LORD  BYRON  and  his  TIMES
Byron
Documents Biography Criticism
Letters and Journals of Lord Byron
Journal Entry: 16 January 1814
INTRODUCTION & INDEXES
DOCUMENT INFORMATION
GO TO PAGE NUMBER:
Preface
Life of Byron: to 1806
Life of Byron: 1806
Life of Byron: 1807
Life of Byron: 1808
Life of Byron: 1809
Life of Byron: 1810
Life of Byron: 1811
Life of Byron: 1812
Life of Byron: 1813
Life of Byron: 1814
Life of Byron: 1815
Life of Byron: 1816 (I)
Life of Byron: 1816 (II)
Life of Byron: 1817
Life of Byron: 1818
Life of Byron: 1819
Life of Byron: 1820
Life of Byron: 1821
Life of Byron: 1822
Life of Byron: 1823
Life of Byron: 1824
Appendix
Creative Commons License

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
Produced by CATH
 
“January 16, 1814.
* * * * * * *

“To-morrow I leave town for a few days. I saw Lewis to-day, who is just returned from Oatlands, where he has been squabbling with Mad. de Staël about himself, Clarissa Harlowe, Mackintosh, and me. My homage has never been paid in that quarter, or we would have agreed still worse. I don’t talk—I can’t flatter, and won’t listen, except to a pretty or a foolish woman. She bored Lewis with praises of himself till he sickened—found out that Clarissa was perfection, and Mackintosh the first man in England. There I agree, at least, one of the first—but Lewis did not. As to Clarissa, I leave to those who can read it to judge

And making a jump from Moscow to France,
He stepp’d across the sea,
And rested his hoof on a turnpike road,
No very great way from a bishop’s abode.
5.
“But first as he flew, I forgot to say,
That he hover’d a moment upon his way
To look upon Leipsic plain;
And so sweet to his eye was its sulphury glare,
And so soft to his ear was the cry of despair,
That he perch’d on a mountain of slain;
And he gazed with delight from its growing height,
Nor often on earth had he seen such a sight,
Nor his work done half as well:
For the field ran so red with the blood of the dead,
That it blush’d like the waves of Hell!
Then loudly, and wildly, and long laugh’d he:
‘Methinks they have here little need of me!’
* * * * *
8.
“But the softest note that sooth’d his ear
Was the sound of a widow sighing;
And the sweetest sight was the icy tear,
Which Horror froze in the blue eye clear
Of a maid by her lover lying—
As round her fell her long fair hair;
And she look’d to Heaven with that frenzied air
Which seem’d to ask if a God were there!

A. D. 1813. LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 473
and dispute. I could not do the one, and am, consequently, not qualified for the other. She told Lewis wisely, he being my friend, that I was affected, in the first place, and that, in the next place, I committed the heinous offence of sitting at dinner with my eyes shut, or half shut. * * * I wonder if I really have this trick. I must cure myself of it, if true. One insensibly acquires awkward habits, which should be broken in time. If this is one, I wish I had been told of it before. It would not so much signify if one was always to be checkmated by a plain woman, but one may as well see some of one’s neighbours, as well as the plate upon the table.

“I should like, of all things, to have heard the Amabæan eclogue

And, stretch’d by the wall of a ruin’d hut,
With its hollow cheek, and eyes half shut,
A child of famine dying:
And the carnage begun, when resistance is done,
And the fall of the vainly flying!
* * * * *
10.
“But the Devil has reach’d our cliffs so white,
And what did he there, I pray?
If his eyes were good, he but saw by night
What we see every day;
But he made a tour, and kept a journal
Of all the wondrous sights nocturnal,
And he sold it in shares to the Men of the Row,
Who bid pretty well—but they cheated him, though!
11.
“The Devil first saw, as he thought, the Mail,
Its coachman and his coat;
So instead of a pistol be cock’d his tail,
And seized him by the throat:
‘Aha,’ quoth he, ‘what have we here?
’Tis a new barouche, and an ancient peer!’
12.
“So he sat him on his box again,
And bade him have no fear,
But be true to his club, and stanch to his rein,
His brothel, and his beer;

474 NOTICES OF THE A. D. 1813.
between her and Lewis—both obstinate, clever, and garrulous, and shrill. In fact, one could have heard nothing else. But they fell out, alas!—and now they will never quarrel again. Could not one reconcile them for the ‘nonce?’ Poor Corinne—she will find that some of her fine sayings won’t suit our fine ladies and gentlemen.

“I am getting rather into admiration of * *, the youngest sister of * *. A wife would be my salvation. I am sure the wives of my acquaintances have hitherto done me little good. * * is beautiful, but very young, and, I think, a fool. But I have not seen enough to judge; besides, I hate an esprit in petticoats. That she won’t love me is very probable, nor shall I love her. But, on my system, and the modern system in general, that don’t signify. The business (if it came to business) would probably be arranged between papa and me. She

‘Next to seeing a lord at the council board,
I would rather see him here.’
* * * * *
17.
“The Devil gat next to Westminster,
And he turn’d to ‘the room’ of the Commons;
But he heard, as he purposed to enter in there,
That ‘the Lords’ had received a summons;
And he thought, as a ‘quondam Aristocrat,’
He might peep at the peers, though to hear them were flat;
And he walk’d up the house so like one of our own,
That they say that he stood pretty near the throne.
18.
“He saw the Lord L—l seeming1y wise,
The Lord W—d certainly silly,
And Johnny of Norfolk—a man of some size—
And Chatham, so—like his friend Billy;
And he saw the tears in Lord E—n’s eyes,
Because the Catholics would not rise,
In spite of his prayers and his prophecies;
And he heard—which set Satan himself a staring—
A certain Chief Justice say something like swearing,
And the Devil was shock’d—and quoth he, ‘I must go,
For I find we have much better manners below.
If thus he harangues when he passes my border,
I shall hint to friend Moloch to call him to order.’”

A. D. 1813. LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 475
would have her own way; I am good-humoured to women, and docile; and, if I did not fall in love with her, which I should try to prevent, we should be a very comfortable couple. As to conduct, that she must look to. * * * * * But if I love, I shall be jealous;—and for that reason I will not be in love. Though, after all, I doubt my temper, and fear I should not be so patient as becomes the bienséance of a married man in my station. * * * * * Divorce ruins the poor femme, and damages are a paltry compensation. I do fear my temper would lead me into some of our oriental tricks of vengeance, or, at any rate, into a summary appeal to the court of twelve paces. So ‘I’ll none on ’t,’ but e’en remain single and solitary;—though I should like to have somebody now and then, to yawn with one.

“W. and, after him, * *, has stolen one of my buffooneries about Mde. de Staël’s Metaphysics and the Fog, and passed it, by speech and letter, as their own. As Gibbet says, ‘they are the most of a gentleman of any on the road.’ W. is in sad enmity with the Whigs about this Review of Fox (if he did review him);—all the epigrammatists and essayists are at him. I hate odds, and wish he may beat them. As for me, by the blessing of indifference, I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments; and, as it is the shortest and most agreeable and summary feeling imaginable, the first moment of an universal republic would convert me into an advocate for single and uncontradicted despotism. The fact is, riches are power, and poverty is slavery, all over the earth, and one sort of establishment is no better, nor worse, for a people than another. I shall adhere to my party, because it would not be honourable to act otherwise; but, as to opinions, I don’t think politics worth an opinion. Conduct is another thing:—if you begin with a party, go on with them. I have no consistency, except in politics; and that probably arises from my indifference on the subject altogether.”