect on the part of your German translators that you are not aware of the works of * *

"There is also another, named * *

I mention these poets by way of sample to enlighten you. They form but two bricks of our Babel, (WINDSOR bricks, by the way,) but may serve for a specimen of the building.

"It is, moreover, asserted that the predominant character of the whole body of the present English poetry is a disgust and contempt for life.' But I rather suspect that by one single work of prose, you yourself, have excited a greater contempt for life than all the English volumes of poesy that ever were written. Madame de Stael says, that 'Werther has occasioned more suicides than the most beautiful woman;' and I really believe that he has put more individuals out of this world than Napoleon himself, except in the way of his profession. Perhaps, Illustrious Sir, the acrimonious judgment passed by a celebrated northern journal upon you in particular, and the Germans in general, has rather indisposed you towards English

Living Authors of Great Britain and Ireland," and dedicated to the Prince Regent, appeared in 1816.]

4 [See an article on Goethe's "Aus Meinen Leben," &c. in the Edinburgh Rev. vol. xxvi. and xxvii.]

poetry as well as criticism. But you must not regard our critics, who are at bottom good-natured fellows, considering their two professions, taking up the law in court, and laying it down out of it. No one can more lament their hasty and unfair judgment, in your particular, than I do; and I so expressed myself to your friend Schlegel, in 1816, at Coppet.

"In behalf of my 'ten thousand' living brethren, and of myself, I have thus far taken notice of an opinion expressed with regard to English poetry' in general, and which merited notice, because it was YOURS.

"My principal object in addressing you was to testify my sincere respect and admiration of a man, who, for half a century, has led the literature of a great nation, and will

left it four or five years ago. Some of the English scribblers, it is true, abused Pope and Swift, but the reason was that they themselves did not know how to write either prose or verse; but nobody thought them worth making a sect of. Perhaps there may be something of the kind sprung up lately, but I have not heard much about it, and it would be such bad taste that I shall be very sorry to believe it.”

CHAPTER XL.

1820.

"You have been fortunate, Sir, not only in the writings which have illustrated your name, but in the name itself, as being sufficiently musical for the articulation of posterity. In this you have the advantage of some of your countrymen, whose names would perhaps be immortal also body could pronounce them.

- if any

"It may, perhaps, be supposed, by this apparent tone of levity, that I am wanting in intentional respect towards you; but this will be a mistake: I am always flippant in prose. Considering you, as I really and warmly do, in common with all your own, and with most other nations, to be by far the first literary character which has existed in Europe since the death of Voltaire, I felt, and feel, desirous to inscribe to you the following work, not as being either a tragedy or a poem, (for I cannot pronounce upon its pretensions to be either one or the other, or both, or neither,) but as a mark of esteem and admiration from a foreigner to the man who has been hailed in Germany " THE GREAT GOETHE.'

66

"I have the honour to be, With the truest respect, "Your most obedient and "Very humble servant, 66 BYRON.

-A CHANT. EPIGRAMS. A POR-
TRAIT.
HENRY MATTHEWS.
THE
WHITE LADY OF COLALTO. — KEATS AND
THE EDINBURGH REVIEW.-PROGRESS OF
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY. ANECDOTES. ——
PLAN OF A NEWSPAPER IN CONJUNCTION
WITH MOORE. DISTURBED STATE OF
ITALY. THE CARBONARI.-LORD BYRON'S
ADDRESS TO THE NEAPOLITAN GOVERN-
MENT. FURTHER ANECDOTES.

LETTER 394.

TO MR. MOORE.

"Ravenna, October 17. 1820. I

"You owe me two letters -pay them. want to know what you are about. The summer is over, and you will be back to Paris. Apropos of Paris, it was not Sophia Gail, but Sophia Gay-the English word Gay-who was my correspondent. you tell who she is, as you did of the defunct**?

Can

"Have you gone on with your poem? I have received the French of mine. Only think of being traduced into a foreign language in such an abominable travesty! It is useless to rail, but one can't help it.

"Have you got my Memoir copied? I have begun a continuation. Shall I send it you, as far as it is gone?

"I can't say any thing to you about Italy, for the Government here look upon me with a suspicious eye, as I am well informed. Pretty fellows! as if I, a solitary stranger, could do any mischief. It is because I am fond of rifle and pistol shooting, I believe; for they took the alarm at the quantity of cartridges I consumed, —the wiseacres !

was Madame Sophie Gay, mother of the celebrated poetess and beauty, Mademoiselle Delphine Gay.]

ÆT. 32.

66

"Ravenna, 8bre 25°, 1820.

Pray forward the enclosed to Lady Byron. It is on business.

"In thanking you for the Abbot, I made four grand mistakes. Sir John Gordon was not of Gight, but of Bogagicht, and a son of Huntley's. He suffered not for his loyalty, but in an insurrection. He had nothing to do with Loch Leven, having been dead some time at the period of the Queen's confinement and, fourthly, I am not sure that he was the Queen's paramour or no, for Robertson does not allude to this, though Walter Scott does, in the list he gives of her admirers (as unfortunate) at the close of 'The Abbot.' "I must have made all these mistakes in recollecting my mother's account of the matter, although she was more accurate than I am, being precise upon points of genealogy, like all the aristocratical Scotch. She had a long list of ancestors, like Sir Lucius O'Trigger's, most of whom are to be found in the old Scotch Chronicles, Spalding, &c. in arms and doing mischief. I remember well passing Loch Leven, as well as the Queen's Ferry we were on our way to England in Yours.

1798.

:

"You had better not publish Blackwood and the Roberts' prose, except what regards Pope;- -you have let the time slip by."

1 [The Duke of Bourdeaux, born the 29th of September 1820.]

2 [It has since been introduced into the complete edition of Lord Byron's Works (see p. 800.), and is characterised by the Quarterly Reviewers as "one of the finest specimens of English prose produced in this or in any preceding time."]

3 While these sheets are passing through the press, a printed statement has been transmitted to me by Lady Noel Byron, which the reader will find inserted in the Appendix (First Edit.)

4 Mr. Galignani had applied to Lord Byron with the view of procuring from him such legal right over those works of his Lordship of which he had hitherto been the sole publisher in France, as would enable him to prevent others, in future, from usurping the same privilege.

> [In a pamphlet entitled "The Invariable Principles

461

The Pamphlet in answer to Blackwood's Magazine, here mentioned, was occasioned by an article in that work, entitled "Remarks on Don Juan," and though put to press by Mr. Murray, was never published. The writer in the Magazine having, in reference to certain passages in Don Juan, taken occasion to pass some severe strictures on the author's matrimonial conduct, Lord Byron, in his reply, enters at some length into that painful subject; and his defence, 2 - if defence it can be called, where there has never yet been any definite charges will be perused with strong interest.

LETTER 396. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Ravenna, 9bre 4. 1820.

"I have received from Mr. Galignani the enclosed letters, duplicates and receipts, which will explain themselves. 4 As the poems are your property by purchase, right, and justice, all matters of publication, &c. &c. are for you to decide upon. I know not how far my compliance with Mr. Galignani's request might be legal, and I doubt that it would not be honest. In case you choose to arrange with him, I enclose the permits to you, and in so doing I wash my hands of the business altogether. I sign them merely to enable you to exert the power you justly possess more properly. I will have nothing to do with it farther, except, in my answer to Mr. Galignani, to state that the letters, &c. &c. are sent to you, and the causes thereof.

"If you can check these foreign pirates, do; if not, put the permissive papers in the fire. I can have no view nor object whatever, but to secure to you your property.

Yours, &c.

"P.S. I have read part of the Quarterly just arrived: Mr. Bowles shall be answered; -he is not quite correct in his statement about English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. They support Pope, I see, in the

of Poetry," in a letter to Mr. Campbell, occasioned by his masterly vindication of Pope in the first volume of his Specimens of British Poets. "It is with pain we have so long witnessed the attacks on the moral and poetical character of this great poet by the last two of his editors. Warton, who first entered the list, though not unwilling to wound, exhibits occasionally some of the courtesy of the ancient chivalry; but his successor, the Rev. Mr. Bowles, possesses the contest à l'outrance, with the appearance, though not with the reality, of personal hostility. It had been more honourable in this gentleman, with his known prejudices against this class of poetry, in which Pope will always remain unrivalled, to have declined the office of editor, than to attempt to spread among new generations of readers the most unfavourable and the most unjust impressions of the Poet and of the Man."--Quart. Rev. vol. xxiii. p. 407.]