“The Second Canto of Don Juan was sent, on Saturday last, by post, in four packets, two of four,
and two of three sheets each, containing in all two hundred and seventeen stanzas,
octave measure. But I will permit no curtailments, except those mentioned about
Castlereagh and
* * * * * *. You shan’t make canticles of my cantos. The poem will please, if it is lively; if
it is stupid, it will fail:
| 204 | NOTICES OF THE | A. D. 1819. |
“So you and Mr. Foscolo, &c. want me to undertake what you call a ‘great work?’ an Epic Poem, I suppose, or some such pyramid. I’ll try no such thing; I hate tasks. And then ‘seven or eight years!’ God send us all well this day three months, let alone years. If one’s years can’t be better employed than in sweating poesy, a man had better be a ditcher. And works, too!—is Childe Harold nothing? You have so many ‘divine’ poems, is it nothing to have written a human one? without any of your worn-out machinery. Why, man, I could have spun the thoughts of the Four Cantos of that poem into twenty, had I wanted to book-make, and its passion into as many modern tragedies. Since you want length, you shall have enough of Juan, for I’ll make Fifty Cantos.
“And Foscolo, too! Why does he not do something more than the Letters of Ortis, and a tragedy, and pamphlets? He has good fifteen years more at his command than I have: what has he done all that time?—proved his genius, doubtless, but not fixed its fame, nor done his utmost.
“Besides, I mean to write my best work in Italian, and it will take me nine years more thoroughly to master the language; and then if my fancy exists, and I exist too, I will try what I can do really. As to the estimation of the English which you talk of, let them calculate what it is worth, before they insult me with their insolent condescension.
“I have not written for their pleasure. If they are pleased, it is that they chose to be so; I have never flattered their opinions, nor their pride; nor will I. Neither will I make ‘Ladies’ books’ ‘al dilettar le femine e la plebe.’ I have written from the fulness of my mind, from passion, from impulse, from many motives, but not for their ‘sweet voices.’
“I know the precise worth of popular applause, for few
scribblers have had more of it; and if I chose to swerve into their paths, I could
retain it, or resume it. But I neither love ye, nor fear ye; and though I buy with ye
and sell with ye, I will neither eat with ye, drink with ye, nor pray with ye.
They made me, without my search, a species of
| A. D. 1819. | LIFE OF LORD BYRON. | 205 |
“You ask about my health: about the beginning of the year I was in a state of great exhaustion, attended by such debility of stomach that nothing remained upon it; and I was obliged to reform my ‘way of life,’ which was conducting me from the ‘yellow leaf’ to the ground, with all deliberate speed. I am better in health and morals, and very much yours, &c.
“P.S. I have read Hodgson’s ‘Friends.’ * * * * He is right in defending Pope against the bastard pelicans of the poetical winter day, who add insult to their parricide, by sucking the blood of the parent of English real poetry—poetry without fault—and then spurning the bosom which fed them.”
