“If this had been begun ten years ago, and faithfully kept!!!—heigho! there are too many things I wish never to have remembered, as it is. Well,—I have had my share of what are called the pleasures of this life, and have seen more of the European and Asiatic world than I have made a good use of. They say ‘virtue is its own reward,’—it certainly should be paid well for its trouble. At five-and-twenty, when the better part of life is over, one should be something;—and what am I? nothing but five-and-twenty—and the odd months. What have I seen? the same man all over the world,—ay, and woman too. Give me a Mussulman who never asks questions, and a she of the same race who saves one the trouble of putting them. But for this same plague—yellow-fever—and Newstead delay, I should have been by this time a second time close to the Euxine. If I can overcome the last, I don’t so much mind your pestilence; and, at any rate, the spring shall see me there,—provided I neither marry myself nor unmarry any one else in the
* “C’est surtout aux hommes qui sont hors de toute comparaison par le génie qu’on aime à ressembler au moins par la foiblesses.”—Ginguené.
|
“No more reflections.—Let me see—last night I finished ‘Zuleika,’ my second Turkish Tale. I believe the composition of it kept me alive—for it was written to drive my thoughts from the recollection of—
‘Dear sacred name, rest ever unreveal’d.’ |
‘quæque ipse . . . . . vidi, Et quorum pars magna fui.’ |
“To-day Henry Byron called on me with my little cousin Eliza. She will grow up a beauty and a plague; but, in the mean time, it is the prettiest child! dark eyes and eyelashes, black and long as the wing of a raven. I think she is prettier even than my niece, Georgina,—yet I don’t like to think so neither; and, though older, she is not so clever.
“Dallas called before I was up, so we did not meet. Lewis, too—who seems out of humour with every thing. What can be the matter? he is not married—has he lost his own mistress, or any other person’s wife? Hodgson, too, came. He is going to be married, and he is the kind of man who will be the happier. He has talent, cheerfulness, every thing that can make him a pleasing companion; and his intended is handsome and young, and all that. But I never see any one much improved by matrimony. All my coupled contemporaries are bald and discontented. W. and S. have both lost their hair and good-humour; and the last of the two had a good deal to lose. But it don’t much signify what falls off a man’s temples in that state.
| A. D. 1813. | LIFE OF LORD BYRON. | 437 |
“Mem. I must get a toy to-morrow for Eliza, and send the device for the seals of myself and * * * * * Mem. too, to call on the Staël and Lady Holland to-morrow, and on * *, who has advised me (without seeing it, by the by,) not to publish ‘Zuleika;’ I believe he is right, but experience might have taught him that not to print is physically impossible. No one has seen it but Hodgson and Mr. Gifford. I never in my life read a composition, save to Hodgson, as he pays me in kind. It is a horrible thing to do too frequently;—better print, and they who like may read, and, if they don’t like, you have the satisfaction of knowing that they have, at least, purchased the right of saying so.
“I have declined presenting the Debtor’s Petition, being sick of parliamentary mummeries. I have spoken thrice; but I doubt my ever becoming an orator. My first was liked; the second and third—I don’t know whether they succeeded or not. I have never yet set to it con amore;—one must have some excuse to oneself for laziness, or inability, or both, and this is mine. ‘Company, villanous company, hath been the spoil of me;’—and then, I have ‘drunk medicines,’ not to make me love others, but certainly enough to hate myself.
“Two nights ago, I saw the tigers sup at Exeter ‘Change. Except Veli Pacha’s lion in the Morea,—who followed the Arab keeper like a dog,—the fondness of the hyæena for her keeper amused me most. Such a conversazione!—There was a ‘hippopotamus,’ like Lord L—l in the face; and the ‘Ursine Sloth’ hath the very voice and manner of my valet—but the tiger talked too much. The elephant took and gave me my money again—took off my hat—opened a door—trunked a whip—and behaved so well, that I wish he was my butler. The handsomest animal on earth is one of the panthers; but the poor antelopes were dead. I should hate to see one here:—the sight of the camel made me pine again for Asia Minor. ‘Oh quando te aspiciam?’
