Life of Lord Byron Volume IV Part 1
Life of Lord Byron.
Vol. IV.
by Thomas Moore.
LETTER 272. TO MR. MURRAY.
"Venice, April 9. 1817.
"Your letters of the 18th and 20th are arrived. In my own I have given you the rise, progress, decline, and fall, of my recent malady. It is gone to the devil: I won't pay him so bad a compliment as to say it came from him;--he is too much of a gentleman. It was nothing but a slow fever, which quickened its pace towards the end of its journey. I had been bored with it some weeks--with nocturnal burnings and morning perspirations; but I am quite well again, which I attribute to having had neither medicine nor doctor thereof.
"In a few days I set off for Rome: such is my purpose. I shall change it very often before Monday next, but do you continue to direct and address to _Venice_, as heretofore. If I go, letters will be forwarded: I say '_if_,' because I never know what I shall do till it is done; and as I mean most firmly to set out for Rome, it is not unlikely I may find myself at St. Petersburg.
"You tell me to 'take care of myself;'--faith, and I will. I won't be posthumous yet, if I can help it. Notwithstanding, only think what a 'Life and Adventures,' while I am in full scandal, would be worth, together with the 'membra' of my writing-desk, the sixteen beginnings of poems never to be finished! Do you think I would not have shot myself last year, had I not luckily recollected that Mrs.
C * * and Lady N * *, and all the old women in England would have been delighted;--besides the agreeable 'Lunacy,' of the 'Crowner's Quest,' and the regrets of two or three or half a dozen? Be a.s.sured that I _would live_ for two reasons, or more;--there are one or two people whom I have to put out of the world, and as many into it, before I can 'depart in peace;' if I do so before, I have not fulfilled my mission. Besides, when I turn thirty, I will turn devout; I feel a great vocation that way in Catholic churches, and when I hear the organ.
"So * * is writing again! Is there no Bedlam in Scotland? nor thumb-screw? nor gag? nor hand-cuff? I went upon my knees to him almost, some years ago, to prevent him from publishing a political pamphlet, which would have given him a livelier idea of 'Habeas Corpus' than the world will derive from his present production upon that suspended subject, which will doubtless be followed by the suspension of other of his Majesty's subjects.
"I condole with Drury Lane and rejoice with * *,--that is, in a modest way,--on the tragical end of the new tragedy.
"You and Leigh Hunt have quarrelled then, it seems? I introduce him and his poem to you, in the hope that (malgre politics) the union would be beneficial to both, and the end is eternal enmity; and yet I did this with the best intentions: I introduce * * *, and * * *
runs away with your money: my friend Hobhouse quarrels, too, with the Quarterly: and (except the last) I am the innocent Istmhus (d.a.m.n the word! I can't spell it, though I have crossed that of Corinth a dozen times) of these enmities.
"I will tell you something about Chillon.--A Mr. _De Luc_, ninety years old, a Swiss, had it read to him, and is pleased with it,--so my sister writes. He said that he was _with Rousseau_ at _Chillon_, and that the description is perfectly correct. But this is not all: I recollected something of the name, and find the following pa.s.sage in 'The Confessions,' vol. iii. page 247. liv. viii.:--
"'De tous ces amus.e.m.e.ns celui qui me plut davantage fut une promenade autour du Lac, que je fis en bateau avec _De Luc_ pere, sa bru, ses _deux fils_, et ma Therese. Nous mimes sept jours a cette tournee par le plus beau temps du monde. J'en gardai le vif souvenir des sites qui m'avoient frappe a l'autre extremite du Lac, et dont je fis la description, quelques annees apres, dans la Nouvelle Heloise'
"This nonagenarian, De Luc, must be one of the 'deux fils.' He is in England--infirm, but still in faculty. It is odd that he should have lived so long, and not wanting in oddness that he should have made this voyage with Jean Jacques, and afterwards, at such an interval, read a poem by an Englishman (who had made precisely the same circ.u.mnavigation) upon the same scenery.
"As for 'Manfred,' it is of no use sending _proofs_; nothing of that kind comes. I sent the whole at different times. The two first Acts are the best; the third so so; but I was blown with the first and second heats. You must call it 'a Poem,' for it is _no Drama_, and I do not choose to have it called by so * * a name--a 'Poem in dialogue,' or--Pantomime, if you will; any thing but a green-room synonyme; and this is your motto--
"'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.'
"Yours ever, &c.
"My love and thanks to Mr. Gifford."
LETTER 273. TO MR. MOORE.
"Venice, April 11. 1817.
"I shall continue to write to you while the fit is on me, by way of penance upon you for your former complaints of long silence. I dare say you would blush, if you could, for not answering. Next week I set out for Rome. Having seen Constantinople, I should like to look at t'other fellow. Besides, I want to see the Pope, and shall take care to tell him that I vote for the Catholics and no Veto.
"I sha'n't go to Naples. It is but the second best sea-view, and I have seen the first and third, viz. Constantinople and Lisbon, (by the way, the last is but a river-view; however, they reckon it after Stamboul and Naples, and before Genoa,) and Vesuvius is silent, and I have pa.s.sed by aetna. So I shall e'en return to Venice in July; and if you write, I pray you to address to Venice, which is my head, or rather my _heart_, quarters.
"My late physician, Dr. Polidori, is here on his way to England, with the present Lord G * * and the widow of the late earl. Dr.
Polidori has, just now, no more patients, because his patients are no more. He had lately three, who are now all dead--one embalmed.
Horner and a child of Thomas Hope's are interred at Pisa and Rome.
Lord G * * died of an inflammation of the bowels: so they took them out, and sent them (on account of their discrepancies), separately from the carca.s.s, to England. Conceive a man going one way, and his intestines another, and his immortal soul a third!--was there ever such a distribution? One certainly has a soul; but how it came to allow itself to be enclosed in a body is more than I can imagine. I only know if once mine gets out, I'll have a bit of a tussle before I let it get in again to that or any other.
"And so poor dear Mr. Maturin's second tragedy has been neglected by the discerning public! * * will be d----d glad of this, and d----d without being glad, if ever his own plays come upon 'any stage.'
"I wrote to Rogers the other day, with a message for you. I hope that he flourishes. He is the t.i.thonus of poetry--immortal already. You and I must wait for it.
"I hear nothing--know nothing. You may easily suppose that the English don't seek me, and I avoid them. To be sure, there are but few or none here, save pa.s.sengers. Florence and Naples are their Margate and Ramsgate, and much the same sort of company too, by all accounts, which hurts us among the Italians.
"I want to hear of Lalla Rookh--are you out? Death and fiends! why don't you tell me where you are, what you are, and how you are? I shall go to Bologna by Ferrara, instead of Mantua: because I would rather see the cell where they caged Ta.s.so, and where he became mad and * *, than his own MSS. at Modena, or the Mantuan birthplace of that harmonious plagiary and miserable flatterer, whose cursed hexameters were drilled into me at Harrow. I saw Verona and Vicenza on my way here--Padua too.
"I go alone,--but alone, because I mean to return here. I only want to see Rome. I have not the least curiosity about Florence, though I must see it for the sake of the Venus, &c. &c.; and I wish also to see the Fall of Terni. I think to return to Venice by Ravenna and Rimini, of both of which I mean to take notes for Leigh Hunt, who will be glad to hear of the scenery of his Poem. There was a devil of a review of him in the Quarterly, a year ago, which he answered. All answers are imprudent: but, to be sure, poetical flesh and blood must have the last word--that's certain. I thought, and think, very highly of his Poem; but I warned him of the row his favourite antique phraseology would bring him into.
"You have taken a house at Hornsey: I had much rather you had taken one in the Apennines. If you think of coming out for a summer, or so, tell me, that I may be upon the hover for you.
"Ever," &c.
LETTER 274. TO MR. MURRAY.
"Venice, April 14. 1817.
"By the favour of Dr. Polidori, who is here on his way to England with the present Lord G * *, (the late earl having gone to England by another road, accompanied by his bowels in a separate coffer,) I remit to you, to deliver to Mrs. Leigh, _two miniatures_; previously you will have the goodness to desire Mr. Love (as a peace-offering between him and me) to set them in plain gold, with my arms complete, and 'Painted by Prepiani--Venice, 1817,' on the back. I wish also that you would desire Holmes to make a copy of _each_--that is, both--for myself, and that you will retain the said copies till my return. One was done while I was very unwell; the other in my health, which may account for their dissimilitude.
I trust that they will reach their destination in safety.
"I recommend the Doctor to your good offices with your government friends; and if you can be of any use to him in a literary point of view, pray be so.
"To-day, or rather yesterday, for it is past midnight, I have been up to the battlements of the highest tower in Venice, and seen it and its view, in all the glory of a clear Italian sky. I also went over the Manfrini Palace, famous for its pictures. Amongst them, there is a portrait of _Ariosto_ by _t.i.tian_, surpa.s.sing all my antic.i.p.ation of the power of painting or human expression: it is the poetry of portrait, and the portrait of poetry. There was also one of some learned lady, centuries old, whose name I forget, but whose features must always be remembered. I never saw greater beauty, or sweetness, or wisdom:--it is the kind of face to go mad for, because it cannot walk out of its frame. There is also a famous dead Christ and live Apostles, for which Buonaparte offered in vain five thousand louis; and of which, though it is a capo d'opera of t.i.tian, as I am no connoisseur, I say little, and thought less, except of one figure in it. There are ten thousand others, and some very fine Giorgiones amongst them, &c. &c. There is an original Laura and Petrarch, very hideous both. Petrarch has not only the dress, but the features and air of an old woman, and Laura looks by no means like a young one, or a pretty one. What struck me most in the general collection was the extreme resemblance of the style of the female faces in the ma.s.s of pictures, so many centuries or generations old, to those you see and meet every day among the existing Italians. The queen of Cyprus and Giorgione's wife, particularly the latter, are Venetians as it were of yesterday; the same eyes and expression, and, to my mind, there is none finer.
"You must recollect, however, that I know nothing of painting; and that I detest it, unless it reminds me of something I have seen, or think it possible to see, for which reason I spit upon and abhor all the Saints and subjects of one half the impostures I see in the churches and palaces; and when in Flanders, I never was so disgusted in my life, as with Rubens and his eternal wives and infernal glare of colours, as they appeared to me; and in Spain I did not think much of Murillo and Velasquez. Depend upon it, of all the arts, it is the most artificial and unnatural, and that by which the nonsense of mankind is most imposed upon. I never yet saw the picture or the statue which came a league within my conception or expectation; but I have seen many mountains, and seas, and rivers, and views, and two or three women, who went as far beyond it,--besides some horses; and a lion (at Veli Pacha's) in the Morea; and a tiger at supper in Exeter Change.
"When you write, continue to address to me at _Venice_. Where do you suppose the books you sent to me are? At _Turin_! This comes of '_the Foreign Office_' which is foreign enough, G.o.d knows, for any good it can be of to me, or any one else, and be d----d to it, to its last clerk and first charlatan, Castlereagh.
"This makes my hundredth letter at least.
"Yours," &c.
TO MR. MURRAY.
"Venice, April 14. 1817.
"The present proofs (of the whole) begin only at the 17th page; but as I had corrected and sent back the first Act, it does not signify.
"The third Act is certainly d----d bad, and, like the Archbishop of Grenada's homily (which savoured of the palsy), has the dregs of my fever, during which it was written. It must on _no account_ be published in its present state. I will try and reform it, or rewrite it altogether; but the impulse is gone, and I have no chance of making any thing out of it. I would not have it published as it is on any account. The speech of Manfred to the Sun is the only part of this act I thought good myself; the rest is certainly as bad as bad can be, and I wonder what the devil possessed me.
"I am very glad indeed that you sent me Mr. Gifford's opinion without _deduction_. Do you suppose me such a b.o.o.by as not to be very much obliged to him? or that in fact I was not, and am not, convinced and convicted in my conscience of this same overt act of nonsense?