Letters and Journals of Lord Byron
Lord Byron to Samuel Rogers, 29 July 1816
“Diodati, near Geneva, July 29th, 1816.
“Do you recollect a book, Mathieson’s
Letters, which you lent me, which I
have still, and yet hope to return to your library? Well, I have encountered at Copet
and elsewhere Gray’s correspondent, that
same Bonstetten, to whom I lent the translation of his
correspondent’s epistles for a few days; but all he could remember of
Gray amounts to little,
* The motto is— “He left a name to all succeeding times, Link’d with one virtue and a thousand crimes.” |
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| 10 | NOTICES OF THE | A. D. 1816. |
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except that he was the most ‘melancholy and
gentlemanlike’ of all possible poets. Bonstetten
himself is a fine and very lively old man, and much esteemed by his compatriots; he is
also a littérateur of good repute, and all his friends have a
mania of addressing to him volumes of letters—Mathieson, Muller the historian, &c. &c. He is a good deal
at Copet, where I have met him a few times. All there are well, except Rocca, who, I am sorry to say, looks in a very bad state
of health. Schlegel is in high force, and
Madame as brilliant as ever.
“I came here by the Netherlands and the Rhine route, and
Basle, Berne, Morat, and Lausanne. I have circumnavigated the Lake, and go to Chamouni
with the first fair weather; but really we have had lately such stupid mists, fogs, and
perpetual density, that one would think Castlereagh
had the Foreign Affairs of the kingdom of Heaven also on his hands. I need say nothing
to you of these parts, you having traversed them already. I do not think of Italy before
September. I have read Glenarvon,
and have also seen Ben. Constant’s
Adolphe, and his preface, denying the
real people. It is a work which leaves an unpleasant impression, but very consistent
with the consequences of not being in love, which is perhaps as disagreeable as any
thing, except being so. I doubt, however, whether all such liens (as he calls them) terminate so wretchedly as his hero and
heroine’s.
“There is a third Canto (a longer than either of the former)
of Childe Harold finished, and some
smaller things,—among them a story on the
Chateau de Chillon; I only wait a good opportunity to transmit them to the
grand Murray, who, I hope, flourishes. Where is
Moore? Why is he not out? My love to him, and
my perfect consideration and remembrances to all, particularly to Lord and Lady
Holland, and to your Duchess of Somerset.
“Ever, &c.
“P.S. I send you a fac simile, a
note of Bonstetten’s, thinking you might
like to see the hand of Gray’s
correspondent.”
Henry Richard Fox, third baron Holland (1773-1840)
Whig politician and literary patron; Holland House was for many years the meeting place
for reform-minded politicians and writers. He also published translations from the Spanish
and Italian;
Memoirs of the Whig Party was published in 1852.
Thomas Gray (1716-1771)
English poet, author of “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College,” “Elegy written in a
Country Churchyard,” and “The Bard”; he was professor of history at Cambridge
(1768).
Thomas Moore (1779-1852)
Irish poet and biographer, author of the
Irish Melodies (1807-34),
The Fudge Family in Paris (1818), and
Lalla
Rookh (1817); he was Byron's close friend and designated biographer.
John Murray II (1778-1843)
The second John Murray began the
Quarterly Review in 1809 and
published works by Scott, Byron, Austen, Crabbe, and other literary notables.
Albert Jean-Michel Rocca (1788-1818)
Swiss Hussar, the second husband of Germaine de Staël (1816); they had a son,
Louis-Alphonse Rocca (1812-42).
Samuel Rogers (1763-1855)
English poet, banker, and aesthete, author of the ever-popular
Pleasures of Memory (1792),
Columbus (1810),
Jaqueline (1814), and
Italy (1822-28).
Germaine de Staël (1766-1817)
French woman of letters; author of the novel
Corinne, ou L'Italie
(1807) and
De l'Allemagne (1811); banned from Paris by Napoleon, she
spent her later years living in Germany, Britain, and Switzerland.
