“‘Grata superveniet,’ &c. &c. I had written to you again, but burnt the letter, because I began to think you seriously hurt at my
* The following is the enclosure here referred to. “Darlington, June 3, 1815. “MY LORD, “I have lately purchased a set of your works, and am quite vexed that you have not cancelled the Ode to Buonaparte. It certainly was prematurely written, without thought or reflection. Providence has now brought him to reign over millions again, while the same Providence keeps as it were in a garrison another potentate, who, in the language of Mr. Burke, ‘he hurled from his throne.’ See if you cannot make amends far your folly, and consider that, in almost every respect, human nature is the same, in every clime and in every period, and don’t act the part of a foolish boy. Let not Englishmen talk of the stretch of tyrants, while the torrents of blood shed in the East Indies cry aloud to Heaven for retaliation. Learn. good sir, not to cast the first stone. I remain your lordship’s servant, “J. R. * *.” |
| 624 | NOTICES OF THE | A. D. 1815. |
“I had given over all hopes of yours. By the by, my ‘grata superveniet’ should be in the present tense; for I perceive it looks now as if it applied to this present scrawl reaching you, whereas it is to the receipt of thy Kilkenny epistle that I have tacked that venerable sentiment.
“Poor Whitbread died yesterday morning—a sudden and severe loss. His health had been wavering, but so fatal an attack was not apprehended. He dropped down and, I believe, never spoke afterwards. I perceive Perry attributes his death to Drury-lane,—a consolatory encouragement to the new Committee. I have no doubt that * *, who is of a plethoric habit, will be bled immediately; and as I have, since my marriage, lost much of my paleness, and,—‘horresco referens’ (for I hate even moderate fat)—that happy slenderness, to which, when I first knew you, I had attained, I by no means sit easy under this dispensation of the Morning Chronicle. Every one must regret the loss of Whitbread; he was surely a great and very good man.
“Paris is taken for the second time. I presume it, for the future, will have an anniversary capture. In the late battles, like all the world, I have lost a connexion,—poor Frederick Howard, the best of his race. I had little intercourse, of late years, with his family, but I never saw or heard but good of him. Hobhouse’s brother is killed. In short, the havoc has not left a family out of its tender mercies.
“Every hope of a republic is over, and we must go on under the old system. But I am sick at heart of politics and slaughters; and the luck which Providence is pleased to lavish on Lord * * is only a proof of the little value the gods set upon prosperity, when they permit such * * *s as he and that drunken corporal, old Blucher, to bully their betters. From this, however, Wellington should be excepted. He is a man,—and the Scipio of our Hannibal. However, he may thank the Russian frosts, which destroyed the real élite of the French army, for the successes of Waterloo.
“La! Moore—how you
blasphemes about ‘Parnassus’ and ‘Moses!’
| A. D. 1815. | LIFE OF LORD BYRON. | 625 |
“When shall we see you in England? Sir Ralph Noel (late Milbanke—he don’t promise to be late Noel in a hurry) finding that one man can’t inhabit two houses, has given his place in the north to me for a habitation; and there Lady B. threatens to be brought to bed in November. Sir R. and my Lady Mother are to quarter at Kirby—Lord Wentworth’s that was. Perhaps you and Mrs. Moore will pay us a visit at Seaham in the course of the autumn. If so, you and I (without our wives) will take a lark to Edinburgh and embrace Jeffrey. It is not much above one hundred miles from us. But all this, and other high matters, we will discuss at meeting, which I hope will be on your return. We don’t leave town till August.
